Ninjutsu fact and fiction - Interview with Antony Cummins

Bushu.ch: Hi Antony. It’s a pleasure to finally do this interview with you. May we start with your background. I know you trained in the Bujinkan and then you started to write books and started your video channel.

Antony Cummins: Yes; basically, I was always interested in the Ninja but it was not until about the year 1999 that I joined my first Bujinkan class. Even though I'd followed Hatsumi since I was a young boy, we got the books, the magazines. I knew who Hatsumi was, I knew who Stephen K. Hayes was and eventually I found a Dojo to train in the Art of Ninja.

It was there that I met what was to become my Shidoshi, which was Steven Powell.

Bushu.ch: The big controversy is that you stated that there is no historical proof that there ever was a hand-to-hand combat system of the Ninja and that the Ninja are part of the samurai class. From a combat point of view, if the Ninja wanted to train in martial arts skills, they trained in the same type of stuff the Samurai did because there are Samurai. But the ninja training was not about combat; it was really about the art of espionage. Things like gathering information about castles, persons and also troop movements. On what basis did you arrive at this conclusion?

Antony Cummins: First of all, you have to remember, this is not a case of me proving there is no ninja martial art. Remember, I was an enthusiastic Bujinkan member, I would love it if there was a ninja martial art but let's start with the word martial art. What we mean by that is hand-to-hand combat, physical fighting between two people, not martial arts as a generic term with the meaning warfare.

What I did was when I went to Japan, I looked through all the books, I went around to all of the secondhand book shops and collected all of the old books on the ninja and I went through them with Yoshie Minami, my translator. But first remember, I believed Ninjutsu was hand-to-hand combat at the time. But after some research, it appeared that a lot of these books from the 1950s and 1960s were just made up and did not have any basis for their claims.  

The people at the time where just guessing, but none of them said there is a hand-to-hand combat system of martial arts used by the ninja. None of them except Takamatsu; he was the only one. Even Seiko Fujita said why are you doing fighting techniques? It's not Ninjutsu.

Then I decided that I should get rid of all the 20th century books. It's not primary research so I just said right, let’s scrap all of that. So I had to go back and start all over again. And from this point on we only used primary research. This means we only use scrolls from the past and we only use historical information. There is no mention, not a single mention of any form of specific hand-to-hand combat used only by the ninja anywhere.

But there is so much information to say that these guys are just normal people who are highly trained in espionage. Every single Ninja scroll is about espionage, magic, saboteurs, etc.

Bushu.ch: I also would like to know if you have a normal job besides being an author and maintaining your big YouTube channel.

Antony Cummins: No; just this. I only just barely make a living and that's why I have to keep doing the YouTube videos to make sure people are aware of my books. I need people buying them all the time because I need money to continue my projects. I need money to fly to Japan, get some more scrolls, and obviously sit down with the masters and say, well, how come this doesn't match? But that's a lot of money because in Japan, you have to buy drinks, take people for meals and also the gifts are quite expensive.

First my translator team puts together a basic English script and from this we go back and forth. We do cross-source checks and finally we have book which is interesting to read. I also write my own books, as well. For example, “The Ultimate Art of War” is just out and I've written it solely by myself.

Bushu.ch: So, the Ninja are parts of the samurai class and also trained in hand-to-hand combat in the same way the Samurai did?

Antony Cummins: Well, actually the question is “what did the Samurai learn”. We know a lot about the Edo Period. So actually, what did the Samurai in the Sengoku period (c. 1467 – c. 1603) actually study? One mistake people often make with the Samurai is they think they're all living in towns with castles. But that's in the Edo period. Before that, they were living in farms, they were living in villages and they ran the village for the Lord.

They lived in a mini-fortified mansion, not a castle, but a fortification. They would have their family with them, their extended family.

Of course, the Lord has his own retainers around him there's times where there's lots of Samurai together. But on the whole Samurais’ are studying their family art.

Bushu.ch: Did you ever find any indication that the ninjas trained in something else other than the Samurai did in hand-to-hand combat?

Antony Cummins: Not a single shred. That's why when people say, “Oh, how can you prove the ninjas didn't”, you are like, “well, where did this idea come from that they did?” That's not how professional historians work. You can't just make something up and then say, disprove it. You know, like I was visited by aliens last night: disprove it. That is just ridiculous.

The Ninja hand-to-hand combat and the claims of the Bujinkan just don't make any sense. My aim is not to go against the Bujinkan. I was actually a Bujinkan practitioner and my aim was to find the truth. Unfortunately, what they train in the Bujinkan doesn't fit with the facts, the truth of the authentic Ninja.

Bushu.ch: Yes, true. So, your goal of the publication, really, is to just provide knowledge; yes?

Antony Cummins: My real goal is that I want everybody to totally understand the Samurai in history. I've seen so many books on the Ninja which are just totally wrong.

If you actually read a lot about the Samurai, you know there's a lot of foreign accounts of the Samurai and of Japan from the 1500s when the Jesuits came up. They say the Samurai are vicious; they are brutal, they will betray each other straight away. Some of them even say that you can be at meal and two enemies are having a very polite meal and within a few seconds one of them chops the other’s head off after the other is drunk, just to trap them.

They're real good fighters. What a lot of people don't know is that Samurai were hired as mercenaries in Southeast Asia.

Bushu.ch: Really? I never heard that.

Antony Cummins: Yes; Steven Turnbull had an academic article on it. People used to come across and say we need some Samurai and some of the Samurai used to be pirates and they used to go into Southeast Asia and were involved in all sorts fighting. But that was before Japan locked itself down and chose to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Don't get me wrong, for me the Samurai and their customs are amazing. But there is so much more to it than what you just see today in the movies. Nobody knows what Samurai actually did. So that's the question I'm going to answer.

Bushu.ch: Great. I can’t wait to read more about it.

Antony Cummins: Well, a lot of people don't understand why I'm publishing the Natori Ryu scrolls. I am doing them to answer the question about the ninja. We have to really understand the Samurai. When we understand the Samurai, we can understand the ninja.

Bushu.ch: Many martial artists have an interest in the history of the Samurai.

Antony Cummins: Most people just want to do the martial art side and not the strategy. However, for me personally, now that I've studied the strategy, my life is much clearer. Its gives me structure in my life. In fact, I'm writing a new book soon, which is called ‘How to be a modern Samurai’ and it comes out in July 2020. In this book I will write how you can use the strategy for yourself. I hope I can change some minds and promote interest for the strategy side of the Samurai.

Bushu.ch: Yes, this sounds great. Thank you so much for your time.

Click here for a detailed interview with Antony Cummins

On the part of Bushu.ch Raoul Haldimann conducted the interview with Antony Cummins on the 7. Januar 2020 by Skype.

Mehr Informationen about Antony can you find here:

• Official Website of Antony Cummins
• Antony Cummins YouTube channel on historical ninja research