Although the Christmas season has passed, it is always a good time to talk about Jesus of Nazareth . Something has that universal Galilean that never goes out of style. This time we will focus on a topic even more hackneyed than his famous birth:his death. Can anything new be told about the death of Jesus at this point in the film? Yes, there is still room for surprise. More than the death itself, we are going to talk about his (supposed) tomb . Much has been speculated about the place where the bones of Christ rest. According to the "official" version, such a place does not even exist. You know, the ascension to heaven and all that. There are also more or less bizarre proposals that say that, after the crucifixion, Jesus went to distant places to live his life quietly, far from Jews and Romans. The hypothesis of his withdrawal in Kashmir is well known. , where some claim that he lived peacefully until the end of his days. Certain traditions make it reach France, others send it to Egypt... There are stories of all colors, more or less apocryphal, depending on the taste of the consumer. But the one we are going to tell next surpasses them all. Because, according to a certain theory, the tomb of Jesus Christ would be no less than… in Japan.
Tomb of Jesus in Aomori
More specifically in Shingo , Aomori Prefecture , in the north of the main island of the Japanese archipelago. Almost hitting Vladivostok . About 10,000 km away from Palestine. There is nothing. How did Israel's messiah end up there? An ancient Japanese tradition explains it to us with hair and signs.
Aomori Prefecture (in red), place of the supposed grave
To begin with, it was not the first time that Jesus stepped on Japanese land. Apparently, he had already visited these places during the years of his hidden life, for unknown purposes. We also do not know if the piece of the Pacific Ocean that separates Japan from the continent would cross it walking on the waters, or if he, who always had contacts in the guild, used a fishing boat. The fact is that, after spending a season enjoying the snow and the landscapes of northern Japan, he returned to Palestine to follow the course of history that we all know. But you can see that he liked that, because after coming down from Calvary he decided that Aomori it was a good place to settle down and maybe put down roots. And there he went again, this time to stay. If what he was looking for was to put land in the middle, it was certainly not a bad choice. Further from Galilee, difficult.
But it should be clarified that, according to this Japanese apocryphal gospel, the crucifixion was not as we have been told. Actually, the one who died on the cross was not Jesus, but, attention, his brother Isukiri , who immolated himself in his place. Let us clarify that, if the name sounds little Hebrew, it is because it is undoubtedly an adaptation to Japanese phonetics. For example, Christ in Japan is called Kirisuto , since it is difficult for them to pronounce closed syllables. «Isukiri » sounds a bit funny, but it's probably the best the ancient Japanese could do to pronounce Aramaic. In any case, to save the life of his divine brother, Isukiri gave the Romans the switch and it was he who ended up nailed to the stake at Golgotha. We already know what the Monty Python were inspired by for his famous cross-casting shtick in Life of Brian .
Devastated by the tragedy, Jesus decided to leave Israelite lands and return to Japan, taking with him the remains of his brother. And, by the way, a good handful of relics like locks of hair from the Virgin Mary and delicacies of the kind. After crossing all of Asia Minor and Siberia (with Isukiri's body on his back, let's remember), he arrived back in Japan, where he was finally able to take a well-deserved rest. And what if he did, and also forever. He settled in the small village of Shingo , where he married a local woman, had children and lived to the age of 106. When he died, his remains were buried in a burial mound on the outskirts of town, along with those of his martyred brother. And those are the tombs that today, 2,000 years later, we can visit in Aomori .
So you don't get lost...
No, we haven't gone crazy. Incredible as it may seem, there is an immemorial tradition in the area that ensures that things happened exactly like this. And, as if that were not enough, there are also written documents that reliably prove all this. Sadly, it seems skeptics have nowhere to hold on.
The Asian adventures of Jesus are collected in his testament, a collection of different writings that came to light at the end of the s. XIX. Supposedly, they date from 1,500 years ago and would be a copy, in turn, of other previous parchments. They have been passed down from generation to generation within the Takenouchi family. , whose members have historically served as priests at a certain Shinto shrine in neighboring Ibaraki prefecture . In other words, the custodians of the last secret of Jesus Christ on earth are not Christians, but priests of a polytheistic pagan cult. Long live religious syncretism.
Who brought to light and popularized these documents, already entered the s. XX, he was a certain Wado Kosaka , a vocational cosmoarchaeologist of obscure origins who was in charge of transcribing the original files, compiling them and even translating them into various languages. The documents exist, of that there is no doubt. Now, its authenticity is already another matter. No scholar in Japan (or abroad) has ever taken them seriously, and it's hard not to agree with them. But the legend is there, alive and kicking after a couple of hundred years, and Shingo's village gets a good slice of it thanks to tourism. The tomb of Christ is the main industry of the town. You have to live on something when in your land the rice fields are buried under a meter and a half of snow most of the year.
Locals dance in the "festival of Christ"
But, messianic trace or not, the truth is that Shingo is a strange place. It has an ineffable connection with mystery. And, of course, a little scratching does not take long to appear small details that sow doubt. For example, since ancient times, among the natives of the place, people with features more similar to Westerners than to Japanese abound. While there are perfectly logical reasons for these genetic variations, proponents of Isukiri et al.'s theory cling to it to "prove" their claims. For them, those Japanese Caucasians would actually be blood descendants of Christ. In other words, the Cathars of the Far East, to understand us. To add insult to injury, there also seem to be words of possible Hebrew origin in the dialect of the area. But these transoceanic miscegenation theories are not limited to Jesus. There have always been legends about lost tribes of Israel that, more than 3,000 years ago, could reach the islands of Japan, also through Siberia, in their exodus. Pretending that the Japanese are descendants of Abraham seems hard to believe, but the theory is there, and there are those who defend it. There is everything in the Lord's vineyard.
If after reading all these arguments readers still think that, after all, the story told by the Bible is more credible, we do not blame them. We suspect that Shingo's countrymen, in their hearts, are of the same opinion. But they are very careful not to confess it in public. For them, officially, the descendants of Jesus of Nazareth continue to live in Aomori in the middle of the s. XXI. Even if they have a Japanese surname and are Buddhists.
In any case, whoever rests in those tombs, they are cared for with all the love in the world. Always sparkling clean. They even bless them every year when the town festivals arrive. The only bad thing is that, instead of bringing a priest to do the honors, as would be de rigueur, they do it for the Shinto rites. Oh, if Isukiri raised his head…
Collaboration of R. Ibarzabal of Samurai Stories