1. Roald Dahl Helped Bring Ninjas Into Western Pop Culture
The first known Western usage of the ninja in pop culture was in the James Bond novel You Only Live Twice. Like the first four Bond movies, You Only Live Twice is based on the stories written by Ian Fleming. However, the screenwriter of the first movies was unavailable to write the fifth, so the famed children’s writer Roald Dahl, who specialized in dark morality tales in which children and their parents were depicted as either good or bad, was hired to do the screenwriting. He dispensed with much of the material in the novel and turned the movie into a racy, patriarchal scheme of bikinis, massages, and, of course, ninjas.
The ninja part is based somewhat on the book, as Ian Fleming’s Bond did have to battle a ninja force. However, Dahl took the ninjas to new levels and helped introduce the idea into pop culture. At the same time, Japanese culture was taking off in the Western world, with the art of judo being submitted as a sport in the 1964 Olympics and 1970s martial arts movies starring the likes of Bruce Lee becoming popular. Today, manga and anime have immeasurably increased the popularity of Japanese ideas like the samurai, warlords, and ninjas. The irony of the whole ninja pop-culture phenomenon is that Roald Dahl hated writing the script to You Only Live Twice.
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