Picked up a used copy of a 2004 Japanese-language ninjutsu book called Shinobi: All Things About Ninja – Hattori Hanzo, Momochi Tanba, Fujibayashi and More, which was sealed and I couldn’t inspect before committing to. As I don’t read kanji myself, owning Japanese tomes for me is all about the illustrations and pics, and sadly this one did not deliver. The text heavy, photo-bereft and diagram-light book does touch upon commonly seen weaponry, maps and other ‘usual suspect’ material via some simplified digital illustrations, but if I had to guess its largely a rehash the standard Readers Digest/tourist guide material now common to Japanese ninja books of the 2000s to now.
However, the cover illustration and a few brush-work spots by artist Katsuya Terada are quite nice. The entire book should have been littered with these…
And here’s a better look at that cover image reversed from the knock-out silver originally presented above, a nice collage…
This book will eventually be up from grabs, space is forcing me to thin the herd of the VN library this summer. Stay tuned, or drop us a line if interested.
