Philip Patrick has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Getting an interview with Jinichi Kawakami, the man known in Japan as ‘the Last Ninja’, was no easy task – but nor should it have been. Ninjas, Japan’s legendary covert operatives and assassins, were renowned for their elusiveness, so it would have been disappointing if tracking one down had proved a cinch. It took a good deal of research and persistence before I was granted an interview by landline telephone – which also seems appropriate since ninjas were reputedly able to make themselves invisible.
Kawakami is head of the Banke Shinobinoden school of ninjutsu (ninja culture), director of the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum and Ninja Council, and a professor of Ninja Studies at Mie University. At 76, he is the last living embodiment of a centuries-old tradition and the master of a very particular set of skills that have been passed down orally. Kawakami has chosen not to take on an apprentice, so when he goes, that will be it: no more ninjas. How does he feel about this?
‘Well, I never called myself “the Last Ninja”, but I suppose there is a certain sadness,’ he tells me, speaking so quietly that he is almost inaudible (that feels appropriate too: it is easy to imagine him stealing up on you unawares). ‘But it’s a misconception that ninjas still exist in their traditional form. It’s a pity people still believe that.’
What exactly that traditional form was is a matter of contention. We know ninjas – or, more accurately, shinobi (‘those who conceal themselves’) – existed and something of what they did, but details are scant.
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