Back then, they were usually known as “shinobi,” a word considered interchangeable with the word “ninja,” based on how their characters are written. The fighting led to a demand for skilled experts who could carry out assassinations and undercover operations, but likely within a normal military chain of command, according to Stephen Turnbull, a visiting professor of Japanese studies at Akita International University in Japan and author of the forthcoming book The Ninja Myth. Most references to the first real ninjas date back to the 16th-century Japan, a time of civil war between warlords. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Historians argue that the Hollywood fantasy is based on folk tales and legends passed down through the years, which are in fact based on a real tradition in medieval Japan. “The image of the ninja is a man in black whose aim in life is to break, enter, steal and kill, for which one also has to be a martial arts expert… Teachers claim to have inherited authority and skills through generations. “That image dominates everything everyone ‘knows’ about ninjas,” he says, and most of it is myth. John Man, author of Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior, argues that the TMNT gang is also influenced by the ninja concept parodied by Burt Kwouk in the Pink Panther films. That Hollywood version of the ninja took off after the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice in fact, dictionaries often trace the first popular use of the word ninja in the West to the book version by Bond creator Ian Fleming. Most directly, the Turtles were influenced by the visions of ninjas in Frank Miller comics, like Daredevil and Ronin, and by the movies that, starting in the 1960s, popularized the figures of the specially trained martial artist. Though the comics were an instant hit, Turtlemania did not reach the big time until New York licensing agent Mark Freedman offered to market the heroes…Freedman cut the deal with Playmates Toys, who, in turn, sponsored the first TV episodes.īut that doesn’t mean the Ninja Turtles aren’t part of real history-both a decades-long American pop-cultural history and a centuries-long military history. Eastman quickly christened them the Ninja Turtles, but then, in an absurdist wink at two of the most popular themes in comic books at the time, Laird lengthened the name to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… By the end of the evening the artists had created four tortoises. The idea of a slowpokey turtle as a swift and wily ninja cracked them up. Eastman drew a humanized turtle wearing a ninja mask and carrying a katana blade. One night in 1983 - and neither can remember why - inspiration struck.
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