XPost: alt.religion, alt.religion.christianity, alt.christian.religion   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Religious sites, relics indicate Christ beat Buddha to Japan   
      
   by Rob Gilhooly   
      
       Jul 24, 2001   
      
   In 1949, former Kyoto University professor Sakae Ikeda wrote a letter   
   in a Japanese newspaper requesting help. “Whoever may want to help   
   reintroduce Nestorianism . . . to Japan . . . is requested to write   
   me,” the letter pleads.   
      
   The idea of “reintroducing” Nestorian Christianity here might seem   
   surprising taking into account the official history textbook line that   
   Christianity was introduced here by Francis Xavier in 1549.   
      
   Yet, Ikeda is one of a number of scholars who claim the Nestorian   
   Church, or Church of the East, arrived in Japan over 1,000 years   
   before St. Francis was even born.   
      
   “Through the Church of the East,” Ikeda continues in his letter, “the   
   missionary enterprise of the Christian faith flourished in Japan . . .   
   (and) exerted not a little influence on the culture.”   
      
   A contemporary proponent of this theory is Japan-born American Ken   
   Joseph, whose ancestors were among the missionaries who brought   
   Christianity to the Far East around 1,500 years ago.   
      
   Over 50 years of research on the subject by Joseph and his father   
   culminated in the publishing of a book this year, “Jujika no kuni —   
   Nihon” (Japan: The Nation of the Cross), in which the authors tell the   
   largely hidden story of early Christianity in Japan and introduce   
   Christian sites throughout the nation.   
      
   Yet, Joseph says it was the uncovering of the Da Qin monastery in   
   Xian, China that has provided the most conclusive evidence that the   
   church made it here. The two Chinese characters for Da Qin, he says,   
   correspond to “Uzumasa” in Japanese. Uzumasa-dera is one of the names   
   given to a Kyoto temple long thought to have once been a place of   
   Christian worship. Even today there are remnants there indicating its   
   Christian past, Joseph says.   
      
   Built at the beginning of the 7th century, the temple, better known   
   today as Koryu-ji, was founded by Hata no Kawakatsu, a member of the   
   influential Hata family, whose more important members are thought to   
   have arrived in Japan from Korea in AD 400.   
      
   However, in a book penned in the 1960s, Kyoto professor Ikeda claims   
   that the Hata clan were from Turkestan. “The Hatas were a Nestorian   
   tribe who . . . migrated to Japan via China and Korea in search of   
   religious freedom,” Ikeda writes. “Although they were persecuted by   
   Buddhists in both China and Korea, they were granted full freedom in   
   all but name from the time of their arrival.”   
      
   The temple also housed a shrine to St. David and a holy well upon   
   which stood a sacred tripod symbolizing the holy Trinity, Ikeda says.   
   A tripod, built in the style of a triangular “torii,” can still be   
   seen at the temple today.   
      
   Koryu-ji was one of the sites Joseph visited for his book. Others   
   included Horyu-ji temple in Nara Prefecture, originally built in 607   
   by order of Prince Shotoku, a good friend of Hata no Kawakatsu.   
   Although the temple was destroyed by fire in 670, a part of a beam   
   survives and is today stored in the Tokyo National Museum. On the beam   
   is inscribed what are thought to be two Nestorian crosses.   
      
   Joseph also visited a graveyard in Kyushu housing an 8th-century   
   tombstone on which a similar cross was engraved, and “Christ’s Grave”   
   in Gunma Prefecture, which legend says is the place where Christ was   
   laid to rest.   
      
   Upon meeting with the owner of the land on which the burial site is   
   erected, Joseph asked if perhaps there were a more “credible”   
   explanation for its origin. “He eventually conceded that the site was   
   the burial place of early Christian missionaries,” Joseph says.   
      
   Written evidence of an early Christian presence has been noted by   
   other scholars. Yoshiro Saeki, known as the father of research on the   
   Eastern Church, wrote two books on Nestorianism in the early 1900s.   
      
   While both concentrate largely on interpreting relics and documents   
   found in China, Saeki, who studied both the Persian and Syriac   
   languages at Oxford University to help his studies in Eastern   
   Christianity, also notes Imperial records in Japan that mark the visit   
   of a Persian missionary to Nara in AD 736.   
      
   Saeki believes this man, who was granted an audience with the Emperor   
   and is said to have received “Imperial favors,” to be the father of   
   Yesbuzid, who erected the Nestorian Monument in China (see main   
   story).   
      
   What’s more, in his book “Nestorian Missionary Enterprise,” British   
   scholar John Stewart says that it was through the teachings of this   
   Persian visitor that Empress Komyo (701-760) was “led to embrace   
   Christianity.”   
      
   The legacy of the early Christians lives on in the Japanese customs   
   and language of today. Saeki believed that the origin of the word   
   “Uzumasa” was taken from the Aramaic “Yeshu Mesiach,” meaning “Jesus   
   messiah.”   
      
   Indeed, Hebrew words and phrases are not uncommon in Japanese folk   
   songs and stories, according to Ikuro Teshima, a disciple of Saeki’s.   
   In a paper on the subject, Teshima states that in a song in the famous   
   children’s story “Momotaro,” the line “En Yalah Yah” appears. The   
   meaning in Hebrew is “I praise God,” Teshima says.   
      
   What’s more, the August festival of Obon was influenced by the   
   Nestorian Christian’s All Souls festival, and Buddhist ceremonies held   
   at the monastic site of Mount Koya still incorporate the making of the   
   sign of the cross, Joseph said. “I spoke to a priest there who said   
   that while most of the Christian forms in Shingon Buddhism have gone,   
   some still remain.”   
      
   Another unusual feature on Koya-san is a replica of the Nestorian   
   Monument, which was erected in the 1940s by Nestorian scholar E.A.   
   Gordon. Joseph says he was told by a priest there that Koya-san in   
   fact was originally a Christian monastery.   
      
   “The traditional view is that the only thing to arrive in Japan via   
   the Silk Road was Buddhism,” Joseph stated. “No one ever challenges   
   that. It’s simple logic that all kinds of people must have come into   
   Japan — including the early Christians. Whereas the Chinese embrace   
   their cosmopolitan past, the Japanese tend to ignore it.”   
      
   Like Ikeda’s letter 50 years before them, the Josephs have received a   
   number of contacts since the publication of their book. One woman, who   
   was born and raised in a Kyoto temple, told of an episode in her   
   childhood when her grandfather revealed the “hidden treasures” of the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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