Ask any legit Japanese koryu sensei about Hatsumi and he'll tell you what they've told me:
Japanese:
"Hatsumi-wa ninja-gokko o yatteiru."
English:
"Hatsumi is the guy who plays ninja."
Dear Ren,
I always respected your posts but this one doesn´t make sense to me. The use of "any" implies every koryu teacher in Japan thinks so, yet you go on saying that actually "he", one teacher told you that.
I don´t think that this generalization depicts Hatsumi´s image in Japan. There sure are a lot of those like the one you stated, but also otherones who do respect Hatsumi for what he is/does. I felt that his reputation in Japan wasn´t that good but I always found that he is much more famous outside of Japan and some people in Japan base their opinion on very few "facts" they believe to know.
This is of course only my personal opinion which is based on conversations with MA teachers and students in Japan (definetely not enough for a statistic analysis).
Karsten
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karsten helmholz
bujinkan shinden dojo buchholz/hamburg