get Yourself a copy of the Book of Ninja (Bansenshukai) here www.amazon.com/Book-Ninja-Bansenshukai-Japans-Premier/dp/1780284934/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=jvKKL&content-id=amzn1.sym.716a1ed9-074f-4780-9325-0019fece3c64&pf_rd_p=716a1ed9-074f-4780-9325-0019fece3c64&pf_rd_r=YHYZ7F3Z2B32PEFQP5AG&pd_rd_wg=gRyLh&pd_rd_r=a4e17370-d19c-4bea-b3a5-d2fcb94e14b6&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_atf_m
I find both of these to be plausible. Now I am not familiar with the research on this copy other than I am aware from people involved that the evidence is more compelling than this short segment lets on. I am not saying this means conclusive. A reduction is a possibility. It is also possible that this is indeed an earlier document. The written record being essentially a list, with the details being transmitted orally through kuden, is completely in line with many, especially with Sengoku Period, military and martial texts. Now granted it is not all. And there is the exception of the Chinese manuals. But I do not think that it is out of reason that this MIGHT (and I stress might) be an earlier copy. It is possible that Fujibayashi later wrote down the kuden, along with perhaps things he learned from other schools, along with his own notes on experimentation. While I am no expert, I am not quite willing to dismiss the possibility that this is an earlier version of the Bansenshukai, and am curious as to where more research will uncover.
As Fujibayashi was a contemporary of Yagyu Renya, who himself wrote down his father's kuden then sealed it away, it is possible that Fujibayashi's disciples began to gradually add the kuden into the text, especially as the danger of forgetting them during the long peace of the Edo Period meant that there were less opportunities to use the knowledge.
@@hopejordanguerrero7554 Indeed (a) student(s), or (a) student(s) of (a)student(s) doing so is also plausible I think. I was trying to go for the most direct explanation that would not require someone else using Fujibayashi's name. That being that it could have been Fujibayashi himself. But what you say is also plausible.
@@SengokuStudies it happened with Yagyu Sekishusai's 1601 mokuroku, where the written descriptions were added by a Shinkage-ryu adept in the early 18th century. The additions still match the pictures, and Matsudaira was a ranked disciple of Shinkage-ryu as well. Again, Fujibayashi was a contemporary of the Yagyu (a clan with connections to Ninja), so I do not think it likely that he wrote the longer version.
@@hopejordanguerrero7554 The Yagyu existed through the Edo Period, so anyone living in that period would be a "contemporary" of their existence. I admit that I do not know when this Yagyu Renya mention you lived. Or what evidence you have that Fujibayashi was not alive in the 1670s to write the Bansenshikai longer book form? I have been able to find very little outside of the supposed relation to the Bansenshukai. However, I also accept that it could be a pen name for multiple people As I already said, it is possible that the larger Bansenshukai was complied by multiple people. There are more than one plausible explanation. And that is without getting into the validity of the text, or if it was a "ninja" text.
What Chris has highlighted here is EXACTLY what you find in older documents. Less details and fewer techniques is in fact a trademark of old military documents; thicker and more academically detailed versions usually end up appearing during peacetime in the Edo era. The only people this is a problem for is anyone calling themselves "a ninja." Cummins coping with the fact that older documents are almost always just minimalist "lists" with few or no details is hilarious. He is trying to explain why this is a problem to frauds in this video, methinks. "Copium".
Indeed, as actual examples like Kamiizumi's Kage-no-mokuroku may have images of the techniques but Kamiizumi wrote no descriptions at all. Then Yagyu's 1601 mokuroku originally did not have written descriptions, these being added later by Matsudaira more than a century afterwards. Also, Yagyu did not exactly reproduce Kamiizumi either, removing two groups and then adding three more.
@@hopejordanguerrero7554 That is right! What he is doing now is complete nonsense. He has things translated for him, hopes the translator knows what they are doing in terms of accuracy, then asks reenactors to interpret with him and considers that to be authentic. That would be fine as long as his "pro wrasslin" character here was discarded and he admitted he is not an expert in anything he claims to be. This is like an person who likes buildings suddenly thinking they are an architect and trying to build the pyramids with absolutely no experience in construction, and then claiming that is authentic.
When the Shinobi of Koka brought a copy of the Bansenshukai to the Shogun, it seems illogical that the copy would be just be a list or table of contents with very few details. More likely, it would be a very detailed document to prove their credentials, since they were trying to prove themselves as a valuable resource.
Carbon date the paper. The fact that it's on scrolls, doesn't necessarily make it older than booklet versions. Even though scrolls are older than booklets, by this point in history, both scrolls and booklets were being made.
The age of the paper could be older than the age of the ink, this happened a great deal with Bible scriptures being written on much older previously used scrolls, carbon dating it makes people assume it is much older than it really is.
@@samiibrahim5356 Can you carbon date both? I would guess that paper production probably shot way up during the Edo period, so I wouldn't be surprised if the paper is Edo period anyways.
@@dwl3006 it is complicated, but the short answer is no. First of all, sumi ink is roughly categorized into two types: Yuenboku (sumi made of lamp soot) and Shoenboku (sumi made of burnt pine). Sumi ink that has reddish color is called Chaboku, and the one that has bluish color is called Seiboku. In general, Chaboku is often a type of Yuenboku and Seiboku is a type of Shoenboku, but there are exceptions as well. Now, that is assuming they did not use imported ink from China. Carbon dating, also called radiocarbon dating, was discovered by Willard Frank Libby in the 1940s. It is a method used to determine the age of organic substances. It works on the principle of radioactive decay of carbon-14 in dead living organisms. Radiocarbon dating is different from other dating methods as it is specific to fossils. Besides age, it also tells us the time since the living organisms were dead, which makes it very useful. It cannot be used to date inorganic substances such as rocks, sediments, etc. Old samples can be easily contaminated by impurities from other samples. It must be noted that 1% of the sample with a difference of 5000 years of age may differ the results up to 800 years. Hence, during sampling, it is highly emphasized that distinct and pure samples should be taken for analysis. The accuracy of carbon dating is debatable as the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is continuously changing due to volcanic eruptions and acid rains. If they could isolate a soot based ink it would at best only tell you when it was burned just like the paper could only tell you when it was turned into paper not the date someone took that paper and applied the soot based ink to make a particular writing. Some other methods exist that can give you a rough idea of how long the ink has sat on that particular paper and in complex ink, experts can determine how old the ink is and which company may have manufactured it and things of that nature, that would help with more modern issues like how old a person's will really is.
Abridgement of long works of literature is very common example Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago i think this is in the same vein so i agree this probably an abridged version of the Bansenshukai
Have there been any scientific studies on the scrolls to check the age of them? The interview made it seem like the age was based on one person's , personal opinion.
Hello there, I just ordered 4 of your books, I hope they are all autographed ! I can understand there being transcripts. It just seems off a little with one person saying " Yup these are the oldest and original " . The News interviewer didn't confirm with any other sources.
The mokuroku of both Nobutsena and Sekishusai are original, and they contain no descriptions apart from the images. In the case of Sekishusai's mokuroku, the descriptions of the technique were added by a student of Shinkage-ryu more than a hundred years after Sekishusai wrote it. Also, if the Bansenshukai is a transmission of techniques, then it makes more sense for the original is in scroll form rather than as codices.
Agree. And I immediately detected the Japanese researcher's logical fallacy. Now...there may be MORE supportive evidence from his research that is not included in the video (or press releases), but based on what's here, it's not definitive - by far. (Putting conspiratorial tinfoil hat on...) I wonder if this is a collaborative effort between the museum and this...uhhh...researcher, to bring some attention - and money from tourists - towards the ninja business. Maybe their foot traffic metrics are down. I'm very curious what light a "harder" science could shed on those scrolls. For example, if there are material/stylistic changes in Japanese scrolls that could, upon analysis, indicate a time period. That method works in the West (e.g. a hand written document from 1850 may have several differences than one written in 1950). Not sure about Japan.
This is from Ninja Truth. A show hosted by Chris Glenn on NHK that first played in March. These shows use too many anime and non-historical versions of shinobi to be a 100% historical.
The Bansenshukai contains many quotes, but it also contains sections that are lifted from older samurai manuals AND those sections are NOT marked as quotations--- someone who is unfamiliar with the original manuals would miss that it is "lifted" and would (justifiably) believe that it is Fujibayashi's original writing. With this in mind, we would have to perform an analysis of this scroll copy to make sure that none of the reduced segments contain material from the "lifted" sections, because that would guarantee that it was a reduced copy transcribed from the original. My personal belief is that this scroll copy will contain lines that are a mixture of Fujibayashi's original material AND the lifted material-- and I also predict some of these shorthand will not overlap accurately : that is.. some of it will be half a segment or a third of a segment. The existence of these partial pieces of the lifted material would make the document undeniably a shorthand copy produced AFTER the larger version. I would gladly participate in such a study if it happened. I would even put together a team and spearhead this analysis IF the "individuals" involved with the scroll would actually allow such an analysis to take place-- and we all know they never would allow it. This is going to be a point of debate/contention for years to come.
Yeah it could be a reduction of the original. But on the other hand a lot of transcriptions throughout the ages were miss wrote or added text from one book to the next especially from one language to another also. We see that in a lot of books of history from all different kinds of cultures. Only way to get it authenticated in an actual museum.
Or it could be a Mokuroku version collated by Fujibayashi, and kuden/explanatory material was added people close to Fujibayashi's system over a number of years. There's plenty of precedence in HEMA where you have the initial bare bones 'monkey model' and extra stuff is added by other students of the system, with multiple revisions, with eventually one default version emerging, but still attributed to one single author. It may be that the actual one presented to the authorities was the culmination of a number of rewrites and became the default one that was then repeatedly transcribed. No reason to think the Japanese would be any different. Naturally to prove this you would have to find one of these early revisions....
It's possible that the additions in the later copies were originally "kuden", i.e. "oral instructions", that were added to the original because there was a danger that they might be forgotten, like what Yagyu Renya did when he preserved the "kuden" of his father Yagyu Hyogonosuke.
@@AntonyCummins The same way that Yagyu Sekishusai wrote and presented to his friend, Noh actor Konparu Shichiro Ujikatsu, in 1601 a mokuroku that contained Shinkage-ryu's techniques, but did not have written descriptions to accompany the images. The accompanying descriptions were added by Matsudaira Nobusada-accomplished swordsman of the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu-in 1707 (more than a century later) at the request of Ujikatsu’s descendants. In the same way, the expanded Bansenshukai were probably written by by students of the author when there was a danger of forgetting the kuden.
@@AntonyCummins Nobutsena's own mokuroku that he gave to Sekishusai had no written descriptions either, and the interpretation of it is dependent on Yagyu Renya's secretly transcribing the kuden his father Hyogonosuke taught him. Renya sealed this text and never showed it to other people. He then passed it down to his nephew, the eighth headmaster, after writing on the cover that anyone who broke the seal, would face punishment by Marishiten, a Buddhist deity. It is taught that the eleventh headmaster, Yagyu Toshiharu, gathered his extraordinary courage and conviction and opened the scroll, and it has illuminated the understanding of successive headmasters ever since.
@@AntonyCummins Also, not even Yagyu Jubei wrote the descriptions of the techniques as taught by the Edo Yagyu, so the written descriptions came much later when there was a danger of forgetting the kuden. Furthermore, that they are scrolls is another argument as to their early provenance, as that was how things like these were presented, as mokuroku, if indeed the Bansenshukai was transmitted as secrets, it is more logical that they would be transmitted in scroll form rather than as codices. The codices became popular once they were no longer presented as school transmissions but as something to purchase at a bookstore.
@@AntonyCummins in other words, the original Bansenshukai was shorter, and as densho (transmission scrolls), as they were school transmissions, then during the long peace of the Edo Period, some students began writing down the “kuden” that their masters taught them and adding them to the text, thereby expanding the real work. Then the scrolls were transcribed into book form to be sold in an Edo Period bookstore.
So the original Bansenshukai is not available what ???? wow so there is an original we don't know about or is yet to be discovered this is a new discovery we need to pay attention
1. Did they test the paper to see where it came from? Is there a way to tell? 2. Clearly they're in good condition and the box has a family crest - so what's the history of the box and its contents? Surely there must be a way to track it down, even if the family doesn't know. 3. Did they test the box? If it's the original box then it seems like you could test the lacquer and the wood, not to mention the actual form of the box which should be able to tell something about its history, to say nothing of the crest and how it's both drawn and depicted. 4. What kind of scrolls are those? Do they fit with any time period? What about the other components like the string and guide rod? All of these should be dots that get connected to inform these claims. 5. What about the ink? Did they test the ink? 6. What about the style of the characters and the specific language used? Does it tell us anything about when this was written? Inquiring minds want to know...
Many common sense questions need answering. For example, why are they not wearing gloves when handling the box and scrolls? Besides making a speculative assumption, are there any other possibly corroborating pieces of evidence? Where and who did the museum get this from? To be clear, all we have here right now is a shortened version, unique among all other copies. A lot more work needs to be done before making any claim it's an original and all others are copies.
There should at least be empirical data for his claim, he was conducting "serious" research. Get in touch and see what his working method actually looked like and if there are any facts. Shouldn't it be possible to determine the age of scrolls using the carbon-14 method and do the same with other competing versions?
it makes sense to simplify it. it's what I'm trying to do and see how to use the wisdom in it in regards to survival in a modern sense. I mean it's not easy just trying to do that! I don't know if anyone would try to complicate things more even for money like what they're suggesting. especially at a time when one mistake could cost you your life.
I agree with you, it is far more plausible that the scrolls are someone's short version of the larger work. If I understand the history of the work correctly, the entire point of writing it was never to pass it down generation to generation within a clan but to offer it up as a sort of resume. It is also very common for people to use scrolls to make short version of works, I've seen this with Sun Tzu's writings and Confucius's Analects and many other large classical works.
All scrolls/books can be real/fake/wrote for man gain like bible etc & never really know. Thru evolution we know more so add to books/scrolls, write new books. Ninja is a mindset of knowledge is power to survive.
Could be the first iteration, and then it has been expanded upon. Anyway aint there ways for you to dispute the claim as a historian? And by doing that force the one that has made the claim, to show you all evidence he has used, as for it to become scientifically accurate claim to a historical document, the method has to be reproduced with the same outcome. I don't know if that how it works. The program only states its a claim though, but they make it sound like its facts, in the way they present it in the show. They will probably not allow any disputes though based on what they are saying in the segment.
@@billlee6855 Yes, he does. He has you fooled. He absolutely needs a interpreter, he admitted that he does not read or speak any Japanese in 2017 and it is obvious that he doesn't to anyone who speaks Japanese (like me) in the way he pronounces words.
@@mekugi fair enough, I've been training ninjutsu since 1984 I've been called a fake so many times, water of a ducks back, maybe you are right,I don't know,I just keep at it,👍
Was there ever a proven and 100% reliable and also confirmed document found which clearly states beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Ninja did not practice Ninja Taijutsu and they did not use hand to hand combat" techniques? Or should we just continue to spread this hopeless lie without any proof?
The art of war is the same way... This was a point I made to you years ago. Same shit happens with military manuals. Things get changed to often for things to last. Shit gets updated bro. Your logic is flawed.. you are far to bias in your thinking. You want things to add up the way you want them to be rather than looking at it from a completely non-bi's perspective.
@@AntonyCummins it became the way it is now the same way the other koryu became the way they are: things got added during the long peace of the Edo Period.
@@AntonyCummins it's pretty simple, people just added things as time passed. Probably kept shit that worked or kind of worked or maybe worked once. Then added shit as the years passed by. I don't understand why you wouldn't think during the 1600s others wouldn't have added extra crap. Look at the bible how much extra shit was added to that over time.
