Iga, located in Mie Prefecture, Japan, is reportedly having a lesser-known crisis compared to the demographic one that the country is currently facing – huge shortage of ninjas despite offering candidates a salary of $85,000 as maximum. The small city, which believes to be the birthplace of the popular ninjas, receives about 30,000 tourists to see and experience the annual ninja festival held in Iga. But while this may be good news to some, the city is actually suffering from depopulation and young people are now moving away from rural countryside. Last year, Mie Prefecture only attracted 43 new young residents as a whole while Iga lost about 1,000 residents. To help bring back the local economy’s boom, Iga’s mayor, Sakae Okamoto, plans to use its ninja heritage to attract both local and international tourists during its annual celebration. However, with the problems listed, pulling this off may post some difficulties. Japan saw a large influx of tourists last year at almost 29 million, which is almost 20% from the numbers in 2016. While this, in its entirety, is good news, rural areas like Iga and other else, are being left out. Iga also needs to employ people to work as ninjas. But to make it clear, these ninjas are actually performers, not the real covert assassins from feudal Japan. But since the country has an extremely low unemployment rate, the local government finds it hard to fill in the free spots for ninja performers – and to make it even more difficult, the position requires the right physique. “Ninja is not an inheritable class. Without severe training, nobody could become a ninja. That’s why they have silently disappeared in history,” curator of the ninja museum in Iga, Sugako Nakagawa, told Reuters. “But this job does have a lot to offer. First of all, the pay is quite competitive. Today, ninjas can earn anything from $23,000 to about $85,000 — which is a really solid salary, and in fact, a lot more than real ninjas used to earn in medieval Japan,” Herships said. The International Ninja Research Center, meanwhile, was quoted as saying that the typical ninja can earn an inflation-adjusted annual income of of $8,000 to $17,000.
