For the Love of History
Ok so first off let me say that I love history. Even in my teens when I would skip all my classes I would go back to school for history class. Let's be honest though sometimes historians don't use common sense. Personally have nothing against Anthony Cummins, never met the guy. From the information I can find online he is a historian that took up an obsession with ninjas and samurai. He at one time, by his own statements, studied Bujinkan at one time.
Mr. Cummins has actually done some great things for the ninjutsu community. For all of you who do not know Anthony Cummins is an anthropologist and author. He founded the “Historical Ninjutsu Research Team” with a goal of studying what his team can find of the old ninja scrolls. He and his team have published the translations of The Shoninki, The Bansenshukai, The Shinobi Hiden, and a collection of Iga and Koka ninja scrolls. For anyone who is trying to study past just the martial arts of ninjutsu these books are a must have. For English speakers like myself they are the only real connection we have besides the martial studies to the original ninjas.
Where I start to have a problem with Mr. Cummins is that he has made continually made statements saying that ninjutsu is not and does not contain any form of martial studies. He has gone as far as to say that Bujinkan is fake, which is fine it’s not like he would be the first to say that. You have to understand I really disagree with Mr. Cummins on a professional level and not a person one like many people do. He has stated that has been called the great betrayer something or another. I have also been told stories that he has out of the Bujinkan for whatever reason. To be completely honest I don’t really care that much.
The major holes that I have with his theory about ninjutsu have any form of budo is that he states that ninja were in fact samurai class. While I can see that this is true for later era japan I have a hard time believing that all the other research done before his was wrong about ninjas coming from the peasant families of the Iga and Koka regions. My second major misgiving about his theories about a ninjutsu budo not existing is that it is frankly moronic to think that ninjas wouldn’t develop their own fighting style among their own people, if it was based on other form of martial arts or not is beside the point. Why wouldn’t it be in writing then? We’ll let see here for one it’s extremely hard to learn any form of martial art through pictures and writing. Hell I don’t even consider video a proper way to learn martial arts. You have to at least in part learn from an actual person. So much of their manuals already have huge sections that just cut off because they were only transferred orally. So why a martial art of the ninja wouldn’t be transferred orally is beyond me.
His next point is that none of the “so called ninja masters”, his words not mine, have not been verified. He even has gone on youtube and offered to verify Soke Hatsumi credentials. Frankly I completely see why Soke Hatsumi doesn’t do this. I wouldn’t either, why would he have to prove himself to anyone let alone a young anthropologist. To sum up honestly I do feel that some of this does stem from some sort of bad blood between Mr. Cummins and he believes that Bujinkan school did him wrong in some way.
