Last ninja: ‘Be able to kill your students’
Sunday, April 30th, 2006HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press
NODA, Japan - The
teachings of Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi echo through my head as he
entreats me to attack a blackbelted disciple with a practice sword.
“Always be able to kill your students,” he says.
Chilling words from a shockingly fit 76-year-old man who bills
himself as the world’s last ninja and stocks his training chamber with
weapons such as throwing stars and nunchucks. Especially to a neophyte
whose closest brush with martial arts was watching Bruce Lee matinees
as a kid.
As I cautiously raise the sword with a taut two-handed samurai grip,
my sparring partner gingerly points to Hatsumi. I avert my eyes for a
split second - and WHAM! The next thing I know, I’m staring at the
rafters.
Keeping your focus is just one of the lessons thumped out on the
mats of the Bujinkan Dojo, a cramped school outside Tokyo that is a
pilgrimage site for 100,000 worldwide followers. They revere Hatsumi as
the last living master of ninjutsu - the mysterious Japanese art of war
practiced by black-masked assassins of yesteryear.
“He’s unlimited in body, mind and spirit,” says Richard VanDonk, who
flew in from California to practice body throws in the dojo’s warm glow
of rice-paper screens and flickering votive candles. “He’s a master of
change.”
Hatsumi is the only living student of the last “fighting ninja,”
Toshitsugu Takamatsu, the so-called 33rd Grand Master who was a
bodyguard to officials in Japanese-occupied Manchuria before World War
II and fought - and won - 12 fights to the death. Legend says that
during one battle, Takamatsu snatched an eyeball from a would-be
Chinese bandit.