Treasure hunters attracted to Japan's legendary Holy Grail
Date: Sunday, June 11th, 2006 (CST )
Topic: Religion & Spirituality
 Holy Grail! Japan can lay claim to a Second Coming of Christ that even now, hundreds of years later, is so wrapped in mystery it can rival the enigmas of "The Da Vinci Code," according to Weekly Playboy (6/19).
Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" and the film of the same name currently performing box office miracles around the world, center around the premise that the Holy Grail wasn't some sort of cup, but the direct blood descendant of Jesus Christ.
But Japan has a Holy Grail connection of its own that it also wrapped in mystery. The military standard used by 17th century Japanese Christian Amagusa Shiro during a Christian rebellion against the Shogun is preserved in Kumamoto's Amagusa Kurisuchian Museum in Hondo, Kumamoto Prefecture.
"This
standard is, along with the standard of the Western European crusaders
and the flag of Joan of Arc, regarded as one of the three great flags
of Christendom. The Holy Grail is in the center of the flag, while
above it is bread to symbolize the body of Christ. Written on the flag
is the Latin acronym INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Indaeorum -- Jesus of
Nazareth, King of the Jews)," a Kumamoto historian tells Weekly
Playboy, which says that Amagusa Shiro's decision to use the Holy Grail
as his standard entitles him to claim to be the direct descendant of
Christ.
"That's going a bit far,"
the historian says. "But the flag is said to have been made by Goemon
Yamaguchi, the only survivor of the Shimabara Rebellion. Without him,
nobody would ever have known about Amagusa Shiro."
The Shimabara Rebellion
occurred in 1637. Then 16-year-old Amagusa gathered 37,000 Christians
who, in a last-ditch effort to save their religion, took on the
124,000-force mustered by the Shogunate, which was hell-bent on ridding
Japan of Christianity. The Christians were, with the exception of
Yamaguchi, brutally slaughtered.
Weekly Playboy notes that
early in the 17th century, a Portuguese priest called Marcos predicted
that the Messiah would be born in Japan. Being in the right time and
place, Amagusa, the son of a masterless samurai Christian, was suddenly
deified.
"Christian samurai duped
people into believing Shiro was the Second Coming. They told people he
could walk on water from one island to another. They also said that all
he needed to do was extend his arm and a dove would fly down and lay an
egg in his palm. Breaking the egg open would reveal a Christian
scripture. The Christian samurai who organized the Shimabara Rebellion
used Shiro by claiming he was the Messiah and getting ordinary folk to
join their fight," the historian says. Though Amagusa Shiro was also
cut down in the rebellion, he left plenty of mystery in his wake.
In 1935, almost 300 years
to the day after the Shimabara slaughter, a golden cross was found in a
Christian's grave. On the cross was an inscription in an indecipherable
sentence but one that many believe will lead to a huge pile of treasure
Amagusa Shiro had been ordered to hide to fund the Christians' fight
against the Shogun.
"The problem is that nobody
really knows the complete meaning of the inscription. There was an
ancient map found in Nagasaki that seemed to point people in the
direction of 'a pond that looks like a trinity,'" a treasure hunter
tells Weekly Playboy. "A local schoolteacher searched around a pond
near where Amagusa lived, but they didn't find a thing."
Copyright: MSN-Mainichi Daily News
Related Article: Redoubted Rising Son true raider of the lost ark
|
|