By TAKASHI KONISHI/ Staff Writer
March 25, 2025 at 08:00 JST
Genichi Mitsuhashi in Iga, Mie Prefecture (Photo by Takashi Konishi)
IGA, Mie Prefecture—A part-time farmer here has sage advice for people stuck in sticky situations where panic must be avoided: Think like a ninja.
“The duty of a ninja is to survive safely,” Genichi Mitsuhashi, 50, said. “So many ninja techniques are useful for disaster management.”
If, for example, you are stranded in a pitch-dark room after a major earthquake, Mitsuhashi recommends slowly turning your toes on the floor to avoid broken glass and other obstacles.
He also said that chanting a spell called “haya-kuji” (quick nine letters) while swiftly moving your fingers will help to calm down your heart.
When he is not cultivating farmland in Iga’s mountains, Mitsuhashi often dons a black ninja costume and gives lessons in “ninjutsu,” or the art of ninja, at his training hall and at schools.
“What I am teaching is about using the body to acquire a ‘zest for living,’” he said, citing an education ministry slogan. “Children are quick to take an interest when you start from accounts of ninja.”
A native of Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, Mitsuhashi studied agricultural economics at Tottori University and Kyoto University’s graduate school before joining his family’s building maintenance business.
A life-threatening experience during a robbery in Brazil led him to take an interest in ninja techniques.
He moved to Iga, Mie Prefecture, a historical center of the feudal-age undercover agents, in 2018 and studied under professor Yuji Yamada, a leading authority on ninja studies, at the Mie University graduate school.
Mitsuhashi earned a Ph.D. in 2023. He was the first doctorate holder among those who had completed the graduate school’s special course on “ninja and ninjutsu studies” earlier.
His doctoral thesis is themed on the 1854 Iga-Ueno earthquake.
In the Tsu feudal domain based in the present-day capital of Mie Prefecture, “musokunin” country samurai without stipend, some of whom descended from ninja, quickly informed feudal domain officials about how the quake had affected farm villages.
The musokunin also worked hard to distribute emergency rice stocks, Mitsuhashi said.
One theory holds that Iga is the birthplace of Ishikawa Goemon (?-1594), the famed thief who likely used ninja techniques.
Mitsuhashi, the latter-day ninja, said that during his tours of the castle town of Iga, he has started to educate people on the role that ninja’s descendants played in disaster management.
“Ninja’s survival capabilities are required in this age,” he said.
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