How do you stop a plot to kill a man who’s been dead for five hundred years? In my case, it required a map, a tour guide, and a ninja. My second Hiro Hattori novel (Shinobi Mystery), Blade of the Samurai, involved a plot to assassinate the 13th Ashikaga Shogun, Japan’s military leader from 1546 to 1565. In the novel, the shogun’s cousin is stabbed to death inside the shogun’s palace, and master ninja Hiro Hattori (along with his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick, Father Mateo) must find the killer and stop the plot – or face execution in the killer’s place. Writing historical mysteries
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Fact from Fiction: Shinobi vs Ninja
At signings, I’m often asked why I refer to my ninja detective, Hattori Hiro (or Hiro Hattori to those who put surnames last), as a “shinobi” instead of a “ninja.” The answer is simple: the two are one and the same. Many Japanese words are written using Kanji, or characters, originally borrowed from Chinese. In Japanese, the word many English speakers pronounce as “ninja” looks like this: The Chinese pronunciation of those characters is “nin sha” – from which the English language derives the word “ninja.” That pronunciation is used in Japan, but more often, the Japanese pronounce those characters
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