New release: Three Great Secret Manuals of the Ninja

[punisher732]

Amazon.com: The Three Great Secret Manuals of the Ninja: Bansenshukai (Mansenshukai), Shoninki, and Ninpiden: Japan’s Three Great Ninjutsu Texts in Unabridged English, ... (Japanese Martial Arts Secrets Book 5) eBook : Yasutake, Hujibayasi, Natori, M

Amazon.com: The Three Great Secret Manuals of the Ninja: Bansenshukai (Mansenshukai), Shoninki, and Ninpiden: Japan’s Three Great Ninjutsu Texts in Unabridged English, ... (Japanese Martial Arts Secrets Book 5) eBook : Yasutake, Hujibayasi, Natori, Masazumi , Hattori, Hanzo Masanari, Hattori...

www.amazon.com

It includes English translations of the Bansenshukai, Shoninki, and Ninpiden which are the three known "ninja" manuals.

For those who are interested in a more "historical" approach of what their skills actually were.

I'm going to summon Chris Parker, Chris Parker, Christ Parker to get his thoughts on the project.

 

[Xue Sheng98]

I'm going to summon Chris Parker, Chris Parker, Christ Parker to get his thoughts on the project.

hmmmm why all of a sudden am I hearing music

 

[O'Malley91]

Amazon.com: The Three Great Secret Manuals of the Ninja: Bansenshukai (Mansenshukai), Shoninki, and Ninpiden: Japan’s Three Great Ninjutsu Texts in Unabridged English, ... (Japanese Martial Arts Secrets Book 5) eBook : Yasutake, Hujibayasi, Natori, M

Amazon.com: The Three Great Secret Manuals of the Ninja: Bansenshukai (Mansenshukai), Shoninki, and Ninpiden: Japan’s Three Great Ninjutsu Texts in Unabridged English, ... (Japanese Martial Arts Secrets Book 5) eBook : Yasutake, Hujibayasi, Natori, Masazumi , Hattori, Hanzo Masanari, Hattori...

www.amazon.com

It includes English translations of the Bansenshukai, Shoninki, and Ninpiden which are the three known "ninja" manuals.

For those who are interested in a more "historical" approach of what their skills actually were.

I'm going to summon Chris Parker, Chris Parker, Christ Parker to get his thoughts on the project.

 

[punisher732]

Must be why he hasn't responded. I attempted to summon the wrong person...

CHRIS PARKER, CHRIS PARKER, CHRIS PARKER

 

[_Simon_104]

Must be why he hasn't responded. I attempted to summon the wrong person...

CHRIS PARKER, CHRIS PARKER, CHRIS PARKER

You've gotta actually tag him!

@Chris Parker @Chris Parker @Chris Parker

There we go. The universal ripples have been set...

 

[O'Malley91]

Wait a minute... OK, this won't work, but... but what if it does...

(With sparkly eyes) @ChristParker !

 

[Xue Sheng98]

You've gotta actually tag him!

@Chris Parker @Chris Parker @Chris Parker

There we go. The universal ripples have been set...

 

[AlexLoh4]

From what I understand, these texts are not very historically accurate.

The main problems are:

• They are a romanticization of the past by authors writing during the Edo period, long after the events they describe.
• Some passages are obviously fanciful or unreliable.
• There were also political motivations behind some of these writings.

In a way, they represent an early form of the ninja myth, predating the Hollywood version.

Therefore, at best, they are a substantially distorted representation of historical reality and should be read with great caution.

 

[Chris Parker]

Okay...........

Hey, Punisher...

So... first thing to say is that Alex is pretty on the money here. The texts themselves have little to no real value, other than in studying the popular image at the time, as they have little to no credibility as authentic texts (from the perspective of them being representative of some secret society and it's methodologies that, for all intents and purposes, didn't really exist in this fashion). There are no academics that would even bother considering using them outside of an anthropological discussion of changing perceptions and presentations within a society.

That said, that's not my biggest issue here. It's that there is no credited translator. There's no credited team. There's... nothing. The only clue we have is that it's published under something referred to as "Japanese Classics In Clear English" as the collection, but absolutely nothing about who did it, what their qualifications are, or anything. If one was to be cynical (or suspicious), I would suggest that it's more than likely an AI re-write of things like Don Roley's translations, or, gods-forbid, Antony Cummins' "work" with the texts.

Without being able to identify anything close to credible individuals doing the translating, and with the myriad issues with the texts themselves, it serves little more utility than any other doorstop to me.