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Japanese ninja history student gets top marks for writing essay in invisible ink
- PokemonNoGo 7y agoDid they use any antiplagarism system?
- DuskStar 7y ago> Ms Haga has been interested in ninjas - covert agents and assassins in medieval Japan - since watching an animated TV show as a child. I would find it absolutely hilarious if that "animated TV show" was Naruto.
- rasengan 7y agoNaruto is an epic story.
- abootstrapper 7y agoI don’t know why they’re so reluctant to admit it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Say it loud and proud, Turtle Power!
- droithomme 7y agoTurtle Power!
- thih9 7y agoIsn’t this a popular anime with a ninja theme? Why would that be hilarious?
- 0xcde4c3db 7y agoIt's been a while, but ISTR that in an early arc Naruto passes an exam for promotion to the next ninja rank after turning in an empty sheet for the essay portion.
- arghwhat 7y agoNo, he has an empty answer sheet at the end of a written exam with multiple questions. To his luck, the exam was a psychological torture test, and he passes when the time is up by sheer virtue of still being in the room. The empty sheet is not found by the proctor until after the students left, with the proctor being amused by the fact that such an idiot could pass his exam.
- on_and_off 7y agoBecause this anime has very little to do with "ninja". Whether it is the black pyjama variety or the historic one, Naruto does something very different. There are Ninjutsu in the serie but more often than not they create large explosions or summon a 30 meters tall creature. The whole has very little (if anything, but I don't know all the arcs) to do with espionnage. Which is 100% fine, but explains why it would be funny to have it as an inspiration.
- Filligree 7y agoThe first season is the best, and also the most realistic. It gets increasingly over the top from there. If you've seen it, you'll know I don't mean to say it's realistic.
- 2muchcoffeeman 7y agoThey pretty much reveal from the very beginning that Naruto hosts the 9 tailed fox. And Naruto is the protagonist. So you know it's going to get wild. But it's a pretty good show!
- on_and_off 7y agoI have seen it an eternity ago and I really liked the Zabuza ark. It was indeed way more grounded, at least compared to what happens afterwards. I wonder how much of the over the topness was planned from the start and how much is just the result of the scaling phenomenon that many shonens suffer from and semi improvised "head above the water" weekly publications.
- shostack 7y agoWhen I tried to jump back into the Shippuuden arc a while back I had to find a site that gave synopsis of the episodes so I could skip watching the filler episodes. There were... Quite a lot.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoThe show is kinda closer to the pre-martial-arts-boom idea of magical, mystical ninja in Japan, though. It literally borrows character names from that. Jiraiya for example.
- johnchristopher 7y agoOr ninja scrolls. Or basilisk.
- awillen 7y agoI have so many questions: - Ninja student? Is there a ninja school?? - How do I go to ninja school?! - Is ninja school considered elite, and if so has there ever been an Operation Varsity Blues type admissions scandal? - What is the post-ninja school career path? I mean obviously you're going to be a ninja, but who are the dominant employers in that field? Does it make sense to join a ninjitsu startup and get more experience but lower pay? This article really feels like it's burying the lede...
- wodenokoto 7y agoThe answer to most of your questions are found in the first sentence of the article > A Japanese student of ninja history Later it is revealed that she is studying at Mie University. Yes, it is a shitty headline.
- dang 7y agoOk, we've squeezed some history into the title above.
- chaostheory 7y agoThe student in question isn’t a ninja student, she’s just taking a ninja history class. > What is the post-ninja school career path? In the modern era, we just call them special forces or intelligence officers
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- social_quotient 7y agoThe first rule of ninja school...
- catalogia 7y agoAs I understand it, it's somewhere between a martial arts discipline and historical reenacting[or larping?] It seems pretty fun tbh. I suspect graduates might find work as instructors.
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- olalonde 7y agoReminds me the story of the philosophy student who was asked to write an essay about "What is courage?" and handed a single page with the words "This is.".
- umvi 7y agoAnyone else remember the website "Real Ultimate Power"?
- bryanrasmussen 7y agohttp://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm http://www.realultimatepower.net/index4.htm
- GnarfGnarf 7y ago"The words appeared when her professor heated the paper over his gas stove." Heating super-thin paper over the stove? Wasn't the student taking a big chance her homework would go up in flames?
- kaybe 7y agoIt's not that hard (after a low number of tries). You can try yourself, write something with milk and hold it over a candle after drying.
- jrockway 7y ago> "I didn't hesitate to give the report full marks - even though I didn't read it to the very end because I thought I should leave some part of the paper unheated, in case the media would somehow find this and take a picture." This guy gets social media.
- RandomGuyDTB 7y agoI think he meant media as in the news media, not social media.
- bakoo 7y agoAs kids we obviously wanted to be ninjas, which was mostly about fighting using exotic weapons and sneaking around. We learned the ropes from VHS rentals and pirated copies of the Last Ninja games on C64. Secret messages mostly belonged to different universes, where we wanted to be secret agents or detectives. We sent encoded messages written in invisible ink, usually caesar cipher variants, written using filtered lemon juice. Milk might also have been involved, as I distinctly recall heating up and decoding really smelly paper notes.
- orblivion 7y agoI was just thinking the other day how I couldn't think of a historical analog of our modern intelligence agencies. Now I'm realizing that the CIA is just a modern ninja clan.
- 19870213 7y agoThat reminds me of a character from Discworld called Vetinari who is a trained assassin (which is established as a legal guild in Ankh-Morpork, a quite respectable profession for the upper-class) that failed his stealth examination due to 'not attending'. :D (I might be missing details, it's been a while since I read Night Watch.)
- codeduck 7y agoVetinari is the ruler of Ankh-Morpork, and is notable for imaginative solutions such as "Tax the rat farms" when asked how to solve a plague of rats. He's like Machiavelli, only with more style.
- ducaale 7y agoI have read when i was in fourth grade that onion juice could be used to make invisible ink that appears when the paper is heated. There was also a scene[0] in National Treasure film (2004) where they use lemon and heat to reveal a hidden text [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTA7KR9-9lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTA7KR9-9lM
- JulianMorrison 7y agoSoya juice (what she used) probably has the advantage of not smelling. Onion and lemon would give themselves away, I feel!
- alexis_fr 7y agoIt looks like any organic liquid works, including milk in the case of Lenin, soya juice in your case, lemon and onion if you want to tip off the spied ;) I’m curious about how it bends the paper. The retractile nature of drying juices must create visible irregularities on the surface.
- mcqueenjordan 7y ago> Ms Haga has been interested in ninjas - covert agents and assassins in medieval Japan - since watching an animated TV show as a child. Translation: Naruto.
- gattr 7y agoI heard an anecdote from a ninjutsu instructor (a European). He was visiting Japan, meeting with friends; and to one of the meetings he wore a T-shirt with the Nin kanji. Suddenly one of his hitherto very friendly acquaintances changed to being only coldly polite. Later it turned out he was from an old samurai family, which was mostly wiped out by assassins some 400 years ago.
- alltakendamned 7y agoTalk about holding a grudge... I don’t understand people who somehow feel involved in things that happened literally 100s of years ago, it does neither impact nor reflect on them in any way.
- eigenloss 7y agoHistory matters. Where can anyone draw the line?
- jacquesm 7y agoWe draw the line at personal involvement. If not for that no German would walk the streets abroad safe in Europe.
- Huycfhct 7y agoWW2 isn't a good example. A Nazi flag would be horribly offensive for a holocaust survivor. Or a Japanese rising sun flag in Nanjing
- dkersten 7y agoBeing a holocaust survivor would imply personal involvement.
- smueller1234 7y agoThat's right. Germans abroad such as myself do appreciate that a lot. :) It feels like once again some Unix philosophy could be applied for the better: be strict in what you emit (ie. be kind and consider how your behavior reflects on you, but also be cognizant of your or your culture's history), but lenient in what you accept (ie. do not take offense easily/unnecessarily).
- differentView 7y agoI, too, turned in a blank piece of paper for my American Ninja Warrior class. But I told the professor a sob story, so I got an "A".
- failrate 7y agoTruly high marks should only go to a student, previously unknown by the Department, who surreptitiously adds a graded report card into the midst of their peers.
- org3432 7y agoWorks with plain old lemon juice too, the soybean process sounds over engineered.
- aaron695 7y agoNo one worries that the BBC says Japanese Universities give A's to students who copy things from TV shows? It was a club. https://www.serialpressit.com/2019/10/10/student-essay-invisible-ink-eimi-haga-followed-the-ninja-technique-of-aburidashi/ https://www.serialpressit.com/2019/10/10/student-essay-invis... "Eimi Haga, 19, a first-year student at the university’s Faculty of Humanities, Law and Economics who hails from Nagoya’s Nakamura Ward, joined the ninja club. She was invited to the group following the entrance ceremony."
- tguvot 7y agoLenin, while been in prison used to write in milk on shoulders of the books that his family was bringing in for him to read. When books were returned to family they would heat pages which made letters to appear.
- brodsky 7y agothe story also goes that, since he was only given milk and bread while in solitary confinement, he would make inkwells out of bread, in order to write with said milk. I can't remember off the top of my head what he used as a writing utensil.
- goatinaboat 7y agoI can't remember off the top of my head what he used as a writing utensil. The hair, from his back.
- Trias11 7y agoWhen my father was in university (60's) he asked what size of paper they (students) need to deliver an engineering draft project on. Professor told "Any, you may even use a postal stamp". My father cut a paper of a size of a postal stamp and under spy glass draw perfect engineering architecture student assignment. Professor unemotionally examined the work. Well deserved top mark followed.
- Mathnerd314 7y agoIn today's schools you can get a failing grade for margins 0.1 inches off. Professors who reward creativity seem to be getting rarer.
- learc83 7y agoFrom what my mom told about college in her day, her professors were much worse about those kinds of rules than mine were.
- Pmop 7y agoI had this kind of professor. We'd say that he was the human version of diff.
- rimliu 7y agoHaving margins right should have no effect on your creativity. Attention to details is a nice skill to have, especially on areas where mistakes can cost human lives.
- lupire 7y agoEssay margins don't kill people, people with bad word processing software kill people. Details can be attended to without being nonsense specifications.
- cyberferret 7y agoWhen I was in flying school, we had a fiendishly difficult navigation examination with a known curmudgeon of a CFI (Chief Flying Instructor). Almost everyone in the class failed. One student got 68% and myself and another got 99.9% I was amazed as I am not often such a high scoring student, so I cheekily asked where I had lost the 0.1%? The CFI told me that I had copied one number down incorrectly from the question sheet onto the first line of my (4 page) working sheet. I had got the "right" answer at the end though, by following all steps of the spherical trigonometry through to the end. Instead of marking me as a 'fail' for getting the wrong copybook answer, he still deemed it correct because I had followed all the correct formulae and logical steps, using the derived results in the next sections. He deducted 0.1% for the brain fart that transposed one starting value. I didn't find out why the other guy lost 0.1%, but I was amazed at his integrity to mark the work and knowledge and not just see the final value different from the desired outcome and simply marking it wrong. It would have taken him some time and effort to validate my results from my wrong initial values.
- droithomme 7y agoInternational accolades and acclaim is a nice prize in addition to the respect of the professor.
- atum47 7y agodoesn't lemon juice display similar effect? I remember writing secret agent letters to my friend (who lived in a house in front of mine) so he can iron the paper and read the content.
- gk1 7y agoYes, lemon juice has the same effect. Ironing is an interesting way to do it. I used to just hold a candle up to it, trying not to burn the whole thing up.
- em-bee 7y agonow that's one way to prevent your classmates from copying your work.
- kingofpee 7y agoWhat I find more mindboggling is the fact that there is something as a Ninja History Student.
- lupire 7y agoIt's a single class. Most colleges have slightly whimsical gen ed / liberal arts electives. Greendale College in Colorado has a seminar "Nicholas Cage: Good or Bad?".
- cyberferret 7y agoI read a lot of books on Ninjutsu, and the Shinobi as a kid, and I recall that a popular form of invisible ink that they used required the recipient to urinate on the paper to reveal the words. Glad this student didn't utilise that form of invisible ink...
- FabHK 7y agoTrue story: British agents in WW I used sperm as invisible ink, approved by Captain Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming of the Secret Service Bureau, under the motto "Every man his own stylo". Apparently some agents didn't use, erm, fresh ink, but previously produced reserves (despite Captain Cummings's decree that "fresh operation was necessary for each letter") and subsequently the practice was discontinued because of the smell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming
- lupire 7y agoThe professor didn't finish heating/reading the essay because he was saving it for the media, which someone in class reached it to. What's the term for this concept, where the expectation of media coverage changes the event being covered, even though the event wasn't originally intended for the media?
- dmit 7y agoI think physicists won't mind if we extend the "observer effect" to cover this case.