1964 I. Fleming You only live Twice x. 126 The men..are now learning to be ninja or ‘stealers-in’.

1974 Age (Melbourne) 7 May 8 Those black-garbed figures..are ninja, the mediaeval masterminds of espionage.

1981 Best of Karate '81 Spring 16/2 A ninja had to be able to run faster than ordinary men, scale impossible walls, swim further and longer, jump higher..and be so well disciplined in mind and body as to endure all sorts of hardships.

1995 Houston Chron. (Nexis) 3 Oct. 1 Today's martial arts students are more likely to be lawyers than ninjas.

2000 Denver Post 15 Oct. t10/1 Spies prowled Japan from the seventh century, but the secretive ninja left few written records.

1972 Internat. Newsweek 11 Sept. 28 For months the Japanese spoke of national-security adviser Henry Kissinger as a ninja—the magician of Japanese legends who performs supernatural acts and practices sorcery.

1977 Associated Press Newswire (Nexis) 16 Jan. Kissinger is a ‘ninja’ in a good sense...He's thrilling, swash-buckling.

1987 Business Week 3 Aug. 40 Other bankers are dubbing themselves ninja, modern-day descendants of the superspies of 17th century samurai houses.

1991 Manch. Guardian Weekly (Nexis) 4 Aug. 13 Young banking and securities firms executives (nicknamed the ninja..) are especially assigned to cultivate relations with the finance ministry. Only verbal instructions are ever given to the ninja.

1998 Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 28 Dec. 1 He immediately suspected they were ninjas because, he said, they were dressed in black and wore masks, trademarks of the mysterious assassins who have been sowing terror across East Java in recent months.

2003 Business Times (Singapore) (Nexis) 21 Feb. Yen buyers were more subdued..fearing the Bank of Japan's new strategy of covert intervention to buy U.S. dollars through agent banks—described by some as the central bank's ninjas or secret agents.

1966 Black Belt Oct. 5/3 The July 1966 issue had a cartoon concerning a Ninja dojo.

1971 Black Belt May 40/1 One of the most controversial characters in Japan's current ninja boom is a stout but surprisingly agile man in his mid-forties named Norihiro Iga-Hakuyusai.

1981 I. McQueen Japan 345/2 Possibly of greater interest is a sizeable collection of ninja weapons and devices.

1985 Times 27 Sept. 8/6 Two men dressed in Japanese ninja warrior clothes shot dead an elderly British couple.

1989 New Yorker 11 Dec. 141/3 Shredder didn't resort to the usual Ninja flying kick to the head but instead threw radioactive goo on his enemy.

1995 Time 28 Aug. 36 Federal agents in body armor and black ninja uniforms.

2002 Guardian (Nexis) 31 Aug. 2 As they broke camp, the teenage son practised his Ninja moves with a tentpole.

2003 New Straits Times (Malaysia) (Nexis) 26 Jan. 6 Expect loads of hilarious antics from these four-legged animals, such as ninja kitties that wear night-vision goggles, parachute from the sky and smack dogs around using martial arts.

1994 Washington Post (Nexis) 20 Mar. w16 When thrown, ninja rocks are sharp enough to break the thin, stretched skin in tempered glass, which causes the entire pane to shatter.

1999 Orange County (Calif.) Reg. (Nexis) 5 Aug. 7 Someone used pieces of spark plugs, which police reports referred to as ‘ninja rocks’, to break the windows of several vehicles and steal women's purses.

2001 U.S. News & World Rep. (Nexis) 24 Dec. 131/58 The ninja rock looks like a piece of junk. Only with a string tied to it—as possessed by one frugal thief in a Southeastern state not long ago—does it become a prosecutable burglary tool.

1992 I. Banks Crow Road vii. 160 I leapt up, ninja'd over to Gav's bed and wheeched the duvet off.

1996 Rocky Mountain News (Denver) (Nexis) 23 Apr. 5 In our dark house we were ninja-ing around with water guns.

2002 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 29 Aug. 48 I ninja'd my way into Kung Fu Records to hang out with those merry pranksters the Vandals.