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When Westerners watch anime for the first time, they are often struck by what seem to be random uses of Judeo-Christian religious elements. The concept of angels and demons comes to mind, as well as the use of "Western" religious symbols and symbolism (pentagrams, hexagrams, crosses, colors, etc…). This could be just a flair for the "exotic" on the part of the Japanese, or it could be a much more deeply rooted ideology that sprang from the fusion of Shinto (the traditional religion of Japan) and Judaism.
There has always been a movement among prominent anthropological researchers to discover the true origins of the Japanese people (as yet undecided in current times), and recently a fascinating link has been discovered. The first Western influences to be introduced to Japan may have come as early as a wandering tribe of Israelites well before Common Era. In fact, these ancient Israelites may be in part the ancestors of the Japanese people, or at least very closely blood-related. While there are yet to be any published findings of hard-core scientific research(1) (DNA testing, genotyping, etc…) there has been much cultural research done into the similarities of these two seemingly diverse peoples.
The origin of the theory, that the Hebrew and the Japanese are possibly one and the same, stems from the fact that there were once twelve tribes of Israel. Two were the ancestors of who we consider the Jews of today; they remained in their homeland of Judah (now modern Israel) while the ten other tribes were banished to Assyria (and lands beyond) around 722 B.C.E., and dubbed "The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." Through the diligent work of anthropologists the world-over, nine of the lost tribes and their descendants have been accounted for, in steadily increasing distances to the east from their original homeland. The most recent was discovered in Kaifeng, China, where there has been a thriving Jewish community since B.C.E. Only one tribe remains to be discovered, and researchers wisely turned their attentions to China's cousin, Japan.
Through a comparison of Shinto religious traditions and Japanese social customs with Jewish religious traditions and social customs, one can clearly see that there must be some kind of relationship. For instance, in a common version of one of Shinto's oldest and most popular legends, the story of the vain sun goddess Amaterasu, noticeable similarities can be seen between religious chants of the Shinto priests and Hebrew priests. Shinto legend tells us that Amaterasu once locked herself away in a cave, and the world fell into darkness. The other gods, needing the light of the sun for the world, gathered around the entrance of her cave and with a priest chanted, "Hi, fu, mi, yo, itsu, mu, nana, ya, kokono, towo," to make the sun goddess come out of her cave. This is also a common method of counting in Japanese today, although the Japanese acknowledge they do not know the origin of the words. The striking similarity here lies in the fact that this phrase, when pronounced, very closely resembles the phrase in Hebrew, "Hifa mi yotsia ma na'ne y'kakhena tavo," which means, literally "The beautiful (Goddess). Who will bring her out? What should we call out (in chorus) to entice her to come?" This meaning undeniably fits the situation in this legend.
Other examples of how many words in both ancient and modern Hebrew and Japanese share similar pronunciations and meaning are:
1. "anata" meaning "you (informal)" is both the same in Hebrew and Japanese
2. "Koyane" the name of the Shinto priest in the above legend, bears a resemblance to the Hebrew word for priest, "kohen"
3. "hazukashime" in Japanese, and "hadak hashem" in Hebrew both mean "shame" or "disgrace"
4. "Mikado" meaning "emperor" in Japanese, and "migadol" meaning "the noble" in Hebrew
5. "nushi" meaning the same in Japanese as "nasi" in Hebrew - "leader"
Thousands of other words which possibly share a root origin in Hebrew can be found in Joseph Eidelberg's book, The Japanese and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. In about ninety percent of cases, the words are undeniably related.
(1)There has been work by Professor Tanemoto Furuhata of Tokyo University's forensic medicine department into the similarities of blood types found amongst the Japanese and Hebrew peoples, as well as genetic investigation in France that possibly uncovered proof that the Y-chromosome is the same size in the Japanese as the Hebrew peoples. However, these findings have not yet been conclusively stated and published, as far as I know.
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