Japan's Ninja Shortage [audio] | Hacker News Reader

Japan's Ninja Shortage [audio]

npr.org

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Direct link to the transcript: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

And the GDPR-friendly text link: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=629584186

Maybe all countries

have ninjas just like Japan

but who hide better

Took me a minute to realize this is a haiku.

Assassin's Creed elevator pitch haiku?

This is fake news. http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0004610201

I was hoping this would dive further into the history and lore of ninjas... But I suppose I'll just need to visit Iga!

It would be awesome if the small town's population could be saved by ninjas; Japan is so much more than just Tokyo.

> Today on the show, Sally Herships goes to Iga to discuss the city's plan to use ninjas to fight depopulation.

Ninjas should be well suited for kidnapping children at night and raising them to become ninjas. Maybe they just need a more cutthroat leader.

I would apply, but I'm pretty sure the idea of American Ninja was killed off after the movie of the same name was released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clA5lOsa6O4

As a child of the 80's I just have to say- American Ninja 4: The Annhiliation is positively the worst one. But the first American Ninja is a classic as far as Ninja movies go. It's no Pray For Death that's for sure but it's still up there.

I really liked part 2. All that non-stop fighting of hordes of ninja super soldiers, and that final battle with the bad guy.

I took those movies so seriously as a kid.

That fight scene at the beach ... hooboy, talk about something that I had rose colored glasses on for the last 30-odd years :P

As did I to the point of reading Stephen Hayes books on the subject, the history of Hattori Hanzo, and learning the martial arts techniques. I was a horrible child in retrospect I could take a long rope tied to a weight and use it to climb onto a branch 20 ft. in the air. Somehow I thought my parents would think this was "cool" and send me to Japan for more training. As it turned out I was grounded a lot :(

In contrast, the supply of shaolin monks has always been steady

One is a religious congregation, one is not.

Quite impressive, considering that only a few out of many are chosen to become an actual shaolin monk and receive official warrior monkhood (if you were thinking of the kung fu monks), usually only a few out of couple hundred normal monks get chosen. They still have to abide by the rigorous no-meat no-wine, no-sex, no-marriage lifestyle and fight to protect Buddhists.

Interesting that you mention this. I was just reflecting: Years ago I had a shaolin-trained martial arts instructor, and some years after that, several shorin-ryu-trained instructors; shorin and shaolin are related in interesting ways in terms of styles but very closely related in the sense that they are martial arts "disciplines" with similar paths. When I watch e.g. documentaries of the shaolin way, it cracks me up to see the same attitude again and again--here are the serious students, and there are the fat teachers with amused looks on their faces, who just don't seem to care in that way anymore. I wonder if it's made worse by watching all the hardcore newbies line up at the door every year.

One guy who impressed me, and everybody else, was an instructor from Japan who lit into the fat American instructors, telling them they couldn't represent his way of doing things and also live as such a poor physical specimen. Still, I felt for them. There's some balance to be found, once the initial excitement and seriousness is over, once it has become one's day to day, and must now accommodate natural turns of flaxen emotionality in addition to the iron discipline. So these instructors talked the iron-discipline talk, but hadn't been trained, apparently, to navigate a long-term, realistic approach to life as an expert martial artist. As a result they looked like these guys I always see in the documentaries: Casting amused glances at the students, pot-bellied, always looking out for a laugh or a chance to lighten up. Something about that state of being contains an important martial arts truth.

The pot-bellied easy nature is one of those Buddhist ideals, not concerned with vanity, so you are natural and flowing. Sometimes called laughing buddha or budai

Budai is the one everyone always mistakes for Buddha, who in contrast was probably quite thin.

After listening through the full podcast, I wondered why someone would want such a job. I remember people telling me about the park/museum when I lived in Mie. Lots of physical activity seemed a job requirement. If true, is this expected _on top of_ the typically high Japanese list of employer expectations? If so I'm not surprised that even at $85K inaka-bucks nobody is interested.

But $85k is an extremely high salary in Japan... A software engineer in osaka/kyoto starts at $35k a year.

Employment in Japan is extremely low at 2%. It's really hard to find workers. Also being a Ninja would mean to live and work remotely.

*Unemployment

2% employment sounds like there would be an oversupply of workers, therefore the depressed salaries.

>about $23,000 to about $85,000

That range is kinda terrible to pretty good. Hard to know with a range like that what they really going to pay.

I'm looking for work and when I see ranges like that I'm not sure what to think. I get entry level vs senior.... but that low end is kinda extra low....

Good ninjas are invisible. Maybe the streets are filled with them.

I'd expect to see some of the average ones

By definition, there's no Ninja of average stealth. You're either exceptionally stealthy and a Ninja, or not stealthy enough and never made it to Ninja.

The big question: where are all the people who tried out for Ninja and failed?

Maybe you either pass the Ninja trials and become invisible or you become invisible because they never find your body.

It's not so mysterious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bujinkan

Hatsumi's books are trash.

They’re not meant to be read outside the context of training in the bujinkan.

Japan is a very efficient / clean place. Their Ninja body disposal teams are exceptionally efficient. The people are very polite too, after killing an opposing Ninja, they call in the location of the body immediately.

Those are the dead ones.... it's all survivorship bias when it comes to the Ninja market. It's a rough market.

>The unemployment rate in Japan right now is 2.5 percent.

Any idea how that compares to the US rate that while low also has a lot of underemployment?

What do you mean how does it compare? Ours is around 4 percent and dropping.

Participation rate in the US is still depressed.

Ironic considering the language Ruby originated there

It's probably a joke in reference to "coder ninjas".

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