The Fiction of the Ninja

Ishikawa Goemon, Shinobi no mono, and English-Language Popular History

Authors

  • Robert Tuck Arizona State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2025.347

Keywords:

Ishikawa Goemon, ninja, shinobi, Murayama Tomoyoshi, Oda Nobunaga, Edogawa Ranpo, Shinobi no mono, Yaneura no sanposha, Takaiwa Hajime, Roald Dahl, James Bond, You Only Live Twice, historical fictions, kabuki, joruri

Abstract

The claim that the legendary thief Ishikawa Goemon attempted to assassinate the warlord Oda Nobunaga by dripping poison down a thread into the latter’s mouth is a staple of English-language histories of the so-called ‘ninja.’ Despite its widespread circulation in popular histories of Japan, there is good reason to believe that this famous assassination attempt never actually happened. In this article, I trace the Ishikawa Goemon legend through a range of Japanese-language documentary and literary sources, attempting to find a source for the poison-thread tale. I conclude that the story is not only fiction but modern fiction, resulting from a misunderstanding of the climactic scene of a 1962 ninja movie, Shinobi no mono, as depicting an historical event. The poison-thread technique, I also suggest, is not an authentic historical technique at all but a borrowing from a 1925 novel by the mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo. The article concludes by exploring how the poison-thread story managed to circulate unchallenged for more than fifty years, and by offering some observations on the serious methodological flaws of English-language ‘ninja’ histories to date.     

Author Biography

Robert Tuck, Arizona State University

Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Culture

School of International Letters and Cultures

Arizona State University

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Published

2025-04-19

Issue

Vol. 59 No. 1 (2025): Japanese Language and Literature

Section

LITERATURE ARTICLES

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Robert Tuck

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