Page 1 of 2

Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Tue Mar 05, 2019 6:48 pm
by lineofintent
Back again with more awesomeness on ancient Japanese scrolls...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9LrNjlkujM

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:29 am
by middleway
Cool interview! :) Thank you

I remember mentioning to you when we first met how Hatsumi and Takamatsu basically made it all up. haha.

I actually learnt a lineage of Kukishin Ryu Bo Jutsu which the Bujinkan claim as one of their styles. Needless to say their version is ... well ... ahum .... unique. ::)

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 4:55 am
by cloudz
Interesting!

I have some history with a secret ninjas school.. Cummins is quite controversial amongst the Bujinkan crowd from what I gathered.
At the heart of it, I think it's all really a mystery school transmission. Definitely one I want to watch, thanks for sharing.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 8:58 am
by Ian C. Kuzushi
Dubious. I mean, the guy can't read or speak Japanese.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 9:26 am
by lineofintent
Chris yes i remember you telling me!

George that is cool, which secret school? Go on, you are with friends here.....

Ian, he speaks some Japanese but cannot read, the scrolls are translated by a linguist and he edits and compiles the information into books.

Do you mean his books are dubious or his whole story? He certainly seems sincere and has done an amazing job of historical research.

Which parts of the books exactly do you think are wrong?

I have no connection with Bujinkan so have no feeling one way or the other, but it does seems as if the school had duped people somewhere along the line.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:06 am
by cloudz
retreats108 wrote:
George that is cool, which secret school? Go on, you are with friends here.....




Ah well, I guess it's a long story, but the name of the school was Zenkyoshin. My teachers teacher claimed to have inherited it from a Japanese family that moved to the UK. He traced it back, a long way, to a so called Blue Mountain Sect. There was interesting history and stories published some time ago when my teacher went the website route.

The main guy had a background in Oriental Studies and would tell the story of Chinese origin, what they were about, how they were part of the Chan Budhism school, described a split in that school in China. Anyway this tradition found it's way to Japan and at some point merged with Yamabushi mountain folk and or similar - just going by memory atm.

Unfortunately that website didn't last as it attracted a fair bit if criticism from Japanese Koryuu types and the Ninjas that chase down and scold the independents for being fakes. I mean if that isn't ironic I don't know what is.

I guess when I say 'secret' when I started the story of the school and how it related to Ninjutsu was a little obfuscated. In MA terms the school was a mish mash - almost on purpose i suspect; so I was mostly doing a version of TCC with a bit of aikijutsu and kenjutsu/ japanese sword. I don't think you would immidiately recognise a class or the school as anything particularly to do with Ninjas.. But yes, to me, I guess it's really more of a secret society really. I took blood oath and shared in some interesting esoteric/ spiritual and philosophical training. Including 108 precepts, that was right up my street.. :D

They also had taijitsu and other things in the cirriculum; all in all there was a lot that had been accumalated and practiced. Much of it I suspect put together from the top guy, so to speak.

It's really hard to quite know what to make of it, even now. One thing I can tell you they (top guys) were very dedicated and practiced like hell, so they had something going on, that's for sure.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:10 am
by cloudz
Ps. There's a story about a character called Nissi in Japan, how he met these few guys including a samurai, the story goes on to tell how their meeting up led to the formal set up of the school somewhere in Japan. I might be able to find that somewhere..

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:39 am
by Ian C. Kuzushi
I find the claim that ninja as we conceive of them today ever existed to be beyond dubious. They just never existed. Cummings does a good job of mixing in some bits of truth (they didn't wear masks, have shuriken, etc), but his basic claim that there were ninja (especially, ninja specialists coming out of Iga and Koka) in the 13th, 14th, or even 15th Centuries is not born out by rigorous study. Of course there have been commando types throughout Japan for ages, but not ninja. To borrow Eric Hobsbawm's term, the ninja are an invented tradition.

I'm happy to give Cummings the benefit of the doubt and assume he is working in good faith and is just very enthusiastic. He is finding what he wants to find. There is almost zero peer-reviewed scholarship on the ninja and for good reason. The only thing I have ever found that seems to follow the evidence is Turnbull's essay. Not a big fan of Turnbull, but I was glad to see him admit fault with some of his previous work.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/530c/a ... 840ebf.pdf

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 5:09 pm
by edededed
Reminds me of Shorinji kenpo - everyone would have believed their Shaolin origins story forever, except that the actual Shaolin temple contradicted pretty much the whole system. That doesn't mean that the Shorinji kenpo curriculum is bad, though. But now, no one disputes the non-relationship.

Same thing with taekwondo - noone believes the taekkyon origins anymore, since taekkyon came out of the woods, too.

Lucky for the various secret ninjutsu, etc. schools, there is no ninja authority to fear.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 5:55 pm
by lineofintent
Interview back up in a few hours, just sorting out some technical issues...

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 1:56 am
by cloudz
phew, thought the ninjas had stolen it
tried to watch last night :D

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 2:01 am
by Trick
cloudz wrote:
retreats108 wrote:
George that is cool, which secret school? Go on, you are with friends here.....




Ah well, I guess it's a long story, but the name of the school was Zenkyoshin. My teachers teacher claimed to have inherited it from a Japanese family that moved to the UK. He traced it back, a long way, to a so called Blue Mountain Sect. There was interesting history and stories published some time ago when my teacher went the website route.

The main guy had a background in Oriental Studies and would tell the story of Chinese origin, what they were about, how they were part of the Chan Budhism school, described a split in that school in China. Anyway this tradition found it's way to Japan and at some point merged with Yamabushi mountain folk and or similar - just going by memory atm.

Unfortunately that website didn't last as it attracted a fair bit if criticism from Japanese Koryuu types and the Ninjas that chase down and scold the independents for being fakes. I mean if that isn't ironic I don't know what is.

I guess when I say 'secret' when I started the story of the school and how it related to Ninjutsu was a little obfuscated. In MA terms the school was a mish mash - almost on purpose i suspect; so I was mostly doing a version of TCC with a bit of aikijutsu and kenjutsu/ japanese sword. I don't think you would immidiately recognise a class or the school as anything particularly to do with Ninjas.. But yes, to me, I guess it's really more of a secret society really. I took blood oath and shared in some interesting esoteric/ spiritual and philosophical training. Including 108 precepts, that was right up my street.. :D

They also had taijitsu and other things in the cirriculum; all in all there was a lot that had been accumalated and practiced. Much of it I suspect put together from the top guy, so to speak.

It's really hard to quite know what to make of it, even now. One thing I can tell you they (top guys) were very dedicated and practiced like hell, so they had something going on, that's for sure.

i'll guess that school was invicible secret prior the 1988 bloodsport movie

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 5:12 pm
by C.J.W.
Thanks to all the cheesy Hollywood Ninja flicks of the 80s, Bujinkan was able to attract a large following in the West and grow into an international organization. (I'd say over 90% of his students are Westerners; no Japanese in the formal Koryu/budo circles takes his Ninjutsu hocus-pocus voodoo seriously.)

On a side note, based on my readings and a trip to Iga-ryu Ninja museum in Mie Prefecture in Japan two years ago, the modern stereotypical image of ninjas is actually quite inaccurate. Historians now believe that real ninjas acted more like spies whose goal was to infiltrate and gather information in enemy territories by blending in and looking/acting like your average joes and janes -- as opposed to donning black outfits while running around on rooftops. The notion that ninjas were all martial arts experts is pretty much fictitious as well because they mainly relied on gadgets and trickery to overcome the opponent in a physical confrontation.

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 5:51 pm
by everything
Image

Re: Secret Scrolls of Samurai and.....Ninja! More Flying Monk

PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:04 pm
by Trick
ninjas and the hollywood connection was pointed out, but as a swede i would also want to highlight the swedish superpruduction the 1984 "the ninja mission" starring real swedish ninjas lead by the head ninja Bo Munthe. Munthe opened his first ninja school in 1975 by inviting one of Hatsumi's top ninjas to sweden. this was probably the very start of the ninja invation in europe...ninjas have a long history in europe