The Bureau of Ninja Affairs (BNA) is a U.S. Federal agency within the Department of the Interior, charged with managing some 437 "Authorized Ninja Villages" on behalf of Ninja Americans and Ninja Alaskans. The Bureau of Ninja Affairs works with 162 federally recognized Ninja clans within the United States, developing ninja lands, licensing ninja merchandise, promoting ninja traditions, protecting ninja rights, standardizing ninjutsu education, preventing anti-ninja discrimination, and helping track down and assassinate rogue ninja.
The BNA is guided by the Assistant Secretary of Ninja Affairs. The current appointee, nominated by President Joe Biden and unanimously confirmed by the Senate on September 21, 2021, is F. Takashi "Tak" Hashimoto, a career Ninja Affairs bureaucrat and a 12th-dan member of of the Soga clan of western Minnesota.
Historical Background
The first Ninja Americans began immigrating to the Western Hemisphere in the mid 17th century. With the advent of the peaceful Tokugawa Period of Japanese History, ninjas found they were no longer needed. Chronically unemployed and plagued by high ninja birthrates, several clans decided to emigrate. Several went to China and Korea but others, having heard rumors of a "New World" to the West, made their way to Mexico, according to legend by hitching a ride with Japanese pirates to Manila and then ninja-ing their way onto Spanish treasure galleons.
From Mexico the ninja clans gradually trickled northward to the plains and forests of North America, where they established small villages and practiced their traditional ninja ways. But their idyllic lifestyle was soon shattered by the arrival of American settlers, as the ninja became caught up in the "Ninja Wars" of the 19th century.
The Ninja Wars were brutal and had high casualties on both sides. Using stealth, the ninjas would sneak up on U.S. Army detachments in the dead of the night, take out the lookouts, and kill the soldiers while they slept with their katanas before melting away into the darkness without a trace. But on the other hand, the ninjas' adherence to their traditional ways meant that they had no answer for modern weapons like the repeating rifle and the gatling gun.
Once the U.S. Army adopted the devastating policy of burning ninja rice paddies just before harvest and slaughtering the women and children in ninja villages while the men were out hunting for food, the ninjas were forced to sue for peace. This lead directly to the Ninja Accords of 1892 between the Council of Ninja Elders and the second Grover Cleveland administration, followed by the passage the following year of the Ninja Affairs Act of 1893, which led to the creation of the Bureau of Ninja Affairs.
Early Years
In the early years, the BNA focused on separating Ninja Americans from the white settler population by designating and confining the ninjas to special Ninja Reservations, where they could hunt, fish, and practice assassination techniques in peace and privacy. This effort accelerated after a series of high profile lynchings by white settlers of so-called "uppity ninjas" in the 1890s and early 1900s. Of course, the best lands were given to the white settlers, and in many cases promises previously made to the ninjas were reneged upon, especially when valuable natural resources were discovered on ninja lands, such as oil or high quality iron ore for making shuriken.
A particularly controversial set of practices arose out of the so-called "Ninja Assimilation Policy" of the early 20th century. BNA bureaucrats became increasingly concerned about the persistently high ninja birth rates and, inspired by ideas of eugenics that were influential at the time, embarked on a program of forced sterilizations of kunoichis with traits deemed undesirable, allegedly for the purpose of "strengthening and purifying the ninja race."
BNA bureaucrats also worried that ninjas were unassimilable and that ninja culture might eventually overwhelm white, Anglo-American culture if birthrates remained high. This resulted in a policy of forcibly removing ninja children from their families at very young ages and educating them in boarding schools, such as the Intercourse Ninja Industrial School in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. At these schools, ninja youths were given western-style names and were forbidden from speaking Japanese, practicing Buddhism or Shintoism, eating with chopsticks, carrying throwing stars, or vanishing into thin air. This resulted in a profound blow to traditional ninja ways, as younger generations of ninja forgot ninja traditions and could not start on the path of ninjutsu knowledge until already well into adulthood. Many ninjas never returned to their ancestral villages at all and remained in east coast cities where they found ordinary jobs and inter-married into non-ninja families.
In the aftermath of World War I and Imperial Japan's rapid ascent to "great power" status, these mostly assimilated younger ninjas became the focus of an intense "Ninja Scare," whereby non-ninja Americans came to fear that "ninjas might be living among us, poised to strike." A heightened distrust of ordinary Ninja Americans, even those with no special training in the ninja arts, would remain a strong undercurrent in American culture through at least the end of World War II.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, suspicion fell on Ninja Americans as possible saboteurs, spies, and fifth columnists for their ancestral homeland. The U.S. military forcibly occupied America's Ninja Reservations, confiscating millions of katanas, smoke bombs, shuriken, and bamboo blowguns. The Ninja Americans were rounded up into special Ninja Internment Camps, broadly similar to those housing ordinary Japanese Americans, except with much higher walls and much more stringent security measures to keep the sneaky ninjas from escaping.
However, rather than trying to escape, thousands of young ninjas declared themselves patriotic Americans and volunteered for military service. Due to the clandestine nature of their work and many files which remain classified, the true contribution of the Ninja Americans to America's victory in World War II remain under-recognized, but Americas ninja forces earned the gratitude of the U.S. Government by carrying out a number of exceedingly dangerous missions behind enemy lines, including rescuing downed airmen from the Doolittle Raid and assassinating Adolf Hitler while making it look like a suicide.
Postwar Era
In the 1950s and 1960s, a powerful Ninja Rights movement emerged as Ninja Americans organized under the auspices of the National Association for the Advancement of Ninjas and sought recognition for their contributions to the war effort, the abolition of the notorious Jim Ninja laws, and greater representation in the previously all-white leadership of the BNA. As westerners became increasingly intrigued by eastern and "New Age" culture, America's ninjas became seen less as a threat to assassinate people and more as repositories of ancient wisdom and spirituality. A big boost to ninjutsu's popular image came in 1969, when John Lennon and Paul McCartney of The Beatles spent 17 days on a spiritual retreat at a remote ninja village in Montana. Finally, shifting norms and growing popular pressure led President Jimmy Carter to nominate Mariko "Patty" Nakamoto as the first Assistant Secretary of Ninja Affairs of ninja descent, after years of increasing ninja representation in the lower ranks of the Bureau.
Additional momentum arose out of America's nationwide obsession with ninja culture in the 1980s and in 1991, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Ninja Reparations Act, officially apologizing to Ninja Americans on behalf of the U.S. Government for past mistreatment and awarding each Ninja American who could trace their heritage to an Authorized Ninja Village a $500 gift certificate to Benihana.
Current Role
Today, the situation for average Ninja Americans has improved significantly from the dark days of the early 20th century. With the BNA now run mostly by persons of ninja descent, the Bureau's mission has shifted from containing ninja expansion to protecting ninja rights and honoring ninja traditions. In addition, many individual ninja villages have recently become much wealthier by opening up ninja-themed casinos on their land or leasing it out to companies using hydraulic fracking to drill for oil and natural gas.
That being said, some serious social problems remain to be fully addressed, having arisen out of the trauma of past injustices visited upon the ninjas. For example, many ninjas remain addicted to drinking too much sake or gambling away all their money at pachinko parlors, many younger ninjas struggle to learn the complicated Japanese kanji required to read ancient ninja manuscripts, and the ninja birthrate has fallen well below replacement levels in recent years.
To its credit, the present-day Bureau of Ninja Affairs remains dedicated to solving these and other social problems among the ninja population, employing generous federal subsidies to fund addiction recovery programs, Japanese language education in ninja villages, and childcare centers for ninja babies so kunoichi can keep up with their ninja training.