FIRST FAMILY OF NINJUTSU

THIS TALE STARTS WITH TWO PEOPLE WHOSE STORY COULD HAVE BEEN A TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE. IT’S ABOUT A TIMELESS FORCE THAT BOUND A MAN AND A WOMAN FROM DIFFERENT WORLDS AND DIRECTED THEM TO BECOME ONE WITH THE PAST SO THEY COULD MOVE INTO THE FUTURE.

- TERRY L. WILSON

The woman is Rumiko Urata. She was raised in a fishing village on the coast of Kyushu, Japan. Like most kids her age, she grew up with cartoons and comic books. Although she had plenty of heroes to look up to, she only had eyes for an iconic Japanese crusader. "When I was little, ninja were very popular on television, in movies and in comic books," Urata said. "To me, the ninja was a superhero, and I wanted to be one, too. I used to play with swords and pretend that I was a ninja even though I knew they weren't real anymore."

Thousands of miles away, the ninja bug also bit-this time, it got Stephen K. Hayes, a tang soo do student from Dayton, Ohio. "I saw an article about ninja in Black Belt," he said. "That changed my life forever. I vowed to someday move to Japan, find a ninja master and train under him to become a real ninja."

Neither Urata nor Hayes could have known it at the time, but their lives eventually would intertwine and their ninja fantasies would become reality.

After graduating from college, Hayes moved to Japan. It was around the same time Urata graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo.

"I met Rumiko in 1979," Hayes said. "I was in Tokyo doing English advertising for Canon Camera to support myself while training at the ninja dojo. They had just hired Rumiko.

Luckily for me, they put her in the advertising department at a desk directly across from me. That's how we met." For the American, it was love at first sight. He carefully pondered his next move, figuring that their first chat could be their last if he brought up the real reason he was in Japan. Hayes played out several firstdate conversations in his head, unaware that his secret identity had already been compromised.

Unknown to him, gossiping around the office water cooler was as much a tradition in Japan as it was in the States. The subject du jour at Canon was the American who wanted to be a ninja.