Last ninja: 'Be able to kill your students'

Recreation Sports
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Give it up Grasshopper…I ain’t teaching you everything.

[quote]Last ninja: ‘Be able to kill your students’
HANS GREIMEL, Associated Press

NODA, Japan - The teachings of Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi echo through my head as he entreats me to attack a blackbelted disciple with a practice sword. “Always be able to kill your students,” he says.

Chilling words from a shockingly fit 76-year-old man who bills himself as the world’s last ninja and stocks his training chamber with weapons such as throwing stars and nunchucks. Especially to a neophyte whose closest brush with martial arts was watching Bruce Lee matinees as a kid.

As I cautiously raise the sword with a taut two-handed samurai grip, my sparring partner gingerly points to Hatsumi. I avert my eyes for a split second - and WHAM! The next thing I know, I’m staring at the rafters.

Keeping your focus is just one of the lessons thumped out on the mats of the Bujinkan Dojo, a cramped school outside Tokyo that is a pilgrimage site for 100,000 worldwide followers. They revere Hatsumi as the last living master of ninjutsu - the mysterious Japanese art of war practiced by black-masked assassins of yesteryear.(more ninja stuff at the link)
mercurynews.com/mld/mercuryn … 434176.htm[/quote]

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Pretty scary stuff.

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I met [Grandmaster Tanemura Shoto] once at a seminar back home. He said that his teacher became Grandmaster of the organization by sitting in a feild waiting to be attacked by the current Grandmaster. If he was able to stop the attack, success. If not, death.

Someone asked him how he got to be Grandmaster and he said “I waited until my teacher was very very old, and took the sword.” Then he laughed.

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“Someone asked him how he got to be Grandmaster and he said “I waited until my teacher was very very old, and took the sword.” Then he laughed.”

That sounds like some Sith shit right there!

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Wily, crafty and with excellent timing… :smiling_imp: