Cute as a… Ninja?

There was a blurb in local paper the other day about ninja, in Hawaii. Damn those sneaky ninja, how’d they get in here? Probably JAL, or ANA. This was a group from Igaueno representing the Igaryu Museum. I’d kind of forgotten about this until Derek gave me a buzz. Hey, it’s ninja, we really should go check them out. Now how much of a tenuous connection these performers have to the actual Iga ninja of feudal times, we will never know, you know how sneaky these ninja are. The actual performance was entertaining, a bit of a circus show almost. Certainly the kids enjoyed it, I’m sure a good many were enthralled and will be going home to play ninja for the next few days. And I think the adults like me who grew up watching samurai TV series were smiling and chuckling as it brought back memories of watching those dramatized sword fights as the hero skillfully slashed his way through the disposable minions as they grimaced and quickly died of screen. It reminded me of how I grew up running around the house in a kimono/yukata, with my little bamboo sword/dagger. How cool was that? When I went back to Japan after a long time away, putting on the yukata to go to dinner, the onsen and wear in the hotel suddenly brought back a familiar feeling.

Watching the performance, at first I was thinking, my look what the mystical, almost mythical ninja have been reduced to. But then I got to thinking, who’s to say that this isn’t really what ninja would be doing? I’m fairly certain that back in the day, many ninja probably were street performers. What better way to disguise that you’re a ninja than to declare you’re a ninja and play like one. You never know….

And besides, this is a better treatment of ninja than the myriad indignities brought upon the name in many a western movie. I wish they could have conveyed some of the historical aspects a bit more, but that would have been difficult in this setting of Ala Moana center stage. Anyway, I see in their program that this was their last scheduled performance, so darn if you wanted to check it out. You’ll need to go to Japan to the Ninja Museum in Igaueno. But look out you litterbugs, they are scheduled for a “Cleaning of the Waikiki area” tomorrow, so don’t be tossing that plate lunch box into the bushes, because a ninja might just pop out and getcha!