Haha, before I just posted in response to the thread. Now that I read it, the blanket stupidity is frightening. No one has made a specifically correct point about anything they're talking about :-/

Neither have you.

Kirby respect -10

What.

Shaolin are screwed. Argument over.

Uh huh. Mind explaining how your uncle can "play monk?" Do you mean he started studying some form of kung fu, or did he shave his head and speak in cryptic nonsense for awhile?

http://www.beijingwushuteam.com/articles/shaolintour.html

A pretty good article that talks about contemporary "shaolin monks."

Sounds like some video game from Korea... but I thought Samurai were from JAPAN.

That they were.

Right. And you're not even going to try and say anything about any of it.



Dun be *****in bout dem der fytes ye get in less yer gunna back ya **** up. I would quite certainly like you to point out my blanket stupidity in a more succinct manner so that I can refute it and continue being correct.

Anyway, Fister, I'm sure studying Japan and Wikiing something are quite the same. I know thats how I learned to pleasure a woman is on wikipedia.

In my reading, the ninja were an oversimplified cultural phenomenon. The backgrounds that ninja supposedly came from were as diverse as Samurai doing espionage for Daimyo (like Glyde said, and is the ONLY one I really ever saw in anything that had a credible relation to Japanese history, but thats just what I saw, there could be more?) to farmers trying to keep bigger powers from ****ing with their ****. Saying that all ninja were "hired assassins" is like saying that all federal agents are Jack Bauer and all PIs are Shaft.

I think the best explanation for what ninja were, is that they were a particular aspect of feudal japan, that had many different forms and manifestations. People treat it as if it was one cohesive secret society like the Illuminati or some **** that existed from 10th Century Japan to 19th Century Japan, when thats really kind of a dumb viewpoint. There must have been tens upon tens of huge families, many that came in and out of existence during that long period, that would fit our definition of ninja, but would have known nothing of the word at the time.