The Fiction of the Ninja

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

著者

  • Robert Tuck Arizona State University

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

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

要旨

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.     

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Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Culture

School of International Letters and Cultures

Arizona State University

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出版済

2025-04-19

巻号

巻 59 号 1 (2025): Japanese Language and Literature

セクション

LITERATURE ARTICLES

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