Ashida Kim Unmasked

Recently while cleaning some stored boxes, I stumbled across a VHS tape that has been in my possession for quite some time.  It is a genuine video, requiring for playback a genuine VCR.  It is called Ashida Kim Unmasked.

The back of video box says, in all caps, HERE IS A CHANCE TO SEE AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELF JUST WHO IS THE REAL NINJA MASTER! It promises you an hour of color VHS-NTSC enjoyment. It’s really not clear what the intent of the video — which contains neither an introduction nor a coherent summary of its contents beyond the bullet-point list on the back of the video box — was supposed to be. One supposes that if you are asking that question, you are not the intended audience.

I’m inclined to think, based on the tape’s  self-indulgent compilation of scrap-book like video mementos, that Ashida Kim honestly thinks this video makes him look cool. If that’s the case, the reason I couldn’t find it on his DOJO Press website might be because he realized just how embarrassing is this hour of badly spliced, poorly edited, and crudely photographed footage. It may have been pulled from the catalog for this reason — or it may simply be that only consumers of outdated pornography and people living in basements still have videotape machines at home. Thus, the audience for a VHS tape of unrelated video scraps is already somewhat self-constraining.

The video is so absurd that no one would be tempted to take it seriously if not for the earnest and heartfelt commitment of its subject, who truly does seem to believe — and to want you to believe — that he is a ninja master. As a result, I — and my friend Patrick, who has a background in Japanese Martial Arts  and on whom I inflicted this video  while reviewing it — cannot help but feel that the subject warrants ridicule. There simply is no other way to cover Ashida Kim Unmasked.

An initial viewing of the tape left Patrick genuinely distraught and angered at the disrespect to his formative martial arts that Mr. Kim and his “teachings” represent. I, for my part, am upset that I appear to have injured myself laughing, something I have not done since I first set eyes on Mugei Mumei No Jitsu (and braved the threat of its astral protectors to bring my less-than-positive review of it to the world).

You likely will not learn anything from this video. Only the most sheltered of martial artists will be impressed by it.

Instead, if you are like Patrick and I, who sat through this video multiple times, you will be horrified.  You will be nauseated. You will be bored.

Apart from that, well, you have been warned. This is not a video that should be watched by anyone with a weak constitution. If you have to stop and ask yourself if it’s safe to ride a roller coaster, it’s not safe for you to watch this video. Perhaps the fact that this is a VHS tape is a blessing to a world already weary from past horrors.   Thus it shall lie forever sleeping beneath the seas of self-indulgent camcorder escapades past, like some warbly, scratchy, grainy Cthulhu dormant in insensate near-slumber at the bottom of an ocean of broken dreams of black belt rankings and tournament tropies.

Ashida Kim Unmasked performs a Kata Dante of Death on your will to live, forever taking from you the enjoyment you might otherwise have felt in viewing for recreation a video of this type.  You undertake the consumption of this product at your own risk. Do not try this at home.

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All screen captures shown here are used in accordance with fair use legal guidelines. No copyright violation can or should be construed or inferred from their inclusion.

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The video opens without warning with the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For the Devil and, I am not kidding, ninja jazz hands.

The music is clearly playing on a stereo off camera, and Ashida Kim, hiding behind some kind of screen, engages in a bizarre shadow-play in which he keeps showing us shadow puppets for a strangely interminable period of time. I mean, long after you’ve asked yourself why this is happening, had time to adjust to it, resigned yourself to the fact that it’s going to go on for a while, and watched a silhouetted Ashida Kim put on his trench coat (?) to the strains of the Stones’ best efforts, you’re STILL watching the ninja jazz hands, and you don’t know why. This is inter-cut with footage of a masked Ashida in FULL COLOR very slowly pretending to beat the crap out of numerous gi-clad opponents.

Suddenly the screen goes black. The music continues. Then the screen cuts abruptly to training footage again. Ashida, now maskless, tells us you cannot learn to be a ninja — you must be born a ninja and then discover that you are one, which I think is how being gay is supposed to work.

We are watching, it seems, some kind of video interview segment on what appears to be Australian television. There is some footage of Ashida limply wielding nunchaku and a decorator sword. Then we see someone, presumably Ashida (he’s wielding the sword seen earlier) trying and entirely failing to cut a piece of newspaper in half. I mean, the newspaper is actually dragged down, across the screen, by the dull blade, ripping off at the corner where it is held by a student. What is amazing is that this footage was left in the video segment, as if the failure to cut a piece of newsprint with a samurai-sword-shaped-object is actually something about which Ashida Kim should be proud.

Then the Australian voice-over lady tells us that Master Kim is here to teach the Kata Dante. If the brief reaction shot of the students standing there listening to Ashida Kim is any indication, Australian women find either Kata Dante, Ashida Kim, or both to be mildly revolting.

When Ashida Kim is shown performing the moves of Kata Dante, it is hard to know what is more disturbing — the noodle-like limpness and complete lack of energy, intent, and power — in short, all qualities of which the absence thereof makes it look like Ashida is having an elaborate seizure — or the bland look on the little man’s face as he tells his seemingly disgusted students just how many different Terribly Deadly Things they are doing to their paralyzed, claw-handed, club-footed dunces of opponents.

In the interview, with a completely straight face and a credulity that would do proud the most earnest of true believers, the young Ashida Kim (for he was much younger when this video was taken than he is now, having achieved a sort of grandmastery, moldy longevity in his chronological persistence on the martial arts scene — kind of like a recurring case of jock-itch or athlete’s foot) demonstrates proudly the technique he calls “Monkey Stealing a Peach,” in which the erstwhile ninja slowly and deviously massages the enemy’s nutsack while pretending to rip it off.

When the Australian package ends, we suddenly cut to another interview, on some kind of apparently South African talk show called Late Night Live. The host is a pornography-mustached, varsity-jacket-wearing sort of guy. Ashida Kim comes out and explains that his nickname is Japanese for “big foot,” or something, because he used to kick a lot in tournaments and people… wait, what was I talking about? I black out a lot when I watch this tape.

There’s no doubt that Ashida Kim is good in front of an audience. He has a presence that really helps him sell his act on stage. He blathers on about the ninja master he studied with for a bit, chats with the jacketed host about sentry removal, and then goes on (after a carnival spiel that he has memorized very, very well) to demonstrate the lethal moves of the Kata Dante — the signature form of the Black Dragon Fighting Society. He says the Kata Dante is comprised of 27 poison hand techniques guaranteed to kill, cripple, maim, and so on. Then he runs us through the Kata Dante, which apparently consists of the following:

• Step forward.
• Perform a “mirror block.”
• Throw a palm heel strike to the chin.
• Rake down across the enemy’s eyes.
• Tiger claw strike to the cheek.
• Tiger claw strike to the ear.
• Arm block.
• Throat strike.
• Dragon claw strike to rip the groin.
• Elbow strike to the solar plexus.
• Kee strike.
• Elbow strike.
• Throw the enemy on the ground.
• Break his elbow.
• break his shoulder.
• Break the back of his neck.
• Stomp on him with both feet.
• Grab the head.
• Smash the head ‘into the mat.”
• Roll him over.
• Stomp on him again.
• Knee drop to the throat.
• Crush the throat with a hand strike.
• Rip the head off with a double tiger claw.
• Do it again with a double reverse tiger claw.
• Perform a palm heel strike.
• Crush his face and step off him.

Most disturbing about this demonstration is not Ashida, who is actually kind of impressive as he walks through a routine with which he is clearly extremely familiar, but rather the mysterious talk show guest sitting and smiling vacantly through all this, like a lobotomized mental patient left to stare into the sun in his wheelchair on the front porch of a depression-era sanitarium.

We cut to footage of an outdoor seminar where students are doing the Kata Danta according to a 24, no wait, a grudging 25-count (not 27), after which Ashida tells them all how proud he is and unleashes them in their new-found ninja prowess upon an unsuspecting and undoubtedly soon-to-be-terrified world. In the space of an afternoon in the South African sun, they have developed from cute little larval ninja-pupae to full-grown ninja masters, no doubt issued cards of membership in the Black Dragon Fighting Society.

Abruptly, we cut to an interior that forms much of the footage of the video, in which an inexpertly duct-taped blue tarp has been affixed to the wall to form a crude backdrop that roughly matches the floor. A masked ninja warrior, presumably Ashida Kim, sits in what we used to politically incorrectly call “Indian style” on the floor, flanked by posters that appear to be enlargements of pages from Ashida Kim’s book or books. It’s hard to tell. To the strains of creepy gong music that is probably used in Jaycees haunted houses in late October, we realize suddenly that we are being treated to audio stolen from an old episode of the David Carradine vehicle Kung Fu. Quick, somebody alert the Kung Fu series copyright people.

Ashida halfheartedly pantomimes along with the stolen audio, perhaps projecting himself into the position of the wise old Master Po and Po’s creepy relationship with his freshly shaven young boy student. The camcorder’s autofocus feature appears to be having its own seizure, and we drift in and out in confusion along with it, as Ashida does some vaguely ninja-y things in front of the backdrop. These include standing on one leg and performing kicking combinations while asserting the deadly ninja prowess needed to avoid falling over, which nearly happens several times.

There are more ninja jazz hands and some snake-like movements. It becomes apparent that Ashida is doing a vague approximation of the five animals of Kung Fu, which again is stolen from the audio that has been thieved, ninja-like, from an old Betamax tape (okay, maybe it is VHS) of Kung Fu.

Then, because he cannot help himself, Ashida breaks into Kata Dante in slow motion, which one imagines he does whenever he uses his body for more than a few moments at a time. No doubt this gets embarrassing when he is out dancing, visiting the dentist, or perhaps just walking down the street, randomly Kata Dante-ing the people he passes and disgusting or revolting any women within a fifty yard radius. Eventually, an innocent board waiting patiently to be broken is broken. Suddenly, we cut to Ashida Kim in a white gi and no mask, wearing a very nicely pressed black belt, again on the blue tarp background, the duct tape holding which appears to be slowly freeing itself from the wall behind Mr. Kim.

Mr. Kim, demonstrating that he has, in fact, received actual martial arts training, to the strains of some very loud Manowar-style medieval ambient hair metal, performs a series of legitimate Okinawan kata, doing them poorly and without focus. The music is more distracting than anything else, because I kept expecting a shirtless bodybuilder wearing a broadsword, buffalo horns, and furry boots to leap onstage, shout “Kings of Metal,” and introduce the other members of the band.

There is no body weight involved at any point in the stances or techniques executed, and at one point Kim literally hops in a circle to face the way he’s come, in a method that would probably get you beaten to death by an irate instructor in a traditional dojo — if only because you had offended the Sensei’s conceptions of aesthetics, masculinity, propriety, common decency, professionalism, and humanity. Kim’s stances are far too shallow for the art he is imitating. He keeps his hands too close to his body and his wrists are limp.

There is again no intent or energy behind the techniques performed. It evokes the disturbing image of an arthritic, anorexic Tyrannosaurus Rex stumbling hopelessly through a blighted post-meteor-strike landscape in the last fitfully coughing days of the dinosaurs. After this anemic display, we again abruptly cut, without explanation, to a bizarre video skit involving Ashida Kim as the Green Hornet, an unnamed assistant as Kato, and an array of hapless and possibly soon-to-be-outraged students or friends who were, however they were convinced to participate, undoubtedly horrified when they saw the end result of the little drama that unfolds before us.

The entire sequence was apparently edited right on the camcorder, and any sense of urgency to the proceedings is lent to this tragic affair by the fact that it is growing dark as the filming goes on. Soon we cannot see anything that is happening except by the light of the car headlights parked at either side of the frame. If the sweatshirt worn by the woman who is, seemingly reluctantly, rescued by Ashida and his driver is any indication, the video was sponsored by Marlboro and probably smells vaguely of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Neither I nor Patrick, still suffering before the VCR as I type this, have ever been consumers of gay pornography, but it is harder to conceive of or otherwise imagine a video looking or feeling more gay than the fight sequence committed to videotape on Ashida Kim Unmasked.. By the time the sequence was completed, Patrick, was rocking himself back and forth, whispering in hushed tones as if he had witnessed the unspeakable face of horror one sees only in Lovecraft novels.

No sooner has this abomination begun to fade from our retinas than we are yet again, and yet again abruptly, transported into the ruthlessly tarped blue backdrop setting once more. The posters are back, and now the rebreakable board has been replaced by a candle. Audio, which is blaring badly out of balance in the background, has been stolen from the first Conan movie. Ashida Kim walks sullenly out in front of the camera wearing, I am not making this up, a Tengu mask that makes him look like a Mexican wrestler. He is carrying the finest in 440 stainless steel decorator swords, no doubt procured from the gift shop next to Cinnabon at the local shopping plaza.

There is a lot of fucking around, which Patrick informs me is an imitation of a traditional sword ceremony. Then there is a creepy pause for what Patrick termed, “fiveever,” during which Ashida Kim just sits there and stares at us — long enough for us to think, “Why is he staring at us like that? Does he really see us? Could he possibly? Oh God, I think maybe he does see us. If he does, our sense of reality and the very fabric of the universe is something we have tragically misjudged. What do we do? Can we make it to the door? How about the window? Is there any escape? Did I leave the iron on? Whatever happened to Dirk Bennedict after Battlestar Galactica and The A-Team, anyway?”

Eventually, Mr. Kim pretends to cut the candle in half with his razor-sharp Taiwanese blade, after first performing a sword kata and treating us to his nunchaku work — but not before we are forced to acknowledge that, when you stare into the masked Ashida Kim, the masked Ashida Kim also stares into you.

After the sword blade passes well above the level of the candle, Ashida proudly holds up the pre-cut candle to show us that he is pretending to have cut it in half, in a display of showmanship and special effects vaguely reminiscent of the climactic sword fight in Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester. There is a sequence during this mess in which Ashida throws ninja stars at targets conveniently located off camera. At one point, you can actually hear the star clatter and fall to the floor impotently, its kinetic potential unrealized, when it fails to hit a target you cannot see and that probably does not exist anyway. Because, hey, it takes a ninja master to toss ninja stars in the general direction of away from himself.

At this point in the video, I honestly felt as I did the time I drove to Virginia from New York. It took about twelve hours to get where I was going. About the time I felt like I had driven so long I wanted to pull over and throw up, there was still two hours left to drive. That is how this video makes you feel, as it slowly kills your soul and saps your will to live. Time slows to an Einsteinian crawl as the colors around you shift to red and you feel yourself trapped in an amber-like miasma of hopelessness, pain, and boredom.

The masked face of Tengu Ashida Kim taunts you as you realize that you have not even gotten to the part, yet, where he hides in this guy’s house and steals his sword while people in a completely different video practice different martial arts somewhere miles and miles away. And of course, there are the parts where random ninja attacking a tool shed in the Florida Everglades must contend with sentries. Truly, it is very difficult to be a shed sentry in the Everglades, because small men in ski masks are forever jumping on your head and throwing talcum powder at you, when you as a sentry are not pretending to shoot guns accompanied by unconvincing sound effects.

No, really, I’m not making this up; I wish I were. There is a lengthy section in which these shed-guarding sentries start pretending to shoot air guns or twenty-twos or something at completely unrelated patches of brush in footage clearly taken miles away. At one point, Ashida Kim melds seamlessly into the brush by rolling backward into it, his silent passage marked only by the large tree that sways back and forth when he rolls into and past it.

There is a perfectly unfathomable scene in which the masked Ashida Kim dodges bullet sound effects fired by a man in the Florida Everglades in a completely different set of video footage. Dodging bullets apparently involves a lot of slowly rolling around on your yard, followed by splaying your ninja jazz hands wide and proclaiming, with your chest exposed to the imminent danger, that you fear no bullets and thus you will make your target profile as broad as possible.

Once the bullet-dodging has been completed, and you have paused to lament your fate as this video continues not to end, we are greeted by footage of a clearly staged “fight” between some sort of kickboxer and Ashida himself (we presume), overseen by a portly astronaut wearing a camera mounted to a bike helmet, with a large Ghostbusters-style proton backpack slung over his shoulders. Ashida and the much more manly fellow who kickboxes pretend to fight each other for a while, and then the fight is declared a draw. At least nobody is really in any danger, except maybe the astronaut referee, whose dignity takes a terrible beating whenever he is on camera.

The close of the video features a subliminal message from something called Video Pirates, which is either a production company, or the company whose tape Ashida recorded over in making his video. Ashida himself warns of copyright, er, rights, and then there’s more Kata Dante, because there is always more Kata Dante.

God help us all.