1967 - America's First View of Ninja?

Edit: It has come to my attention from a reliable source that You Only Live Twice does NOT have Soke Masaaki Hatsumi in it or involved at all! So this whole post is BS. Oh well, it was a pretty cool movie anyway.

You Only Live Twice - The James Bond film released in 1967 in which Bond's mission takes him to Japan, turns him Japanese, and gives him a couple days of ninja training. Soke Masaaki Hatsumi served as a ninja advisor and according to the IMDB entry for the film he starred, uncredited, as the photo assistant on the train to the character Tiger Tanaka (cool name!). That was the reason I rented the film but when I watched it the first time I didn't recognize Soke at all. After learning which scene he was in I went back and captured these shots.

Man he's young! He is unrecognizable as Soke to me.




Here is the photo he was told to look into. The bad guy's boat is named Ninpo!



The film is standard Bond stuff but here are screen shots of things I found interesting or ninja related.

Successful Japanese guys have samurai armor in their offices.




Training time.











Machine gun jutsu.



You only live twice was an enjoyable film, to me at least. That may be because of my affinity for ninja and the Japanese culture so I gave it 4 out of 5 "shuriken" on netflix. It's worth a spot in your queue too.

Gambatte!