/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>In the 1540s and 1550s, Japanese pirates known as wokou raided China's eastern and southeastern coasts on an unprecedented scale.

>The geographer Zheng Ruoceng provides the most detailed of the 16th century sources which confirm that, in 1553, Wan Biao, Vice Commissioner in Chief of the Nanjing Chief Military Commission, initiated the conscription of monks—including some from Shaolin—against the pirates.[16] Warrior monks participated in at least four battles: at the Gulf of Hangzhou in spring of 1553 and in the Huangpu River delta at Wengjiagang in July 1553, Majiabang in spring of 1554, and Taozhai in autumn of 1555.[16]

>The monks suffered their greatest defeat at Taozhai, where four of them fell in battle; their remains were buried under the Stūpa of the Four Heroic Monks (Si yi seng ta) at Mount She near Shanghai.[16]

>The monks won their greatest victory at Wengjiagang.[16] On 21 July 1553, 120 warrior monks led by the Shaolin monk Tianyuan defeated a group of pirates and chased the survivors over ten days and twenty miles.[16] The pirates suffered over one hundred casualties and the monks only four.[16]"

This is the closest thing to real life ninjas vs pirates that has ever happened.