なかには着物や忍者など、世界中に知られているものもあります。

Hi all, the sentence above is from a bilingual book about Japan. The author is talking about the uniqueness of Japanese culture (島国である日本は、独自の文化を持っています。). Then, the sentence in question follows:

なかには着物や忍者など、世界中に知られているものもあります。It's translated as: 'Some parts of Japanese culture, such as kimono and ninja, are known throughout the world'.

I don't understand how the part before the comma connects to the rest. The translation seems to suggest that など is modifying もの. Is that the case? The closest example I could find on goo辞書 is ペンやインキなどの筆記用具, suggesting that の is needed for など to modify another noun.

... or is 着物や忍者など just a syntactically independent chunk, not connected to the rest of the sentence?

Thanks.

Grammatically speaking, it's not modifying もの, no, but that doesn't mean it's just "an independent chunk not connected to the rest of the sentence."

One way to think of it would be that both なかには着物や忍者など and 世界中に知られているもの both connect to the predicate ～もあります

なかには着物や忍者などもあります。
世界中に知られているものもあります。
↓
なかには着物や忍者など、世界中に知られているものもあります。

This use of など is actually quite common, meaning that while ペンやインキなどの筆記用具 is correct (and as an independent noun phrase you'd need the の there to indicate the relationship), 「ペンやインキなど、筆記用具を色々買いました」or what-have-you would also be valid.

Got it. Thanks bentenmusume-san, I appreciate your help.

など shows the preceding words are examples like "etc." in English. の is optional in your examples, as bentenmusume-san wrote, but there are cases where の is necessary, for instance, 赤や黄などの落ち葉 in goo辞書. Yellow or red are not examples of fallen leaves but examples of the colors of them here.
In the similar reason, の is necessary for general nouns like もの, こと or 場所, except when these words are modified by an adjectival phrase/clause, i.e., the meaning of the word is specified.
e.g.
〇着物や忍者などのものは世界中に知られています。
×着物や忍者など、ものは世界中に知られています。
〇東京や大阪などの、人の多い場所は苦手です。
〇東京や大阪など、人の多い場所は苦手です。
〇東京や大阪などの場所は苦手です。
×東京や大阪など、場所は苦手です。

I see! You have raised some interesting points, thanks Toritoribe-san.