2.1 “Even Today the Ninja Exist”: Hatsumi Masaaki and bujinkan

The extent to which ninja have existed as a historical phenomenon, and during what time periods, is very much a question of how the category is defined (Turnbull 2017). Clearer is that ninja have been a prevalent motif in Japanese popular culture for a long time, with a notable surge of films following in the wake of the grim Shinobi no mono 忍びの者 (1962; directed by Yamamoto Satsuo 山本薩夫 [1910–1983]). For westerners, ninja became known primarily through Ian Fleming’s (1908–1964) James Bond novel You Only Live Twice (1964) and its cinematic adaptation in 1967 (directed by Lewis Gilbert [1920–2018]), although the full concept was truly popularised only via the film Enter the Ninja (1981; directed by Menahem Golan [1929–2014]) that triggered a flood of similar exploitation films, in which actor Shō Kosugi ショー・コスギ (b. 1948) would repeatedly appear in ninja roles. Notably, Golan’s film showcases “esoteric” dimensions of the ninja in the form of the special mudrā (in Japanese referred to as kuji 九字) they employ (for more on this technique, see sub-section 3.3 below). One of the earliest Western mentions of ninjutsu as a specific, still-existing style or school of martial arts (rather than as a motif in fiction or a thing of the past) was a chapter in Peter Urban’s (1934–2004) well-known The Karate Dojo: Traditions and Tales of a Martial Art (1967), a book which, despite its title, covers several martial arts. Urban describes “olden days” ninja as “a strange group of men and women who always dressed in black,” considered by many to be “magicians of the black arts, in league with all that was evil”. Although they “did not believe in magic themselves”, they “could perform seemingly magical feats” (1967: 100).⁵ He further states: “Some say that even today the ninja exist, but this is not officially certain or admitted. All that is known is that there are a few old martial arts teachers in southern Japan who, for the sake of tradition, still practice the ninjutsu training.” Significantly, Urban refers to ninjutsu as a “dying art,” clearly not viewing it as a flourishing style that would be feasible for his readers to start practising (ibid.: 103). He would likely have been hard-pressed to imagine that a mere fifteen years or so later there would be thousands of Westerners diligently training in ninjutsu.

The instigator of this unexpected turn was Hatsumi Masaaki 初見良昭 (b. 1931), a bone setter, painter, and martial artist from Noda, Japan. Hatsumi grew up with a violent alcoholic father, and initially studied arts like jūdō 柔道, karate 空手, and aikido 合氣道. He also has a background in theatre studies and later acted as martial arts consultant on several films. When he was twenty-seven years old, he became a pupil of the elderly Takamatsu Toshitsugu 高松寿嗣 (1889–1972). By the time Takamatsu died, he had appointed Hatsumi as sōke 宗家 (often translated as “grandmaster” in this context) of nine martial art schools, some of which were focused on ninjutsu (Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 5–10). Western martial arts afficionados were introduced to Hatsumi primarily through a three-part article series by Andrew Adams in Black Belt Magazine published from December 1966 to February 1967 (Turnbull 2017: 165), followed by the 1970 book Ninja: The Invisible Assassins, also authored by Adams (more on which below).⁶

Outside of Japan, Hatsumi’s teachings were at first chiefly conveyed by his disciple Stephen K. Hayes (b. 1949) from Ohio, USA. Hayes holds a B.A. in theatre studies from Miami University, which perhaps shows in his penchant for elaborately staged photoshoots and flamboyant language. He started practising martial arts in the mid-1960s, and after studying with Hatsumi in Japan he founded the organisation Shadows of Iga in 1975 to teach westerners ninjutsu (Hayes 1981: 7).⁷ As we will see, Hayes added many of his own spiritual ideas and included parapsychology-inspired exercises in a long series of influential books that started appearing in 1980 (by the 1990s, however, they were rejected by most Swedish bujinkan practitioners). In Europe, as mentioned, the Swede Bo F. Munthe was arguably responsible for much of the initial dissemination. It is thus to Sweden we now turn.

2.2 “Brothers and Sisters of the Darkness”: Ninjutsu in Sweden

Sweden is often seen as one of the world’s most secularised countries, something scholars of religion have nuanced by pointing out that a non- denominational, individualistic “spirituality” is widespread among the population even if adherence to institutionalised religion has declined. Nevertheless, religious identities are habitually constructed as problematic in public discourse, and secularism holds a largely hegemonic position (Frisk and Åkerbäck 2013; Thurfjell 2015; Willander 2015). Views of religion in the Swedish budō 武道 milieu have fluctuated ever since Japanese martial arts became broadly popular in the 1960s, at times constituting a source of internal conflict. In 1970, the head of the country’s martial arts umbrella organisation Budoförbundet, Robert von Sandor (1929–1997), proclaimed in one of his books that true budō had to be a Zen 禅 practice, a type of moving meditation, while a 2011 pamphlet from the organisation forcefully denied that anything remotely related to religion was going on in their arts (Faxneld 2024: 401–402). These wider tensions in Swedish society and local budō are present in bujinkan as well.

The man who brought ninjutsu to Sweden, Bo F. Munthe, began his martial arts career with jūdō in 1965. Through his instructor Georg Irénius (1929–2013), he developed an interest in “the philosophical in budo.” Among other things, their post-class discussions covered how the Christian Bible had important things to offer regardless of whether one was religious or not (Munthe 2014: 16–17; Odén 2010: 117; Wall and Munthe 1996: 18). Munthe quite soon opened his own jūdō dōjō and attained the shodan 初段 (first dan 段, i.e., a “black belt”) in 1973 (Munthe 2014: 16–19). As one of the gifts in celebration of the belt, he received Andrew Adams’ book Ninja: The Invisible Assassins, but only read it the following year. This evocative text, describing Hatsumi as offering “training [for] both the body and spirit” and in “how to foresee the future” (Adams 1970: 173), piqued Munthe’s curiosity and he wrote a letter to Hatsumi. This led to the grandmaster’s senior student Ishizuka Tetsuji 石塚哲二 (b. 1948) visiting Sweden in 1975, followed by Munthe going to Japan in 1976. He trained with Hatsumi and received a shodan grade in Togakure-ryū 戸隠流 (usually said to be the oldest of the nine schools in bujinkan) but would not be back in Japan until 1983 (Munthe 2014: 26–31; Wall and Munthe 1996: 18–19). Commenting cynically on the first trip in an interview more than thirty years later, Munthe said: “I was, just like most who come to Hatsumi, a newly saved person [Swedish: nyfrälst]. Many who go there think the sun shines out of the old man’s bottom” (Odén 2010: 119). Stephen K. Hayes had also begun to spend time with the Japanese ninjutsu teacher, as had at least one French budō practitioner, all preceded by the Israeli Doron Navon (who was also a well-known teacher of the Feldenkrais Method, a type of alternative/complementary medicine system) in the late 1960s (Munthe 1982: 20; 2014: 44, 49; Hatsumi 1988b: 5). Munthe would later call on Hayes in the United States and the two appear to have been on consistently good terms (Munthe 2014: 89–91).

Following a second visit from Ishizuka in 1977, Munthe’s dōjō – initially housed in his garage in a Stockholm suburb – changed its name to Bujinkan Ishizuka Dojo Sweden and operated under that moniker until 1981 with a modest number of students. He also created the organisation Ninpo Goshinjutsu Society, whose logo featured two crossed vajra. Munthe describes the vajra as “primarily a religious symbol” signifying the “traditional” character of his style (2017: 54–56, 60–61). Much later, in 2002, Munthe co-founded the style Goshido, which he described as follows: “Goshido, Zen and Budo have the same goal: to serve as a vehicle for personal spiritual development” (ibid.: 64). All this reflects Munthe’s long-standing involvement with Buddhism and aligns with his interpretation of ninjutsu. In 1979, Munthe came across the recently published book Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams (1923–2008), in his opinion “a miracle for those of us who want to learn how to employ Zen in daily life or in our training.” He began corresponding with the author and they became good friends, paying each other several visits over the coming years.⁸ However, it was not only Buddhism that captivated Munthe. One of his former students, who knew him well, describes his teacher as a “seeker,” with a deep interest in a variety of spiritual matters.⁹ Later in life, Munthe would state that James Redfield’s (b. 1950) holistic spirituality bestseller The Celestine Prophecy (1993) gets “very close to […] the essence in my way of living” (2017: 219).

In 1982, as the action film-instigated global ninja boom was reverberating through Sweden, Munthe opened the straightforwardly named Ninja Center in the posh Stockholm neighbourhood Östermalm. The opening attracted various celebrities, including actress Christina Lindberg (b. 1950) and New Age musician Ralf Lundsten (1936–2023). Almost 200 students immediately signed up (Munthe 2014: 94–95). The first folder from the centre proudly proclaimed that Munthe was the only person outside the United States and Japan who could teach you ninjutsu. Munthe knew how to use mystery to market his dōjō, and the folder’s drawing of a ninja in full attire was captioned (in English) “BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE DARKNESS” (reproduced in Munthe 2014: 95). This phrase has a ring to it that would not be out of place in some varieties of esotericism and, indeed, some of the students attracted to ninjutsu would come from such a background.¹⁰ Most however, were likely simply youngsters drawn in by the allure of pop culture ninja imagery.

Aside from direct teaching offered by Munthe and his cadre of instructors, books were the main source of ninjutsu knowledge for Swedes in the 1980s. The first work on the topic in Swedish was Munthe’s Ninja: Mördare i svart (Ninja: Assassins in Black, 1982), published by men’s magazine Lektyr (not as peculiar as it might sound – in the United States, Playboy had recently issued a martial arts manual by Munthe’s friend Joe Hyams).¹¹ The big Lektyr logo on the cover did not quite lend a dignified air to the book, sold by bookshops as well as newsagents and grocery stores across the country, which presents ninjutsu as an ancient philosophical art of espionage, assassination, and close combat that in the present, however, is geared towards “functioning as a help with personal enlightenment and harmony” (Munthe 1982: 22).¹² Beginning with a brief chapter on historical background and basic tenets, the bulk of the book consists of various action-filled ninja legends in a quite literary, embellished format.

In October 1983, a second dōjō opened in 300-square-metre premises in the more bohemian neighbourhood of Södermalm. Ninjutsu was the talk of the town and eager students flocked. 1983 also saw Munthe being invited to give classes in England and Ireland, where Dublin-based budōka 武道家 Brian McCarthy wanted to establish ninjutsu. Subsequently, Munthe would travel extensively across Europe to introduce the art and visited the United Kingdom monthly for several years. He later also made numerous trips to Spain, where the art was growing fast, and helped get things started in Germany (Munthe 2014: 103, 107, 159–165).

After Munthe showed the legendary exploitation director Mats Helge Ohlsson (b. 1953) his Ninja: Mördare i svart book, the latter immediately decided to base a film on it and Munthe was offered a co-starring role in the first-ever Swedish piece of martial arts cinema, Ninja Mission. Despite an ambitious “ninja show” organised by Munthe for the film’s 1984 premiere in Stockholm, it bombed at the box office and received devastating reviews in the Swedish press. However, Ninja Mission did surprisingly well economically on the international market (Munthe 2014: 73, 79). Absolutely nothing of the philosophical and metaphysical ideas from Munthe’s book, that we will look closer at presently, was carried over into the film. Unlike in the American films mentioned above, there is no “spiritual” side to the black-clad warriors in this ludicrous, slapdash mix of cold war intrigue, commando combat, and high-kicking ninja action.

Meanwhile, Munthe’s 1984 advertising continued emphasising ninjutsu as an effective self-defence method but also as “a philosophy that develops your personality” and has “a deeper meaning than just defeating an enemy.” Munthe further added, in English, that he was “headman for Europe” (Munthe 2014: 113). Indeed, he claims that when visiting Hatsumi in Japan in 1984, he was instructed to “go home and organise Europe” (ibid.: 128–129). The organisation Munthe was head of would grow to comprise twenty-seven dōjō in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Greece, and the Netherlands. In Sweden, the number of students peaked around 1,000 (400 of which attended the big Södermalm dōjō), and in the other countries, in total, approximately 800. Between 1983 and 1986, Bujinkan Bo Dojo encompassed some fifteen clubs in Sweden (Wall and Munthe 1996: 19; Munthe 2014: 77, 132).¹³

By 1986, however, adolescents had grown tired of ninja and Munthe’s Swedish ninjutsu empire collapsed, leading to some of his disciples who had economic stakes in it losing considerable sums of money (Wall and Munthe 1996: 20–21). Conflicts between Munthe and several of the instructors at the Södermalm dōjō in Stockholm, as well as with Hatsumi, resulted in Munthe temporarily leaving bujinkan and taking a sabbatical where he worked as head of security for a private company (Munthe 2014: 171). This was also announced in an open letter to the US magazine Fighting Stars Ninja, where he wrote: “I once introduced ninjutsu to Europe, now it’s time for other people to continue the work I started,” citing frustration over recent gradings and promotions by Hatsumi, “not to mention the political in-fighting and back-stabbing that has gone on between instructors since the art became popular a few years back” (reproduced in Munthe 2014: 173).¹⁴ Munthe subsequently returned to bujinkan, although he felt that the problems persisted (ibid.: 174). Hatsumi would visit Sweden several times for big events in the coming years, but it should be noted that these were not organised by Munthe.¹⁵ They were part of the yearly global gatherings, Taikai 大会, held from 1986 to 2003 in different countries, where Hatsumi would teach practitioners from around thirty different nations, many of whom would return year after year, resulting in a tightly knit international community. After 2003, it was only possible to train with Hatsumi (now in his early seventies) by going to Japan (Sundelius 2016: 141), and in 2019 he retired from teaching.¹⁶

Munthe resigned and then returned again several times but would eventually step back almost entirely from the bujinkan organisation led by Hatsumi (Odén 2010: 120–121). In a 1988 book, Hatsumi lists six primary international members of the “ninja community,” with Sveneric Bogsäter (b. 1947), rather than Munthe, representing Sweden (Hatsumi 1988a: 138).¹⁷ In other words, after Munthe’s relationship to Hatsumi became strained in the second half of the 1980s, bujinkan in Sweden continued developing with different key players. Nevertheless, Munthe still taught both in Sweden and abroad and kept making his voice heard in the bujinkan milieu, for example, through articles written in English for the international bujinkan newsletter Ura & Omote (裏表; “Back & Front”) in the 1990s. Munthe here emphasised themes like “the peaceful spiritual way” and explained that a (true) warrior is constantly “engaged in developing his mind, his inner thoughts, his spiritual life” (Munthe 2017: 214–216). Munthe’s legacy has been controversial, and, subsequently, many considered his pioneering work to have done more damage than good. By the late 1990s, Swedish bujinkan practitioners viewed both Hayes’ and Munthe’s claims about the nature of ninjutsu and historical ninja with considerable scepticism, instead preferring to go directly to Hatsumi for instruction (Carlsson 1998; Anon 1990).

As is clear from articles and interviews in martial arts magazines from the time, ninjutsu/bujinkan had a bad reputation among other Swedish martial artists in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was denied entry into the national umbrella organisation for budō arts (Anon 1988; 1989; Red 1989b). One of the reasons appears to have been that the influential head of the kendō 剣道section, Robert von Sandor (formerly leader of the entire organisation), doubted the veracity of its claimed lineage (Anon 1989/1990: 77). Eventually, bujinkan gained admission and was integrated into the broader budō milieu.

The bujinkan instructors I have talked to describe it as currently being difficult to find new recruits, and several of today’s clubs revolve around a core of dedicated but ageing veteran practitioners. The number of participants has fluctuated, and it has certainly not been all decline since the 1980s. For example, from November 1994 to June 1996, the number of clubs grew from ten to thirty and the aim was to reach fifty clubs and 1,000 practitioners in 1997 (Budoförbundet 1995/1996: 26). This would not come to pass, and, in the next annual report, bujinkan’s representatives had to concede that “[a]t present, Swedish bujinkan is not growing in quantity but in quality” (Budoförbundet 1997/1998: 40). In 2009, bujinkan was at least the third fastest growing martial art in Sweden, proportionately speaking, with a thirty-one percent increase (from a comparably small size, it must be said).¹⁸ Today, Bujinkanförbundet (The Bujinkan Association) in Sweden encompasses twenty clubs with around 500 members (Broberg and Lundkvist 2024: 75). A couple of the several offshoots from the main organisation, Jinen-ryū 自然流 and Genbukan 玄武館, also have clubs in Sweden.¹⁹ In addition, there is at least one dōjō remaining within the original lineage that, even so, has chosen not to be part of Bujinkanförbundet.

2.3 “Assassins in Black”: Books for Swedish Ninja

Given the initial scarcity of highly graded instructors, books were an important source of information for early practitioners worldwide. The first ninjutsu manual in English was Hayes’ Ninja: Spirit of the Shadow Warrior (1980), which preceded Munthe’s book and was soon followed by a long series of further publications. Munthe’s modest volume clearly relied on Hayes’ work (among other things in his history of ninjutsu), and even the drawings included are obviously based on photographs in the latter’s first book (cf. Munthe 1982: 15–21; Hayes 1980: 42–44).

Another American who went to Japan to train with Hatsumi in the 1970s, a while after Hayes, was Robert Bussey (b. 1961), who in his own teaching, however, soon started “downplaying the antiquated and esoteric aspects of Ninjutsu.” In 1988, he severed ties with bujinkan due to “its foundation in eastern religious beliefs, rather than Christianity.”²⁰ Bussey is an interesting example of how some have been quite troubled by the very things that people like Hayes and Munthe found to be a main point of attraction.

In 1986, Swedish translations appeared of the first two volumes in Hayes’ Ninja series (followed by the third book in 1987 and the fourth one in 1988). Before this, the originals had been quite easily available as imports for the more devoted ninjutsu enthusiasts (most Swedes read English effortlessly). By the late 1980s, books by Hatsumi also began emerging in English, and more and more Swedes regularly went to Japan to learn directly from the grandmaster.²¹ This, as mentioned, resulted in a wide-spread disillusionment with Hayes’ texts, that many now felt to be Americanised distortions, or even, as one of my informants put it, “cultural appropriation.”²² Regardless, the Swedish translations remained in print (and are, in fact, still available from the distributor)²³ and continued being an entry point for some. At least a few Swedes also became members of Hayes’ Shadows of Iga organisation (advertised at the back of the volumes). Finally, Hayes’ books likely had an impact as manuals for solitary practice for those not being able to access a club at all, for example, due to living in the countryside.²⁴ Munthe wrote further books – that appeared in Swedish as well as in German and English – and, later on, Swedish bujinkan instructors like Sven Erik Bogsäter (c. 2002–2006), Mats Hjelm (2018), and Rikard Sundelius (2016) also published books, both in Swedish and English and typically in small editions or as print-on-demand.²⁵

In the following analysis, I will look at a series of themes as they are presented in the books of Hatsumi, Swedish instructors (Munthe, Bogsäter, Hjelm, and Sundelius), and the four books by Hayes translated into Swedish – in other words, the texts most circulated in the Swedish bujinkan milieu. This will be compared to how said themes emerge (or do not emerge) in my field observations and interviews as well as on the websites of Swedish bujinkan clubs. I employ the English translations of Hatsumi’s books, since they are what Swedes would as good as always read (this being the context I am focusing on).

3.1 “You Don’t Need Religion”: Spirituality and Religion in Bujinkan

The earliest book-length presentations of the art, then, came courtesy of Hayes, who did not shy away from setting a fully metaphysical tone. In his first book, he repeatedly uses the term “warrior wizards” for ninja (Hayes 1980: 9, 15) and enthusiastically refers to ninjutsu as an “esoteric system” (ibid.: 15). No stranger to hyperbole, he would later write of “us individual aspirants on the razor-edged path leading to the warrior’s attainment of the universal secrets” (Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 90) and modestly designated himself “a living bridge between the timeless wisdom of the East and the fresh vigor of the West” (Hayes 1985: 5).

When Munthe presented ninjutsu to the Swedish audience in 1982, he relied on Hayes in claiming that it originated from the religious system of the yamabushi 山伏 (Munthe 1982: 5). These mountain ascetics, he maintains, were refugees from China who arrived around the year 900, carrying “esoteric teachings” originating in India and Tibet – a system “encompassing the development of body and soul, based on knowledge of the universe and its workings” (ibid.: 5–6). Later, they would adopt local forms of esoteric Buddhism, and the collectivistic Japanese administration, Munthe writes, felt threatened by their individualistic spiritual activities (ibid.: 6). Here we see a recurrent theme in bujinkan: individualist spiritual ninja versus organised religion. The government thus persecuted them, leading to the yamabushi being forced to develop warfare and stealth skills – i.e., becoming ninja. As time passed, the ninja turned spies and assassins for hire, especially active during the days of the Tokugawa 徳川 shogunate (1603–1868), transmitting their skills within secretive clans (ibid.: 7–10).

This closely follows Hayes construction (partially originating with Hatsumi and the older lore he drew on) of the ninja as a religious counterculture of sorts, oppressed by the government since “the state religion did not accept the theory that anything beyond the mortal flesh could be experienced directly by anything less than a priest of the ruler’s religion” (Hayes 1980: 16), and links up with the generally negative view of mainline religious institutions in bujinkan discourse. Following a pattern common in so-called “spiritual but not religious” or “holistic” contexts (Frisk and Åkerbäck 2013: 94–101), several bujinkan books contain a harsh criticism of (organised) religion. Hayes underscores that

As ninja today, we are not interested in or associated with any religion. However, the original universal principles of causation, power, and enlightenment, which later became watered down to result in the countless religions of mankind, are of great interest to us (1981: 145).

In this perennialist argument – which postulates a sort of esoteric core shared by, yet obfuscated in, all exoteric religions – Hayes further condemns how those in political and religious control have historically been holding “the masses in ignorance of their own power” (Hayes 1983: 40). Personal (spiritual) power is thus juxtaposed with religious collectivist subordination. This is echoed by the influential Swedish instructor Sveneric Bogsäter, who sees his martial art practice as “a matter of self-realisation, self-command and spiritual freedom” and “a means to build up your body and your spirit” (Bogsäter n.d., c: 28).

Hatsumi has several times distanced himself from religion in a similar manner. “You don’t need religion,” he says, instead emphasising the “capacity you have in yourself ” and suggesting acting “as intuition dictates and you will see the secrets of taijutsu there” (Hatsumi 1988a: 73; cf. 1988b: 84–85; 2004: 38). Bogsäter reiterates this, saying “[t]he highest knowledge comes from within” (Bogsäter n.d., a: 48), fully in line with a common notion in holistic spirituality discourses (Hammer 2016: 351). Hatsumi’s criticism of religion further highlights

[…] the tragicomedies created by extreme adherence to religious commandments: having sex be a sin or virtue, making the consumption of certain foods a sin […], fasting, forbidding the intake of liquor, making violence a sin or virtue. The lives of those who are members of these extreme religions cannot be called mentally or physically healthy (1988a: 136).

This description of “extreme” religions would obviously encompass most forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and quite a few other traditions as well).²⁶ Bogsäter is equally critical of religious institutions, stating that “organized religion separates us whereas a true believe [sic] should unite us” (n.d., c: 28, cf. Bergli 1999: 32). The theme of “spiritual but not religious” also appears prominently in my interviews, often coupled with a denunciation specifically of western religion.

Having had negative experiences in the Church of Sweden in his teens, one informant rejected organised religion. “Today,” he states, “I probably think in a more Buddhist way about religion. I like this thing Einstein said, that my god is Spinoza’s god: me and the universe are one and the same. I also think that is very close to Shintō.”²⁷ Another informant explains: “I believe in something, of course, but no specific religion. […] More like Gnosticism, perhaps.”²⁸ A third describes herself as an atheist, but with an aesthetic penchant for certain religions: “Shintō is a wonderful religion, a nature religion, it’s the most beautiful religion I know. I can’t stop reading about it.” She also mentions the “spiritual joy” she finds in Miyazaki Hayao’s宮崎駿 (b. 1941) Shintō-infused animated films, and continues: “Spirituality to me doesn’t entail belief in something supernatural but rather to be part of a context, of a brotherhood, or the universe, or your own consciousness. So, call it … a divine force coming from within.”²⁹

While religion is an ambivalent category for them, several of the informants unhesitatingly define themselves as “spiritual.” When asked to specify what this means they often state that it is hard to pin down. “Lars” says:

It’s difficult. You can sense it in training sometimes, that you had luck with a technique, or you did something that was perfectly timed and quite incredible and when you think about it perhaps some spirit helped me out. […] I believe in … what do you call them? Spirits that sit on my shoulder and help me to make the right decision and warn me in case of danger.

Spirituality is to these informants, in some sense, usually bound up with bujinkan. One instructor says: “I have a worldview that consists of lots of facets that I connect with bujinkan, that help me in my bujinkan practice. […] Most people want training to be concrete, but then you can portion out some small things here and there.” Actually trying to teach any of the spiritual ideas from Hatsumi’s books, he says, is not very common in bujinkan, and peers have let him know he is idiosyncratic: “Other people take it for a physical activity you can leave behind when you put on your everyday clothes. And that works too. But then we risk watering it down.”³⁰

A different instructor comments: “Regardless of which religion – Buddhism, Christianity, Shintō – the source is the same. With ninjutsu, too, it is possible to achieve a certain union with the source.”³¹ His co-instructor interjects: “I would never consider myself religious, but I’m in agreement with the principle of union and unification.” To her, “[b]eing spiritual or feeling spiritual is to be in touch with your inner and to be open towards what exists around you,” and she firmly feels her bujinkan training has a spiritual dimension and that, among other things, it helps develop her intuition.³² The other person agrees that there is “a certain spiritual dimension” making him feel “more balanced, more open, more intuitive.”³³ At the same time, however, he is adamant that bujinkan should not be perceived as a religion. While this is repeatedly stressed by informants, likely in part due to a concern over why a historian of religions wants to study them and to some extent because of scepticism towards organised religion as such, Hatsumi in fact occasionally talks of “the religion of the ninja” (1988a: 135) in a more historical sense – which is not to say he, or any other author analysed here, ever explicitly designates modern bujinkan a “religion.” Rather, religion quite consistently remains an “Other” against which one may define oneself.

Regardless, most books by Swedish bujinkan instructors are peppered with quotes by Lǎozǐ 老子, Zen masters like Takuan Sōhō 沢庵宗彭 (1573–1645), and Zen scholar/reformist and Theosophist Suzuki Daisetsu 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966) (Munthe 2014: 14, 22, 52, 112; 2017: 27, 187, 201; Bogsäter n.d., b: 12, 63, 97; n.d., c: 24, 32; Sundelius 2016: 1).³⁴ Such quotes are also present on some Swedish bujinkan websites.³⁵ This is less prominent in Hatsumi’s books, although the occasional quote by, for example, Nichiren 日蓮 (1222–1282) can be found (Hatsumi 1988a: 26–27). The recurring quoting of Daoist and Buddhist thinkers reinforces the resemblances with holistic spiritual discourses – in which such East Asian religious traditions are often evoked simultaneously with criticisms of organised (especially western) religion (Thurfjell 2015: 157–182) – as does the great number of reviews of books on Zen, including authors like Suzuki, in the early Swedish bujinkan magazine Ninja No Shiori (with the reviewer, notably, being keen to emphasize that “Zen is not a religion”; Mellbin 1983a: 23).

Such distancing from religion notwithstanding, we find Hatsumi avowing that the aim of the ninja is “to achieve the enlightenment described by the first words of the Buddha,” advocating “gaining enlightenment in each existence” and saying that ninjutsu “offers homage to both religious and martial ways” (2004: 18, 178, 138). Although at one point he underlined that “[p]hysical exercises alone are not good enough” (Hatsumi 1988b: 25), there is little tangible instruction in his books on anything else. For example, whereas he states that the ninja must advance to the fourth (“the world of Mu – nothingness – a world haunted by death, a world of spirit only”) or even the fifth dimension of reality, he gives little concrete advice on how to do so (Hatsumi 2004: 30).

The first ninjutsu book in English by Hatsumi (in whose writing and editing process, however, Hayes appears to have played a significant role at this point) explains that “[t]he art of ninjutsu employs a broad collection of esoteric knowledge that provides the basis for the ninja’s unique approach to life,” offering “a life harmonious with the playing out of the universe” ultimately aimed at achieving “a state of enlightenment” (Hatsumi 1981: 181). Ninjutsu has emerged anew “because once again, it is the time in human destiny in which ninpo is needed” and Hatsumi hopes “mankind can continue to grow and evolve into the next great plateau” (ibid.: i). Versions of this line of reasoning are pursued throughout his entire œuvre, with calls to becoming, for example, “connected to a greater life – a life that one could call infinite or eternal” (Hatsumi 1988b: 24). Another regular feature in Hatsumi’s books is that they are rather perplexing and abstract when it comes to spiritual matters. Considering the consistent soteriological language of enlightenment, apotheosis, and transcendence he employs, however, spirituality must be seen as a core theme in his construction of bujinkan as it has evolved over the last five decades.³⁶ Interpreting his many statements to this effect as purely metaphorical might thus seem a slight stretch of semiotic feasibility. Yet, at least some Swedes certainly choose to do so, or view them as a type of ruse. Discussing the spiritual content in the grandmaster’s books, one instructor told me that his “impression is that [Hatsumi] sometimes writes things to confuse people,” as a method of “weeding people out.”³⁷

This can also be viewed as a repudiation of a prominent initial tendency in Swedish bujinkan. We have seen above how Munthe from early on framed ninjutsu as a technique for Zen-related spiritual self-cultivation. At this stage he had only limited direct contact with Japanese instructors, and did not read or speak Japanese, which means he likely derived this at least partially from the work of Hayes (combined with his own personal interest and reading in Zen Buddhism). In his first book (widely available in Sweden and an entry point for many), echoing typical themes from the holistic milieu (cf. Hammer 2016: 350), Hayes describes ninjutsu as “a method for enhancing the qualities of love, wonder, control, understanding and power inherent in every human being” (1980: 5), and criticises earlier writings on the topic in English for “ignoring the original spiritual nature of […] the warrior wizards of feudal Japan” (ibid.: 9). He describes ninjutsu as a cure for modern man’s alienation and feelings of helplessness: “In today’s crowded cities and impersonal institutions, where computerized figures keep track of our personal lives […] we can derive our own concepts of personal power and control” from ninjutsu, that offers “techniques for opening our consciousness” and helps “re-acquaint ourselves with the harmony inherent in the way all things unfold” (ibid.). A touch of this type of rhetoric remains in Swedish bujinkan today (although there are also instructors who emphatically renounce it). Just as well as being a legacy from Hayes and Munthe, however, this could indicate the broad general influence of holistic spirituality in present-day Sweden (Frisk and Åkerbäck 2013; Thurfjell 2015: 114–156).

The fact that Munthe laid the local foundations of such an approach is clear, and most Swedish instructors belong to a lineage traceable directly to him. A 1984 advert for Munthe’s first book states that ninjutsu is “[m]ore than a self-defence, more than a Zen philosophy. A harmonious blend of both, that strengthens the body, challenges the intellect and sharpens the senses, and develops you as a person.”³⁸ Aside from the explicit mention of Zen, which reflects Munthe’s own preferences, this is surprisingly similar to Mats Hjelm’s text promoting his recent (2018) bujinkan book: “Gain unparalleled insights into the art of self-defence, personal growth, and spiritual development. It is more than just physical techniques – it is a holistic approach to mastering oneself.”³⁹ Note the employment of the word “holistic” here, in common emic use to designate a plethora of practices in alternative spiritual contexts (though this, it must be emphasised, is not necessarily what Hjelm has in mind).

Phrasings of this kind being a durable mainstay is exemplified by how tone-setting Swedish instructors in the intervening years argued along the same lines. In a section based on a text he originally published in 1995, Sveneric Bogsäter’s third book (c. 2006)⁴⁰ lays down that walking “the true path of the martial artist” is “a beginning of an endless process of personal progress, growth and spiritual transformation” where “maybe most important is to give up the destructive notion that our body, mind and spirit are something separate.” Thus, it is necessary to “discover the emptiness from where intuition is born to be able to reach that place within ourselves where body, mind and spirit dance as one” (Bogsäter n.d., c: 15–16).⁴¹ In other words, seemingly close to Munthe’s ideas and what Hjelm calls a “holistic approach.”

An unswerving core theme in Swedish bujinkan books, then, is that the training is seen as something much deeper than a mere “collection of physical exercises” (Schjerling 2016: 13). Especially Hatsumi’s enigmatic term “the heart and eyes of god” tends to be highlighted as the final accomplishment of enlightenment to be strived for (e.g., Carlsson 2016: 17–18), but seldom, if ever (just as in Hatsumi’s use of it; e.g., Hatsumi 1988b: 31), with any real elaboration on exactly what it entails. Judging by my interviews, this is probably partly because the meaning is not entirely clear to most instructors (a fact they are completely transparent about).

Looking at how the art presents itself online, the picture is mostly consistent with the books. The Bujinkanförbundet website chiefly details the art’s principles of combat and does not contain a single word explicitly referring to spirituality, aside from promising “a unique personal development for the persistent practitioner.”⁴² However, certain clubs explain online that the art is “not only about protecting the physical body through the training of the martial art, but also the mind and the spirit.”⁴³ The same website quotes Hatsumi as saying that “[p]ersonal enlightenment can only be accomplished through total commitment to the traditions of Ninpo as a way of life” that offer a key “to finding harmony, understanding of the universe and of the world’s spiritual and natural material.”⁴⁴ Another elucidates that the training is uniting body and “Shin,” where the latter “refers both to conscious thought and what we in the West designate the soul,” further explicating that “in the culture of the East the border between these is less clear than in the West.”⁴⁵

Two recurring key phrasings on the websites, then, are “personal development”⁴⁶ and training both “body and soul.”⁴⁷ We also find indeterminate mentions of “philosophy” and a “deeper understanding beyond pure self-defence skills.”⁴⁸ While this, especially given intermittent explicit mentions of “the soul”⁴⁹ (which can, however, be understood in a more vague metaphorical sense in Swedish as signifying simply general mental/psychological dimensions), seems to embrace a somewhat restrained form of “spiritual” self-cultivation, one website explicitly warns against those who go too far in this direction. Should a club “claim to engage in magic or mysticism et cetera – stay away, it is not Bujinkan or Ninpô.”⁵⁰ The perceived need to mention this signals the enduring (and, for some, worrying) presence of such “excessive” varieties and ideas in the broader bujinkan milieu. In the 1990s, an opinion piece in bujinkan newsletter Ura & Omote railed against the “New Age garbage” introduced into US bujinkan by “psychics and spoon-benders” (Zurhellen 1995), and the Swede Tomas Bergli’s (b. 1974) En liten bok om ninjutsu (A Small Book About Ninjutsu, 1999) repudiates those that hold the idea that “ninjutsu is a New Age thing only existing to make money” (Bergli 1999: 41).

Whereas magic, mysticism, and what is perceived to be new age ideas may be scorned, an openly defined but Japanese-tinged type of implicit spirituality is commonly part of the online self-presentation of the art. This is not only apparent in text. Several websites prominently feature photographs of the dōjō’s kamidana 神棚 (see 3.2. below). We also find the ladle used for ritual cleansing in a Japanese Shintō shrine depicted,⁵¹ and an information film on one club’s website opens with shots of the ceremonial bujinkan greeting, including Shintō-style handclapping and the reciting of a partially Sanskrit-derived phrase (for more on all this, see the next section), accompanied by mysterious-sounding music.⁵² Then again, such features can be contrasted with, for example, a film clip showing instructor Mats Hjelm wearing a security guard uniform, rather than the usual kanji 漢字-decorated black bujinkan keikogi 稽古着, while demonstrating baton techniques for apprehending culprits.⁵³ This is not to say that gritty, street-oriented techniques constitute Hjelm’s entire repertoire, as his book offers speculations on gaining higher understanding through visionary dreams wherein he contemplates “if there isn’t some power existing beyond the physical world” and proposes “a substance that cannot be sensed with our human senses” (Hjelm 2018: 94). Bujinkan and its practitioners, then, have many sides. Some of these, and the interesting tensions surrounding them, can be discerned by looking more closely at the dōjō space and what takes place there.

3.2 “Lightning from the Sky”: Dōjō Paraphernalia and Ceremonies

A permanent bujinkan dōjō will always have a Shintō kamidana on one wall (in one of the dōjō I visited there was also a Buddhist altar, but this is not usually the case).⁵⁴ This feature appears to have caused some friction with students in a Swedish context, or to be something that instructors for other reasons think needs to be harmonised with hegemonic secularism (or, possibly, multi-cultural religious diversity). Thus one club website explains:

It is common in Japan that you, like in Sweden, view religion and religious traditions more as a cultural thing than something religious, meaning kamidana are found in many homes and many workplaces in the same way us Swedes sometimes have advent candelabras, celebrate Christmas, or hum along to the songs of a St. Lucy procession without attaching any strong religious conviction to it. None of us in the dojo practise Shinto, but we have the kamidana in the dojo as a link to the culture and history where the art we practise originates. […] We never attempt to push an unwanted belief on anyone training and we do not see it as a hindrance but rather an advantage that different religious and cultural phases mingle and coexist.⁵⁵

A slightly different position is presented by another Swedish club’s website, instead emphasising that students simply have to accept Japanese religion as part of the training: “Since Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu is closely linked to traditional Japanese martial arts there is also a natural connection to Japanese culture and Japanese religion. As a practitioner you are expected to respect and accept this as natural features in the training, even if you do not yourself practise Japanese religions.”⁵⁶

Generally, when at all mentioned on Swedish bujinkan websites, the category “religion,” though undeniable linked to certain dōjō paraphernalia and practices, is reframed and muted. A kanji scroll in a dōjō, stated to reflect “the Buddhist notion that the divine and the human are not separate but united in man’s soul,” is for example given a secularised re-interpretation suited for contemporary Swedes by connecting it with protection against burnout, stress, and depression.⁵⁷ An instructor in a different dōjō, with whom I discussed the kamidana, was keen to convey that Shintō should not even be considered a religion in the common sense: “Shintō wasn’t a religion […]. It was more connected to animism, perhaps.”⁵⁸

Some dōjō also have tengu 天狗 masks (a type of supernatural entity with a long nose or crow’s beak, thought to sometimes give humans instruction in martial arts) or paintings depicting war gods or other martial entities, but when asking instructors about them I have invariably received explanations highlighting their relation to “Japanese culture” rather than religion or spirituality.

Let us now consider some of the recurrent practices. Classes start with everyone sitting down in the kneeling seiza 正座 position, by order of rank. The instructor sits with his back to the class and directs a kuji (more on which in section 3.3 below) towards the kamidana. Next, the instructor recites the phrase shikin haramitsu daikomyō 四拳波羅蜜大光明 (which, incidentally, also appears in reiki 霊気 healing contexts),⁵⁹ the class echoes it back, all clap their hands twice, bow to the kamidana, and then clap once. The handclapping, not commonly seen in most other Japanese martial arts, gives this ceremonial salutation a distinctive connection to Shintō ritual (as it partially follows the protocol for clapping when entering a Shintō shrine).⁶⁰ The instructor now turns to face the students, and a bow is exchanged while all utter the word onegaishimasu お願いします (roughly “please” or “do me a favour” – a term used in the opening ceremony of most Japanese martial arts as well as in everyday social contexts). The closing of a class is done in a similar manner (cf. Hjelm 2018: ix). This procedure is quite strictly adhered to (although in one class I attended, it was skipped, and when I asked about it afterwards the instructor commented that “external form” is not the truly important thing in training).⁶¹

The phrase just mentioned, partially derived from Sanskrit (haramitsu is a Japanisation of the Sanskrit term pāramitā), can be translated in different ways.⁶² Bogsäter, who calls it a “benediction,” prefers “The Powerful Light of Wisdom,” which he relates to achievement of spiritual power, the Buddha’s spiritual awakening (satori 悟り), and “energy continuing forever” (Bogsäter n.d., a: 34). Sundelius, who was mentored by Bogsäter, gives a similar explanation in his book and underscores that this ceremony “[s]hould be taken with utmost seriousness and concentration should be at a maximum” (Sundelius 2016: 39). Hjelm explains it as creating “a change in our heart” when repeated over many years, hopefully leading the practitioner to suddenly “understand everything like a lightning from the sky” (Hjelm 2018: xii) – a notion reflecting Buddhist concepts of abrupt enlightenment. A club website provides a detailed Buddhist exegesis of the terms, capped off with “Hatsumi Sensei states that Daikōmyō makes us respect each other irrespective of race, religion, beliefs, or gender.”⁶³ This last wording is, we can note, explicitly in line with typical Swedish inclusive-egalitarian values as well as the current basic ethical principles (värdegrund) of Budo- och kampsportsförbundet (The Budo and Martial Arts Association).⁶⁴

A more intricate, “metaphysical” (for want of a better term) understanding of the “benediction” is not always offered by instructors in my interviews and it is common for them (even the ones that have actually written on it themselves in books or on websites) to express uncertainty regarding its exact meaning when interviewed. Buddhist enlightenment was referenced by some when I asked about it. One of my informants, however, said: “I don’t know how to translate it. I think Hatsumi translates it better in his books. I think it’s a sort of connecting to the universe. […] For me, it isn’t tied to religion but a thing you do that puts you in a certain inner mood when you begin the class.”⁶⁵ A different informant also referred to a longer phrase, “a type of spell,” that he will at times recite silently to himself when holding the opening ceremony, but was somewhat reluctant to provide a more detailed clarification.⁶⁶ As mentioned, most instructors also do a kuji towards the kamidana as part of the ceremony, a practice to which we now turn.

3.3 “Sign Language for Communicating with the Divine Will”: The Power of Kuji

Kuji 九字 – usually a type of weaving together of the fingers in different positions, known in Sanskrit as mudrā and common in various forms of Buddhism and Hinduism – is one of the most fabled esoteric practices of ninja in fiction, performed (usually in a sequence of nine) to gain insight or (subtle) energy (Turnbull 2017: 113). Hatsumi defines kuji as “a sign language for communicating with the divine will (providence, fortune)” (2014: 217).⁶⁷ While Hatsumi is characteristically sparse in his description of the technique (e.g., 1988b: 47–51; 1998: 87), something that according to my informants also applies to when he teaches in person, Hayes has offered wide-ranging explanations of it.

In his first book, he says it is “an attitude-control system based on direction of energy through the hands” where “[t]he thumb represents the ku source element, with each of the fingers representing one of the four elemental manifestations” (Hayes 1980: 89). Somewhat melodramatically, he also warns that “there are many who would give anything asked of them for the powers of kuji magic without having first to go through the extremely risky process of personal power cultivation along the warrior path of enlightenment” (Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 120). In other words, he stresses that this is a technique only intended for the fully initiated, thus generating a type of secrecy-based cultural capital (more on this in section 3.9 below). His second book accordingly states that all hand poses have their “own unique mantra sentence and mind setting procedure, which are not included in this volume […] as they must be guided personally by a competent teacher of ninjutsu” (Hayes 1981: 153). In other words, to learn kuji one must have reached a high level of initiation, and actual instruction can only be offered directly from a properly qualified teacher – like Hayes himself, most readers might assume. Interestingly, a few years later, Hatsumi would insist he had yet to teach kuji to anyone, as none of his students had reached the required level of skill (1988b: 49).⁶⁸

What do kuji accomplish, then? This “power generating system based on a balancing out or directing of energy through the hands” (Hayes 1981: 152–153) enables the ninja to “foresee and go along with the scheme of totality” (ibid.: 154), inspires “an expanded awareness that will allow the ninja to feel the approach of a premonition of danger,” and attunes “the awareness towards knowing the thoughts of others and projecting thoughts to others” (ibid.: 156). Hatsumi mentions kuji that “can stop an opponent from moving” or “bring about a loss of sensation in an opponent” (1988b: 48). None of my informants have had anything remotely so elaborate or spectacular to say about kuji, and they mostly seem to appear only in the context of the opening ceremony.

One informant, however, uses them in her meditation practice: “I have incorporated them so deeply into my body that when I meditate today it feels natural, I just recourse to them,” she said, and elaborated further:

They are a meditation technique and were really prohibited to discuss [in Swedish bujinkan]. I suppose they were also something that Stephen Hayes brought up quite a bit. But I feel that when you have learned them and explored it yourself something happens in the connection between the brain and the rest of the body that is very … how can I describe it, it makes you conscious of our powers and abilities. In western meditation there is so much head and so little body, but in my opinion these finger-wrappings bring it all together, body and mind.⁶⁹

We can note that this informant today only practises bujinkan privately, and no longer in a club setting, wherefore her outlier approach to the kuji may reflect an attitude more prevalent in earlier stages of Swedish bujinkan (though she also said it was a “forbidden” topic, hinting at her practice being idiosyncratic), possibly suggesting the elsewhere now-faded influence of Hayes (whom she explicitly mentions). A different informant stressed that he actually understood little of what the kuji mean, though he performed them at the opening of his classes, and commented: “Sometimes people have a tendency to exaggerate, [concerning] both spirituality and the significance of hand signs like these – because it’s so exciting and esoteric.”⁷⁰

We have seen that Hayes’ discussion of the kuji connects them to “energy,” and he more specifically says they “represent the channeling of subtle energies,” stating that “a collection of electropolar channels (meridians) run through the tissues of the body” (Hayes 1981: 152; emphasis added). These are concepts we will now look closer at.

3.4 “Power Like an Electrical Charge”: Subtle Energy and Vibrations

In more “esoterically” inclined martial arts, notions of ki 気 and “subtle energy” tend to be central (Faxneld 2024: 403; see also Justin Stein’s article on aikidō in the present issue). Not so in the writings of Hatsumi, however, even if we can occasionally find implicit and vague references to ideas about a so-called “subtle body” as in the claim that “[b]y cultivating an aerial feeling, you can learn astral projection” (Hatsumi 2004: 130).⁷¹ Still, some of Hatsumi’s direct and indirect disciples have certainly taken a sustained interest in such matters and it is possible to find vivid descriptions of, for example, how a student meditating in conjunction with a training camp “could quite feel a kind of power like an electrical charge over our immediate area” (Popejoy 1984: 10).

In Ninjutsu: History and Tradition (1981), there is some discussion of “attuning with the total flow of energies” through four different forms of harmonising with ki – three of them involving a shout, and one that is also possible to perform as a silent technique (Hatsumi 1981: 231–232, quote on p. 231). This may to some extent reflect the prominent part played by Hayes in said text’s genesis. Hayes’ own early books very much reflect concerns in the US holistic milieu of the time, and he puts concepts like (subtle) energy and vibrations centre stage (e.g., Hayes 1981: 145; 1983: 133; 1985: 152). Contemporary ninja training, Hayes says, includes “[e]nergy channeling” and “[b]alancing electromagnetic power fields” (1981: 18). In the fourth book in his Ninja series, he provides an exercise with the heading “Subtle Energies” (a term popularised by the holistic spirituality author William A. Tiller [1929–2022] in the late 1970s; see Zoehrer forthcoming), that includes visualising “an imaginary ball of […] energy rolling between your palms” (Hayes 1985: 164). This is further extended into a two-person “Energy Sensitivity Exercise” where “heightened electromagnetic energy awareness” is maintained to “feel the other person’s energy” (ibid.: 166).

Applying a science-like language familiar from the context of esotericism and holistic spirituality (Hammer 2004: 201–330), Hayes explains: “Everything in the universe is made up of, and manifested as, varying rates of vibrations or wavelengths. At the bottom of the spectrum, with the slowest vibratory rate, is solid physical matter” (1980: 79–80). He also concerns himself with even more specifically holistic-spiritual concepts, like “harmonious vibrations” and how “the ninja can employ appropriate sounds that will create an altered vibratory state” (1983: 134).

Conspicuously, most of the recent Swedish bujinkan books display no references to subtle energy (or, for that matter, “vibrations”) or contain only the most passing mentions (e.g., Hjelm 2018: 13). Munthe, however, clearly viewed it as important, and in his 1987 English-language book Traditional Ninjutsu (subsequently published in German as Ninjutsu in 1992) he describes the existence of ki as “the basic question of all fighting arts,” further elaborating: “Ki is the manifestation of an invisible force […]. We cannot see it, but in the universe and on earth this force exists. Human beings breathe this power and the energy from the universe” (Munthe 1987: 9; cf. 1992: 64). Despite being pronounced a “basic question,” it is surprisingly not discussed further. The only real exception among Swedish bujinkan authors is Sveneric Bogsäter, whose three books display a vivid interest in such matters – even surpassing Hayes.

“If you are a follower of Budo,” Bogsäter writes, “[y]ou will be filled with a strong life-energy (Ki)” (n.d., b: 26–27).⁷² In a passage that will have a familiar ring to Star Wars fans, he elucidates: “This life force embraces all things, but at the same time it pierces everything. It both binds and splits. It is the energy that sustains every form of life” (n.d., a: 56). “Everything, as I see it,” he clarifies, “in its purest and deepest essence, is energy” (n.d., c: 46) and “[l]iving energy flows through your body” (ibid.: 36). Note the stress on a living energy permeating the universe, marking the concept out as (in some sense) different from notions of energy found in a mainstream scientific context and aligning it with classic esoteric notions (Faivre 1994: 10–15). In passages resembling Hayes’ holistic spirituality-infused concern with “harmonious vibrations,” Bogsäter submits one should not be “anti” anything, as that “will lead to even more negative energy in your life force,” and suggests striving for “inner balance, wholeness and wellness” (n.d., c: 48, 66).

Deliberating on meridians (energy circuits) in the body, Bogsäter explains that our “three individual, basic energies” all “contain a colourless, free-flowing non-cellular fluid that carries the energy through your body, by a system of 72,000 electrical body circuits called the meridians,” and proceeds to discuss “the eight mystical flows” (n.d., c: 58). In great detail he then treats the different meridians and how to rectify imbalances, saying this will help the martial artist learn how to “extend your energy” (ibid.: 60–63, quote on p. 63).⁷³ Moreover, he presents instructions for visualising energy coming into the body through the midsection (mentioning “the Chakras [sic] navel vortex”) and running through the body to achieve “a coordinated total power of body and mind” (ibid.: 64).⁷⁴ This is a rare example of a Swedish instructor offering an actual exercise related to non-physical (some might even say supranormal) matters.

The limited interest in meridians otherwise to be found in Swedish bujinkan is primarily linked to kyūsho 急所, the so-called “vital points” of the body that the art has special techniques for attacking (Bogsäter n.d., a: 59–60). One of the points, Bogsäter tells us, “controls the Ying and Yang energies in the body” and striking it can therefore “effect the energy balance on the body,” while striking another may result in “vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of energy in the lower body” as well as “emotional disturbance” (ibid.: 73, 94).⁷⁵ Although Hatsumi states that ninjutsu “is like the tantra” and “has the power to strengthen the life force” (2004: 176), and elsewhere includes what appears to be schematic illustrations of kyūsho (2008: 87–101), unlike Bogsäter and Hayes he furnishes little elucidation of such concepts.

In stark contrast to the Hayes books, ki and subtle energy more broadly are largely absent as verbalised concepts in my field observations and interviews. Indirectly, notions of subtle energy are observable in the sense that they underlie the meridian system forming the basis of the curriculum’s kyūsho techniques, taught to advanced students. However, this implicit presence, it should be stressed, seems quite subdued in the present-day Swedish context.

One of my veteran informants, with forty years of involvement, described experiences of ki when training with Hatsumi (see section 3.6 below). Yet, he could not point to any such specific sensations back home, adding “I suppose I have them in almost every class. Perhaps one has grown so accustomed to it as to longer notice.”⁷⁶ Although this person clearly has fairly substantial knowledge of subtle energy-based systems from taking a one-year course in acupuncture, he does not feel what he learned there has really impacted his bujinkan practice nor does he teach it to students. Another informant, also active in bujinkan since the late 1980s, said he had very seldom even heard the word ki in a Swedish bujinkan context (and only three or four times in his many encounters with Hatsumi).⁷⁷ This is confirmed by the sundry students I have had casual conversations with when visiting different dōjō.

One informant related having personally developed an interest in ki through cross-training in aikidō, but, like the others, she said it has little presence in bujinkan. Whereas she metaphorically, and with a broad grin on her face, referred to ki as “a supernatural energy permeating you […] almost like a magical force,” and “a ball of energy one shapes and sends in a direction”, she was quick to add that “ki definitely has a physical explanation, […] it’s like mind and body being one” and designated it “a further dimension of flow.”⁷⁸

Another instructor I interviewed had a parallel practice of reiki healing (on the history of reiki, see Stein 2023), but to my surprise even so dismissed ki in a bujinkan context as “new age” and “mumbo-jumbo,” signalling he was uncomfortable discussing it. “It’s nothing mysterious,” he said. “It’s about air, about breathing. You fill the body with air […] and the cells of the body get access to oxygen. But don’t connect it to YouTube occulture. […] It’s always about the body, and that ki is expressed through the body.” Even his interpretation of Reiki healing is manifestly secularised. When he puts his hands on a part of someone’s body, he clarified, it “may have a calming effect” similar to massage, being all about “oxytocin, calming hormones.” Regarding ki, he augmented, “[o]ne can’t define it or put words on it. We Westerners have unfortunately learned to put words on everything, but it is more like an iceberg. We only see the tip, ninety percent is below the surface.” When instructing bujinkan classes, he sometimes integrates reiki treatments and compares reiki’s function as “a spiritual method to know yourself, to possess self-knowledge, to achieve harmony and cure and heal things in yourself” (where healing others, he said, in fact comes second) to the self-development found in bujinkan.⁷⁹

Largely, ki (or subtle energy more broadly) emerges in the interviews as a background concept, that is explored mostly on an individual basis, if at all, and not considered a significant part of bujinkan – even by someone performing reiki healing. The inclusion of reiki in this instructor’s classes (that take place in a club not part of Bujinkanförbundet) is a somewhat ambiguous feature, where more “metaphysical” understandings of ki appear to be softened and secularised by being framed in a language of relaxation and hormones. Hayes, Munthe, and Bogsäter all belong to the earliest generations of bujinkan practitioners, and perhaps their perspicuous preoccupation with subtle energy in a more explicitly transcendent sense can be said to reflect a superseded stage in the art’s development (at least in Sweden).

3.5 “The State of Oneness”: ESP, the Sixth Sense, and the Fifth-degree Test

A feature with partially metaphysical dimensions that remains central, however, is the test for the fifth dan (godan 五段) grade in bujinkan, described by Hatsumi as “the dan of enlightenment” (Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 70). Swedish bujinkan books and websites, too, consistently highlight it as a special, singular achievement.⁸⁰ Not always couched in quite such spiritual language, it can also be delineated simply as entailing “being able to work with listening to your intuition” (Sundelius 2016: 127). Hatsumi, however, unequivocally connects it to “thought-transmission” and “the state of oneness between man and god, of unity within oneself” and “a link with the subtle worlds” (1996/2014: 45, 23).

For the test, also known as “the sakki test,” the grandmaster (or, nowadays, one of his shihan 師範 – top-ranked instructors) stands with a raised shinai 竹刀 (bamboo practice sword), while the student sits with eyes closed and his back to him. The idea is that persons about to commit an act of violence emit sakki 殺気 (a term that can be translated as “murderous intent”), a type of aggressive “aura” or energy, and that perceiving this without employing any of the ordinary five senses is possible. When the cut comes, the student is to “feel” the sakki and roll away. To pass, one must not start moving until the cut comes, and, of course, should not be hit by the sword (Munthe 2014: 182). In other words, it is a test of having developed a sort of “sixth sense,” or, as Italian bujinkan practitioner Luca Lanaro puts it, “an initiation ceremony through the sixth sense” (Munthe 2017: 104).

The basic premise of such a test will be familiar to anyone who has seen Star Wars: A New Hope (1977; directed by George Lucas [b. 1944]) where Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker to “Stretch out with your feelings” to parry incoming attacks while wearing a helmet making him unable to see. It is also commonly depicted in ninja films. American Ninja (1985; directed by Sam Firstenberg [b. 1950]) shows the hero defending an attack from a stick-wielding assailant while having his head covered with a bucket, while American Ninja 3 (1989; directed by Cedric Sundstrom [b. 1951]) contains a scene closely mimicking the sakki examination, where a kneeling female ninja is tested and rolls away from a sword cut from behind. The hero of Bloodsport (1988; directed by Newt Arnold [1922–2000]), played by Jean-Claude Van Damme (b. 1960), is enabled by ninjutsu sensitivity training to defeat an opponent who has blinded him with a powder. It should be noted that ideas about a “sixth sense,” possibly reflecting the impact of such popular culture on the “plausibility structures” of media consumers (Partridge 2004: 123–126), are fairly mainstream among the general Swedish population, with a recent sociological survey showing one in three professing a belief in it (Bergquist and Lundmark 2023: 294). The role it plays in Swedish bujinkan is thus not highly irregular, and it must also be said that some informants give the test a rationalistic slant when talking about it.

Munthe unsuccessfully took the sakki test in 1985 and 1986, finally making it in 1988. At this point it had become imperative that the person who introduced ninjutsu in Sweden managed to pass – since some of his students had already succeeded (Munthe 2014: 143, 178, 181). Munthe’s own description of the test presents it as a mystical experience:

When then the real cut came everything turned white before my eyes, it was like a lightning illuminating my innermost and I was seized away and to the side from the murderous cut. I had passed the gate to the inner wisdom and begun an inner journey in the study of this martial art’s philosophies previously unknown to me. In retrospect, when I have begun studying my inner energies more, I understand that the light I perceived at the sakki-cut likely parallels what in some circles is called the light of insight (2014: 183).

An early description along the same lines is found in a 1983 issue of Ninja No Shiori, in which Peter Mellbin gives an account of his sixth sense feat during a training camp in Greece. Like Munthe, he couches it in a language similar to narratives of mystical religious experiences:

[…] my whole system of perception was turned inside out. How did it feel? Like standing at the edge of an abyss that previously had been shallow and black. […] Suddenly, everything was whole, and my earlier way of seeing seemed partial and incomplete. It was terrible and wonderful at the same time. The feeling lasted for perhaps one and a half hour before fading away. The aftertaste, however, still remains (Mellbin 1983b: 17–18).

As mentioned, not everyone is impressed by such accounts. During one bujinkan class I attended, the instructors criticised Italian and Spanish practitioners they had met at camps for trying to come across as special and deep by giving overly vivid and flowery reports of cosmic, mystical experiences during their sakki tests.

In a more down-to-earth context, sakki sensitivity is frequently held up as a life-saving skill in everyday situations. One of my informants, who works as a security guard, mentioned an incident where he knew someone was carrying a knife without anything really indicating it and could thus pre-empt the attack.⁸¹ Another informant with a background in the same profession told a similar story (but also recounted an occasion when his sakki sensitivity failed him, resulting in a punch in the face from a shoplifter).⁸² Even those who have not yet passed the godan test gave testimonies of comparable sensations and abilities.⁸³

Some informants who have successfully taken the test offered remarkable statements. “Lars” said that “when he [Hatsumi] cut I was just snatched to the side, the same feeling as when you twitch falling asleep.” He added: “After the godan test, that’s when the invisible training begins – things we can’t see or understand or even describe.”⁸⁴ “Johan,” meanwhile, said about the experience that

I don’t think it can be put into words at all. It does, however, strike a hole in your head, inserts something that enables you to cross this threshold of your rational self. And suddenly, during the following month, you start having whole new experiences in training. […] For me, there’s a clear contrast between before and after.

“Johan” talked of “a new self” following the test: “Suddenly you can feel a lot of things.” Some, he said, “become quiet like ‘Lars’ and a little mysterious” after having taken it.⁸⁵ This powerful effect is confirmed in another interview, where the informant expounded:

Some have issues because of it, since the body reacts in a manner you can’t explain logically, and some go around brooding on it and many stop training because it has become too much. So sometimes we take people out to drink copious amounts of beer immediately afterwards in order for them to let it go and not deliberate too much on it.⁸⁶

“Maria” explained that as she sat waiting for the cut, “someone plucked me out of nowhere and lifted me away, it was a total out-of-body experience, utterly amazing.” As she is a self-professed atheist, however, she was careful to underline that she did not “ascribe any greater spirituality to it, it was simply a different level of perception, a wonderful experience in that way.” Afterwards, she felt “one with the world, filled with some form of completeness.”⁸⁷ She also mentioned the special atmosphere of the honbu 本部 (“headquarter”) dōjō in Noda, where she took the test, as a significant part of the experience. In my fieldwork, I got to have an unexpected first-hand taste of this trial.

During a class in a Stockholm suburb, I sat with the local head instructor in a corner of his dōjō to discuss the sakki test. He attempted to defuse the metaphysical dimension many read into it: “I haven’t had any of these ‘heaven opens’ moments and personally I think a lot of this is highly exaggerated. […] Some get all flowery about the godan test, seeing unicorns appear […]. I’m a little sceptical when I hear about people’s wow-experiences.”⁸⁸ All the same, he said, it is a formidable experience, and one difficult to put into words.

Then, suddenly, he asked: “Would you like to have a go?” Utterly surprised, I responded: “What, here and now?” He smiled and said “Yes. It is not usually administered outside the grading for fifth dan, but I think it’s easier to let you have the experience than to explain it.” Having been familiar with the concept of the test for decades, viewing it with considerable scepticism, I suppressed an incredulous frown and responded in the affirmative.

The class lined up, and an eighth dan was called up to demonstrate. The room fell dead silent. He sat down in seiza with his back to the instructor who touched first his one shoulder, then the other, and finally the top of his head lightly with a shinai. The sword was raised, there were a few moments of tense anticipation and just as the sword cut down forcefully he rolled away. Despite having watched numerous YouTube clips of the test, I was a little surprised at the exactness of the timing seeing it in real life. There is no way I will be able to do the same, I thought. The shinai will come crashing down on my head or I will attempt to evade it too early, failing comically. Either way it would be an interesting fieldwork experience, I resolved, and I could certainly treat the class to a laugh at my expense in return for their kindness hosting me. “Just so you know, you’re not receiving a fifth dan grade if you pass,” the instructor grinned at me. “I don’t think we have to worry about that,” I retorted.

Having heard the stories about this fabled test in previous interviews, I did not know what to expect. Well, a firm smack on the head, most likely. I sat down in seiza, a position my almost twenty-year break from Japanese martial arts had rendered quite uncomfortable. Closing my eyes, I felt the tap on the first shoulder, the second shoulder, the head. I realised the sword was now raised behind me, so I attempted to empty my mind. A strange non-reflexive blankness immediately filled me, something I have never had much luck with when meditating in various contexts. Time was frozen up and simultaneously freely flowing. Then, without in the least having made a conscious decision, my body rolled effortlessly to the side. As I looked back, I saw the shinai having cut down right where I sat. The instructor gave me a pleased nod.

In my field notes, a series of questions are jotted down. What did I just experience? Certainly no “enlightenment” or sense of cosmic unity. Or was the odd emptiness and sudden intuitive, non-intention-driven action the very thing others had embroidered so extensively? Did I feel even that because I had read about the test, heard others talk about it at length, and took it in a dōjō – a classic case of set and setting (cf. Rosegrant 1976)? Yet, I had no (cognizant) desire to have any particular experience and was in fact filled with cynical disbelief. Did my body receive the impulse to roll away because my mind was at some level fixed on avoiding a cut? How did it happen, did I really sense sakki being emitted from behind or did the instructor in fact begin his cut at the very moment he perceived a slight beginning of movement from me, thus assuring I “passed”? The latter could very well be the case even if he did not do so consciously and intentionally, should I want to rationalise the episode. I had no answers to any of these questions; and contrary to my expectations, a peculiar feeling persisted for some hours afterwards.

Doing the sakki test under more tense conditions, especially in a setting so conducive to experiences of sacrality as the honbu dōjō in Japan, must make it intensely charged. Notwithstanding being a test arranged for the benefit of a scholar, and regardless of the many possible mundane explanations for why it “worked” and I “passed,” it was a surprisingly powerful experience. The enigmatic non-intentional soft roll still reverberated in me as the eighth dan drove me home through the chilly blackness of the autumn night. I had never before felt my body move on its own accord in such a manner. The attempt at demystification, then, had left me mystified. It also, just as intended, made me better fathom the test at a direct and “intuitive” level, albeit not intellectually.

Indeed, bujinkan discourse privileges intuition over rational thinking. This can take different forms. Hatsumi claims that a mysterious old man taught his master, among other things, “how to predict unhappy calamities before they occurred” (1988a: 12), while Hayes states that ninja had “calm enlightened minds and free-working spiritual powers which we would call psychic abilities today” and that their art contained techniques for “the development of occult powers” (1980: 16). Hatsumi also mentions “esoteric techniques” that would have “an effect on an opponent at a distance through willpower and psychic force” (1988b: 15–16).

In a vaguer manner, Bogsäter assures that “for our desire for spiritual knowledge, we may find the true knowledge that is intuitive and beyond our intellect” (n.d., c: 15). More specifically, and with reference to the skills trialled in the godan test, the expression “sixth sense” or the parapsychological term extrasensory perception (ESP) are commonly employed (Hatsumi 1988a: 66, 72; Bogsäter n.d., b: 29). Bogsäter explicates: “[…] beyond your ‘normal’ awareness is a more subtle awareness – an extraordinary or extrasensory perception. More popular[ly] called a sixth sense” (n.d., b: 29).⁸⁹ Hatsumi says that “[f]or a certain period, I train my students to appreciate and acquire ESP” but then he teaches “them the importance of refining their human senses” as “[m]artial artists should not rely solely on ESP” (1998: 167). It is notable that Hatsumi uses the highly specific term ESP, which was popularised in Japan during the “occult boom” of the 1970s (Gaitanidis and Stein 2021: 6–9). Whereas parapsychology is couched in a science-like language, Hatsumi has expressed a clear view that “[s]cience should play second fiddle to ninjutsu” (2004: 127).

In our interview, “Lars” made clear that the road to achieving the sixth sense is belief: “Firstly, you have to believe in it and be open for it. And then just train. There are no specific techniques to learn it. […] There’s an element of faith there, a bit of spirituality […], it is as if someone else is controlling you.” The reason Munthe needed three attempts, “Lars” suggested, might have been that he did not believe in it firmly enough.⁹⁰ Other Swedish instructors and students I have talked to were also quite adamant that there are no particular exercises to attain the sixth sense, one simply has to practise the physical bujinkan techniques and the intuitive ability will follow. Nor are any specific drills focused on it provided by Hatsumi. Others, however, have historically tried to make up for the lack of such tuition by devising drills of their own. Hayes provides a simple exercise to “experience the power of directed intentions through the action of the senses operating on a more subtle level than normal,” where a “stalker” who “must concentrate intently on his or her objectives” tests a group of “receivers” with their backs to him by extending his hands to simulate a stranglehold (1985: 177). Today’s Swedish instructors firmly reject these instructions from Hayes as inappropriate.⁹¹

Hayes takes such training into clearly parapsychological territory. Once more using science-like language, he writes that even if “the grosser physical manifestations of all matter appear to be separate,” there is “a subtle connection that links the essences of all in existence (i.e., electrons from a common source grouped to form atoms, which became molecules, which became physical objects)” (1980: 108). Hence, there is no dividing line between the physical and spiritual. But “until our physical science is capable of explaining” them, certain mysterious phenomena will incorrectly be dismissed as “of the spirit.” He exemplifies with radio waves a few generations ago seeming “as other-worldly as ESP” (ibid.), a rhetorical move familiar from esoteric contexts.

Hayes enthusiastically opines that historical ninja held knowledge of “the realm that we would call spiritual or occult today” (while present-day Swedish authors and instructors, as we have seen, usually shy away from terms like “occult”), having the “capability of detecting the threatening presence of others, reading the intentions of people, and visualising distant places or persons.” This is not a thing of the past, as “[a]dvanced students of ninjutsu today still practice specific exercises for the development of the finer senses” that acknowledge “the subtle effects we feel from the electromagnetic forcefield influences of others” (1980: 109).

Hayes’ first book, once widely read by Swedes but today spurned, provides no less than six exercises, all involving a “controller” (or controllers) and a “receiver” as is standard in ESP testing contexts. The second and third exercises focus on feeling presence, and Hayes suggests that “[d]ue to the electromagnetic characteristics of the human body, it might be helpful to practice the exercise with a training partner of the opposite sex” (1980: 116). Part of them consists of the controller visualising “the invisible-energy current” flowing out through the fingertips of an outstretched hand while the receiver, eyes closed, attempts to feel the presence of the other person via imagining extending a radar-like forcefield. The fifth and sixth exercise focus on thought projection, using twenty-five cards featuring five different images. Instead of the five symbols familiar from the classic ESP training/testing Zener deck invented in the 1930s, Hayes suggests making your own deck with five stylised ninja weapons/tools. A controller picks up a card and focuses intensely on the image, and the receiver attempts to receive a “subtle image” and sketch it on a piece of paper. This is repeated twenty-five times and afterwards scored, hopefully resulting in a better result than the twenty to twenty-five per cent correct matches dictated by the natural odds – which would then “indicate actual skill at picking up the thought impressions of others” (ibid.: 128–129). The ideas and practices presented by Hayes are clear examples of early overlaps between “ninja training” and esoteric-occult and parapsychological fields, that have today largely, but perhaps not entirely, faded from Swedish bujinkan.

3.6 “In Connection with Some Divine Force”: The Grandmaster’s Abilities

Shortly after his 1983 visit to train with Hatsumi, an excited Munthe wrote: “[…] his whole manner was permeated by an inner harmony and benevolence. He appeared to be in total unison with the universe” (1983: 4). Even Munthe himself was the subject of similar reverence during the early years, with one of his students describing him as “the chi power personified” (Samuelsson 1984: 16). The figure that such spiritual exaltation predominantly centres around, however, is the grandmaster – who has been no stranger to encouraging it.

In a 1980s conversation with Stephen K. Hayes, Hatsumi said: “Takamatsu- sensei used to tell me that it is a fortunate thing that I am in connection with some divine force in the universe. I accept this mystery for what it is. I believe such things can and do exist in the world of human beings.” He then recounted when Hayes’s wife cut herself in the kitchen and he made a series of cutting motions in the air and effected an “instant healing” (Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 131–132).

The view of Hatsumi as a person channelling the divine and mysterious, in some sense, is shared by many of his students. Even those of my informants who were quite keen to downplay spiritual dimensions considered him to have exceptional abilities – appearing to be, bordering on, or belonging in the realm of the supranormal. We also find this in Swedish bujinkan publications. Mats Hjelm’s book recounts a story of one of the author’s students seeing Hatsumi appear in full samurai armour, although he was in fact not wearing one. Hjelm suggests that “[m]aybe this was his intention, and it was so strong that she picked it up” (i.e., a form of thought projection), and then adds: “Many of us have seen strange things happen with Sôke and can testify that this is possible” (2018: 65).

An informant described Hatsumi hitting him with a type of ki force that sent him bouncing into the wall:

It felt like my whole body was impacted at the same time! Imagine a huge pillow just foooph, pushing you away. So there he used something like that. Something. It wasn’t the physical punch sending me off, it was something different. […] So I know such things exist. He can make people freeze up. When you ask his senior students, they don’t understand either. He was special, one in a thousand masters. […] Everyone has some personal experience of something unexplainable with him. So there is something. But he has never tried to teach it. I don’t think it can be taught either. It’s […] energies being transferred between people when you interact with them – without being shown, just as long as you’re close to someone. That’s why I felt it was so important to go five times a year [to train with Hatsumi] towards the end. It’s difficult to explain, sometimes you just know things.

Another occurrence concerned a friend of the informant:

When they were going to do this godan test there were some cats outside the dōjō making quite a bit of noise. Then my friend saw Sōke do one of these mysterious things … It wasn’t Sōke who was conducting the test, he was sitting on the side watching, so he did something with his fingers and mumbled something and then he [the friend] felt something like a blast wave and the cats went silent. No one knows what he [Hatsumi] did, but everybody knows it was he who silenced the cats. [Laughs.] Things like that could occur at every class with him, mysterious things like that. Everybody has stories they can tell about him. But we’re nowhere close to the level where we can do things like that. So in daily training we don’t encounter such things very often. Or perhaps it’s always there. Perhaps it’s not always one senses things.⁹²

Commenting on such examples of experiences, a different instructor said: “I have no reason to doubt it, but it depends on the person what words are chosen. The more mysteriously you try to describe it, the further from the truth you get. It’s nothing mysterious, and simultaneously extremely mysterious, but the more words you add … blast waves and things, well …” His own encounters with Hatsumi were all the same profound experiences, and grasping for words he too ultimately chose the language of the mysterious:

When you’re training, you may meet Hatsumi-sensei’s gaze, and he constantly sees you. His gaze penetrates right through you so that your body is completely depleted of power. […] It’s difficult to describe. He merges into you. Completely. He penetrates and squeezes hold of you. Time stops. Totally insane. It’s disconcerting, but simultaneously you feel very honoured that he sees you. […] He’s there yet he isn’t there, squeezes hold of your heart. […] It’s difficult to describe it: peculiar, strange … mysterious, to use that word.⁹³

Only one of my interviewees categorically denied Hatsumi having any special abilities beyond excellent martial arts skills. “I’m sceptical. […] People have a need to come home from Japan and make it into something more uncanny than it was. […] I’ve never had any experiences of this type of … I’d almost like to call it bullshit, that some people present. They’ve seen a light, and then it perhaps was a passing train outside. But that it was some kind of spirit, naah. I don’t believe that.”⁹⁴

3.7 “A Spirit Seen Around My Ear”: Photography and Cultivating the Mysterious

Another area the notion of Hatsumi’s “mysterious powers” carries over into is that of photography. In his memoir, Munthe writes: “Devoting oneself to Ninjutsu can entail strange things happening. For example, there’s a photo of Hatsumi Sensei bowing where one of his deshi [students] at his side holds a long sword standing straight. Along the length of the sword there’s a red, mist-like shape.” Obviously fascinated by the aura-like phenomenon, Munthe pronounces: “There are plenty of explanations for this, but I’ll leave it with giving this information” (2014: 122). He further recounts how a painting gifted by Hatsumi to provide strength for the Stockholm dōjō, and placed on the kamiza 上座, was very difficult to photograph well and consistently ended up blurry even when all other objects in a picture were clear and sharp, “so I guess you could say the mystique thickens.” A guest from Wales also had a strange experience when he stayed in Munthe’s dōjō for a few nights. He was awakened by a sound, and then saw a light being emitted by the painting. “This has never been explained, either,” Munthe writes, adding that he thinks the phenomenon is “exciting” (ibid.: 135–136).

We could designate Munthe’s rhetoric an active but non-committal cultivation of the mysterious. As is often (but not always) the case, he here follows the lead of his teacher – specifically, a similar discussion in Hatsumi’s book The Essence of Ninjutsu stating that “[t]he mysterious parts of ninpo suggest its profundity” (1988a: 47). On the following page, a photo of Hatsumi giving a demonstration at the Foreign Press Club in Tōkyō is reproduced with the caption “A spirit seen around my ear,” and also provided in closeup to emphasise a blurry lighter spot to the side of his head. Hatsumi received the photograph together with a letter explaining that “it seems to be possible to take spiritual pictures” and stating: “[…] you can see your guiding spirit around your ear in this picture. This picture is Mr. Chosokabe, a samurai of the Toyotomi family […]” (ibid.: 48–49).

Astonished because a book given to him by his teacher Takamatsu had referred to this very samurai, Hatsumi eagerly visited the letter-writer. However, he also consulted a professor friend (a professor of what is not stated) who sceptically explained that “you can easily make a blurred picture that looks like a spirit” (Hatsumi 1988a: 49). This does not appear to have persuaded Hatsumi, who decided to include the photo in his book, making the following remark: “All living creatures as well as human beings lose instinct and awareness of their subconscious as the level of culture become higher and higher. And finally, we lose the intuition that is so essential for living.” In a seeming dismissal of the professor’s opinion, he lays down that “[v]ery few people actually know about the nature of spirit,” adding: “I will continue my study on spirits from the heart, from this sincerity. I personally want to believe in spirits” (ibid.: 49–50). Hatsumi’s approach, then, is anti-sceptical and represents an embrace of the mysterious in life. Indeed, “mysterious” is the term recurringly used in his discussions of such phenomena.

He ends the chapter with recounting a story: “One day a professional cameraman visited our training hall and thoughtlessly began to take photographs. Then, I dared to send him a secret kiai for the purpose of interrupting the flash” (ibid.: 50.) This disrupting of the technological device was apparently successful, as none of the pictures turned out well, and Hatsumi comments: “How mysterious the secret kiai was! Was that the one reflecting the viability of our Togakure ryu ninjutsu over a thousand years? At one time or another I find myself in a dream floating in space, fully understanding the truth Takamatsu sensei’s secret kiai had” (ibid.).

A photo can also, it seems, according to Hatsumi, enable a type of communication with the dead, resulting in (or being linked to) strange light phenomena. He recounts how his teacher, Takamatsu, was talking to a photograph of his instructor while eating a meal of “[t]ypical ninja dishes” – that, unlike ordinary fare, would not result in the loss of stamina, energy, and the sixth sense – and then saw a mysterious light appearing before the food (ibid.: 6). Hatsumi furthermore makes symbolic interpretations of optical effects in photos, elsewhere captioning a picture with: “This photo fades as if telling me that my present students are merely ghosts of the past – the tradition continues” (ibid.: 65). Of course, he is not here literally making any claims about ghostly presences but employs a metaphorical language that is still of some significance. The same can be said of, for example, a photo of Hayes sitting in a cave with his hands surrounded by a peculiar light phenomenon (Hayes 1983: 128) that certainly contributes to building up the supranormal, enigmatic atmosphere conveyed in the text. The frequently reproduced (for instance, on the cover of Hatsumi 1988b) photo of Hatsumi circumscribed by a ring of fire could also be counted to this aspect of bujinkan’s visual culture of the mysterious.

At the time Hatsumi’s book was written, both spirit photography and aura photography were well-established in Japan (Gaitanidis 2019), and it is against this background his interest in these phenomena can be understood. As for Munthe, we have seen that he engaged broadly with holistic-spiritual ideas (for example, quoting Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy as a major influence), and he likely encountered aura photography in such contexts. But what do contemporary Swedish practitioners make of all this? One informant remarked that the mysterious only appears to manifest when analogue cameras are used and that he himself has seen some direct instances of, for example, strange shadows appearing in photographs – but, he added, it is likely just by-products of the analogue development process. He then said: “I don’t think it is possible to photograph such [mysterious] things, I think it was a technical error. But Sōke doesn’t hesitate to take credit for things like that. […] So maybe, maybe not.”⁹⁵

In a different club, my informant remained uncommitted regarding Hatsumi’s spirit photograph: “First of all, it’s his experience, I wasn’t there. […] But if you consider the body and the mental as one, then you can have dreams, have different intuitions.” Another informant, sitting next to us, nodded eagerly and said: “Portents!” (Swedish: “Förnimmelser”). The first informant continued: “Yes, portents, perceptions. That doesn’t mean you are mentally ill. [It’s] just a different frequency he can receive information from. So I don’t know, but perhaps it does happen in his case.” However, he interjected, “I personally don’t seek such experiences. If they come, they come. But through a certain connection between the body and the mental things can happen, just like when we dream.”⁹⁶ An informant who holds an engineering degree was more overtly dismissive of aura and spirit photography, commenting on Munthe’s claims:

This is about auras again, that I personally have no experience of. I think it’s largely a question of Bo’s world view, I’d say. I’ve heard of similar things from other people, but myself I have never … The reason I haven’t seen it is perhaps that it isn’t part of my world view. […] As a person with a background in the physical sciences it irritates me a bit, but I can understand what it is: an invisible dimension. And this is a way to exemplify that. […] That you should be aware that there is something beyond what can be observed and described analytically. These pictures are a way to try to configure that. Since he [Hatsumi] is also an artist, I take it as a method to frame something you can’t describe. […] Many take it literally: It’s an aura surrounding him! […] I don’t believe that. I think it’s a method of configuration. Unfortunately, people take things too literally. Now I perhaps sound snobbish, but … uneducated people who are unable to think symbolically.⁹⁷

A different informant, who at the time of the interview no longer actively trained in a club, said she remembered it being strictly forbidden in Swedish bujinkan to discuss or, even worse, experiment with anything like spirit photography. She considered this to be fully understandable: “I had grown up with art and literature and thought it was exciting, but for many who didn’t have that from their upbringing, and started very young, they might have gotten a cult-like feeling. So perhaps it was positive that it wasn’t talked about or emphasised.”⁹⁸

The attitude towards mysterious photographs in the interviews with my Swedish informants, then, ranges from completely dismissive to a certain level of openness regarding such things. Several of my interlocutors did not evince any belief to speak of concerning what could be called “paranormal” phenomena, unless (as seen in the previous section) it related specifically to the grandmaster’s own abilities (and to a degree, pertaining to the sakki test). Yet, their partial receptivity to delimited “mysterious” matters indicates they may still to an extent share Hatsumi’s basic sentiment, expressed in an animated discussion of numerology, that “[t]he world is […] complex and mysterious” (Hatsumi 2005/2019: 40).⁹⁹

3.8 “A Danger of It Losing Its Sanctity”: Bujinkan as Holistic Body-Mind Practice

Just how “mysterious” budō should be has been a cause of recurring controversy. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was intense debate in the Swedish umbrella organisation Budoförbundet regarding “sportification,” a process that had definitely occurred with, for example, judo and jujutsu (and to almost the same extent karate) in Sweden. An influential phalanx within the organisation felt sportification was the solution in order to gain respectability and wash away the public view of budō as engendering street violence (thus securing access to state grants). However, there were dissenting voices in Budoförbundet, mostly coming from aikidōka 合気道家 (aikidō, like bujinkan, cannot be trained as a competition sport) and older karateka 空手家, who felt important dimensions of self-cultivation and mental-spiritual training were being lost in this sportifying process.¹⁰⁰ The rhetoric found in bujinkan texts aligns the art with this latter camp. For example, Hatsumi criticises modern budō for being unspiritual and desanctified: “[…] the old style is becoming lost and the cultivation of the spirit is being neglected, […]. Without this, there is a danger of it losing its sanctity” (2014: 101–102; cf. Hatsumi and Hayes 1987: 60).

In a 1987 interview, Munthe stated that students from other martial arts come to ninjutsu looking for “[s]omething deeper that [has] more to it,” stressing that “[i]t’s not a sport, it’s a life-style and a philosophical way of finding yourself” (2017: 224). Thirty years later he would affirm the same view, insisting that bujinkan is “a training of the mind for finding the spiritual part” and that “[a]ll the training in the dojo should be a kind of ninpo meiso – ninpo-meditation” (ibid.: 220). Simultaneously, he also complained: “Very seldom have I met a person in Sweden, or in another country, who wanted to teach about the mind and the spiritual side” (ibid.: 219.) In other words, there existed a tension of some sort in ninjutsu regarding actually implementing what must be said to be a wholly central part of the widely read books by Hatsumi, Hayes, and Munthe himself, as well as in the work of Munthe’s Swedish successor Bogsäter. Munthe did try, as one of his students recounted when I interviewed him, by instigating an ambitious Zen meditation group at his dōjō in the late 1980s or early 1990s, where quite detailed instruction was given on how to do deep meditation and for which special meditation stools were acquired.¹⁰¹ Not everyone seems to have enjoyed this, and Bogsäter (once Munthe’s disciple) writes: “In my own experience the absolute[ly] finest form of meditation is daydreaming,” while the “more formal forms of meditation is [sic] in my opinion too focused” leading to “your energy rather close [sic] up” (Bogsäter n.d., a: 101).

Another interpretation occasionally found, and hinted at in Munthe’s words quoted above, is that the practice of fighting methods, at least when you reach a certain level, is an act of moving meditation (e.g, Hatsumi and Cole 2001: 14; Hjelm 2018: 34).¹⁰² In one of the classes I observed, the instructor accordingly called an exercise of basic techniques “moving meditation” – with a sly blink of an eye directed at me, as we had discussed meditation a couple of days earlier. During a different occasion of participant observation in this club, we began the class with a brief seated meditation – with the instructor telling the group we would do it because a guest interested in meditation was present (a clear case of observer impact, if ever there was one). Such meditation is occasionally performed; but far from always, I am informed. In a different club, the instructor said he never did it, and that he preferred a long walk for meditative purposes (an idea he has picked up from senior instructors in Japan).

In Hatsumi’s list of guidelines for ninja, the first item states the need to constantly train in “[s]piritual cultivation” (2014: 100). However, there is scant, if any, instruction concerning how to actually go about this in his books, and it seems that those of my interviewees who had trained extensively with him in person had not received any tuition in it either. Nor do the Swedish bujinkan instructors I talked to have a curriculum pertaining to it that they convey to their students. This means that such cultivation, in concrete terms, must largely be devised, or ignored, by the individual student.

Notably, the practice of meditation, then, does not play a central role in Swedish bujinkan today, despite Hayes’ books being filled with meditation exercises (Hayes 1980: 95–101; 1983: 44–47) and Munthe initiating the day’s activities with meditation when he organised international camps in the 1980s (Lundberg 1984: 14). As just mentioned, Munthe also set up a formal Zen meditation group in his dōjō. Nothing similar seems to be going on currently (even if some practitioners meditate daily on their own).¹⁰³

Another example of discrepancies between text (in this case including more recent texts) and practice concerns breathing. In one of his books, Bogsäter offers an “active breathing” exercise (relating it to the cultivation of subtle energy) where one forms the words “HI (fire, spirit, sun) and FU (wind, expansion)” which “will activate your physical and mental metabolism and brings you in contact with your spirituality” (n.d., c: 92). Another breathing exercise, intended “[t]o fill yourself with energy (ki),” should be performed twice a day, Bogsäter suggests (ibid.: 96–97). He moreover mentions a bujinkan-specific breathing routine called “deep-breathing, 3 methods” but provides no specifics, suggesting readers should instead ask their teachers to tutor them in this (ibid.: 92).

A decade later, Sundelius explains in his book that “[b]reathing functions as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious” (2016: 37). He instructs that ”[w]hen performing the exercises we observe the body tissues, the circulation of [body] liquids, breathing patterns, and an active directing of consciousness, all in harmony with each other” (ibid.: 33) Hjelm, too, gives a series of simple breathing exercises, with a fleeting reference to them helping “the energy flow” and an instruction to push an acupuncture point on the sole of the foot connected to the kidneys (2018: 3). Sundelius’ emphasis on harmonising physical movement, breathing, and consciousness, as well as Hjelm’s mention of energy and acupuncture, can be seen as examples of ideas familiar from the broader “holistic” field that so-called “eastern body-mind techniques” (to the extent that they have a specifically “eastern” origin and character), like yoga and mindfulness meditation, are usually classified by scholars as belonging to (Frisk and Åkerbäck 2013: 59, 163–166).¹⁰⁴

Interestingly, several of the instructors and students I talked to said they had seldom or never encountered any special breathing exercises being taught (including the techniques described by Bogsäter, Hjelm, and Sundelius). It would seem, then, that body-mind techniques may play a role in some dōjō, but that it is very much up to each instructor to formulate and implement them (or refrain from doing so). This may also involve bringing in techniques from other sources. As seen earlier, one of the instructors I interviewed was a reiki healing practitioner and gave reiki treatments as part of his classes, something his students said they appreciated greatly.

An intriguing feature of bujinkan discourse is the consistent emphasis on spiritual development being anchored in the body. Hatsumi flatly states: “I always tell my students to try to attain enlightenment through taijutsu or bodily techniques” (1988a: 115). One instructor told me that he fairly quickly grew tired of the books by Hayes and Munthe, “perhaps because I thought there was too much spacey stuff [Swedish: “flum”] in them. With that I don’t mean to say I deny the spiritual or the presence of such features in training. But it is through the physical exercises you learn the philosophy of budō and the spiritual.”¹⁰⁵

In bujinkan, then, everything begins with the body and martial techniques. Even someone so focused on subtle energy and spiritual aspects as Hayes repeatedly stresses this: attain combat skills first, then study ki cultivation (1985: 152, 155). Hatsumi, meanwhile, usually entirely leaves out instructions for ki cultivation, kuji, and similar things, emphasising that bodily martial techniques are sufficient (Hayes 1983: 9–10; cf. Hatsumi 1998: 78) to attain what Hayes, employing the language of the holistic milieu, calls “mind-body-spirit harmony” (1980: 21). This is also underscored on a club website: “Consciousness and personality are primarily trained through the training of the body.”¹⁰⁶

Reflecting this exaltation of the corporeal, Hayes is sharply critical of attempts to depreciate “the body and its sensual capabilities,” writing that

[a]ny spiritual system that denies or represses the natural physical requirements and proclivities of the body will create a grave state of imbalance that must be dealt with eventually before any true spiritual advancement can be attained. The teachings of ninjutsu advocate the development of the total entity […] and they reject as senseless and needlessly brutal any system, martial or religious, that demands suffering, repression, self-debasement, or the abdication of joy in life for the sake of attaining transcendent consciousness or so-called salvation (1980: 82).

We find analogous views expressed by Bogsäter, repudiating “the doctrine about our bodies as it is expressed in the Bible by Paul as it is the basis of hate and distrust against the physical being” (n.d., c: 30). In this sense, bujinkan emerges as a this-worldly teaching, not dissimilar to the many varieties of holistic spirituality also celebrating the body (cf. Frisk and Åkerbäck 2013). Yet, if we look at, for example, Bogsäter’s books, the ultimate goal seems to be more transcendent, and the much-lauded body, at the end of the day, constitutes a means to this end. He writes: “Budo is a path that puts self-development before practical applications of techniques. It is to develop yourself to be a complete, enlightened person. It is, if you like, spiritual perfection through physical training” (n.d., c: 54, emphasis added).

3.9 “Great Meanings Hidden Within”: Secrecy and Transmission

Bujinkan books often have titles incorporating the word “secret” (e.g., works by Hatsumi like The Way of the Ninja: Secret Techniques and The Complete Ninja: The Secret World Revealed).¹⁰⁷ The marketing text for Hjelm’s book assures that ”Within the pages of the Yudansha Book, you will unlock the hidden secrets of Bujinkan.”¹⁰⁸ In a Swedish context, this form of rhetoric stretches all the way back to Munthe, who in his first book proclaimed that ninjutsu “has for centuries been preserved in secret, it has even been trained in secret” (1982: 5), but now, of course, it is to be revealed to us by the Swede who has conquered the mysteries of the orient. The pattern is familiar from, for example, Theosophy (with books like The Secret Doctrine) and other esoteric teachings, whereas the general notion of ancient wisdom from an exotic location is a common trait in contemporary holistic spirituality (Hammer 2016: 353). From esoteric contexts we also recognise the notion that the secrets are not graspable for just anyone through the texts themselves but need a particular insight (gnosis) to actually be understood. Commenting on one of the ninjutsu scrolls given to him by his teacher, Hatsumi writes: “[…] I can finally see the great meanings hidden within it. […] If anyone should steal the scroll, it would be useless, because I’m the only one with the experience and enlightenment to read and understand it” (1988a: 15; cf. 2008: 102). Hatsumi also often mentions things like “the secrets of religion and martial arts” or “three secret concepts of universal consciousness” (2008: 47–48), but seldom explains them in any greater detail – thus building a sense of alluring undisclosed knowledge.

The main points here are that bujinkan discourse posits an ancient (with a recorded lineage allegedly stretching 1,000 or even 4,300 years back; see Hatsumi 2004: 18) and formerly secret teaching now being divulged to the public, with tantalising revealing of even further secrets on the horizon, and that its highest levels must be learned in the flesh from the only person fully grasping it, the grandmaster – just like it has been transmitted for a thousand years or more, according to bujinkan tradition. This latter notion of an “initiatory chain” is a feature familiar both from esotericism as defined by Antoine Faivre (1994: 4–15) and from various traditional Japanese (and not only martial) arts (Morinaga 2005).

Such transmission creates unique cultural capital for those it has been bestowed upon (or who claim they have been granted this privilege). Regarding kuji, Hayes writes that “actual initiation and empowerment can only come from personal interaction with a teacher who is experienced in the method” (1983: 137). It is a must, then, with “an initiated instructor” (ibid.: 140, emphasis added; cf. 1981: 150). And such a teacher, of course, needs to have an impeccable, traceable lineage. Further employing rhetorical devices typical of esotericism, Hayes (as well as Hatsumi, Munthe, and others, as we have seen earlier) frames ninjutsu as a form of clandestine rejected knowledge (cf. Hanegraaff 2012), “transmitted secretly only because the organised state religions throughout history have feared the thought of losing their control over the masses” (Hayes 1983: 136). While most of my informants tended to downplay the notion of secrecy, it remains very much part of the art’s backstory and continues being emphasised in book titles, internal historiography, and certain marketing. The idea of the initiatory chain, where an ancient “gnosis” needs to be transferred in person, has also persisted.