“Most ninja lore, despite what hucksters tell you, dates from no earlier than the mid-20th century,” Clements explains. “The first real boom in ninja stories comes after the second World War, when the samurai aristocracy were discredited and left-wing authors and manga creators started celebrating the peasantry, invisible through much of history. It got a huge boost in the early days of television, when Cold War spy thrillers got a localized samurai-era twist. The word ‘ninja’ didn’t even turn up in a Japanese-English dictionary before 1974.”

Over at MEL magazine, I end up as the bad guy once more, ruining everybody’s ninja hopes, interviewed for an article about the phenomenon of “Naruto running.”