Mahikari Exposed

The Early History Hoax

by Fiona
December 2002


Mahikari claims that the Japanese race has been around since Early Palaeolithic times, using various archaeological evidence - a claim that is disputed by mainstream science. In 2000, this evidence was revealed as a hoax, which seriously damages the claims made by Mahikari and the supposed infallibility of its leaders.

CONTENTS





Fujimura and his "god's hands"

"Mainichi Shimbun (Mainichi newspaper) broke the news on Sunday morning, November 5, 2000 - an archaeologist, FUJIMURA Shin'ichi, had been caught on video planting stone artifacts at the Kami-Takamori site in the town of Tsukidate in northern Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan."
Charles Keally

Fujimura was deputy director at the private institute, Tohoku Paleolithic Cultural Research Institute. He was said to have "god's hands" since he found most of the Early Paleolithic period stoneware excavated in Japan.

However, in November 2000, Fujimura admitted that he had planted 61 of the 65 stoneware pieces excavated in the Kamitakamori ruins, and all 29 stoneware pieces found in the Soshin Fudozaka ruins (Shintotsukawa, Hokkaido).

The pieces that Fujimura buried were from his private collection of artifacts, that he had excavated earlier from the Miyagi Prefecture. Since he buried and then 'found' them in 600,000 year old rock strata (thereby placing the finds in the Early Palaeolithic era), it was assumed that the artifacts were 600,000 years old too - no other testing was carried out to verify this claim.

Fujimura said "I was tempted by the devil. I don't know how I can apologize for what I did."

Apart from the huge damage this hoax has done to all of Japanese archeaology, it also throws doubt on the ability of Mahikari's spiritual leaders to know the real truth of matters. If Ms Okada has the all-seeing God-given powers that she claims, why didn't she know that the Kamitakamori finds were a hoax? Surely if she had genuine divine powers, she would have denounced these findings as flawed when they actually occurred, in 1994, and not used them as evidence in her teachings on the history Japan. Maybe she only has the powers of a normal human, after all.



The Quest for an Ancient History

A frequent theme in Mahikari teachings is how the Japanese were the first race, the first people created by God, the origin of all mankind. To support such claims, accurate and verified archaeological findings are obviously required. Mahikari has been helped in this by the generally poor state of academic enquiry in Japan, the widespread Japanese desire to prove themselves older than the Chinese, and the personal aspirations of Fujimura Shin'ichi, an amateur archaeologist.

In Mahikari literature, Japan is called Hinomototsu-kuni, the Land of Spirit's Origin. "It is the original place where God created spiritual forms and spiritual images of all with the Art of Mu-u (from nothingness to the existence with power). He placed O-bito (the King race [the Japanese]) here and dispatched all five races throughout the world as branch races."
Goseigen, "Mankind, Make your spiritual origin clear" pg 275, JP 458-459

"Historic events do not occur by chance but are arranged to fulfil the purpose of the Creator God. Of particular relevance here, however, is that the history of the human began in Japan."
Mahikari - Thank God for the Answers at Last, Dr A. K. Tebecis, pg 388

The view that Japan is the head of the world is not a new concept. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Japan looked inwards to search for the unique 'Japaneseness' of their culture, distilled from Chinese and Korean influences. The Japanese have long wanted to prove that they have an ancient culture, the first culture. It is not surprising that these sorts of attitudes have developed within Japanese culture, resulting in desperate efforts to create an ancient history, such as Fujimura's hoaxs.

"While Japanese culture ultimately derives from the immigrants of the third century BC, the bulk of Japanese culture is forged from Chinese materials - a fact that will drive an entire cultural revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as scholars attempt to reclaim original Japanese culture from its Chinese accretions."
Richard Hooker
Commemorative Stamp
Japanese stamp issue commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Excavations of Iwajuku Paleolithic Site

When supposedly ultra-ancient artifacts were found and made public, they were simply accepted as genuine, displayed in museums, and text books were changed to include Japan's new 'early history' without any rigorous scientific checks or verification.

There is no doubt that tools that date into the Late Palaeolithic period have been found, or about the findings of Aizawa (who is mentioned in various Mahikari books). There is some doubt as to whether Aizawa was a professional or not - in Oshienushisama's teachings (below) she says that he was an amateur, making his finds "while earning his living selling natto."

However, in Chapter 6 of "Daiseishu - Great and Holy Master" (the book about Sukuinushisama), he is called Professor Aizawa, implying that he is a professional archaeologist. From what I have learnt recently, I suspect that he was an amateur.

The archaeologist, Professor Charles T. Keally (personal correspondence, Nov 2001) writes :

"Tadahiro Aizawa found the Iwajuku site in 1946 and an excavation by two Meiji University archaeologists in 1949 confirmed Aizawa's find as the first Palaeolithic site in Japan. Since then, the Late Palaeolithic in Japan has been well studied.

"But the Early Palaeolithic has always been controversial. Now, as you know, exposure of the hoax has effectively put the study of finds older than 35,000 years ago back to zero. There is no serious controversy about the Late Palaeolithic, which dates from about 35,000 years ago until 12,000 years ago."

Timeline

Professor Keally's summary of the main criticisms of the Early Palaeolithic work is below, as well as his detailed analysis of the hoax and its effects on the study of archaeology in Japan.



Extracts from the Teachings of Oshienushisama
"A Major Turning-Point in the History of Humankind"

5 October 1996

"Due to the major changes in the will of Heaven, problems that cannot be solved using previously held assumptions and ideas are arising one after another. Major changes are occurring in every realm of human endeavour, whether it be history, religion, science, economics or politics.

"One example of these changes is that firmly held misconceptions regarding history have started to collapse.

"This began with the discovery of the Iwajuku site in Nitta County, Gunma Prefecture, and the Second World War. It was an epoch-making discovery in terms of our understanding of the palaeolithic culture of Japan.

"Mr Tadahiro Aizawa was responsible for discovering stone tools from the palaeolithic period in Japan. Until that time, it was believed that stone tools that were more than ten thousand years old did not exist in Japan. It was under such circumstances that Mr Aizawa continued his research while earning his living selling natto (fermented soybeans). One day he found an excellent example of a stone implement made of obsidian. It was by the side of a road in a stratum of red clay which had been exposed while the road was being made. That was how the evidence of the palaeolothic period in Japan was first revealed.

"Our holy founder, Suikunishisama, would visit the Iwajuku and Natsuido sites with Mr Aizawa every time he made a Tour of Light to Gunma. On one trip, Sukuinushisama pointed to a certain place on the ground with his walking stick and said that archaeological remains would be discovered there. Some time later, important stone tools were unearthed in that spot.

"Since then, stone tools from the palaeolithic period have been found one after the other at the Iwajuku and Natsuido sites. Suikunishisama had predicted that,"Much, much older stone tools will be found." Indeed, 300,000-year-old stone tools were later excavated from the Natsuido site. However, the academic world, still close-minded at the time, has been very reluctant to accept these findings.

"In recent years, the discoveries of the Zazaragi and Babadan sites in Miyagi Prefecture have shown that Japan's palaeolithic age began more than 100,000 years ago. These findings have forced scholars, who had argued against it, to accept the existence of such an early palaeolithic period for Japan.

"Furthermore, in 1994, a surprising discovery was made at the Kamitakamori site, also in Miyagi Prefecture. Splendid stone tools from the palaeolithic period were found in strata dating back all of 600,000 years, which is 100,000 years earlier than the appearance of Peking man. [These are the finds that Fujimura later admits he planted, were never date tested, and are NOT from the Early Palaeolithic era.]

"There were also traces of scorching by fire at this site, showing that early humans in Japan used fire at an earlier stage than Peking man. When this fact is confirmed, wit will constitute a great discovery in regard to the earliest use of fire, which was the foundation for the development of human culture and civilisation, and in itself, led to a rapid improvement in living conditions.

"Fifteen articles forming a circular design were found at the site. A piece of red jasper was in the centre and the other pieces radiated from it to form a circle. From this we can see that early humans possessed a sense of beauty that enabled them to arrange things in an orderly way and that they were highly imaginative. From this discovery we learn that our ancestors had the custom of holding Divine ceremonies in the distant past - from at least 600,000 years ago - and that they had a tradition of burying people's personal articles with them when they died.

"The time of Heaven has now arrived when humankind is being urged to extensively rewrite its history.

"In the prayer book (Norigotoshu), there are the following Divine songs:

As the Light of God has started to radiate at dawn, a time of great transition in human history has arrived.

Awaken! Now is the pioneering age when human history must be rewritten in the Light of the righteous path."
(Butsumetsu no Yo, pg 200, JP 131-6 & 131-7) and

This is the beginning of the Era in which human history shall be rewritten."
(Geinen, pg 211, JP 138-4)

"Sukuinushisama predicted, "The excavations, discoveries, and progress made by the new archaeology will lead to the discovery in the Japanese islands of remains dating back at least a million years." This means that human being already lived in the Land of Origin of Spirit (Hi no Motosu Kuni - Japan) a million years ago, not just 600,000 years ago.

"Facts unthinkable according to ideas commonly held until now are coming to light and being proved by archaeology.

"The predictions Sukuinushisama made regarding the great expanse of human history are turning out to be correct."

In fact, it is clear from these recent events that the predictions that Okada made "regarding the great expanse of human history" are turning out to be rubbish and wishful thinking.

The failure of Ms Okada to pick up the fact that the Kami-takamori finds were a hoax throws all the other claims of Mahikari into doubt. They cannot be trusted to present properly researched scientific findings, especially given their attitude to science in general.

Mahikari has a basic aversion and aggression towards rational thought and the scientific process, which is clear throughout its teachings. It is highly hypocritical for them to then to make use of scientific results to support their various positions on such topics as the ancient history of Japan.

"There are also numerous scholars (Gakusha; man of self-caused sufferings) who are causing self sufferings. Although there are many kinds of scholars, only the evil ones have increased in the past thousand years..."

"There are truly many academic fields with contaminated egos different from that of God. There is much "poisonous powder of a moth" covering these fields. They are covered with excrement. Thou shalt make them realise this soon. There is no other way than to make them realise the Principle of Cross of the two essences."
Goseigen Ambiguous Delusion called Truth, pg 92 (JP 152-153)




How Fabrication of Two Early Palaeolithic Sites Has Damaged All of Japanese Archaeology

by Charles T. Keally
December 14, 2000

I have talked with a number of archaeologists on both sides of the Early and Middle Palaeolithic controversy and recent fabrication scandal. Those who have favored the material give the impression that they still feel most of the finds are valid and eventually will be validated. Those who have criticized the work seem 100% convinced that it is all now proven invalid. Both sides seem unwilling to concede any possibility that the other side might be right, if even only partially right, and neither side seems to understand that they need to produce some very good, concrete scientific evidence to support their arguments. Neither side presently has much such evidence backing their arguments.

The circumstantial evidence (note 1) (which is all we really have at the moment) is about 90% against the validity of the Early and Middle Palaeolithic finds of FUJIMURA Shin'ichi and the group of archaeologists in Miyagi Prefecture (note 2) that he worked with. But, if we ASSUME that some or all of these finds will eventually be shown to be valid, we need to ask how the fabrication of just two sites in the 2000 field season has come to cast a dark cloud of suspicion on all the other 31 excavated Early and Middle Palaeolithic sites, and on the previous several seasons' work on the two sites that were fabricated this year. That this confirmed fabrication of two sites has had such a bad effect on all the other Early and Middle Palaeolithic work is why Japanese archaeology as a whole has come to look so bad.

The Early and Middle Palaeolithic finds by themselves are important to Japan. They give evidence of ancient humans in the islands at the same time as Peking Man or the earlier Lantien Woman in North China. Such important finds needed to be validated by other archaeologists, and the archaeologists in Miyagi Prefecture needed government financial support and government pressure to do the studies that would answer their critics. Instead of this, the government -- Cultural Affairs Agency, Ministry of Education -- the Japanese Archaeological Association and leading Japanese archaeologists did not provide support or ask for validation; they simply accepted the finds and put them in museum exhibits and approved them for inclusion in school textbooks. That was careless to the point of being foolish.

But when the Early Palaeolithic sites started to produce cache pits with neatly arranged tools, bifacial points and evidence of socketted tools, the government, the archaeology associations, and the leading archaeologists needed to take action. These finds suggested that Homo erectus in Japan had cognitive and mechanical skills far in advance of anything suggested for Homo erectus elsewhere in the world. These finds could have changed our understanding of human evolution. But even several years after the first of these highly significant finds, the leading archaeologists, archaeological organizations and government agencies were just accepting all of this without any validation or any request for validation. This inaction and unquestioning acceptance of such potentially significant finds is unbelievable behavior for academics and related government institutions in an advanced country like Japan. It calls into question their competence.

The primary focus for blame for the fabrication has been on Fujimura himself, because he is the one who got caught and he claims to have been alone. The media have given themselves some of the blame for their emphasis on "finds" and superlatives, such as "older." There is also criticism of the Miyagi archaeologists who worked with Fujimura and did not realize he was planting artifacts on the sites. But I think the real blame lies with the leading archaeologists and institutions that did not provide support for the research or require validation before accepting the finds, or pay attention to the criticisms that were being made by some archaeologists. Focusing on one person, or on one group of archaeologists, will not explain how this scandal occurred or result in eventual validation, or invalidation, and a system that will prevent a similar scandal in the future. If the critics had been listened to instead of ignored 14 years ago, we might now have a validated Early and Middle Palaeolithic, and fabrication of two sites would not have any affects beyond those two sites.

Even if many of these finds prove to be valid in the end, the Japanese archaeology world has suffered hugely from this display of scientific incompetence. If these finds prove to be a 20-year-long, 33-site hoax, Japanese archaeology will have a long uphill battle trying to demonstrate that it belongs among the archaeologies of the advanced, educated world. For those people who do not have direct contact with, for example, the Jomon research here, how are they supposed to judge the quality of [Jomon] research by Japanese archaeologists? This wholly unacademic, incompetent work in the Early and Middle Palaeolithic research will suggest that that is possibly also the quality of work in all other areas of Japanese archaeological research. The rest of the world will (might or should?) cease to believe anything that comes out of Japanese archaeology, unless they have first-hand knowledge of it, or some other very good means of validating it.

My hope is that Japanese archaeologists will realize just how much damage this scandal has done (or could do) to them and then take the necessary measures to ensure the high quality of all future archaeological research here, and to provide validation for all past archaeological research, too. In fact, much of Japanese archaeology has been of very high quality, and it is unfortunate that this, too, is likely to suffer because so many leading archaeologists and institutions have been so careless about the Early and Middle Palaeolithic research.

Note 1:

The main criticisms and/or sources of doubt are:

  1. lack of vertical displacement of artifacts in the soil, when there is always some vertical displacement in Late Palaeolithic sites, caused by moles, tree roots and other natural agents;

  2. dates with extremely large plus-minus error factors, suggesting possibly great disturbance of the strata;

  3. extreme scarcity of refittable pieces or other evidence of stone tool production on the site, when there is always such evidence in Late Palaeolithic sites; but despite this scarcity in the Early and Middle Palaeolitic sites, there is one example of a refit between two sites that are 30 km apart and on opposite sides of a mountain range;

  4. cache pits with neatly arranged stone tools, and other evidence suggesting cognitive abilities and mechanical skills for humans in Japan several hundred-thousand years before such abilities and skills are generally thought to have evolved in humans;

  5. one person, Fujimura, is responsible for finding most of the sites and a majority of the artifacts, and his "god hand" seems to go far beyond the expectable even for an unusual combination of skill and luck;

  6. no evidence of cultural evolution over a period of several hundred-thousand years;

  7. Early Palaeolithic artifacts that appear to be the same as Jomon artifacts dating several hundred-thousand years later; and

  8. new finds getting older by a 100,000 years almost every year.

  9. Lack of Early and Middle Palaeolithic finds in rich Palaeolithic regions, such as the plains of South Kanto, and no more than a few uncertain claims for pre-35,000-year finds elsewhere in the country (that is, effectively ALL Early and Middle Palaeolithic finds involve a single group of archaeologists).

Note 2:

KAJIWARA Hiroshi (an archaeologist at Tohoku Fukushi University), KAMADA Toshiaki (a college-trained archaeologist and Buddhist priest), FUJIMURA Shin'ichi (an amateur archaeologist), several other archaeologists who have not gained as much fame, and, until 1990, OKAMURA Michio (presently an archaeologist with the national Cultural Affairs Agency). These people are all members of the Sekki Bunka Danwakai, which is now called the Tohoku Kyusekki Bunka Kenkyujo (Tohoku Palaeolithic Laboratory).

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Last Modified: September 2015