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What was Jesus doing in Japan?

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Despite an abundance of scholarly efforts in search of the historical Jesus in recent years, not much is known about him, except that he was born in Palestine around 4 B.C.E., began his ministry around 28 C.E., and was tried and executed by Roman officials around 30 C.E.1 This means that much of what has been transmitted to us about Jesus comes from the accounts of his life recorded in the Gospels. How reliable, then, are the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life?

Modern research has established the writing of the Gospels to have been around 70-90 C.E.: Mark, circa 70, Luke and Matthew, circa 85, and John, circa 90. Carsten Peter Thiede, a German archeologist and New Testament scholar, in his 1996 book, claims that the Gospels according to Mark and Matthew were written around 70 C.E., making them potential eyewitnesses in their accounts of the life of Jesus.2 However, consensus opinions among Biblical scholars are: (1) The Gospel narratives were composed from the oral traditions at least 40 years after the death of Jesus; (2) Each of the Gospels brings together parables, stories, and theological assertions that existed earlier in oral form; (3) The New Testament authors, whoever they may have been, interpreted Jesus in light of various images and beliefs from the Hebrew Scriptures.3

The efforts to make connections with the Hebrew tradition, however, seem to have led to some contradictions among the four Gospels. For example, in tracing Joseph’s descent from King David, Matthew counts twenty-eight intermediate generations, while Luke counts forty-one generations. The last words of Jesus on the cross are: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew and Mark quoting from Psalm 22), “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke quoting from Psalm 31) and “It is finished.” (John).

The New Testament transforms the historical Jesus, the son of Mary, into Christ, the Son of God. This transformation is contingent on two “miraculous” stories about his birth and about his death: the Nativity (the Virgin Birth) and the Resurrection (which is followed by his Ascension into Heaven, leaving with the disciples the promise of his return as the Messiah). These stories, while defying modern scientific explanations, are nevertheless crucial for the birth of Christianity. Thus, Paul writes about the importance of the Resurrection in his first Epistles to Corinthians: “And if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” (I Corinthians 15:14)

Careful reading of the Gospel accounts does not help us to clear up controversies surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, for the Gospel themselves contain some inconsistencies. Who announces the resurrection? Matthew says it was an angel, but Mark says it was a messenger in a robe. In Luke the messenger becomes two angels, and in John one of the angels becomes Jesus himself. To whom did Jesus appear first after the resurrection? Matthew says it was to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, but Luke says it was to Peter. Where did Jesus appear after the resurrection? Matthew says it was in Galilee, but Luke says it was in Jerusalem.

While the Gospels talk about the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross, what happened actually? Speculations abound as to what happened to Jesus after execution. “Probably eaten by the dogs and crows”, says John Dominic Crossan in his Who Killed Jesus?4 Needless to say, this is an extreme view—a blasphemous one at that for Christians, for it implies that Jesus’ body was dumped into a common, shallow grave along with those of other criminals. His point is that the Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus should be read with caution as they reflect the Anti-Semitism of the Gospel writers.

“He was not actually dead”, says Barbara Thiering in her Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls.5 According to Thiering, Jesus was a wicked priest, actually crucified in Qunran and buried in a cave by the Dead Sea. But he was not actually dead, but only appeared dead, thanks to a slow-acting poison administered to him on the cross. Later, Simon Magus, a magician, gave Jesus a purgative to revive him. The revived Jesus went on to marry Mary Magdalene, father three children, divorce her, and then marry Lydia. He eventually died in Rome.

A variation of Thiering’s story is the one that puts the revived Jesus not in Galilee or Jerusalem but in a small village called Shingo in Aomori Prefecture in Japan.6 According to the story told among the Shingo villagers, Jesus first came to Japan at age 21 to study theology and returned to Judea at age 33, explaining what Jesus was doing during the twelve years missing from the Gospel accounts of his life. Jesus avoided execution on the cross by switching places with his brother, called Isukiri by the Shingo villagers, and fled back to Japan. After arriving in Japan, Jesus adopted a new identity, married a Japanese woman, fathered three children, and died at the ripe old age of 106. After his death, the graves were built to bury his remains and part of his brother’s remains, said to be one of his ears.

Considering the distance over which Jesus had to travel in an age when intercontinental jet flights were not available and the fact that the official contact with Christianity did not take place until 1549 when Francis Xavier reached the southern tip of Kyushu after journeying three months by ship from Goa, the story of the revived Jesus living the rest of his life in Japan may be another “miraculous”, or “fantastic”, story about his life that defies rational explanation. The story could be interpreted as a wishful projection by the Shingo villagers of a religious leader who, like Jesus, championed the cause of the poor and the persecuted and preached love and peace to conquer over enmity and hatred. It is quite possible that someone like him actually existed. Remarkably, the “fantastic” story about Jesus’ two travels to Japan is still preserved in the form of the Tomb of Christ and the Legend of Christ Museum in the Shingo village. A more reasonable explanation for the presence of the tomb and the museum dedicated to Jesus would be the paucity of other tourist attractions in this small northern village, consisting most of farmers. Like other rural villages and towns in Japan, Shingo had to come up with an innovative idea to revive its economy faced with the aging of its population.

While the number of Christians accounts for less than one percent of the population, the Japanese have adopted Christmas as an important day for them, especially for children as they expect to receive presents from their parents, and exchange gifts with their friends. Whether Japanese children know about the significance of Christmas, or whose birthday it is, is quite another story. Thus, Christmas in Japan is another example of absorption and adaptation of foreign culture by the Japanese into their own. While what Jesus was doing in Japan two thousand years ago is shrouded in mystery, what Jesus is doing in Japan today is quite clear: His birthday is treated as a huge commercial opportunity for businesses and merchants with special Christmas sales of all kinds of products, from electric gadgets for children to fancy clothes for year-end parties for young adults, to trips to resort hotels for mature adults and seniors. What tends to be forgotten by the commercialization of Christmas is, however, Jesus’ teaching of love and peace, which is certainly more important than what we got or did on Christmas, and needs to be observed in the fragmented and conflict-ridden world today, whether we are Christians or not.

  1. See, for example, Brown, Raymond E., The Death of the Messiah, New York: Doubleday, 1994, Chilton, Bruce, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, New York: Image Books, 2000, and Vermes, Geza, The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Penguin, 2010.
  2. Thiede, Carsten Peter, Eyewitness to Jesus, New York: Doubleday, 1996.
  3. The Old Testament records Ezekiel’s vision of the four creatures: “As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side: they four also had the face of an eagle.” (Ezekiel 1:10). During the second century these four faces came to be associated with the four Gospel writers—a man with Matthew, a lion with Mark, an ox with Luke, and an eagle with John.
  4. Crossan, John Dominic, Who Killed Jesus? The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus, San Francisco: HarperOne, 1996.
  5. Thiering, Barbara, Jesus of the Apocalypse: The Life of Jesus after the Resurrection, New York: Doubleday, 1995.
  6. Lidz, Franz, “Land of the Rising Son”, Smithsonian, January 2013.

Cheering on the other WTO

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization that sets up the rules of international trade among member states, monitors the trade policies and practices of member states for their compliance with the international agreements, and mediates the trade disputes between member states if and when such disputes arise. WTO came into being in 1995 to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), created in 1947, that had been responsible for promoting free trade among nations in the post-World War II world economy by reducing tariffs and removing other restrictive trade practices. The idea of free trade promoted by GATT and WTO has been largely responsible for the phenomenal increase in the volume of international trade not only in goods and services but also in information.

While the World Trade Organization is well known as it is often in the news in today’s world of global capitalism, there is another international organization with the same abbreviation of WTO. Although not as well known as the World Trade Organization, this is the World Toilet Organization, which was founded on November 19, 2001, with the inaugural World Toilet Summit held in Singapore. The World Toilet Organization, or the other WTO, is committed itself to the task of promoting sanitary toilets as it was the unsanitary condition of toilets in the world, especially in the developing part of the world, that was behind the formation of this international organization. With the resolution passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2013, November 19 is now officially recognized as the World Toilet Day to bring the attention of the people all over the world to the importance of keeping sanitary toilets.

Even in the developed part of the world, toilets were not as sanitary as they are today. As a matter of fact, the word gofujyo is one of the polite expressions the Japanese used to refer to their toilets. The word gofuujyo actually consists of two words: go and fujyo. Fujyo is a familiar word for the Japanese who have read the Heart Sutra, or heard it recited, for the expression “fuku fujyo” appears in it, which is usually translated as “neither defiled nor immaculate”. Go, on the other hand, is an honorific word that is used to pay respect to whatever word that comes after it. Thus, gosho, which combines go with sho, the word that means “a place”, is the word the Japanese employ to refer to “the imperial palace”. Gofujyo, with go combined with fujyo, is therefore a polite way of saying “a place that is not immaculate”, suggesting that toilets in Japan used to be regarded as unsanitary places, which is understandable, considering that pit toilets had long been the most common type of toilets until the introduction of water closets in the twentieth century.

The Japanese perception of a toilet as a place that is not immaculate has since been radically changed with the widespread use of water closets. As with other imported products, water closets have gone through revisions and improvements in the hands of Japanese manufacturing firms. With the widespread usage of water closets, especially the type of toilets called “washlets”, Japanese toilets in private homes as well as in public places such as parks, train stations and airports have been turned into clean, even immaculate, places. As a result, the word gofujyo has gone out of circulation among the Japanese, replaced more and more by the word, toilet, which the Japanese condense into toire.

Keeping toilets clean and immaculate is very important to prevent diarrhea and other diseases that are caused by unsanitary toilets. According to WTO—the other WTO, that is—there are still over 1 billion people in the world who practice open defecation, including in such countries as China and India, despite the fact that these countries are now ready to join the selected club of developed nations with their remarkable achievement in economic development in recent decades. As a matter of fact, the practice of open defecation in India, which Mahatma Gandhi lamented some 90 years ago, has become so repugnant to residents and tourists alike that Narendra Modi, who became the prime minister this May, initiated a “Clean India” campaign to make toilets and clean water available to all Indians by 2019, urging all citizens to join him. Needless to say, it takes more than a government-led campaign to realize the goal set by Modi, for India will have to invest heavily in building the necessary infrastructure for sewage treatment, not to mention that for securing clean water supply and garbage disposal. But Modi’s “Clean India” campaign is a good start if it helps to cultivate awareness among the Indians about the need to have a clean living environment for sustainable development. It would be indeed a real accomplishment for the Indians when India, the country that gave us the Heart Sutra, can claim on the World Toilet Day in 2019 that their toilets are clean and sanitary, if not totally immaculate.