In the city of Matsumoto of Nagano Prefecture in Japan, there is an old shrine called Suwa Taisha. This is a very big and strange shrine for us Japanese too in some reasons.

This shrine has a very unique and famous festival valled Onbashira Festival.  How unique is it ?  Maybe words can’t tell it exactly, but it’s a super strange festival for us too. 

Onbashira Festival is held once in 7 years.  This festival’s purpose is carrying 4 tall tree poles from woods to the shrine as tributes to god. In the process of carrying 4 poles, large number of people march on shouting loud and sometimes keeping quiet. In the late part of the march, poles are slided down off a steep slope by the large number of people.  The people try to ride on the tree poles on the slope and they slide together with poles to the bottom with very fast speed.  It’s a dangerous part of the festival, actually some people ever died in the part.

But people there don’t stop this festival. In the time of 7 years end, people get together there and carry big tree poles from woods as if it was a promise with their god. Poles are carried to the shrine and they believe they work for god. 

This festival has started today.  Until the poles reach at the shrine, Suwa Taisha, the festival will go on for 4 weeks or so.

As an interesting story, this shrine, Suwa Taisha, is said to be related wtih old time of Israel. Of course, people around there don’t know it, but some academic people point out the undeniable facts. In Japanese pole is called HASHIRA, and this festival shown poeple believe that God rests with the Hashira. So they carry the poles to the shrine by the promise of the god.  In Hebrew, pole is called Ashira ( Not sure on spelling ) and old jewish people also believe the tree pole is equal to God.  And the festival is similar to the story written in the old testament of Judaism. ” They carried large tree poles from Lebanon to Jerusalem to build the Shrine”.

Near Suwa Taisha shrine, there is a mountian. This shrine sees the mountian as its God. This mountian’s name is MORIYA ( Moriah), which means holy place in Israel.

Also, this shrines has some more festivals and one of them is especially unique. It’s called Ontosai, which means Holy Head Festival.  This has been changed a little with the times but the original of this Ontosai festival was as follows.

A high rank priest trys to kill a child lying before him with a sharp knife. Suddenly the other priest comes up to stop killing the child. Instead of it, the other priest offers 75 deer heads as dedication to god. 

This festival is very similar to the old testament story of chapter 22 in Genesis, when Abraham tries to kill Isac for god,  but he is stopped by the man from god. In stead of killing Isac, he dedicated 75 sheep. 

As above, the festival story is really close.  Probably nobody can deny there was a big influence from Judaism or old Israel when Japanese religion was formed.

As stated, maybe it’s really hard to deny all of the facts. Certainly recently we have more consensus among new academic people of Japan and Israel as Japan or Japanese Shinto religion was formed by Jewish people who came in Japan in the ancient time.  Some say that the Jewish probably came 4 to 5 times over some hundred years duration.  First group arrived and formed basic Japanese religion, and the later groups completed it. Also later groups of the Jewish were supposed to be Primitive Christians who believed Christianity at the very first stage of its birth.

This is a big taboo story, but some do believe it. Why Taboo ? The answer is easy, if Japan was formed by the power of Jewish people, the hisotry and identify of Japanses people would be totally different. It means Japan needs to revise its history…including the origin of Japanese people, religion, and the origin of Emperor of Japan…Maybe. There are more proofs of influence of the Jewish in Japanese history, it’s too many to show all of them.

Probably this will not be resulted in one answer forever. But the arguement about the origin of Japan and its people is still covered by historical mistery… this is the only truth.