Previously, when the whole incident with Logan Paul filming suicides in Aokigahara Forest blew up the Internet, I talked about how the West’s obsession with documenting facets of Japanese society that it considered “weird” was a kind of casual racism that bred cultural misunderstanding. If people are convinced that Japan is a strange land full of strange happenings – as opposed to just being an island full of people going about their everyday lives – then they’re likely to believe any crazy story that someone publishes about the country.
Your Honor, I submit Exhibit A.
Recently, NPR interviewed Okamoto Sakae, the current mayor of the city of Iga in Mie Prefecture (map). According to freelance writer Shinohara Shuuji and Asahi Shinbun, the mayor expected he would be talking about the revitalization of Iga in the face of a dwindling and aging Japanese population. But instead, the story somehow morphed into a report on “Iga’s Ninja Shortage”. Commentator Vanek Smith stated that ninja performers in the city could make up to USD $85,000 a year. It was further implied that Iga is short on performers, and could use an influx of fresh talent.
Now, it’s true that Iga is, for lack of a better term, a “ninja town.” It’s the birthplace of what’s referred to as iga-ryuu (伊賀流), or the Iga school of ninjutsu. The city’s Iga-Ueno Tourist Association, a general corporation, heavily promotes its ninja heritage to tourists, and runs the city’s Iga-Ryuu Ninja Museum. And the city has used that fact to its advantage: in 2017, the city declared itself 忍者市 (ninja-shi), or a ninja city, and it was recognized by the Japan Government’s Agency of Cultural Affairs, along with the city of Kaga, as 忍者の里 (ninja no sato), or “Birthplace of the Ninjas”.
And that’s as far as it goes. There is no “ninja shortage” in the city, and performers who do portray ninjas in the town aren’t making anywhere near that kind of dosh. The city itself doesn’t even hire performers; it’s the Tourist Association that runs such activities. However, that didn’t stop people from all over the world – by Asahi Shinbun’s report, up to 115 inquiries from 14 separate countries – offering their mad ninja skills to the beleaguered city of Iga. People with martial arts skills or military training apparently thought this was their ticket to a better life.
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The situation became so bad that the city had to put out an official pronouncement in (admittedly poor) English, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish denouncing the report. Mayor Okamoto said he had no idea how the program got the idea the city was on a ninja hiring spree. And the Iga-Ueno Tourist Association made it clear that pay for performers “would never get as high” as ￥9,450,000 a year.
I have no idea how NPR came up with this Fake News story. One hopes that the news organization – which, frankly, should know better than this – will do a full accounting and retraction. In the meantime, it’s good for those of us in the English-speaking world to look upon these stories with a grain of salt, and to always hold the possibilities in our heads that, maybe somehow, something along the way got lost in translation.
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