Wow.
It's gigantic.
The rock itself is said to weigh about 500 tons.
Wow.
You want to just look down below here.
That's amazing.
It's hovering above the water.
This monolith is said to be
related to one of the first gods
that descended from the heavens to Japan,
and he traveled over the country on a sky ship
made out of a giant rock.
So what you're telling me is that there is
a deity flying around in the sky
with a gigantic vehicle made of stone?
Absolutely.
Tokyo, Japan.
May 2017.
The University of Tokyo reveals designs for electric vehicles
that are able to charge while driving on powered roadways,
enabling the Japanese to travel freely with unlimited mileage
throughout the country.
This same month, the Japanese government,
in cooperation with private companies,
unveils plans to unleash a countrywide drone
delivery system by 2020,
with self-driving trucks to follow in 2022.
And Inami Hiyama Laboratory brings to market
a new prosthetic device called MetaLimbs,
a pair of wearable robotic arms controlled by the legs and feet,
giving the user two additional hands to work with.
These are just a few of the scientific innovations
introduced by the Japanese in a single month.
And they, along with numerous others,
have helped accelerate mankind's technological advancement
at a breathtaking pace.
Yet, in the midst of this cutting-edge technology
are antiquated teahouses, palaces
and shrines dating back thousands of years
that create a stark contrast
between the old and the new.
Japan can be a puzzle to a Westerner.
On one hand, you have this modern culture
with trains that are going 250 miles an hour.
Robots can serve you in the home,
can help people with handicaps walk.
They can be a robotic pet.
They have parking garages in which the cars,
uh, park themselves.
So, Japan is always on the cutting edge
of technological development and innovation.
Yet, at the same time, it cherishes and looks back
at its age-old traditions,
some of them going back several millennia, in fact.
While Japan is a nation
where old world traditions
and new world technology collide,
ancient astronaut theorists suggest the two
are not as disconnected as they may seem
and that the secrets of ancient Japan
help explain why they are at the forefront of technology today,
secrets that are connected to extraterrestrial visitation.
December 18, 2007.
Ryuji Yamane of the Democratic Party of Japan,
under increasing pressure from his constituents,
publicly demands a response
from the prime minister and his cabinet
to address the surge of UFO activity over Japan,
totaling more than 300 reported sightings per month.
The cabinet's official statement
is that it "has not confirmed the existence
of unidentified flying objects from outer space."
But within a few hours, everything changes.
Just hours after this meeting,
the Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura
announced on live television
that regarding the question of extraterrestrials,
he definitely thinks they exist.
Then, a week later, the Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba
revealed that he had been carefully considering
different response scenarios for an alien invasion.
And what he said is incredible.
He said, and I quote,
"There are no grounds for us to deny
"that there are unidentified flying objects
and some life forms that controls them."
Two years later, the wife of the prime minister
came out with an extraordinary series of statements,
in which she claimed that she had been abducted by aliens,
that she had traveled on a UFO.
For the wife of the prime minister to come out
and make a statement like that was absolutely unprecedented.
I think the only reason this isn't on the front page
of every newspaper in the world is that,
certainly in the United States, we do tend to be
rather heavily focused on English-speaking countries,
and, indeed, very U.S.-centric in our outlook.
If the statements being made in Japan
were being made in America,
it would be on every major news network 24-7.
Could these profound statements
coming from top Japanese government officials reveal
that they have knowledge of alien visitation?
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest
evidence of alien contact on these islands
dates back thousands of years,
and can be found within the teachings of Shintoism.
Shintoism is the primary religion of Japan,
with over 107 million followers,
and is designed around a set of ritual practices
that connect present-day Japan
to its ancient mystical past.
At its center are celestial beings
that, according to the Japanese people,
still roam their islands to this day.
The term "Shinto" translates as "the way of the kami,"
or, uh, "the way of the gods."
It's a tradition
that has a millennia-long history in Japan.
There are over eight million kamis,
according to the Shinto tradition,
and each one of them has
its own particular personality traits, if you will.
So, in that sense, they are quite different
from the notion of monotheistic God that we have
in traditions that are most widespread in the West.
The kami are these celestial beings
that are able to inhabit basically anything,
from a human being
to an animal, and even inanimate objects.
So on the one hand, they're these multi-dimensional beings,
but then, they also describe them
as having come down from their celestial palace in the sky,
which is called Takamagahara.
The celestial kami will come into the terrestrial world,
our world, and they need a home,
so they have these major shrines for these kami
when they come into the world,
so that they can feel at home in the terrestrial world.
The Japanese archipelago is dotted with over 81,000 shrines
that are devoted to the kami gods,
and it's believed that these are houses or places
where these extraterrestrial beings come to live
when they're on Earth.
The Japanese people will visit the shrines of the kami
with the belief that they are actually praying
to an extraterrestrial being who can fulfill their blessings.
If what Shinto followers call "the kami"
really are otherworldly beings
that have been visiting Japan since ancient times,
are they still being encountered today in the form of UFOs?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining ancient Japanese structures
that defy explanation.
There are thousands of these statuettes
Honshu, Japan. April 2017.
Near the modern-day city of Osaka,
Giorgio Tsoukalos meets
with fellow ancient astronaut theorist Takeharu Mikami
to investigate one of the oldest and holiest sites
in the country... The Ishi-no-Hoden megalith,
a Shinto shrine said to be inhabited
by an otherworldly being.
Wow.
It's gigantic.
This is...
I had no idea.
I mean, it is massive.
The rock itself is said to weigh about 500 tons.
- 500 tons? - Yes.
Wow!
This is said to have the soul of a god,
or kami, inside it.
Okay, so to this day,
this is the belief, that some type of spirit
lives in this,
or that the rock itself has spirit.
The spirit of a god is inside,
and the stone carries a special spiritual meaning now.
Okay. That's amazing.
I want to... I need to walk around.
I mean, I had no idea how massive this is.
So, do you want to just look down below here?
It looks like it's floating over the water.
It really does.
Oh.
The name for this rock is Ame-no-kishi,
or the Floating Rock from the Heavens.
So this monolith is said to be related
to one of the first gods
that descended from the heavens to Japan,
and he is said to have traveled over the country
on a sky ship made out of a giant rock,
which was called Ama no Iwafune,
which is the Heavenly Rock Ship.
So what you're telling me is that there is
an ancient Japanese legend that speaks of a deity
flying around in the sky
with a gigantic vehicle made of stone?
Absolutely.
So, do you think
that is the reason why it was called
a vehicle made of stone, because it was so powerful and strong
and virtually indestructible that the story became
it's a vehicle made of stone?
You're absolutely right,
because the gods were...
flying over the land on a giant ship.
It wasn't a plane, because it didn't have wings.
It looked like a ship
made out of very hard material
that was like a very hard stone,
and they would descend from the heavens and down onto the land,
and thus, they would travel around the country.
According to the Japanese,
otherworldly beings had been visiting their islands
for over 12,000 years.
The earliest culture that we can identify in Japan
is the Jomon,
which is originally a Stone Age culture
running roughly from 10,000 BCE to 300 BCE.
It is a culture that we don't know an awful lot about,
because they had no writing system.
All we have is artifacts.
The little that we do know about the Jomon
comes from archaeological evidence.
And... one of the most representative, uh,
artifacts that is tied to the Jomon
is the Dogu statue.
Approximately 15,000 Dogu figurines
resembling strange, humanoid beings
have been found throughout the Japanese islands.
Ancient astronaut theorists suggest these figurines
represent the very kami the Japanese believe descended
to this world in the ancient past.
There are thousands of these statuettes
that have been recovered, and these figures have
goggle-type eyes, and they have rivets all over their body,
indicating that they're wearing some kind of a space suit
or technological armor.
So you have to ask yourself,
were these statues sky beings
who came and directed the Japanese
to have their civilization and culture, and that ultimately,
these sky gods are their ancestors?
Do the Dogu figures represent extraterrestrials
that visited Japan thousands of years ago?
And could they have descended in a craft
that resembled the monolith called Ishi-no-Hoden,
as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?
Perhaps further clues can be found
in Japan's official historical texts,
which describe the islands
as inhabited by otherworldly beings.
Ise, Japan.
In the center of this remote coastal city
is a massive complex of 125 individual shrines
erected 2,000 years ago,
dedicated to the supreme goddess of Shintoism...
Amaterasu.
When Amaterasu is residing
in the terrestrial plane, instead of the celestial plane,
her home is the Grand Shrine at Ise,
which is built without any nails,
any metal fastenings whatsoever.
It's also architecturally unlike any other shrine in Japan.
Modern architects still have difficulty
comprehending how this palace was built.
It is the most important shrine in Shintoism,
and has been visited by hundreds of millions of pilgrims
over thousands of years.
Now, allegedly,
the shrine contains something called the Sacred Mirror,
one of Japan's three most sacred artifacts,
which are collectively known
as the Imperial Regalia of Japan.
They were given by Amaterasu to Emperor Jimmu,
the first emperor of Japan.
And they have only been seen
by the emperors and high priests of Japan.
But what were they?
And why is the public not allowed to see them?
If these are items that are brought to Earth
by celestial beings, then by definition,
that would make them of extraterrestrial origin.
Is it possible that the Ishi-no-Hoden megalith
and the Ise Grand Shrine are physical evidence
of extraterrestrial visitations in Japan's ancient past?
And might the prime minister of Japan and his cabinet
still have connections
to these same otherworldly beings?
Perhaps the answer can be found
by more closely examining Emperor Jimmu,
and the stories that he was guided
by an intelligence that spoke to him...
from the sky.
Why would they label a boat.
Osaka, Japan.
In the middle of this modern metropolis
lies the Daisen Kofun,
a tomb for one of Japan's long line of divine emperors.
Covering over 400,000 square meters, the Daisen Kofun
is considered the largest tomb by area in the world.
There are more than 160,000 kofun
dotting the Japanese archipelago,
all of which contain the remains
of emperors or their royal families.
There are burial mounds throughout the world.
However, there's one specific shape that exists only in Japan,
and this is the Keyhole Kofun.
Most of these can only be seen from the sky.
This raises the question as to why emperors would be buried
in such a way that they are actually being memorialized
and being seen from the sky.
The Japanese believed that the royal family
was descended from gods that came from the sky.
So we have to wonder,
is this a way for the extraterrestrials
to identify the tombs of their ancestors?
Could the thousands of kofun
dotting the Japanese islands
contain the bodies of extraterrestrial beings?
Curiously, in 2016,
researchers studying high-resolution photos
of the surface of Mars
spotted an eerily similar keyhole-shaped mound.
Is this possibly a kofun found on Mars,
burying some lost extraterrestrial god?
If so, we can see that there's
definitely a connection between what we're seeing on Mars,
as some type of kofun burial site,
and over 160,000 of these found all over Japan.
Could the kofuns in Japan,
and the alleged structure on Mars,
contain definitive proof of a link
to beings from outside our world?
To investigate this theory further,
Giorgio Tsoukalos and Takeharu Mikami
were granted special access to one of Japan's oldest tombs...
the Ishibutai Kofun.
Oh, man, it's gigantic.
It's a megalith from sixth century AD.
Okay.
The largest rock on this tumulus
weighs about 77 tons.
Have they calculated the weight of all the rocks combined?
All together, this would weigh about 2,300 tons.
Wow!
That's incredible.
Can we go inside?
- Yes. - All right.
Wow.
So I presume one of these rocks up there
is the one that's 77 tons.
We would have great difficulty achieving that today.
And I'm not saying we can't do it.
Of course we can do it.
But we would use sophisticated,
high-tech, heavy machinery.
Excavation visitors have found wooden sleds
that are said to have been the tools
they used to drag and carry
these large rocks across the fields.
However, we don't know exactly how and from where
these rocks were carried from.
Yeah, I completely and utterly disagree with that notion.
You put 77 tons on wood,
it crushes into dust.
So that's wonderful that these sleds were found,
but I highly doubt
that 77 tons were on wooden sleds.
Because I've once seen a five-ton block being placed
on wooden rollers,
and it got crushed into oblivion.
This area here,
it's very hilly, uh, mountainous.
So in those ancient texts,
does it say how these stones were moved into position?
Traditionally, there were a group
of very skilled artisans or architects
who held a lot of, uh, secret skills and technology
that was only kept to them.
But, unfortunately,
we don't know what exactly those skills and technologies were.
I agree that there was engineering knowledge
that has been lost.
And to build something like this,
does he presume that this knowledge
may have come from some of those kamis or celestial beings
that are in Japanese mythologies?
So the further back in history we go,
the greater these monuments become. - Yes.
So the technology was there from the very beginning.
And if we go back in time
to follow these roots of these beings, we will go back
to prehistoric times of the-the era, the age
of the kamis or the deities.
Ancient Japanese Shintos believe
that once you die, you would be put into a coffin
that was shaped like a boat
and then travel to the land of the gods.
You know, that's so fascinating, because...
there are stories of flying boats
all around the world.
In ancient Egypt,
you have the sun barges descending from the sky.
In Native American cultures,
you have the flying canoes.
Why would they label a boat a flying boat?
Well, could it be perhaps because they didn't have
the vocabulary to say "airplane"?
I don't think our ancestors pulled this
out of their own imagination.
I think they actually saw flying boats,
and thus the legends were born.
Might the Ishibutai Kofun have been built
with the help of extraterrestrial beings,
beings that were also present on Mars in the distant past?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and suggest further clues can be found
by examining another mysterious megalithic structure,
one that some believe represents the so-called flying boats
that, according to the ancient Japanese stories,
were used to travel to the land of the gods.
So this could be some type of representation
of one of those flying vehicles that our ancestors witnessed.
Hitachi Province, Japan. 1803.
Local fishermen on the Harayadori shore
spot an unusual craft drifting in the distance.
When the vessel washes ashore,
they are astonished by what they witness.
This craft was likened to the shape
of a Japanese incense burner.
It is almost literally a flying disk,
a flying saucer.
On the outside of this craft
were multiple small metal plates,
uh, not too dissimilar to heat-resistant tiles
that you'd find, say, on a space shuttle.
A hatch opened,
and a young woman came out of the craft
dressed in clothes that had never been seen before
and speaking a language that nobody understood
in the slightest.
When they looked inside the craft,
they could see hieroglyphs
and strange writing all inside of the craft.
The story of the strange Utsuro Bune craft
appears in three different Japanese texts.
Even today, modern historians, uh, struggle to understand
what this means.
Nobody can really decipher this.
Japanese today are very familiar with this story.
And to them, this is a curious story
of one of the gods of their ancestry
who had somehow arrived there on the island
in this mysterious craft
and then departed.
Could the Utsuro Bune incident
have marked the return of extraterrestrial beings
that were present in Japan in the distant past?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and claim further evidence can be found
by examining a strange monolithic stone
that many believe was carved to resemble the very craft
that have been visiting Japan for thousands of years.
Asuka Park, Japan.
April 2017.
Does that say "rock ship"?
- "Masuda Rock Ship, this way." - Oh, all right.
Giorgio Tsoukalos
and ancient astronaut theorist Takeharu Mikami
set out to examine Masuda-no-Iwafune,
an 800-ton rock structure
that was carved from a single piece of granite and resembles
no other architecture in Japan.
Oh, man. Whoa.
Wow. That is...
I mean,
I've never seen anything like it.
While some researchers believe
the Masuda-no-Iwafune megalith is a tomb,
others claim it is meant to depict the sky boats
that are described in ancient Japanese stories.
So, the idea is that this was the entrance
to a Buddhist temple. What do they mean by that?
Inside... I mean, where?
It would actually predate Buddhism in Japan,
so it wouldn't have anything to do with Buddhist temples.
Right. So,
what is the actual translation of "Masuda-no-Iwafune"?
"Masuda" is the name of the region,
and "iwafune" literally means
"stone ship" or "rock ship."
Okay.
Yes, it's... naturally, the iwafune
or the rock ship
would have come down from the heavens
as a vehicle for the gods
to descend upon Earth.
So, I guess with the combination of the mythologies
of celestial beings, this could be
some type of representation of one
of those flying vehicles that our ancestors
perhaps witnessed.
Could the Masuda-no-Iwafune
have been carved to resemble the so-called flying boats
that were referred to in ancient Japanese texts?
And was a similar alien craft witnessed
by Japanese fishermen in 1803?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining much more recent UFO sightings
and the long-held belief that Japan's imperial family
has a connection to otherworldly beings.
Coming up...
Kyushu, Japan.
The seventh century BC.
According to Japan's earliest known historical texts,
Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, it is from this point
that the country's first ruler,
Emperor Jimmu, set out to conquer
and unify the Japanese islands.
He seems to have come out of Kyushu,
the southern island,
and moved across Japan to find a better place
to center the government and center his realm,
conquering people along the way,
and eventually he settles in the Yamato region.
And that becomes the center of Japan's government,
all the way until it moves to Tokyo in 1868.
As he was working his way northwards,
he was actually assisted
by a divine crow.
A three-legged crow, known as Yatagarasu.
"Yatagarasu" loosely translates
to "eight span crow."
So, we can imagine
that this crow would have been extremely large.
In some instances, Yatagarasu is also depicted
within a fiery orb in the sky.
This so-called "crow"
guided him on his journey
and advised him in military matters to ensure his success.
And, when you look at ancient depictions of this crow,
it is often depicted inside some kind of an orb,
this circular disc.
So if you look at that, you have to ask,
what exactly were the ancient Japanese talking about here?
Because this, to me, sounds more
like he was being guided by some kind of a flying craft
than an actual crow.
Could Japan's first Emperor, Jimmu,
and the imperial family today,
be direct descendants of extraterrestrials?
And might the three-legged crow, Yatagarasu,
really have been an alien craft?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest further evidence can be found
by examining a military coup designed to cover up
this extraterrestrial heritage.
Kyoto, Japan. 1183.
Military general Minamoto no Yoritomo
besieges the capital city of Japan,
forcing the current Emperor Antoku
and his bodyguard to flee.
For nearly 700 years after,
military dictatorships known as shogunates
maintained strict control over Japan.
Isolationist policies allowed few to enter
or exit the islands, with death as the ultimate penalty.
Only in 1867 did shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu,
facing a revolt from the Japanese people,
relinquish control of the government back to the emperor.
The Meiji Emperor was the first of the emperors
after the restoration.
Made a point of tracing his lineage
all the way back to Emperor Jimmu...
and to Amaterasu, as well.
So, this notion of a divine emperor,
of a living kami at the head of Japan, was resuscitated.
They wanted to return to the original Japanese empire,
the one founded by Jimmu,
and his connection with the extraterrestrial beings.
What happened after this is extraordinary.
Suddenly Japan takes off.
It starts accelerating in its technological ability.
It suddenly becomes a world-conquering nation.
By the early twentieth century, Japan was a superpower
and it had amassed a vast colonial empire,
rivaling that of the greatest Western colonial empires.
And what Japan accomplished in modernization
in the span of 20 years,
it took most European nations
about 200 or even 300 years to accomplish.
So you have to wonder
with the reinstating of the royal family,
was this also a reconnection
to the technical and extraterrestrial past
that had begun centuries ago in Japan,
and is now continuing today,
possibly with the guidance of extraterrestrials?
Could Japan's meteoric rise to power
be a direct result of reinstating the "divine,"
perhaps extraterrestrial, dynasty
originally established by Emperor Jimmu?
And is this why some of Japan's top government officials
have recently made statements supporting the notion
that alien visitation is real?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest further evidence of an alien presence in Japan today
can be found by examining a recent mass UFO sighting.
In July 2015, multiple witnesses in and around the city of Osaka
sighted a fleet of UFOs
moving in a quite extraordinary fashion
in broad daylight right over the city.
And various people caught them from different angles on camera.
Now, the government was quick to dismiss them as candles
or lanterns in the sky.
But the erratic movements and patterns suggested
that they were technological in nature.
Similar white orbs
were reported four years earlier,
during one of the worst environmental disasters
in mankind's history.
On March 26, 2011,
two weeks after the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan,
a fleet of white orbs
was recorded hovering over the site.
If we go back and look at the history of the UFO subject,
we find a great deal of interest with,
for example, our atomic energy plants,
our nuclear missile silos.
And it suggests to me that maybe
we're seeing alien entities who are deeply concerned
by our usage of atomic power.
Could the white orbs witnessed above Osaka
and Fukushima be alien craft belonging
to the same celestial beings the Japanese trace back
to their very origins?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining recent attempts by Japanese astronomers
to make contact with extraterrestrial beings.
Tokyo, Japan. July 1983.
At the University of Tokyo Astronomical Observatory,
astronomers Hisashi Hirabayashi and Masaki Morimoto
target a telescope towards the star Altair.
Using radio waves, they transmit a short, binary-encoded message
in an attempt to contact extraterrestrial life.
This was a groundbreaking piece of history
in terms of the search for extraterrestrial life.
This message basically told information
regarding human life, human history, DNA,
and also the location of the Earth itself.
So, any potential extraterrestrials
living in the vicinity of Altair
would potentially know where we're coming from.
The star of Altair is 16 light-years away from Earth,
and so it was expected
that the binary message would reach that star
by around 1999.
And now, from 2015 on,
the Japanese are expecting some kind of reply from their signal.
Now, what's particularly intriguing
is that Altair actually represents
one of the ancient Japanese gods.
This makes me wonder if the scientific community
had come to a conclusion that perhaps
their ancient god, represented by Altair,
may not have been a god after all.
So you have to wonder here,
are these Japanese astronomers
trying to contact the extraterrestrial gods
that they believe
came to Earth and started the Japanese civilization?
It would seem so.
In 2010, JAXA, Japan's national space program,
announced plans to establish a base on the moon
by the year 2020.
And recently, the Shimizu Corporation unveiled designs
for their LUNAR RING project,
a massive band of solar panels surrounding the moon
that would beam limitless clean power back to Earth.
When you look at all this together,
you can't help but wonder what's going on here?
Is it about reaching out to extraterrestrials,
or is it perhaps about using
extraterrestrial knowledge and technology
that the Japanese already have?
This suggests that the Japanese people are serious
about colonizing space
and may be working with extraterrestrials
on developing this enormously advanced technology.
Is it possible that there is a link
between Japan's technological advancements
and the country's connection to extraterrestrial beings?
And are these beings the same otherworldly entities
that have been influencing the development of Japanese culture
for thousands of years?
Ancient astronaut theorists say, yes,
and believe the proof lies not only at various locations
found throughout the Japanese landscape,
but also on Earth's neighboring planets...
and one in particular...
soon to be explored.
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