Shaolin Monks May Sue Over Tale of Defeat by Ninja

Socguy writes "A unique story on the CBC website details an even more unusual conflict. A Chinese Shaolin temple has demanded an apology from 'an Internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja beat its kung fu-practicing monks in a showdown.' A letter from the members of the temple, posted on the Internet on Thursday, denied the fight ever took place and called on the person who posted the claim under the name "Five minutes every day" to apologize to the temple's martial arts masters. Monks from the temple, which is located in the Songshan Mountain region of the Henan province, said they will consider legal action if he or she doesn't make a public apology."

Comments

Re:Wouldn't happen that way

[jahudabudy]

Again, I think it's a lot of B.S. but I think the Ninja myth is to Japan what the Cowboy myth is to the U.S. or what the King Arthur myth is to England.

And just like the cowboy myth, and probably Arthurian legend, there is some historical basis for the ninja legend as well. I have studied (in an informal manner) feudal Japanese samurai culture, and run across some material related to ninja. Ninja basically began as traditional samurai that operated outside the code of Bushido in order to defeat their enemy. One almost certainly apocryphal story I ran across related the origin of "ninja" as follows:
It was considered a great honor for a samurai in an army attacking a city to be the first one across the city walls. In order to be able to claim the honor of being the first across the walls when battle began, a couple of bright lads got the idea to sneak into the city the night before! It became a short step from there to sneaking inside a city before battle to plant units that would spring up behind a city's defenses, assassinate enemy leaders before battle began, etc. Eventually, a few groups or even clans became willing to hire themselves out to perform such "dishonorable" actions, which naturally became more sophisticated as the "ninjas" gained experience in this type of warfare. But just like any other criminal organization, they didn't exactly advertise; this secrecy is probably what began the myth of the ninja, which was then exaggerated by the clans themselves as a form of PR. But I don't think there is any real consensus on the origin, or even exact role, of the ninja in Japanese society. The very nature of the myth itself makes it difficult to disprove. "The fact that you know nothing about this secret society of invisible assassins merely proves how good they really were!"