The Ten Lost Tribes: Japan Dear friends in the world, I am a Japanese writer living in Japan. As I study the Bible, I began to realize that many traditional customs and ceremonies in Japan are very similar to the ones of ancient Israel. I considered that perhaps these rituals came from the religion and customs of the Jews and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who might have come to ancient Japan. The following sections are concerned with those Japanese traditions which possibly originated from the ancient Israelites. The reason why I exhibit these on the Internet is to enable anyone interested in this subject, especially Jewish friends to become more interested, research it for yourself, and share your findings. - Arimasa Kubo Israelites Came To Ancient Japan Many of the traditional ceremonies in Japan seem to indicate that the Lost Tribes of Israel came to ancient Japan. Ark of the covenant of Israel (left) and Omikoshi ark of Japan (right) In Nagano prefecture, Japan, there is a large Shinto shrine named Suwa-Taisha (Shinto is the national traditional religion peculiar to Japan.) At Suwa-Taisha, the traditional festival called Ontohsai is held on April 15 every year (When the Japanese used the lunar calendar it was March-April). This festival illustrates the story of Isaac in chapter 22 of Genesis in the Bible - when Abraham was about to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. The Ontohsai festival, held since ancient days, is judged to be the most important festival of Suwa-Taisha. The Suwa-Taisha shrine At the back of the shrine Suwa-Taisha, there is a mountain called Mt. Moriya (Moriya-san in Japanese). The people from the Suwa area call the god of Mt. Moriya Moriya no kami, which means, the god of Moriya. This shrine is built to worship the god of Moriya. At the festival, a boy is tied up by a rope to a wooden pillar, and placed on a bamboo carpet. A Shinto priest comes to him preparing a knife, and he cuts a part of the top of the wooden pillar, but then a messenger (another priest) comes there, and the boy is released. This is reminiscent of the Biblical story in which Isaac was released after an angel came to Abraham. The knife and sword used in the Ontohsai festival At this festival, animal sacrifices are also offered. 75 deer are sacrificed, but among them it is believed that there is a deer with its ear split. The deer is considered to be the one God prepared. It could have had some connection with the ram that God prepared and was sacrificed after Isaac was released. Since the ram was caught in the thicket by the horns, the ear might have been split. In ancient time of Japan there were no sheep and it might be the reason why they used deer (deer is Kosher). Even in historic times, people thought that this custom of deer sacrifice was strange, because animal sacrifice is not a Shinto tradition. My friend went to Israel and saw a Passover festival on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria. He asked a Samaritan priest how many rams were offered. The priest answered that they used to offer 75. This may have a connection with the 75 deer which were offered at Suwa-Taisha shrine in Japan. Abraham and Isaac People call this festival the festival for Misakuchi-god. Misakuchi might be mi-isaku-chi. Mi means great, isaku is most likely Isaac (the Hebrew word Yitzhak), and chi is something for the end of the word. It seems that the people of Suwa made Isaac a god, probably by the influence of idol worshipers. Today, this custom of the boy about to be sacrificed and then released, is no longer practiced, but we can still see the custom of the wooden pillar called oniye-basira, which means, sacrifice-pillar. The oniye-bashira on which the boy is supposed to be tied up Currently, people use stuffed animals instead of performing a real animal sacrifice. Tying a boy along with animal sacrifice was regarded as savage by people of the Meiji-era (about 100 years ago), and those customs were discontinued. However, the festival itself still remains. The custom of the boy had been maintained until the beginning of Meiji era. Masumi Sugae, who was a Japanese scholar and a travel writer in the Edo era (about 200 years ago), wrote a record of his travels and noted what he saw at Suwa. The record shows the details of Ontohsai. It tells that the custom of the boy about to be sacrificed and his ultimate release, as well as animal sacrifices that existed those days. His records are kept at the museum near Suwa-Taisha. The festival of Ontohsai has been maintained by the Moriya family ever since ancient times. The Moriya family think of Moriya-no-kami (god of Moriya) as their ancestors god. They also consider Mt. Moriya as their holy place. The name, Moriya, could have come from Moriah (the Hebrew word Moriyyah) of Genesis 22:2, that is todays Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Among Jews, God of Moriah means the one true God whom the Bible teaches. The Moriya family have been hosting the festival for 78 generations. And the curator of the museum said to me that the faith in the god of Moriya had existed among the people since the time of B.C.E. Apparently, no other country but Japan has a festival illustrating the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. This tradition appears to provide strong evidence that the ancient Israelites came to ancient Japan. Japanese Religious Priests Yamabushi Put A Black Box on their Foreheads Just As Jews Put A Phylactery on their Foreheads. Yamabushi is a religious man in training unique to Japan. Today, they are thought to belong to Japanese Buddhism. However, Buddhism in China, Korea and India have no such custom. The custom of yamabushi existed in Japan before Buddhism was imported into Japan in the seventh century. On the forehead of Yamabushi, he puts a black small box called a tokin, which is tied to his head with a black cord. He greatly resembles a Jew putting on a phylactery (black box) on his forehead with a black cord. The size of this black box tokin is almost the same as the Jewish phylactery, but its shape is round and flower-like. A yamabushi with a tokin blowing a horn Originally the Jewish phylactery placed on the forehead seems to have come from the forehead plate put on the high priest Aaron with a cord (Exodus 28:36-38). It was about 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) in size according to folklore, and some scholars maintain that it was flower-shaped. If so, it was very similar to the shape of the Japanese tokin worn by the yamabushi. A Jew with a phylactery blowing a shofar Israel and Japan are the only two countries that in the world I know of that use of the black forehead box for religious purpose. Furthermore, the yamabushi use a big seashell as a horn. This is very similar to Jews blowing a shofar or rams horn. The way it is blown and the sounds of the yamabushis horn are very similar to those of a shofar. Because there are no sheep in Japan, the yamabushi had to use seashell horns instead of rams horns. Yamabushis are people who regard mountains as their holy places for religious training. The Israelites also regarded mountains as their holy places. The Ten Commandments of the Torah were given on Mt. Sinai. Jerusalem is a city on a mountain. In Japan, there is the legend of Tengu who lives on a mountain and has the figure of a yamabushi. He has a pronounced nose and supernatural capabilities. A ninja, who was an agent or spy in the old days, while working for his lord, goes to Tengu at the mountain to get from him supernatural abilities. Tengu gives him a tora-no-maki (a scroll of the tora) after giving him additional powers. This scroll of the tora is regarded as a very important book which is helpful for any crisis. Japanese use this word sometimes in their current lives. There is no knowledge that a real scroll of a Jewish Torah was ever found in a Japanese historical site. However, it appears this scroll of the tora is a derivation of the Jewish Torah. moshiach/tribes/ns/5.html
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 00:31:38 +0000
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