Review: The Book of Ninja — Bansenshukai

Translation by Antony Cummins and Yoshie Minami

As someone who began training under Bo Munthe at the Stockholm Bujinkan Dojo in 1988, during a golden era of Bujinkan when Soke Hatsumi himself would occasionally visit, I approached The Book of Ninja with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. Over the years, my journey has taken me from the tatami mats of Shadow Warrior Bujinkan London to the revered Hombu Dojo in 2005, where I had the privilege of training under both Hatsumi Sensei and Nagato Sensei. I’ve also made pilgrimages to the historic ninja strongholds of Koka and Iga, and had the rare opportunity to see the original Bansenshukai manuscripts in Koka. With this background, I feel well-positioned to reflect critically, but appreciatively, on this modern English-language translation.

Let’s be clear: this is not a book of Taijutsu. Readers looking for techniques or spiritual insights in the vein of Stephen K. Hayes’ Ninja: Spirit of the Shadow Warrior, or practical application texts like Unarmed Fighting Techniques of the Samurai, will not find that here. Nor is it a guide aligned with Bujinkan training as passed down from Takamatsu to Hatsumi. This is a historical document, painstakingly translated for a modern, primarily Western audience, and in that regard, it is both successful and valuable.

Antony Cummins, alongside Yoshie Minami, delivers what is essentially a translation job, not a new interpretation or a modern retelling. This works in its favor. The voice of the original author, Fujibayashi Yasutake, remains intact through the archaic yet disciplined structure. While the translation lacks the poetic flavor one might find in William Scott Wilson’s work (e.g., The Book of Five Rings), it compensates with clarity and directness, no small feat when dealing with 17th-century Japanese military texts.

The hardcover edition is handsomely bound and sits well alongside other historical ninja works such as Ninpiden and Shoninki (both also translated by Cummins). However, the audiobook format, while enjoyable and well-paced, naturally loses out on the rich illustrations and charts that are essential to understanding much of the spycraft, fire tools, and disguises described. I found myself switching between the formats, often revisiting sections in the hardcover for a fuller grasp of the material.

And then there’s the content itself. For those of us who’ve stared at scrolls in dim light in Koka or huddled around conversations in Hombu about the “true” history of ninjutsu, there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing these texts opened up to wider audiences. The Bansenshukai is a treasure trove, not of techniques, but of mindset, of culture, of the era’s intelligence operations and survival philosophies. It’s a ninja’s field manual rooted in the Sengoku and early Edo period realities, not dojo mythos.

But how does this historical record align with the living, breathing art we’ve trained in for decades?

More including the original scroll and Koka Ninja Village, Japan 🇯🇵 at

https://1-2-1.app/post/3c30e06a-7716-428f-b94b-f01b090d5269?s=m