Jesus of Tokyo

[Dogmudgeon]

Don't kill the messenger, folks -- I don't even try to make this stuff up!

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.

Verily, the entire article mayest be read here: When Jesus walked in Japan

--p!

[drhilarius]

1. Did he turn water into sake?

[whirlygigspin]

2. isn't there a similar story like this that takes place in India?

I seem to remember some place like Goa claims him too.