When Jesus walked in Japan

[emad]

The Independent
While the thoughts of the world's Christians turn to events in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, the inhabitants of a little village a few hours' drive from Tokyo prefer another version of the Greatest Story Ever Told. David McNeill reports
15 December 2004


The village of Shingo nestles in a mountainous patch of pine forests, rice paddies and apple trees a six-hour drive from Tokyo. Known for its garlic ice-cream, and the unusually rapid flight of its young to nearby cities, it seems like an odd final resting place for the Christian Messiah.

In the Bible version of The Greatest Story Ever Told, Jesus Christ was crucified at Calvary and rose from the dead three days later to save mankind from sin. Not so, says local legend in Shingo; that was his brother Isukuri. In reality, Christ escaped the clutches of the Romans, fled across land carrying his brother's severed ear and a lock of hair from the Virgin Mary and settled down to life in exile in the snowy isolation of Northern Japan.

Here he married a woman called Miyuko, fathered three daughters and died at the age of 106. Two wooden crosses outside the village mark the graves of the brothers from Galilee and a museum makes the case that the man we call Jesus Christ the carpenter was known around these parts as garlic farmer Daitenku Taro Jurai.

Difficult to believe, perhaps, that a man in sandals from the Middle East found his way across Siberia, via Vladivostok, to this small corner of the world, but the villagers claim he had practice. A sign beside the grave reads: "When Jesus Christ was 21 years old he came to Japan to pursue knowledge of divinity for 12 years." After over a decade of study somewhere near Mount Fuji and by this time fluent in Japanese, he returned to Judea aged 33 but his teachings were rejected and he was arrested. His brother took his place on the cross and Daitenku began the second 10,000-mile trek back to his alma mater.

More more more:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=593197

READ this in the Fortean Times about four years ago. Interesting that it should pop up now in the Indie...

[ellie]

1. That is really interesting

My devout Catholic mother and sister were telling me about how, between the ages of 13 and 33, Jesus traveled the world. I never heard about that in Catholic school.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. he supposedly travelled east.

[WoodrowFan]

4. there is a very funny book about this..

titled :" Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380813815/qid=1103213247/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-2247418-1137557

Joshua (a.k.a. Jesus) knows he is unique and quite alone in his calling, but what exactly does his Father want of him? Taking liberties with ancient history, Moore works up an adventure tale as Biff and Joshua seek out the three wise men so that Joshua can better understand what he is supposed to do as Messiah. Biff, a capable sinner, tags along and gives Joshua ample opportunities to know the failings and weaknesses of being truly human. With a wit similar to Douglas Adams, Moore pulls no punches: a young Biff has the hots for Joshua's mom, Mary, which doesn't amuse Josh much: "Don't let anyone ever tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone." And the origin of the Easter Bunny is explained as a drunken Jesus gushes his affection for bunnies, declaring, "Henceforth and from now on, I decree that whenever something bad happens to me, there shall be bunnies around."

[emad]

5. Nor did many in the UK or Europe.....

The documents, said to be written in archaic Japanese, were discovered in the hands of a Shinto priest outside Tokyo in 1935 and were claimed as Christ's last will and testament, dictated as he neared death in the village. The originals were destroyed during the war, but a copy of the scrolls sits in a glass case in the Shingo museum, brought to the village by Banzan Toya, a nationalist historian who said they referred to two burial mounds that had been in the hands of a local garlic-farming family called Sawaguchi for generations.

The key to deciphering the mystery lies in the cultural climate of the time. In 1935, Japan was dominated by an extreme, militaristic ideology. Like Germany in the 1930s, much of Japan's finest brainpower was expended in an effort to prove racial and cultural superiority over the hordes in Asia, leading this almost exclusively Shinto and Buddhist country up some odd intellectual avenues. It was during this period that another document was uncovered, "proving" Moses had come to Japan and been presented with the Ten Commandments, and the Star of David, by the Emperor.

[LiberalFighter]

6. At 13? By himself? If not with whom?

[ellie]

11. They were light on the details.

I will have to read up more on it. Apparently, Jesus was a member of the Essene sect and was known as the Teacher of Righteousness and during the time the bible says that he was in desert, he was really traveling to every Essene community to learn from the wise teachers there. Then he went to India to learn the Vedic tradition, then he went to Persia, then he went to Egypt. Some believe he then went to Avalon in southern England with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea. He left a white rose bush that would only bloom in the midst of winter. A cutting of this bush still blooms through the Glastonbury snow each winter.

[LiberalFighter]

3. How long would it take to travel 10,000 miles in that time?

[DrWeird]

8. A few years. If he took his time.

The ancient world wasn't as static as some people would like to think. They've found ancient roman coins in the Mekong delta.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. There's an eighth century storehouse in Nara, Japan,

which contains ancient artifacts not only from Japan but also from as far away as Persia.

[lutherj]

7. FYI - There is a short story by John Updike on this subject in his

collection called "Museums & Women." This was probably written 30 years ago.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. The most likely explanation for this

In the 16th century, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries went to Japan and were highly successful in winning converts. According to most estimates, they converted a larger percentage of the population than any missionaries in the modern era. (BTW, if you've read Shogun or seen the miniseries, that story is a somewhat inaccurate portrayal of that era.)

However, between 1590 and 1600, the Japanese started worrying that the missionaries were the first wave of an attempt to colonize their country. It didn't help that peasants, caught up in the idea of all people being equal before God, staged a revolt, The shogunate decided that Christianity had to be stopped.

Foreign priests were either driven out or killed, and Japanese converts were required either to renounce Christianity or die. Everyone was required to register at a Buddhist temple, and in many localities, there was an annual rite in which people were required to step on a crucifix.

A whole lot of the Japanese converts went underground, disguising their statues or paintings of Jesus or Mary as Buddhist statues, and holding secret meetings to recite what they could remember of the Mass and share what they could remember of Bible stories. Both the worship rites and Bible stories became garbled over the years. Every once in a while, foreign priests tried to sneak into the country. Most were killed, a few renounced Christianity under torture, and a few more just disappeared.

This underground church persisted for nearly 300 years until limited religious freedom was granted in the late nineteenth century.

Now my theory (I first heard the story thirty years ago) is that one of those foreign priests who escaped from the authorities settled down in that remote village, way up in the northern part of the main island of Honshu, an area that was only nominally under the control of the central government, and made a life for himself. After a couple of centuries, the man who talked about Jesus was transformed into the actual Jesus in people's minds.

[morgan2]

12. the most likely explanation

is that Japanese people converted to Christianity easier if the story of Jesus was integrated into their culture. It would be a lot easier to convert people if the stories of Jesus included them. Some where along the way someone decided it was easier to convert if he changed the tales a bit.

Its just like what the Roman Catholic Church did. They selectively included the stories that best benefited them, and kept the others locked away in the Vatican or destroyed them. Religion has always been more about power than being honest.

Whatever best fit their agenda is what gets focus'd on. You can look at Bush now, at his selective interpretations of religion to justify his agenda or the Catholic Church covering up sexual abuse to keep people believing they were morally superior. Power and control, thats what it boils down to.