A behind-the-scenes look at the American director’s story of identity and family in Netflix’s Japanese drama “Shinobi no Ie” | WIRED.jp

It didn’t take long for the ninja drama House of Ninjas to produce results. Just a few days after it was released worldwide on Netflix on February 15, 2024, it entered the top 10 of Netflix’s weekly global TOP 10 (non-English series) in 92 countries and regions around the world, and ranked first in the second week of distribution. He rose to the top.

This result is the highest ever for a Netflix Japanese drama series with a completely original story without any original work. After that, it continued to be ranked in the weekly global “TOP 10 (non-English series)” for four consecutive weeks after its release.

One of the driving forces behind the film’s worldwide success is American Dave Boyle, who wrote and directed the film. He is also the co-founder of SIGNAL 181, a video production company that was announced on April 3rd by actor Kento Kaku, who is the executive producer of this film.

Until now, Boyle had been working as a screenwriter for movies in Los Angeles, building a career in independent films, but had no connection to Japanese productions. “Are you interested in ninja movies?” a producer friend of mine who works for Netflix asked me, and I was drawn to this comment, which led me to become involved in the production of this work. “The opportunity to create a completely original story on a scale that would be distributed worldwide was something that never happened to me,” Boyle confesses.

Conflicts and challenges as an American

However, there were also conflicts at the same time. “As a non-Japanese, should I write about ninjas, a subject unique to Japan? I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have any doubts.I had never lived in Japan for a long time, but that’s why I wanted to write about Japan as realistically as possible.” “I decided to use Japanese to capture the ninja world,” says Boyle.

As he said, the first draft of the script was written in his native English, but from the second draft onwards he tried writing in Japanese, Boyle’s second language. He stayed in Japan for about a year and a half to write and film the script, and even during that time, he did not use an interpreter and only communicated in Japanese.

At the production site, Boyle also adapted to Japanese customs and production processes. This was because I wanted to experience the Japanese way.

For example, he felt that the way scripts were handled was different from Hollywood. “In Hollywood, each time a script is rewritten, newly printed sheets of paper are casually inserted into the original script. However, in Japan, scripts are bound like books. There is a sense of care in handling them. I thought it was there.”

Also, I was able to experience the strength of the team at the filming location. “In the United States, even as a supervisor, there are times when I don’t know what’s going on on-site and how, but in Japan, the people on-site are busy preparing.Everyone goes through the process while checking each step. ” says Boyle. “To be honest, at first I wondered why we needed to have so many meetings, but once I got used to it, I realized how much more stable the work was.”