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How to Be a Ninja

Wednesday, May 06, 2015


 
After visiting Naruto exhibition today, I just realized that even though the word ‘ninja’ or ‘shinobi’ had been known widely, I haven’t found a ninja definition based on the kanji meaning on the net. And since I’m a bit ‘free’ today, I’d like to write one here :-).

Ninja is written as 忍者, and the second kanji simply means a person – which emphasizes that ninja is just a normal human. What makes a ninja different is shown by the first kanji: it can be read as ‘nin’ or ‘shinobi’ (thus the term to say ninja in other way), and the meaning is to persevere, to have patience. The pictograph itself depicts a blade on a heart, and referring to kanji dictionary for elementary school :-), it symbolizes ‘the ability to hold on even though a blade being pressed against one chest’.

Based on the kanji definition above, it can be concluded that a ninja is just a normal human. He doesn’t need to be very strong, because the quality of a ninja is on the patience, on the ability to persevere. And of course it takes a lot of training to be a ninja, and to successfully complete the training, again, you’re gonna need a lot of patience.

Well, since my religion told me that God is with those who are patient, regardless you want to be a ninja or not, patience is a very valuable quality to have :-).

(And about the reason why I picked the picture above as cover picture despite there are countless pictures of ninja that I can use instead, well, I just would like to underline the fact that ninja is just human: they also need to eat :-) (the picture showed Chouji brings box of lunch for Shikamaru – check Naruto wiki if you would like to know about them :-) ). During battles, a ninja might get hurt and lose their appetite to eat, but again, they need to persevere and swallow all those food, so they’ll be able to finish what they are meant to do. So, please don't forget to eat if you want to be a shinobi :-).)