Christ's Odyssey to Shingo
If it's mostly made up, why argue?
Jesus said, "There was a rich man who had much money. He said, 'I shall put my money to use so that I may sow, reap, plant, and fill my storehouse with produce, with the result that I shall lack nothing.' Such were his intentions, but that same night he died. Let him who has ears hear."
Gospel of Thomas, Saying 63
One of my favorite bits of Christian esoterica is in Japan, which is one of those things that I’ve just come to accept is going to be a constant in my life. There are so many weird Mall Samurai over here that admitting one’s love for Japanese folklore as an American is a live grenade. The issue is that it’s just about impossible to engage with Buddhism without becoming familiar with East Asian philosophy, which usually means learning a bunch of stuff about some really cool monks. And I feel like I can’t understand the monks unless I read and contextualize their struggle with their history.
Therefore, my interest in Japan is inseparable from my understanding of God, and particularly my love for the Mahayana tradition. I’ve yet to find a way to engage with Buddhism that doesn’t overlap with immersing oneself in the literature and folklore of East Asia. I hesitate to declare myself anything — experiencing God is a lifelong phenomenon that takes on many forms and beliefs, as the great prophets have noted throughout history — but if you put a gun to my head I’d tell you I’m a Mahayana Buddhist. So, knowing stuff about Japan comes with the territory, and it’s my responsibility to consult with the Fudo Myo-o to mitigate “weeb” behavior.
I try to engage with East Asian folklore in the same way I have engaged with Ethiopian and Jamaican folklore while working on my writing: avoid appropriation or exoticism, and instead look to threads of commonality. It’s easier than one might think with Ethiopia, given the oldest Christian tradition on Earth — once you embrace the implications of its unique Christological doctrine, the differences in Western Christian cultures place emphasis on or value becomes starker and fascinating to trace backwards. There are recognizable markers for the uninitiated amongst an otherwise vastly different culture. It’s a bit more difficult in East Asia, however, where “Christianity” as it is understood in the West hasn’t taken root until the post-war evangelical bullshit got there.
But in Shingo, a small town in the Aomori prefecture in the Northern part of Japan, there’s an oddity. A tomb to Jesus Christ of disputed and dubious origin. Weird folklore about the disproven (and probably racist in ways I don’t feel equipped to dissect) “Japanese Jew” myth. Unexplained linguistic quirks. Folklore is often able to persist because we are a species of completists: We want to know! Where the fuck did all this stuff come from? Thus, when something like Shingo shows up with about a hundred different possible weird explanations, it makes my Western Christian Nurtured Brain go a little haywire.
For the uninitiated, here are the nuts and bolts: in Shingo, there’s a tomb and accompanying Christ myth that states Jesus did not die on the cross. In “fact,” Jesus Christ traveled to Japan when He was young to study theology before returning to Judea and being persecuted for the beliefs that He brought back with Him. However, Jesus switched places with Isukiri, His younger brother, who chose to die on the cross in His place. Jesus Christ then fled through Siberia and Alaska before finally arriving in Japan where He lived a life of peace until the age of 106. He was a garlic farmer and took a wife, had children, and lived modestly for decades.
One of the reasons I like this myth so much is that Western Christians almost always have the same reaction to it: that’s ridiculous. And, it may sound fantastical to a brain inundated with Western Christian imagery from the time one is born on this side of the world. But is it more fantastical than a story about a virgin birth and a literal resurrection from a tomb? This isn’t meant as some sort of metaphysical gotcha — my approach to religion and folklore is to assume all of it is parable and none of it is literal, so it’s not about “proving” anything — but more of a re-centering of the mind. The fact is, with everything we now know about modern science AND modern politics, the Japanese Christ myth is far more plausible than ours. If you dismiss it outright because it does not align with your knowledge of the credulous Western Christ myth, that’s your own personal deficit.
That’s not to say I believe it. I don’t really know that I believe any of this stuff so much as I find it instructive. A compendium of what works and what doesn’t. As such, I find it compelling to embrace the Shingo version of Christ. If all of this stuff is just a parable anyway, why would you embrace the parable about getting beaten to death at age 33 for defying the government? It sounds more appealing to me to live peacefully to the age of 106 with my lovely wife and children. It sucks to think of Jesus Christ — the Son of God and manifestation of Pure Love — letting Isukiri die on the cross in His place, but hey, who knows? Maybe Isukiri made a really compelling case, or had Crohn’s and didn’t want to live anymore.
There’s an extremely high proportion of scripture literalists relative to other faiths in the Western Christian tradition. I always wonder if that literalism poisons every decision we make and informs our obsession with the past as a Gnostic society. A search for a literal key in ancient wisdom to enable utopia. In Buddhist practice, esoterica is often used more as an intellectual exercise; a means of understanding the mind such that unavoidable reactions and urges are given shape and form. Much like what theology is supposed to be, it’s about creating universal frameworks that transcend cultural differences.
When one considers theology and faith from that perspective, the question of whether Jesus Christ ever went to Japan becomes irrelevant. The myth is not historiography. It literally doesn’t matter at all whether Jesus ever escaped the cross, in the same way it doesn’t even matter if — like questions about the Buddha — Jesus Christ was “real.” We — the universal “we” of humanity — create that reality by our interpretations and applications of the myths we are given, all of which have varying degrees of veracity.
Ultimately, what draws me to Shingo is the same thing that draws me to the Mahayana tradition: there is no definitive explanation, nor is there reason to seek one. There are critical views of the Shingo phenomenon that attribute it to the arrival of Catholic missionaries and the ways that Catholics created lies to try and subvert other cultures*. Those might be true! But those don’t matter to the residents of Shingo, many of whom still incorporate the tomb into their traditions and faith-based folklore. There are also much darker ties to consider, wherein Japan followed Germany’s lead and used Christianity as a way of creating nationalism for the war effort in the 1930s. Funny how often that works for a religious tradition supposedly built around love for your fellow man.
*[Editor’s Note: if you’re unfamiliar with the history of Christianity’s arrival in Japan and don’t have lots of time to devote, you can watch Martin Scorsese’s Silence for a quick allegorical primer, but remember that Scorsese is Roman Catholic and therefore unavoidably at a deficit when retelling the story. This is not a denigration of the greatest living filmmaker but an acknowledgment that the Catholic mind is depraved in ways that linger without direct intervention.)
Even if the Catholics did manufacture the Shingo legend, it’s no longer theirs and it doesn’t even reinforce the Filioque-centered individualist theology of the West. In fact, I find the theory that the Catholics manufactured the legend to be the funniest possible outcome: what if Roman Catholic Whores of Babylon arrived in Japan to spread the gospel of selfishness such that they could subjugate East Asia, but their myths couldn’t withstand the ingrained cooperative, peaceful tradition imparted by Buddhism or the respect for God’s existing material creation imparted by the Tao and Shinto? What if the Catholics wanted to bring their Pain Porn theology to the East and people in Japan beat them at their own game by rewriting the myth to reinforce the true meaning of the resurrection — acceptance of one’s inability to shape the world to their desires, and a peaceful life of joy once that knowledge is obtained.
Faith is about finding the answers in between the confirmable. About filling in blanks with the mind’s natural tendency to explore the space between culturally acceptable mythology and wisdom from lived experience. Faith is necessary because of Maya, that alluring attachment to material success at the cost of the spirit, despite being surrounded by evidence of our impermanence. One must have an unshakeable foundation of faith in the Light so that the alluring tricks meant to addle the body don’t claim one’s mind.
Thus, when people ask what I am or what I believe, I have no answer aside from having faith. Places like Shingo reinforce that faith for me, even if it conflicts with the Methodist theology that was programmed into my mind as a child, all for one simple reason: every theological rabbit hole I go down makes it clearer that myths are nothing more than starting places to be refined as cultures develop over centuries. And when people get a chance out from under the thumb of the Anglican or Catholic Pain Piggy theology, they usually end up making the myths into something more hopeful than we’ve ever been allowed in the West.
For some people, these contradictions between shared mythology are enough to dismiss them all outright as gobbledygook; inferior to our modern ways of Materialist Science! But the truth is, mythology is bottom up and these myths are akin to the largest qualitative research project in history. Created by the proverbial “we the people” before being co-opted by institutions seeking power and wealth. Just like any good marketer, the churches tell congregants what to think because the churches have seen time and again that when those same congregants think for themselves, they access the Holy Spirit in a way that ends with them cooperating with each other instead of the state or the elite.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your Sunday. Good luck.
Very interesting indeed. I'd never heard this Shingo theory before.