I'm really pleased and thankful for all the positive responses and the pins. You people are great; I'm glad I took the chance to post this stuff here.

The presence of Nestorian Christians in China is undisputed. No scholar of any credibility would call this into question.

What is a little more controversial is the question of whether the Nestorians ever made it to Japan, and if so, how widespread their influence was. There is some evidence suggesting this and that, but its spotty and not as solid as tthe evidence from China.

A longtime US resident of Japan (and somebody I've bumped into from time to time over the years, although I don't know him too well) is Reverend Ken Joseph. He's a big believer that Nestorians were in early Japan, and he lays out his argument in a book called "Lost Identity," which you can read much if not most of at the link below (pdf file):

[link to www.onmarkproductions.com (secure)]

here's a brief overview of this book written by Japan scholar Mark Schumacher:

Under Prince Regent Shotoku and Empress Suiko in the seventh century, the Hata clan from central Asia were
granted full liberty under the provisions of Shotoku's famous 17-Article Constitution. Some Japanese researchers say that the first bearers of Christianity to Japan were Hata people from modern-day Kazakhstan, who came to Japan from the Silk Road cities of Constantinople, Egypt and Persia starting around 200 A.D. The next wave of Christian immigrants, they say, were the Keikyo people from the (Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East, who began coming to Japan from the fifth century onwards. In the days of Shotoku Taishi, the Nestorian church grounds at Uzumasa-no-Kijima Jinja (in Kyoto, Japan) had their own "Well of Israel" attached to a David's Shrine, and on the well-spring stood a Sacred Tripod symbolizing the Trinity from which a limpid stream flowed. Visitors to Uzumasa today can still see a tripod, build in the style of a triangular torii, which reportedly marks the exact spot where the original tripod of the Nestorians once stood.

Personally, I find much of this sort of evidence to be less convincing than Rev. Joseph makes it out to be. "Legends say," "people claim," "a cross-like marking was found..." and so on. There are a zillion potential explanations for such tales and phenomena. Still, I don't doubt its possible that Nestorians were here, and his book (read with an open mind) makes for a great "what if". Make of his theories what you will.


Thanks for reading friends. I'll try to keep this thread alive from time to time.