Mark your calendars! MJHA roundtable on ninjas and samurai, May 12
Nick Kapur
Tuesday, May 12, 2024 4:00-5:30 PM ET
Wednesday, May 13, 2024 5:00-6:30 AM JST
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MJHA Roundtable #4: Ninja vs. Samurai - Warrior Icons in History, Popular Culture, and the Martial Arts
Featured Panelists:
Polina Barducci (University of Cambridge)
Oleg Benesch (University of York)
Robert Tuck (Arizona State University)
Moderator:
Ran Zwigenberg (Pennsylvania State University)Over the last seventy years, martial arts publications have been hugely influential in shaping views of Japanese culture and history among English-speaking readers. The US journalist Andrew Adams’ 1970 book Ninja: The Invisible Assassins, for instance, went through a staggering thirty-six editions to 2008 and has been cited by hundreds of subsequent popular authors, even as the majority of professional academics have remained unaware of its existence (and its total unreliability). This event engages with academic reluctance to tackle transnational myths of Japanese warriors, including those related to ninja, samurai, and the martial arts. It will showcase both the importance of academic engagement with popular media and the range of concrete ways in which rigorous scholarship delivers insights into these areas. Robert Tuck will argue that “ninja” history is not really “history” in the conventional sense, and that literary-focused methodologies are more useful for understanding how “ninja” discourse works. Polina Barducci will discuss the earlier historical records of those who later became known as the ninja and the challenges of distinguishing them from other warriors. Oleg Benesch will explore the reinvention of the samurai as an icon in modern Japan and around the world. Taken together, the three panelists make a powerful case that the time has come to take popular martial discourses seriously as a field of academic study.