Roman Kim: The Soviet Ninja

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  • ロマン・キム「ソ連の忍者」
  • ロマン ・ キム : ソレン ノ ニンジャ

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Abstract

In the article the life of a writer Roman Kim （1899-1967）, who can be called “Soviet Ninja”, is analyzed from a new perspective. Roman Kim is probably the first person who introduced Ninja and Ninjutsu to the general audience of the Soviet Union. In 1927 he wrote a long corpus of commentaries on a book of a writer Boris Pilnyak, and in those commentaries titled as “Legs for a snake”, he introduced Ninjutsu for the first time. Later, in 1960s he decided to write a novel about Ninjutsu that was finally published in 1964 with a title “The School of Ghosts”. It was not merely pulp fiction, but a work that included a lot of information on the subject, based on Japanese books. Since 1922 Kim cooperated with secret police specializing in counter-intelligence. Kim was working against the Japanese spy network in Soviet Union, butin 1937 he was arrested himself on suspicion of being a Japanese double agent. He had been sentenced to 20 years of jail, but after the end of the World War II he was released. After the War he concentrated on writing novels and became bestselling writer. According to the latest evidence, he has been keeping close relations with KGB since 1950s up to the end of his life. However, even now his biography is extremely mysterious and controversial.

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