[music playing]
NARRATOR: Hitachi Province, Japan, 1803.
Local fishermen on the Harayadori Shore
spot an unusual craft drifting in the distance.
When the vessel washes ashore, they are astonished
by what they witness.
NICK POPE: This craft was likened to the shape
of a Japanese incense burner.
It is almost literally a flying disk, a flying saucer.
On the outside of this craft were multiple small metal
plates, not too dissimilar to heat-resistant tiles
that you'd find, say, on a space shuttle.
NICK REDFERN: A hatch opened, and a young woman came out
of the craft dressed in clothes that had never been seen
before, and speaking a language that nobody
understood in the slightest.
DAVID CHILDRESS: When they looked inside the craft,
they could see hieroglyphs and strange writing
all inside of the craft.
NICK POPE: The story of the strange Utsuro-bune craft
appears in three different Japanese texts.
Even today, modern historians struggle
to understand what this means.
Nobody can really decipher this.
DAVID CHILDRESS: Japanese today are
very familiar with this story, and to them, this
is a curious story of one of the gods of their ancestry
who had somehow arrived there on the island
in this mysterious craft, and then departed.
NARRATOR: Could the Utsuro-bune incident
have marked the return of extraterrestrial beings
that were present in Japan in the distant past?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and claim further evidence can be found by examining
a strange monolithic stone that many believe was carved
to resemble the very craft that have been visiting
Japan for thousands of years.
Asuka Park, Japan, April, 2017.
Does that say rock ship?
Masuda rock ship.
Oh, all right.
NARRATOR: Giorgio Tsoukalos and ancient astronaut theorist
Takeharu Mikami set out to examine Masuda-no-Iwafune,
an 800-ton rock structure that was carved
from a single piece of granite, and resembles
no other architecture in Japan.
Hey, check out this square grid on the sides.
I mean, this is something that I've seen before
in India, in Mahabalipuram.
And they had something very similar
on the side of some of their rocks, as well.
I can't wait to see the top. - Yeah.
[inaudible] - Amazing.
Oh, man.
TAKEHARU MIKAMI: Whoa.
[japanese] - Wow.
That is-- I mean, I've never seen anything like it.
NARRATOR: While some researchers believe
the Masuda-no-Iwafune megalith is a tomb,
others claim it is meant to depict
the sky boats that are described in ancient Japanese stories.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: So the idea is that this was the entrance
to a Buddhist temple.
What do they mean by that?
Inside-- I mean, where?
TAKEHARU MIKAMI: It would actually predate Buddhism
in Japan, so it wouldn't have anything
to do with Buddhist temples.
Right, so what is the actual translation
of Masuda-no-Iwafune?
[speaking japanese]
Masuda is the name of a region,
and Iwafune literally means stone ship, or a rock ship.
OK.
MAN: [speaking japanese] TAKEHARU MIKAMI: Yes.
It's naturally the Iwafune or the rock ship
would have come down from the heavens
as a vehicle for the gods to descend upon earth.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: So I guess with the combination
of those mythologies of celestial beings,
this could be some type of representation of one
of those flying vehicles that our ancestors
perhaps witnessed.