Japan

• Japan

60:3.6Great vol­canic ac­tions oc­curred south of the Alps and along the line of the pres­ent Cal­i­for­nia coast-range moun­tains. The great­est crustal de­for­ma­tions in mil­lions upon mil­lions of years took place in Mex­ico. Great changes also oc­curred in Eu­rope, Rus­sia, Japan, and south­ern South Amer­ica. The cli­mate be­came in­creas­ingly di­ver­si­fied.

78:5.6These And­ites were the so-called Dra­vid­ian and later Aryan con­querors of In­dia; and their pres­ence in cen­tral Asia greatly up­stepped the an­ces­tors of the Tu­ra­ni­ans. Many of this race jour­neyed to China by way of both Sinkiang and Ti­bet and added de­sir­able qual­i­ties to the later Chi­nese stocks. From time to time small groups made their way into Japan, For­mosa, the East In­dies, and south­ern China, though very few en­tered south­ern China by the coastal route.

94:9.1Bud­dhism pros­pered be­cause it of­fered sal­va­tion through be­lief in the Bud­dha, the en­light­ened one. It was more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mel­chiz­e­dek truths than any other re­li­gious sys­tem to be found through­out east­ern Asia. But Bud­dhism did not be­come wide­spread as a re­li­gion un­til it was es­poused in self-pro­tec­tion by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikh­na­ton in Egypt, was one of the most re­mark­able civil rulers be­tween Mel­chiz­e­dek and Mi­chael. Asoka built a great In­dian em­pire through the pro­pa­ganda of his Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies. Dur­ing a pe­riod of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than sev­en­teen thou­sand mis­sion­ar­ies to the far­thest fron­tiers of all the known world. In one gen­er­a­tion he made Bud­dhism the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of one half the world. It soon be­came es­tab­lished in Ti­bet, Kash­mir, Cey­lon, Burma, Java, Siam, Ko­rea, China, and Japan. And gen­er­ally speak­ing, it was a re­li­gion vastly su­pe­rior to those which it sup­planted or up­stepped.

94:11.1Bud­dhism en­tered China in the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ, and it fit­ted well into the re­li­gious cus­toms of the yel­low race. In an­ces­tor wor­ship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Bud­dhism soon amal­ga­mated with the lin­ger­ing rit­u­al­is­tic prac­tices of dis­in­te­grat­ing Tao­ism. This new syn­thetic re­li­gion with its tem­ples of wor­ship and def­i­nite re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial soon be­came the gen­er­ally ac­cepted cult of the peo­ples of China, Ko­rea, and Japan.

58:5.8De­pres­sion of the ocean bot­tom dur­ing the pre­life ages had up­thrust a soli­tary con­ti­nen­tal land mass to such a height that its lat­eral pres­sure tended to cause the east­ern, west­ern, and south­ern fringes to slide down­hill, over the un­der­ly­ing semivis­cous lava beds, into the wa­ters of the sur­round­ing Pa­cific Ocean. This so fully com­pen­sated the con­ti­nen­tal pres­sure that a wide break did not oc­cur on the east­ern shore of this an­cient Asi­atic con­ti­nent, but ever since has that east­ern coast line hov­ered over the precipice of its ad­join­ing oceanic depths, threat­en­ing to slide into a wa­tery grave.

79:6.3Many dif­fer­ent races oc­cu­pied the is­lands of the Pa­cific. In gen­eral, the south­ern and then more ex­ten­sive is­lands were oc­cu­pied by peo­ples car­ry­ing a heavy per­cent­age of green and in­digo blood. The north­ern is­lands were held by An­don­ites and, later on, by races em­brac­ing large pro­por­tions of the yel­low and red stocks. The an­ces­tors of the Japanese peo­ple were not driven off the main­land un­til 12,000 B.C., when they were dis­lodged by a pow­er­ful south­ern-coast­wise thrust of the north­ern Chi­nese tribes. Their fi­nal ex­o­dus was not so much due to pop­u­la­tion pres­sure as to the ini­tia­tive of a chief­tain whom they came to re­gard as a di­vine per­son­age.

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

93:7.2The de­scen­dants of Adam­son, clus­tered about the shores of the lake of Van, were will­ing lis­ten­ers to the Hit­tite teach­ers of the Salem cult. From this one­time And­ite cen­ter, teach­ers were dis­patched to the re­mote re­gions of both Eu­rope and Asia. Salem mis­sion­ar­ies pen­e­trated all Eu­rope, even to the British Isles. One group went by way of the Faroes to the An­don­ites of Ice­land, while an­other tra­versed China and reached the Japanese of the east­ern is­lands. The lives and ex­pe­ri­ences of the men and women who ven­tured forth from Salem, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and Lake Van to en­lighten the tribes of the East­ern Hemi­sphere pre­sent a heroic chap­ter in the an­nals of the hu­man race.

92:6.15In­dia is di­vided among Hindu, Sikh, Mo­hammedan, and Jain, each pic­tur­ing God, man, and the uni­verse as these are var­i­ously con­ceived. China fol­lows the Taoist and the Con­fu­cian teach­ings; Shinto is revered in Japan.