By: Ringo Bones
If all of this were supported by historical facts, then the
so-called “Japanese Jesus” site could be one of the safest of the so-called “Holy-Land
Tour” destinations tours given that Jerusalem has been hard to get into by the
casual “Jesus Tourist” since the establishment of the State of the Israel and
the resulting conflict with the local Palestinians. And the recent Syrian Civil
War has since denied access to the other Syrian holy sites frequented by Jesus
and his disciples during their heyday not to mention Turkish holy-land sites
are getting increasing hard to get to by the casual “Jesus Tourist”, it seems
that the remote Japanese hamlet of Shingo is the safest holy-land tour
/ Jesus Tourism Tour destination at present.
Although unsubstantiated tales of Jesus Christ surviving the
crucifixion and living out the rest of his days in either the South of France
and / or present-day Austria are the most popular, tales about Jesus living out
the rest of his days in some remote mountain hamlet in Northern Japan – though relatively
unknown – seems to have gained scholarly credibility in recent years. The tales
of the so-called “Japanese Jesus” or “Ninja Jesus” turning mountain spring
water directly into sake have nonetheless had its adherents, although of it
becoming into the next popular Japanese Anime series and / or Hollywood blockbuster
seems unlikely, evidence pointing to the existence of the so-called Japanese
Jesus seems to hard to ignore.
The legend goes that on the flat top of a steep hill in a
distant corner of Northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who two
millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmer’s
daughter named Miyuko and fathered three kids and died at a ripe old age of
106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, he’s remembered by the name Daitenku
Taro Jurai – the rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ.
A bucolic backwater with only one Christian resident – an elderly
man named Toshiko Sato, who was 77 years old when Smithsonian Magazine
contributor Franz Lidz last visited him during the spring of 2012 – and no
Christian church within 30 miles, the remote Japanese hamlet of Shingo
nevertheless bills itself as Kirisuto no Sato (Christ’s Hometown). Every year
20,000 or so pilgrims and pagans visit the site, which is maintained by a
nearby yogurt factory. Some visitors shell-out the 100-yen entrance fee at the
Legend of Christ Museum – a trove of religious relics that sells everything
from Jesus coasters to coffee mugs. Some participate in the so-called Springtime
Christian Festival, which is a mash-up of multidenominational rites in which
kimono-clad women dance around the twin graves and chant a three-line litany in
an unknown language. The ceremony, designed to console the spirit of Jesus, has
been staged by the local tourism bureau since 1964.
