Why the ninjas in kung fu films were almost always villains – think Shaw Brothers’ Five Elements Ninjas and Heroes of the East

In Japan ninja films were social dramas, but Hong Kong filmmakers saw ninjas as ‘foreign devils’ and the perfect invaders for a hero to resist, an expert says

That is so in Shaw Brothers’ Heroes of the East and Five Elements Ninjas, but in Japanese co-production Ninja in the Dragon’s Den the ninja character is noble

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Gordon Liu (right) in a still from Heroes of the East, a classic example of a Hong Kong kung fu film featuring ninjas as villains.

Published: 5:15am, 20 Feb 2022

Japanese ninjas became a global cultural phenomenon in the 1980s, but they turn up relatively infrequently in Hong Kong martial arts films.

When they do appear in movies such as the Shaw Brothers classics Heroes of the East (directed by Lau Kar-leung) and Five Elements Ninjas (by Chang Cheh), they are portrayed as cheats who have no respect for honour and a penchant for using sneaky weapons like poison.

In reality, ninjas were spies trained in espionage, and they learned a number of stealth techniques. They carried tools, such as devices to break locks and rope ladders to climb into buildings, and knew how to hide underwater by means of breathing tubes, and disguise themselves in enemy territory.

The Post asked ninja expert Keith Rainville, owner of the Vintage Ninja website, about the fractious relationship between Japanese ninjas and Hong Kong’s kung fu fighters.

How do Hong Kong martial arts films differ from Japanese ninja films?

The biggest difference is that Japanese ninja films can rarely be defined as martial arts films. Although there is hand-to-hand combat and weaponry, the original ninja genre is based in drama.

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