A Backwards Journey to Becoming a Ninja – Antony Cummins

I started at the end. I was going to be a ninja. Standing in the doorway of an ancient master’s dojo in Japan, dreams stood with me shattered, this cannot be real, and it was not. Ten years later and I had solved the riddle; I became the Man Who Killed the Ninja.

Discovering that no ninja still existed in any form, no traditions passed on, myself and my team continue to hunt down and publish medieval ninja scrolls to this day. But even then, I was at the end of the story, not the beginning. To discover who the ninja were, the samurai had to be understood, to understand the samurai, China needed to be known and to understand China, there was a deep dive into prehistory.

Would you believe that the scratching on the backs of turtle shells and horse scapula would find their way into the ancient arts of the Japanese warriors, a wizard’s magic passed down the ages. These scratchings became the lines of yin and yang, which in turn became the I-
Ching, a divination system used not only by Confucius and ourselves, but also by the medieval warriors of Japan. In ancient China, when they looked to the rays of the sun and the shadows of clouds to give birth to yin and yang, aspects that would help define Japanese
culture and even the mental attitude of the ninja. Bit by bit as ancient China evolved, through time and space, its echo reached the shores of Japan. Even Japanese Shinto, the purest of pure religions, untouched by others, succumbed to outside influences.

But it was not just China, every Buddhist Temple in Japan is a finger of Indian religion reaching through time, the Buddha, and his four noble truths were a foundation between east and west, smatterings of Greek culture are found there and the shadow of Indo-European customs, Sanskrit and mantras all have their voice in Japan, mimicked in the mouths of the ninja. When the Buddha sat under his tree, he started what would later become Zen, it would merge with Daoism in China and find its way into the hearts of the samurai of Japan.

The samurai, having no more wars to fight, had no where to settle their hearts so they settled them inside of Zen and connected it with the sword. They stored Zen in their arrows and chanted liturgies in ancient wooden halls.

The more I dig, the more I reach backwards in time and the further outside of Japan I get. That is not to say the Japanese did not have their own culture – they did. Sun gods and goddesses, ancient snakes and dragons in water, magic combs, mirrors, swords and jewels. But it is difficult to determine where one culture ends and another starts. The ninja were the final product of countless generations of the migration of ideas and the cementing of ancient customs. They invented new tools and new ways of thinking based on the ancient masters and their ways. Yet now, to us, they are the ancient masters: bold, courageous, wise. How far will this line go? Is modernity the end of the line for yin-yang, the end of the I-Ching, the end of magical swords and jewels?

For me, and Watkins, I want to preserve ancient wisdom. Not in a way that elevates any intellectual understanding I have but in a way which allows everybody, no matter who they are, to understand with simplicity these complex ways. My goal is to reduce these ancient teachings into their base parts so that you, the reader, can build on them and rebuild their wisdom into your own existence. I hope that my books are not just another spine on the shelf (or a credit on audible) but instead are something which rebuilds the foundations of your understanding and keeps alive the mystery of the world behind the veil.

This blog was written by Antony Cummins, author of several Watkins books. His latest publication Zen and the Samurai Sword is out on 10th February. Follow Antony on YouTube.