Opinion: Who Speaks Out For Ninja Husbands Forced To Wear Hatsumi Headgear?
Posted on | April 7, 2008
Not a day goes by where at least one Western news publication (be it a daily newspaper, a monthly magazine or a quarterly periodical) prints an article decrying the treatment of females in Islamic countries, with almost all of these pieces referring to the fact that a significant part of this oppression derives from the strict requirement that the women wear the hajib head garb in all public places.
Despite my membership of that close-knit coterie of male writers, artists, musicians and public servants who comprise what would probably be described by our liberal-dominated media institutions as the ‘intelligentsia’ of the Anti-Feminazi League (without actually being an official signed-up member of the aforementioned political group) I like any other healthy-minded individual singularly deplore that apparel-appertaining oppression, borne forth as it was from an uncouth religion of nomadic Eastern barbarians.
Nevertheless, I will refrain from turning this article into a another intellectual assassination of the Muhammadan belief system, along with its bastard child the Al Qaeda terrorist superpower, its no-good brother pan-Arabic culture, not to mention its apologist second cousin-once-removed the Western left-wing media/cultural elite. No, there will be plenty of other in-depth and insightful articles to come on that particular boiled potato.
At this moment, I am (or was) writing about the hajib as an example of how one sexual categorisation can use an item of clothing as a weapon of, at its mildest – oppression, at its worst – slavery, against its opposing gender. However, being so ill-served by the present day media apparatus, most ordinary people are unaware that there are in fact cases of men being oppressed in this way by their female counterparts under the pretext of strict socio-religious servitude.
In Japan, the ninja community are the descendants of the Ninjitsu sub-culture that originated in medieval times as an underground alternative society opposing the ruling samurai establishment. The image of the silent, skilled assassin has become a ubiquitous one throughout Eastern and Western popular culture, so the idea of the lethal ninja killer as a helpless victim may appear patently ridiculous in the eyes’ mind of the less-informed observer.
I, being significantly well-informed however, can assure you that innocent ninja husbands in Japan today suffer garment-based persecution on a scale comparable to – possibly even exceeding that – of their Middle Eastern Moslem female counterparts. In public they are harshly obliged to wear the face mask of their Hatsumi uniform at all times and contexts.
This mask (sanjaku-tenugui) consists of two 3-foot clothes tied securely around the head, leaving only the eyes visible. Almost all of these masks, as well as the uniforms, are made of black material for purpose of aiding night-time stealth missions, yet are mandatory during the daytime as well to hinder identity disclosure, making them particularly hot and uncomfortable for the unfortunate wearers.
Yet the necessity of anonymity for the ninja extends well beyond his career as a deadly assassin and saboteur. Even after he settles down with a wife and child/children, the ninja has no choice but to continue donning his restrictive garb in public places for the rest of his natural life. His identity must remain secret to anybody outside his immediate relations otherwise he risks the responsibility of inviting reprisals by merciless former enemies upon not only himself, but also his family.
This commitment to anonymity on the part of the ninja in dedication to his craft, not only negatively affects his physical comfort, but also his economic standing in contemporary Japanese society. Effectively, it means that absolutely no property, possessions or any documentation can ever be attributed to the ninja in his real name.
A practicing ninja of course has neither a fixed abode or luxury possessions, but when retired and settled down with a family, everything – the home, the furniture, the car, the bank account, even the children – are in the name of the wife only, thus rendering the already sweaty and uncomfortable ninja husbands completely without any discernible human rights to speak of whatsoever at all.
The ‘Tokyo Six’ disarming before their peaceful protest last May
Not that the beleaguered ninjitsu community have passively sat back and accepted their humble status with a resigned collective sigh. Last year, a group of six assassin husbands (right) defied their wives’ wishes and took the streets of Tokyo to highlight their plight among the wider Japanese populace. Those brave men walked through the Japanese capital without their Hatsumi garb, each one of them holding aloft a banner proclaiming “My name is…” followed by their individual moniker.
Tragically, within three weeks of violating their vows of anonymity on that fateful march, every single one of those courageous ninja suffragers were pitilessly hunted down and killed by their wives and/or deadly enemies. Such was the overwhelming cost to those unfortunate men – for the ‘crime’ of simply publicly revealing their faces and names to their fellow citizens.
Nevertheless, they, and we, shall not give up hope. The travails of Japanese ninja husbands will not remain suppressed by the matriarchal media much longer. Already the increasing mass of the movement known as Masculinism, or more generally those groups and organisations which subscribe to contemporary interpretations of masculinist ideology – have now adopted the ninja plight as one of the tent-pole issues in our struggle to overthrow the might of feminist orthodoxy.
I have vowed, starting with this article, to highlight their suffering at every available opportunity, be it in private conversations (formal and informal) with friends and associates, or in more public arenas, both in print and broadcasting, whether it is relevant to the topic of conversation at hand or not.
And yet, let me point out, I am not under any illusions that anything I say or write on the matter will be spared from the willful twistingofmeaningandsubversionofcontextthatistheprimarytacticofthosepropagatorsofrthefem
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More opinion: ‘What This Country Needs Is Another Civil War’
