‘It is sad that we are sometimes seen as just killers': an interview with Japan's last ninja

Spectator

30-04-2025

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. From surviving documents, most notably the 17th-century ninja manual Bansenshukai, they appear to have been more spies and saboteurs than killers, though they were armed with elaborate weapons and could dispatch an enemy in short order if required.