Video: Did Jesus Really Escape Execution, Marry, and Live in Japan: Shingo Village Museum
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
650 km north of Tokyo, you can find the tiny village of Shingo, which locals consider the last resting place of Jesus Christ. Allegedly, among the quiet hills of this godforsaken place, the Christian prophet lived like an ordinary farmer, growing garlic. He had three daughters and lived in a Japanese village until he was 106. All this, as well as many other interesting facts, is told in the local "Museum of Jesus". Who knows, maybe today you can come across several of his descendants right on the street …
Shingo is located in Aomori Prefecture and has a population of around 2,500. Other popular tourist attractions near the alleged tomb of Christ include the car race track, the stunning pyramid and the so-called Big Rock. However, tourists still go to Shingo in the first place to see the place where Jesus lived for 70 years after his alleged execution. All visitors are also surprised that the population of the village, which has nothing to do with Christianity, is so passionate about Christ.
Moreover, the legend of Shingo Jesus is not just a ploy to lure tourists. The locals sincerely believe in it. The story goes as follows: 21-year-old Jesus went to Japan, where he studied with a priest on Mount Fuji for 12 years. At the age of 33, he returned to his homeland to preach his newfound Eastern wisdom, but the crowd of angry Romans clearly did not appreciate his impulses. But then the unexpected happened. On a sign at the burial site in Shingo, it is written that Jesus' younger brother, Isukiri, helped Christ escape, and he took his place on the cross in his place and was crucified. After that, Jesus, taking with him as a souvenir the ear of his brother and a lock of his mother's hair, fled through Siberia to Alaska, and from there he returned to Japan, to the places where he learned wisdom. Today it is believed that in the burial next to the tomb of Jesus in Shingo, it is precisely this ear with a lock of hair that rests (therefore, two graves were made).
In Shingo, Christ was considered a “great man,” although the locals knew nothing of the miracles he performed. Jesus adopted the new name Torai Taro Daitenku and started a family with a woman named Miyuko. Direct descendants of their ancestry founded the Sawaguchi clan, which has been tending the grave since then, but refuses to exhume to confirm or deny the legend.
A museum has been built near the burial site, which provides information and evidence of the village's claims to the glory of the final resting place of Christ. The museum says that thanks to the appearance of Jesus, the locals began to wear clothes worthy of Jerusalem and carry their children in baskets, like Moses. In the 1970s, residents began marking babies' foreheads with charcoal. By the way, the Stars of David are found throughout the village, and Hebrew words slip through the local dialect.
Locals have always considered the Savaguchi family very unusual: many of them had blue eyes, and the clan also owned a strange family heirloom: a Mediterranean grape press. However, when asked to share their potentially saintly 2,000-year ancestry, Savaguchi ignored the question, telling reporters that they "can believe what they like." In fact, none of this really matters to the Savaguchi, who, after all, are of the Shinto and Buddhist faiths. However, the local legend of Jesus the immigrant attracts tourists to the region. Every June, people gather for a large celebration near the burial sites, singing Jewish and Japanese folk songs. All this takes place within the framework of the Bon Festival.
Hardly anyone will say that there is at least a tiny grain of truth in this legend. But the fact remains that there is an "unrecorded" 12-year period in the New Testament. Also, once there was allegedly a real biblical relic that confirms the story - the Takeuchi scrolls, which "surfaced" in the 1930s, but then disappeared during World War II. The Jesus Museum in Shingo now contains records of lost documents that only the oldest locals remember.
Most historians believe that this legend is just a high-profile publicity stunt invented in the 1930s by Shingo Mayor Denjiro Sasaki, who at the time "very successfully" made a discovery by finding various ancient pyramids. But instead of sinking into oblivion after a while, this story is increasingly woven into the identity of a village dominated by Buddhism.
Christianity here is not a religious practice, but a tourist attraction that keeps the local economy alive. Therefore, the people of Shingo revere a person whom they consider not a son of God, but rather a "professional virtue" (there is another local legend that says that Jesus traveled very long distances in search of food for the villagers). He was a "big man" in Japan, but he was not a prophet at all.
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