I have nothing much to say or about which to sound-off. Life seems to be pottering on as usual.
In deciding to write a posting just for the sake of writing a posting, nothing much came to mind at first. Then came this: Elder Christofferson was not my first pick to be the new Apostle. It is really quite pointless for me to keep predicting that "this is the time when Elder Kikuchi fulfills President Brown's prophecy." That links to BYU; it must be true.
We have had that prophecy for 41 years. President Brown was in the First Presidency at the time, which in no way makes the prophecy more or less valid. The final sentence quoted reads "I feel it in my heart tonight and I dare to make this prediction in the name of the Lord." To believers, the fact that he himself was an Apostle should be enough.
So what did Sorro and I talk about at the *gasp* mission reunion last Friday night? First of all, we went through the scrapbook album of wedding announcements and made fun of 97% of our fellow JeTSaM alums. We also discussed the President Brown prophecy above. We have both been anticipating the Elder Kikuchi quorum leap (as opposed to a quantum leap), which we do every time there is a vacancy in the Twelve. There is really nothing to anticipate or be excited about; the prophecy will be fulfilled at some point. I don't need to keep on hoping that this will be the time.
Changing topics here, Matt (Schaugaard) Kim and I keep in touch, and he sent an interesting email to me containing this video:
You may also want to check this one out while you're at it:
Back to seriousness, I sent the first video to my dad, who has quite a few articles published in BYU Studies, and is even referenced by R. Lanier Britsch in a couple of Lanny's texts. This by no means makes my dad an expert, but he has read many more books on the subject than the rest of us combined. Allow me to quote portions of his email response to me:
"...can the Japanese ever make a TV show without somebody in the background saying 'Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!' all the time? Also, the lost ten tribes weren't Jews. The Jews are descendants of Judah, the tribe that ruled the southern kingdom. Nephi makes this distinction clearly in the Book of Mormon, always talking about 'the Jews' as if they were different from himself. They were--he was a Josephite from the ten northern tribes. And just having a big nose proves nothing. Billy Crystal has a small nose and he's still Jewish.
"One thing that I thought was silly was the comparison between kana and the Hebrew alphabet [I agree]. It reminded me of a guy who used to bother me at the Family History Library because he thought he was seeing lots of little squares and compasses in Chinese characters. (I called him Nutty Buddy, after an ice cream cone.) Still, it's true that Hebrew has influenced all other alphabets, including Sanskrit, which in turn influenced the development of kana. I was interested in the possibility that Moriya could be the same as Moriah. Here is another website that talks about possible connections: http://www.moshiach.com/features/tribes/japan.php It mentions the book by Marvin Tokayer that I think I have a copy of.
"Anyway, the Middle Eastern images on the mikoshi are very intriguing and it's odd that I haven't seen this pointed out before, although I could have forgotten after all these years. The connections of the Hata clan (Qin in Chinese) to the Silk Road are unmistakable--you had to go through their territory to use the Road. That's how they got powerful enough to found the Qin (or Ch'in) Dynasty and conquer all of China. That's where we get the name 'China' by the way. The Chinese call themselves the Sons of Han, after the native dynasty that threw out the Qin. The histories make it very clear that the Qin were NOT ethnic Chinese. Lots of Hata people had to run for their lives when their dynasty collapsed, and many of them made it to Japan after a stay of many generations in Korea. The words 'qin' and 'hata' mean 'loom' and they were weavers and silk dealers.
"Not all of the Jews in Babylon returned to Palestine; a huge number remained in Mesopotamia for hundreds of years. It could be these people, and not the ten tribes, who became the ancestors of the Hata. But patriarchal blessings usually assign Japanese people to Joseph, the leading tribe of the ten, and it will be interesting to see what DNA research has to say. But a huge sample will be necessary, because so far DNA research has not been able to identify any Israelites in Central America.
"By the way, Ishizaka Kyodai's wife is a descendant of the Hata and he gave me a book about it. My old friend Komae Mori has also written a book about her own life and her belief in Israelite connections to Japan. She's from a priestly family of Okinawa and has found many things in the Old Testament that remind her of the rituals of her ancestral religion."
Many of us in the honbu zone when I was there will remember the Ishizaka/Niiyama power marriage. (Parenthetical aside: Yasuo Niiyama was released from being an area authority yesterday, so we can go back to believing that the Church is true; he was an ass who exhibited very few Christ-like attributes to missionaries. Who knows, maybe he is a closet Christian who merely posed as a jerk.) That's the same Ishizaka mentioned here by my pappy. Apparently, he and I used to be friends when I was still a young'un (as opposed to "Young Guns") before moving to America.
Since I mentioned it:
