Punching Day: The Bansenshukai (Patreon)

A book about ninjutsu with zero Robert Hamburger or expository flashbacks seems wrong. Yet the Bansenshukai’s a precise guide to everything in a medieval murderer’s backpack and mind, and how they went together. It’s reportedly authentic, meaning historians only roll their eyes at the topic instead of the content. Let them. The content’s all I want from life.

Consider this peasant-killing device. I think it was in a movie once.

You might see an overexposed symbol of aristocratic authority, generally displaced in warfare by spears and arrows. But that storytelling matters. It carved space in the human imagination that still elevates art and ruins dates, GPAs, and art today.

Ninjutsu is the nerd version of gold-paved streets. A lingering promise that we can be more than speed bumps for low-flying Predator drones. Look at Ryu Hayabusa, the greatest murderer in the medium of stylized murder, and tell me we’re not made for more than this.

Look at him.

Is the 2022 experience life? Driving past today’s forest fire to an Amazon labor cube, hoping the microplastics under your skin can deflect the bullets flying out of schools? That’s not the ninja way. Ryu expects more. He demands it. Catch the bullets with your hands, and feed them to your local Dylan Kleibold/Roof/inevitable third shooter.

That’s why I bought a ninja manual. To find my legacy.

Hopefully it’s not in the foreword. The guest author has “Dr.” in his name, and I’m not reading anything written in academic pidgin. Grad school debt warps English into a mass of writhing tentacles. I only brushed against them in art kindergarten, and I still tend to obnoxiously apply equivocation and grandiloquent diction to extend a sentence and/or protract a statement beyond its strictly necessary bounds in a grandiose and circuitous manner whenever attempting to make or establish a larger point, part one of four. No deal.

Then there’s the co-translator’s introduction, which is more my speed:

Thank you, Ryu. I never stopped praying to you.

We’re all one library rental away from outclassing a Navy Seal, and Antony Cummins knows it. Though I’m leery of being told to “adapt” the content. Adaptation sounds like the job of the team translating, annotating, and publishing the ninja manual. Cookbooks don’t start with “survive seven years as a Paris bakery slave.”

After the foreword, introduction, and author’s notes come introductory notes, which kick off the ninja bible proper. Nice and simple. This preface, and the book at large, are by a ninja named Fujibayashi Yasutake. It’s good to see a hybrid assassin-author career’s possible. I assume he wrote the first draft in smoke, asphyxiated the editor, and wrote rave reviews under assumed names.

Good point, Fujibayashi. The 1600’s needed a double-dose of righteous ninja violence, and nothing’s changed. I whisper six names every night. They’re the heads of state I won’t decapitate with ninja power.

Some might accuse Fujibayashi of romanticizing dead empires to cope with the present. Stop that. It’s incredibly rude, especially when he writes you fun columns every month.

Besides, Fujibayashi’s ahead of his time. He foresees a dark ninja-less future, where robed eunuchs ban sex without getting kicked through drywall. We’re holding a martial time capsule. A message in a bottle to a less-rad world.

Don’t take my word for it. Fujibayashi knows the stakes:

As you can see, Antony’s Special Forces claim has roots in the text. Raising an important question: should you be able to own an unlicensed ninja manual? Your child might find it unlocked and annihilate the entire Marine Corps. Simple reforms can keep our troops safe until World War 3 kicks off.

Clearly a test. There’s no other motive for saying “you will learn no ninjutsu from this ninjutsu manual. Go back to the manga section.” The Bansenshukai has over five hundred small-print pages, not counting introductions. That’s more text than I’d need to teach you every job I’ve fled. Fujibayashi has shrewdly hidden ninjutsu from lesser attention spans.

The rest of the preface is probably a test too. I’ll skip to the first volume on kicking ass.

Hmm. “Correct Mind” is an odd name for a combat stance, but I’m into it. Perhaps it involves rewriting your opponent’s thoughts before the first stroke. Or at least convincing them you can. I’m mature enough to admit a little mythmaking supports the authentic dragon magic.

Those sound like ethics. Great for an undergrad elective, less so for soloing Delta Squad. I need Fujibayashi to deliver. I live two blocks down from an army base, and I’ve been talking a lot of shit.

I’d love serving a lord with a moral code, but I live in New York. The mayor thinks batons are drumsticks for skulls. His predecessors are a talking bag of money, Donald Trump’s footstool, and some funny way of saying gutless coward. I can’t explain it: something about running Earth’s fraud capital attracts the wrong crowd.

Come again?

I imagine he’d protect himself with platoon-slaying ninjutsu. Isn’t faith for unarmed commoners? If that? Any deities behind the last few millenia aren’t on our side.

Mononofu means samurai, a class ninjas claimed, but drifted from in prestige and total bankruptcy. A fact that shouldn’t distract you from Fujibayashi writing the same poem twice.

Ninja Scroll sold me a bill of goods. I thought ninjas only stopped killing to think about more killing. This spy textbook says I can’t indulge in self-preservation, religious skepticism, or tax evasion. I’m cooked. What’s ninja poetry say about green card weddings?

Much more reasonable. I’m one for four.

I have an adult’s flexible mind and caffeine addiction. I still wasn’t ready for ninja slam poetry. I can’t threaten Fujibayashi, because he’s a dead spy and I’m a living clown. But I’m four open mics deep and haven’t learned one side flip. Even Princeton taught me aerials, and they’re still in the first act of Footloose. What’s next? Ninja short fiction? Is Fujibayashi going to hit us with VeggieTales Gaiden?

I’ll settle in.

The tale begins with a lord’s violent death, and two servants discussing how much outliving him sucks. Said servants embody the shinobi ideal, which is tied to moral blather instead of teleportation. They’ve also saved their boss’ kid, which is one benefit of not tracking employee bathroom breaks.

Sounds heartwarming, but we’re three centuries out from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The question isn’t if this goes Game of Thrones, but which house we’re in. I’m hoping Tyrell, they usually do all right. They’re a reliable team with good fundamentals, and get consistent incest-free points on the board.

Ah, Stark. You suffer, die, and the broken narrative declares it a victory.

Looks like there’s no way of getting around this “noble servant of a nobler patron” thing. I’ll work with what I have:

I feel dirty. But it’s worth it to get to the next chapter, and finally learn death karate.

I’m missing something here.

I came ready for self-congratulation, tangents, or outright lies. This site’s covered generations of pamphlets about disarming muggers with your mind. Yet we’re three volumes into this brick and still getting Buddhism for Murderers instead of Murder for Murderers.

Nothing’s wrong with Combat Buddhism. I have the same vague respect for the faith as every other American unaware of Myanmar. But Enlightenment is a Hadoukenless state. While Nirvana’s nice, I’d rather reign in hell than not be king of hell.

It’s time for answers. I’m breaking Dayle law and reading the foreword. Dr. Nakashima Atsumi runs the Federation of Japanese Koryu Bujutsu, an organization historically silent on wall-running. Hopefully he’s not addicted to commas.

One benefit of print: you can’t see me crying.

I’ve limped through this life for thirty years. I’ve outlived thrash metal, good anime, American prosperity, The Boondocks, the half of my family I liked, usable websites, white sanity, guiltless straws, black sanity, privacy rights, and those Yangtze river dolphins with funny noses. One hope kept me alive: learning the Izuna drop, wherein Ryu Hayabusa launches an enemy into the air, flips behind them, applies a midair full nelson, and spin-piledrives them into the ground.

Now? Nothing. I can’t even join an evil ninja clan. Evidently, they don’t exist.

The Bansenshukai is a grant application by bankrupt war criminals. A glorified cover letter that inspired the entire spin-kick genre. We’re not talking about one character, or one story, or the numbered pig prank every high school claims. An archetype worshiped by dorks worldwide comes from a hooded cover of “We Are The World.”

That’s brilliant. We’re not learning how to shoot fire from our hands. We’re learning how to convince history we did. While panhandling.

Remember, this pitch specifically went to the shogunate. Wasn't there a line about how great a ninja’s lord is? With victory, rectitude, and the number of ninjas on staff in lock step?

Excellent fluffing. But if a feudal warlord takes the ancient spy-murderer-arsonist clans seriously, could a trust issue emerge?

Artful fluffing. “I’m physically incapable of lying to you. Sign here, please.” Shinobi copywriters are famine-proof.

In case any part of you buys an intelligence network made of benevolent humanists, the rest of the book is about arson. Arson tools, arson targets, picking locks (for arson), maximizing villagers torched per match, the works.

If you’re reading on a personal device, avoid airports for a bit.

I can’t lie: I love this. The Bansenshukai shows a broke sociopath pandering to an impossibly wealthy sociopath about their shared righteousness. A clear contender for the best unreliable narrator in print history. That picture still captures life today. Right now, a CIA agent’s patting a cabinet member on the back and saying “this is great because we’re great.” The third person in the room is dead.

Thanks to the Bansenshukai, I’ve finally mastered ninjutsu. Specifically, moralizing self-promotion that’ll outlive me and my body count. Keep an eye on my Twitter.

But have you? Do you have Correct Mind? Have you internalized the psychotic moral certainty that made the shinobi strong? You’ve learned through heathen text instead of oral secrets, so it’s suspect. Answer these questions under cover of night:

Welcome to the path. The Art of Deception dominates enemy soldiers, friendly nobles, and global culture.

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