Japanese Ancestors are Jewish ?
This question is often heard in Japan. If you are not familiar to Japanese customs, you would make negative reaction. That’s what most of Japanese do, too.
However, with a little more quest on Japanese culture and history, you may have a different answer to this question.
In Japan there are so many traditional culture and customs that may be influenced by Jewish culture.
First of all, we use Japanese character for writing. In the character, there are so many similar shaped words and similar pronunciation’s, and similar meaning. It’s said that similarity is found in more than 2000 words.
We Japanese are called ” YAMATO” ethnic group. Nobody knows why we say YAMAO. To our surprise, in Hebrew, Ya-Umato ( or similar pronunciation ) seems to mean child of God. Japanese believe our country is where God lives. Is this just a co-incidence ?
In Japanese names of places, there are so many Jewish names, which means Hebrew pronunciation is used as it is. For example, we have Mt. Moriya, but Moriya is also a pronunciation of Hebrew. Also in the ancient Japanese folk songs or old tales, we use many words whose meanings are not clear. We sing or read them just on the sound the words have just because we learn so from our parents or teachers.
The next website explains well about these facts.
http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~magi9/isracame.htm
In Kyoto, the ancient city of Japan, has long history festival every year. The festival term and purpose are exactly same as Jewish festival held in the ancient time. And festival’s name is called Gion Festival whose pronunciation is really close to Zion. They in the festival carry a big Mikoshi ( photo ). Mikoshi is really like the ARC of the COEVNANT. Many people carry it on their shoulders and they shout ” wasshoi, essa, saiya” ( again, these meaning of the words are not known to us, we just say so ) while they are strolling and shouting in the street. A Jewish ambassador once said on Japanese TV that ESSA means CARRY in Hebrew. Mikoshi has 2 poles under the body, and the shape is very similar to the ARC. There are many festivals in Japan, which are held at the same term as Kyoto Gion Festival, and at most of the festivals, a Mikoshi is carried on the shoulders of men. This Mikoshi style festival is Japan’s traditional form. We first noticed that Mikoshi has similar shape with the Arc when someone pointed it out some years ago.
We use salt when we make things pure. For example, we put salt in front of the gate, which means the purity of the house. Like that, Sumo wrestlers use salt and water before the fights. It means they make the ground of fight pure by salt and water. We Japanese soon understand what they do with salt and water. No other foreign countries’ people understand what it means. But I hear the only Jewish understand that meaning completely as we do.
These stories about us and Jewish people are only a few examples. Some University professors in Japan say ” it’s already a truth that Japanese at least had a very big relation with Jewish people long time ago”. Many don’t believe Japanese testimony about the jewish relationship. But it’s also true that many books are written by real Jewish people and they all say that Japanese culture absolutely has many things in common with Jewish Culture. We can’t totally deny it as far as Jewish people say it.
Although this is just a tale from someone interested in Jewish culture, years ago Rothschild family came to Japan under secret travel. They saw many many Jewish like events and cultures in Japan. Many of them are already faded even in Israel, but in Japan the tradition of Jewish culture remained. The family of Rothschild got amazed at the facts. They never thought that Japan had something to do with their tradition. After some days tour in Japan, a news paper article wrote about Mr. Rothschild. He said in the article ” I adore Japan. I respect Japan.”
I’ve not read this article, but I saw this article’s photo of Mr. Rothschild somewhere.
Anyway, these stories are only some samples. The more we know about the relations, the more we get surprised with the similarity between two nations. Please look at this site for more information—-http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~magi9/isracame.htm
