A Teen Dream Nearly Becomes "Kanzenseiha"

After retiring from competing on American Ninja Warrior, once described by The New Yorker as the Great American Obstacle Course, Josh Levin, Ed.M.’22, had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something his teen-self assumed was a long shot: He traveled to Japan to compete on the original Ninja show, Sasuke. As he recently wrote on his Instagram, “I started watching Sasuke when I was 15, dreaming of one day taking on the legendary course. Excited to finally make that dream a reality.”

The show aired over two days on Japanese television this past Christmas eve and Christmas day and included not only 100 Japanese competitors, but also 22 international athletes — an unusual addition for the show, which is now in its 43rd season. Levin was one of five Americans. In the end, he advanced to stage three, further than any other international competitor, and finished in the top three overall, with only one other person advancing to stage four.

Recently, Levin talked about how he first discovered Sasuke, what it’s like competing for 22 hours straight, and figuring out next steps, including thinking about the science of ninja for kids.

You spoke to Ed. magazine in 2022 about your initial interest in ninja competitions. Remind us again.
I grew up watching Sasuke Ninja Warrior, the original show. American Ninja Warrior didn't exist at that point in time. The only way I was able to access Sasuke was by going on YouTube and finding these incredible videos of Japanese athletes doing, in my mind, the coolest obstacle course of all time. One of the things that really stood out to me was that the obstacles themselves were incredibly cool and exciting. And as a rock climber, I really gravitated towards that because it felt to me like an actual extension of the things I loved to climb when I was a kid. At the same time, it also felt very over the top and exciting and dramatic, and it took the idea of what could be a competition and flipped it on its head. In order to win Sasuke, you can't just be the best. That's not how it works. You actually have to overcome every single obstacle in your path to achieve what they call kanzenseiha, or total victory. In the entire 43 season history of Sasuke, there have only ever been four individuals to achieve total victory.

Sasuke rarely includes international contestants. How did you get invited?
It's very, very difficult to compete on Sasuke if you're a foreigner. Sometimes they invite foreign competitors, about three per year, but usually it's 100 Japanese contestants — and that's it. I recognized that I had many incredible seasons with American Ninja Warrior, including my final season, which we chatted about last time, where I made it all the way to the final stage, stage four. That felt like a really nice place to conclude my journey on American Warrior. I'd always wanted to compete on the Japanese show, but there's no application process. I figured, at this point in time, at least in calendar year 2025, I've taken a little bit of a break from doing more traditional job-related opportunities and I'm seeking out some of the things I've always wanted to do. Competing on Sasuke was probably the biggest and most audacious goal at the very top of that list. So, I said to myself, "Now's the time.” A couple weeks after I reached out to Sasuke, I heard back and they said, "You've been selected. You are coming to Japan to compete.”

Was this your first time to Japan?
I've been a couple of times before. Japan has emerged as probably the singular most dominant force in the world of competition rock climbing. They have the best athletes, they have the best training facilities, they're the best in the world. There are other countries that come close but it's like, if you're training to become an Olympic gymnast, the U.S. female gymnasts are the best in the world. You want to train with them. If you're trying to become an Olympic marathon runner, you go to Kenya, they have the best long-distance runners in the world. If you want to train to become the best rock climber in the world, you go to Japan. There are more than 200 indoor rock-climbing gyms just in Tokyo.

How did the American and Japanese competitions compare?
Even if you had experience on your home country's Ninja Warrior show, there were a lot of stark differences, in a good way, that made it an extra level of challenge to compete. One major difference were the environmental factors. In a lot of countries, they film indoors You don't have to worry about rain or mud or snow or wind or dirt or anything like that. In America, the finals are filmed outdoors in Las Vegas, and you do have to deal with extreme temperature variations and dust, but that's about it. On the Japanese show, it's the biggest backyard obstacle course ever. It's filmed about an hour outside Tokyo City Center in Yokohama. You have to get lucky with it raining or not during your run — they don't stop for rain — and that's a huge factor. When I was there, even if it wasn’t raining, it was muddy, and you had to wear giant boots because you’d sink a couple inches in the mud when you were trying to get from one stage to the next. Filming overnight is how we do it in the U.S. version, which has its pros and cons, but at least you know you’re going to start filming at sundown and end filming at sunup. On the Japanese show, they have you filming at all different times of the day over 22 hours. It was the whole spectrum of trying to stay up, stay active, sleep, rest, recover, and stay out of the mud. Another big difference is that on American Ninja, the obstacles are all purely mechanical. There are no motors or moving parts. It's based on the movement of the human body. On the Japanese show, they intentionally include motorized and moving obstacles.

When you were teaching, you found a way to weave Ninja Warrior into your work. Tell us about that.
At Synapse School in California, I combined my passion for Ninja Warrior with an education lens to teach an obstacle course physics class. Over the course of a trimester, we introduced middle school students to Newtonian physics concepts through American Ninja Warrior clips. For their final projects, each group of students designed, fabricated, and constructed an original obstacle from scratch. In future iterations of the course, the students even created accessible obstacles for athletes with a variety of disabilities in line with Paralympics-style competition.

In many ways, you’re still teaching.
Yes, as a climbing coach, I've utilized my experiences as an educator to help design curriculum and training plans for top-level athletes. Being able to delve into the “why” of each athletes' goals was the most important for me to help them achieve success in the long run. One additional piece I touched upon in our initial chat was the idea of informal learning. Pulling from my experience in [Senior Lecturer] Joe Blatt's HT123 Informal Learning for Children class, I realized the platform of reality TV can be an excellent medium to express a message of camaraderie and respect between competitors across nationalities. Through my interviews, I chose to specifically highlight this message of collaboration, especially since the objective goal of Sasuke is that the competitors are competing against the obstacle course, not each other.