In 1936, in this town, Shingou, in Northern Japan, a man named Wado had an amazing discovery.
He'd found Jesus.
Not found Jesus like your cousin Bobby in her 30's after a particularly rough patch,
but like physically found Jesus. His corpse, his bones, his tomb.
And what's more than that, he found the ear of his
Japanese crucified brother Isukiri, and a lock of Mary Magdalene's hair.
And, even more surprising than that, about a hundred meters away,
he found a pyramid that he says was older than the Mayans and the Egyptians. So, a pretty big day for Wado.
Not as big as the day in the 1970's when he would contact a UFO on live TV,
but a pretty big day, nevertheless. Now, I know what you're thinking. It seems a little fishy.
I've been burned before by fake mounds containing Jesus' bones, and I'm going to need some more evidence.
I don't blame you. It can be a little
difficult to believe that Jesus' brother Isukiri was crucified on the cross,
sneakily allowing Jesus to slip through Siberia, up here to become a rice farmer in Northern Japan.
I could see why you might not believe that. But luckily Wado has you covered.
See, Wado didn't come up with the story all by himself.
He was actually relying on a series of documents provided to him by a local farmer named Takenouchi.
Takenouchi claimed that these documents he found were translated to Japanese over
2000 years ago, and they definitively proved that Christ was buried here in town. The fact that
this area wasn't Japanese 2000 years ago, and didn't have a writing system, that didn't really bug Wado.
Similarly, it didn't really bother him that,
well, the writing was written in 1800's farmer vernacular,
and it was signed, "Jesus, the Father of Christmas". Those are the types of details that matter more to someone who's unable to contact
UFOs with their mind.
Not Wado, but all joking aside, this is a pretty interesting story.
Not because it's true, of course, that part is fairly clear.
But because it speaks to a side of the foreign world that I think is rarely discussed or noticed, which is
conspiracy theories.
It almost seems like other countries can't have that sort of thing, but of course they do, just like here.
And what's more interesting to me or truly fascinating is that they seem to stick to the same symbols that our conspiracy theorists do.
UFOs,
Jesus,
the pyramids.
There's just something about these symbols that sticks out in that kind of mind.
What's more, I find it interesting to compare the story of this farmer who created these self-serving lies that went nowhere,
with those who created lies that went somewhere. It's interesting to me that the amount of people who believe a lie
changes how we're allowed to talk about it. It's really easy to dismiss Takenouchi's
documents and the gullibility of Wado, but it's harder to do so with
Scientology, or Mormonism,
or the Moonies. But their stories were no less unbelievable. They just gained traction at an early stage.
Wado's attempt at cultism failed, but others have succeeded and therein lies the difference.
Who was the audience?
Who was around when the story was told? Because here in this part of Japan,
Christian missionaries were once referred to as vipers.
Even with Jesus' tomb so close,
there's maybe one Christian in town.
Japan itself is about one percent Christian.
The soil just wasn't ready for the seed. My main point is to question, where do we draw the line?
If Wado had been from a town with a more pliable religious background,
would he have thousands of followers today? Would he be considered a martyr?
Or would he remain what he was,
another UFO hopeful embarrassing himself on live television?
It's hard to say really.
There are literally thousand of people living today who claim to be Jesus, or know
secrets of the Bible untold. With the internet being what it is,
communities can pop up on just about anything and conspiracy spreads just as fast as real information. The life of an astronaut is
riddled with people who believe the Earth is flat to the point that they're willing to send death threats.
It's ridiculous, but I don't think it's going anywhere.
As long as there's people willing to lie to others just to feel that much more special, we'll always have a Takenouchi,
or a Smith, or a Hubbard.
It's up to us to differentiate between those beliefs that give us hope in the face of our
mortality and those that are just asking us to cough up some dough.
This is Rare Earth.
But it's not Jesus Christ.
I find it really interesting. *beep* It's not even the opening line. There's a lot of me saying **** on the b-roll by the way.
*laughs*