by Alan Burns
America in the 1980s was a different kind of place. The nation was recovering from the humiliations of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Iran hostage crisis, and the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 signaled that America was ready to do things differently and resume its place on the world stage. To do that, we needed heroes. Americans turned to the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris to put things right and thought to themselves, “If only these guys had been on our side back then, things would have been different.”
But there was another kind of American hero in the ’80s, one that might actually be real in some way. No matter how hard you try, you can never be Superman or the Flash with those powers, but with enough money and ingenuity, you actually could become Batman. In the same way, the ninja presented a hero whose martial arts skills could be learned, whose exotic weapons could be bought, and whose strength could take a nerdy teenager from zero to hero.
This is the true story of how America fell in love with the mystical shadow warriors of Japan.