HANS 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.
I have a mind to visit that dojo someday.
this is crap colin.
what are we supposed to do here. and who are those chicks?
where are all the men? Also we are wondering where the
pictures of Japan are oh and the picture of the new toilet?