Review: Ninja: Shadowhand

General Information

Title: Ninja: Shadowhand
Author: Dr. Haha Lung & Christopher Prowant
Format: Large format (5.5"x8.5") Paperback
Publisher: Citadel Press Kensington
Publication Date: 2000
Pages: 149
ISBN: 0-8065-2607-6
Price: $13

Summary

Ninjas, pirates, robots, and monkeys. Of these the book only covers the former and the later briefly. When I have thought of ninjas I have usually thought of the mystical term used to describe ancient warriors who had super human abilities. This book gives a brief history of the ninja and an overview of what brought them into being. It broadens the term ninja to also include their counterparts from around the world in both historic and modern times. The book includes a very brief overview of the nine training halls of ninjutsu that includes unarmed combat, combat with wooden weapons, combat with blade weapons, combat with flexible weapons, specialized combat training, the art of disguise, the art of espionage, the art of escape and evasion, and the art of mysticism. It also covers the basics of human sight and how the ninja can use that knowledge towards the quest for invisibility. The book also covers some fighting techniques of ninjutsu, the basic philosophies and credo of the ninja. One interesting thing that the book pointed out was that the ninja would often work as a team, with each individual offering some specialty to the group. Now after reading the book, one of the closest counterparts that I think of is the Navy Seals and the Survival Escape Resistance and Evasion (SERE) program.

High Points

• The Basics of Seeing

• Disguising Weapons

• The Dancing Hand Blind

• The Bibliography

Low Points

• The entire chapter on the quest for invisibility

• No index.

The Scores

Presentation (2.8 out of 4.2): The presentation is so so. The book is a nice size but the white/red/black cover makes it look a bit cheep. I actually had trouble when I first picked it up determining if it was a serious martial arts book or not. The back cover has very descriptive text of the contents of the book but parts of it are difficult to read due to the text on background color schemes, there are no less than 4 different schemes (white on black, black on red, white on black, and red on black).

Clarity (3.2 out of 4.2): The text is comprehensible and clear. The author writes in a very straight forward manner but gets bogged down at times. The chapter on invisibility is an example of this where a point never seems to be made and any real facts are left by the wayside.

Structure (4 out of 4.2): The structure of the book is very good. The book is broken out into 2 parts with a total of seven chapters plus an introduction, conclusion and bibliography. The book is short enough that I will not dock it for lacking an index and chapter summaries, but I would like to see more books offer these.

Examples (3.8 out of 4.2): There are many examples throughout the book which are shown through pictorials along with footnotes. These include Taisavaki-jutsu (Art of Avoidance/camoflage), Ukemi (methods of movement), Daikentaijutsu (striking), Jutaijutsu (grappling), and Kobudo-Jutsu (weapons use). The only draw back I saw was in the methods of movement section where the author chose the use of a direction diamond to show and describe movement. "To help students visualize the methods/directions of movement, shadowhand instructors use a numbered nine-sectioned diamond shape consisting of nine approximately 1-foot squares drawn on the dojo floor." Although the author attempts to explain this diamond in detail, I still had trouble picturing the correct flow of movement using this method.

Exercises (2 out of 4.2): This book is geared towards the history, philosophy and techniques of the ninja and does not contain any significant information on exercises that would help one perfect ninjutsu techniques. A chapter on how ninja practitioners trained and exercises they did may have been helpful.

Completeness (2 out of 4.2): This book is just a bare introduction to the ninja. There is so much more information that could have been included. I could see the author separating out the information in this book and combining it with some of his other books (he has published more than a dozen books on the martial arts) and creating a set of nine books... one for each of the Nine Training Halls. This book focuses mostly on unarmed combat, the art of disguise, and the art of mysticism. But it is not long enough to give even one of these halls justice.

Editing (4.1 out of 4.2): The editing was well done. I found only one minor flaw in the book on first reading.

Entertainment (3.2 out of 4.2): Unlike other books on the martial arts, this book was quite enjoyable in places. The imagery dispersed throughout the book made for an enjoyable diversion to the text and helped make the book a very quick read.

Value (2.9 out of 4.2): At $13 this book is fairly inexpensive but it doesn't contain a lot of information that I will ever need to go back and reference. I would suggest skipping this book in favor of some of Dr. Lungs other books on the subject. If you enjoy them then you may want to come back a revisit this book.

Overall (2.8 out of 4.2): Overall this was a decent book despite first impressions. It gave me a little more respect for the ninja and helped demystify them just a bit. It highlighted their interaction with the Samurai of their time and their ability to work in teams.

"Ninja: Shadowhand" receives a very respectable 29.8 out of a possible 42.

Additional Notes and Comments

"Avoid being seen... Seen, avoid capture... Captured, avoid being held." - Not only was this the credo of the shinobi ninja of medieval Japan, it is also what the modern day SERE program teaches.

"Life is only 10 percent what happens to us. The other 90 percent is how we respond to what happens to us." - Dr. Haha Lung

"How we respond to the curve balls life hurls at us depends in great part on how much 'sweat equity' we've invested into prior study - into acquiring those skills and mastering those arts necessary for turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones and, when necessary, sticks into swords." - Dr. Haha Lung upon elaboration of the saying ki kara saru mo ochiru (even monkeys fall out of trees).