Each week sports reporter ROBERT CARRY tries out martial arts from around the world. This week it’s the Japanese code of Ninjutsu
Some odd things go on in the hills around Leinster, but I’m sure that none can be quite as bizarre as what I was both witness and party to on a recent Sunday morning. This column has been running for some time now, and it’s getting to the stage where I’ve come to try out some of the more ‘fringe’ martial arts, like this week’s offering – ninjutsu.
Ninjutsu is the name given to a group of Japanese martial arts elements including grappling, striking weaponry and concealment that are associated with the legendary feudal-era Japanese assassins, the ninja. It took some time to track down a class but once I did, I discovered a whole network of clubs operating from, strangely, the various wooded hillsides of South Dublin/North Wicklow. I settled on one of the smaller clubs run by instructor Liam Duignan from the area in-and-around Bray Head, which welcomes beginners on Sunday mornings.
Standing in the car park of the popular dog-walking spot, I had visions of a group of lads arriving wearing either white karate suits or those all-black ninja outfits straight out of the movies, but luckily the seven-strong class were all wearing tracksuits. The fact that I was spared the embarrassment of having to trudge off into the woods in broad daylight with a gang dressed as ninjas lifted my mood somewhat, and the dread of having to make a total clown of myself in public faded further as Liam led our solemn band to a relatively isolated clearing in a wooded area on the south face of the hill.
The class kicked off with a standard-issue aerobic warm up of star jumps and jogging on the spot, with a few push ups and sit ups thrown in. We then stretched and moved onto the class proper. We paired off and were taken through a series of basic kicks, which we tapped out on our partners, before moving onto some of the ‘controlling’ techniques.
The first drill Liam demonstrated seemed normal enough at first. It started with his partner throwing a punch at him, to which Liam responded by ducking forward and to the side of his partner before quickly rotating behind him by grabbing his would-be attacker’s collar bone. Once Liam was behind his opponent, he took him to the ground by kicking the back of his leg. Then, holding his prostrate opponent in a seated position on the ground from behind, Liam said flatly, “Then you finish him off,” before feigning the neck-rotation death move made famous by the hockey-masked Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies, accompanied by a vocalised crack. I looked around at the rest of the group but there simply wasn’t a flicker of alarm coming from any of them.
I was paired with a tall, comparatively cheerful guy called Denis who told me he had been involved in ninjutsu for the past two months. Luckily, he didn’t attempt to execute the finishing move we’d been shown, and I reciprocated by not killing him when I had the chance.
Next we moved onto lessons in concealment. Now I know I probably would have found all this stuff invaluable if I was an assassin-in-training in Japan 300 years ago, but I struggled to think of any real practical application for what was being taught vis-à-vis my own life in today’s Ireland. For example, though an ‘advanced’ class is taught on how to use – and defend against people attacking with – weapons, instead of teaching how to deal with a situation you might actually face, like someone going for you with a bottle, syringe or hurling stick, it’s all nunchaku (sticks connected by a chain) and shuriken (throwing stars).
Liam began to demonstrate how best to move through a wooded area without making any detectable noise, and he stressed the idea of controlling your breathing, using all your joints fluidly when walking and allowing your arms to float up and down by your sides in time with your steps. I’m fairly confident that we looked like a mob of total plums, but the whole thing kind of reminded me of playing hide-and-seek in the local forest as a young lad, and I couldn’t help but start to enjoy it.
Embarrassingly, our tiptoeing column of would-be ninjas was interrupted by a wayward cocker spaniel who came barrelling through the undergrowth towards us. He eventually disappeared from whence he came in pursuit of his whistling owner, but the mood, for me at least, was ruined.
The reality of what this class was really about began to dawn when one half of our number was sent scurrying through the bushes for a hiding place while the rest of us strung out in a line, counted for five minutes and then swept forward in an attempt to find them. We were a group of grown men reliving our youth by playing hide-and-seek under the veil of a martial art. I couldn’t think of any way out of participating that might not result in me being on the receiving end of a shuriken, which I’m sure someone just must have been carrying, so I decided to get stuck in.
Myself and Denis crept off through the foliage in search of our quarry – a pair of giggling gobshites playing chasing in the woods on a Sunday when we should have been at home curing a hangover with a fry-up and a cup of tea – but despite our best efforts, we didn’t catch anyone. The class wound up when Liam blew a whistle to summon us back to our starting point, and from there we jogged out of the Samurai-infested woods around ancient Tokyo back to a car park on a hillside in Co Wicklow.
This ninjutsu stuff can be a bit of harmless fun if you take it for what it is, but the problem is that a large proportion of those involved take it too seriously. Denis informed me, with a reassuring smirk, that some of the guys have even gone to Japan to train, and that once you reach a certain level you are sent into the woods with a blindfold on, pursued by a Japanese ninjutsu master with a sword. I also heard that these fellas have been known to jump out of trees at each other in the middle of the night in the hills around Dublin (and probably a wood near you).
Basically, these are lads with an unusual fondness for many ninja movies or who have spent a few too many hours playing Tenchu Stealth Warrior on their PlayStations, but the only damage they’re doing is to their own reputations. So should you discover a figure crouched in a bush the next time you’re out walking your dog on a Sunday, don’t be alarmed – it’s only a harmless ninja.
