Was Jesus the first weeb?

A small town in Japan claims Jesus (yes, that one) is buried there.

Religion, man. All the conflicting universal origin stories out there sure cause us a heck of a lot of trouble sometimes. (Tag your favorite violent religious conflict in the comments!)

Sometimes I wonder how different our lives might be today with a few pivotal twists in religious history. Like, for example, if it turned out that Jesus was Western society’s very first weeb.

On the flat top of a steep hill in a distant corner of northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who, two millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmer’s daughter named Miyuko, fathered three kids and died at the ripe old age of 106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, he’s remembered by the name Daitenku Taro Jurai. The rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ.

While this sounds like the setup for an insane and possibly brilliant anime, it’s actually a story from Smithsonian Magazine that I recently stumbled on via Reddit. The town of Shingo, Japan really does claim that Jesus lived there for more than 70 years of a 100+ year lifetime. They even throw an annual Christ Festival, in which “kimono-clad women” dance and chant “in an unknown language” in order to console Jesus’s soul.

Those of you familiar with the minutiae of Christianity might recall that the location, method, and reason for Jesus’s death are actually quite important to biblical doctrine. Notably, the Bible claims that Jesus was nailed to a cross for humanity’s sins. (It’s okay if you don’t remember this, as they rarely bring it up in church.)

However, according to the Legend of Christ Museum (a steal at ¥100 per ticket), the man actually crucified on a hilltop outside of Jerusalem was Isukiri, Jesus’s adopted Japanese brother, who sacrificed himself to save the son of God.

In Shingo, the Greatest Story Ever Told is retold like this: Jesus first came to Japan at the age of 21 to study theology. This was during his so-called “lost years,” a 12-year gap unaccounted for in the New Testament. He landed at the west coast port of Amanohashidate, a spit of land that juts across Miyazu Bay, and became a disciple of a great master near Mount Fuji, learning the Japanese language and Eastern culture. At 33, he returned to Judea—by way of Morocco!—to talk up what a museum brochure calls the “sacred land” he had just visited.

Having run afoul of the Roman authorities, Jesus was arrested and condemned to crucifixion for heresy. But he cheated the executioners by trading places with the unsung, if not unremembered, Isukiri. To escape persecution, Jesus fled back to the promised land of Japan with two keepsakes: one of his sibling’s ears and a lock of the Virgin Mary’s hair. He trekked across the frozen wilderness of Siberia to Alaska, a journey of four years, 6,000 miles and innumerable privations. This alternative Second Coming ended after he sailed to Hachinohe, an ox-cart ride from Shingo.

That’s an escape worthy of the Amazing Jesus himself.

The whole Smithsonian article is worth a read for the many crazy details (Shingo-ians left the body of “Jesus” on a hillside for four years), plus some historical speculation on how this story came to exist (perhaps a Catholic missionary hid in Shingo after Japan banned Christians in 1614). Whatever the case, it’s a fascinating example of religion and folklore intersecting.

It’s also hilarious! This town flatly rejects the biblical story of Jesus… for reasons that have nothing to do with his deity status. In fact, they accept basically every story in the Bible — except for the most important one!

It’s impossible for me not to consider how different Christianity would be if this were the agreed-upon life story of the son of God. (I’m thinking sushi and sake bombs instead of wafers and wine, for starters.) Historians, theologians, and Pope Francis might say that’s blasphemous, but I think it’d be a pretty funny layer of the multiverse to visit.

Also, if Mel Gibson really wants to turn The Passion of the Christ into a franchise, I have a great pitch for Passion 3: Tokyo Drift.