Sunday Herald briefing

The people of China and Japan will be wondering how a tall tale on the internet almost led to a legal battle over the kung fu capabilities of the two ancient cultures.

China's Shaolin Temple took the unusual step of hiring a lawyer to challenge an anonymous internet user who claimed a Japanese ninja took on its revered monks in a fight and won.

Despite many years of sending the monks into exile, pride in kung fu and other martial arts has now become central to modern China's image as a country that fights back against all the odds. And so national pride was considerably piqued by the story posted online anonymously, detailing the exploits of a ninja who emerged from the temple victorious.

The posting last week on the "Iron Blood Bulletin Board Community" described a ninja who challenged the monks of the Shaolin Temple to a fight last month after practising boxing at a Japanese mountain retreat for five years. It claimed the monks accepted the challenge and the ninja won, proving that modern-day monks are trained to perform rather than fight.

"The fact that the monks could not defeat a Japanese ninja showed that they were named as kung fu masters in vain," it said.

Monks from the Shaolin Temple, in the Songshan Mountains of central China's Henan province, threatened to sue. An open letter from the temple posted online denied the fight took place and called on the person who posted the claim to apologise to the temple's martial arts masters.

The incident did nothing to ease lingering tensions between China and Japan, where the account of the ninja's victory has been widely distributed. China is highly sensitive to any notion of Japanese militarism, and many still believe Tokyo has yet to show adequate remorse for second world war atrocities.

The Shaolin Temple's letter said the posting was "evil" and denied there was any truth to the story.

"This extremely irresponsible behaviour not only impacts on the Shaolin Temple and its monks, but also the whole martial arts community and the Chinese people," it said.

The monks' lawyer also made it clear that national honour was at stake. "We vehemently condemn this odious behaviour, which is not just extremely irresponsible as far as Shaolin Temple is concerned but also with regards to martial arts in China, and to the nation as a whole."

The internet author posted an apology soon after. "What I wrote was fiction. I apologise to Shaolin Temple and all my readers," he wrote. "I hope that the Shaolin masters will exercise their Buddhist compassion and virtue, and forgive me. Thank you very much."

But the row might yet escalate. Many read the piece as damning satire, a thinly veiled attack on current controversies surrounding the temple. Its abbot, who has a chauffeur-driven car and has marketed the temple's name commercially in China and abroad, has been accused of neglecting the temple's spiritual priorities.

The online story is a reversal of the typical kung fu movie plot in which a small band of Shaolin fighters overcomes hordes of invading ninjas. If such precious stories of nationhood continue to be corrupted, it may be the lawyers who have to battle it out - in court.