For hundreds of years, pirates infested the Sea of Japan, the thin stretch of ocean that separates Japan from China and Korea. During the Sengoku period, a time of constant strife in Japan, the pirate ranks inflated due to the decades of civil unrest. Those troubles were felt all the way to the eastern coasts of mainland Asia, where fishing villages and port towns were constantly under siege from pirates.
Japan wasn’t the only nation having troubles, however, as China’s Ming Dynasty was in the middle of what would become a long, slow death. Facing invasions from both the north and the west, they did not have a large enough military to regain control of the seas, and largely ceded its people to the pirates.
It was at this time that leaders from the region reached out to various warrior-monks, including the Shaolin.
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