3D Images on Holy Shroud in Turin
In this world there are many things you cannot buy, one of which is the Holy Shroud in Turin.
It presents a negative image of “Jesus Christ,” like on a negative film, lying in a cave-like tomb in which his body was put after the death upon the cross. However, its authenticity is yet to be decided, though various scientific examinations were conducted in the past.
Now the Winter Olympic Games are being held in Turin, Italy. I am not so much interested in it. But, the place of the Games seems to be very suggestive. Accordingly, I am obliged to report some on Turin.
In 2002, a Japanese professor succeeded in creating three-dimensional images of the man whose image is imprinted on the shroud (http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~takemura/seigaifu/english.htm).
The old professor, Dr. Shinichi Takemura, wrote about his work on the site:
“There have been a number of opinions and discussions regarding the production process for the Shroud. Apart from these views, as a scientist, the author could not stop taking interest and concern regarding the 3-D information buried in the Shroud.
Without arbitrarily selecting or modifying the information in the Shroud, the author treated them faithfully and finally succeeded to build a 3-D data of the Face of the Man. In consequence, the Head of the Man can be rendered from various angles.
Now that all the necessary programs for generating the 3-D images are completed, it will be easy to reproduce a 3-D image of the Man if the more precise photographs or the more reliable Z-data are given.
Finally, the author would like to express his gratitude to Father Gaetano Compri, Chairman of the Holy Shroud Research Association of Japan, for his guidance and suggestions.”
Father Gaetano Compri is said to have once learnt in Turin.
How Jesus Christ looks is not important to mankind. The Bible says that when men began to take women to wife through selection based on appearance, the world got worse. And, it is still getting worse due to some special competition in the present world. But, if people begin to choose their religion based on appearance of a founder of a religion, the world would become the worst place for mankind.
A 15-year-old Japanese girl, the winner of Figure Skating Grand Prix final in December 2005, is said to have the highest probability to win the Gold Medal in figure skating in Turin. But, she is a few months younger to be qualified for the Olympic Games, which made upset all the innocent Japanese sports lovers. Anyhow, she is forbidden making an entry for competition in Turin.
As I am not so interested in this winter Olympic Games for some reason, I thought the Lord God acknowledged this way my feeling.
If the Shroud is truly holy, how can you hold such games of pagan origin where the sacred relics are kept and guarded? The place is wrong in either way.
Besides, I have recently felt the anger of the God, maybe due to various deplorable incidents in Japan and the world.
Anyway, you can check the 3D image of the world’s most incredible figure at your site, which might be the same as the figure the first man or angel who entered the cave after Jesus’ burial might have discovered.
“COME BACK TO YOUR RIGHT SENSES AND STOP YOUR SINFUL WAY”
[Please Select UNICODE-8 in PAGE/ENCODE SETTING of Your Internet Explorer]
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
An Apocalypse Oddly Leading to 2001
An Apocalypse Oddly Leading to 2001
Ryotaro Shiba, who died in 1996, was not awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but he is still the most popular writer among the Japanese from ex-prime ministers to students.
It is said he adopted the pen name in order to show his respect to Si-ma Qian (called Shiba-Sen in Japanese), the best historian in China who lived and died in the 1st century BC and whose history book can be virtually comparable to the Bible from a view point of literature.
The pen name “Ryotaro Shiba” means that he humbly admits that he is very inferior to great Sima Qian, but has his own vision in literature and history.
There are two interesting incidents the eminent writer Ryotaro Shiba once reported:
* * *
In early 70’s, a Japanese husband and wife was traveling in Afghanistan during their wandering journey over the Eurasian Continent.
In a village, when the couple was standing with their baby girl in their arms, here coming was a man riding on a horse and scurrying like a caballero in the Middle Ages. The country caballero on a horse quickly took up the baby from their arms, holding her up in the air, running several times around the couple so astonished, and dashing to a certain direction to disappear from their eyesight.
The husband and wife got terribly shocked, understanding that their baby was stolen, and kept just standing there in void of the village.
When a certain time elapsed, here coming back was the man riding on a horse and scurrying like a caballero in the Middle Ages. The country caballero gave back the baby to her parents still standing at the spot.
Later, the Japanese wandering man and wife moved to New York, and their daughter grew up in the city.
In early 1990’s when the eminent Japanese writer visited New York, he met the very wandering husband, and thus the above odd memory was recorded.
At that time, the eminent writer also met two Japanese in New York: a professional painter and an editor of a publication company.
One day the painter and the editor went to Williamsburg, a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn, to paint the street. While the two were making a sketch, an old lady, who apparently looked to be Jewish, came to them, unfriendly saying, “What are you doing here?” Their exchange of words unhappily did not end with only this barbed question. She tried persistently to show her hostility and contempt to the two Japanese cultural figures who happened to be making an innocent sketch of her residence area.
(It was almost a year before 1993 when the first World Trade Center bombing attack was conducted by a terrorist group.)
* * *
In a village of Afghanistan in early 1970’s, there was an extraordinarily uplifted man, on a horse running around a village, who shocked a Japanese man and wife with their baby in their arms.
On a corner of New York before the first terrorist attacks, there was an extraordinarily alerted, old Jewish lady who unpleasantly embarrassed a Japanese artist and an intellectual.
As New York was severely attacked in 2001 by terrorists who were instructed by their leaders hiding in Afghanistan and supporting anti-Israeli terrorism, the above two incidents might be interesting to some readers.
But the eminent Japanese writer did not formulate a story linking two incidents as a kind of apocalypses, to my chagrin.
“WHO WOULD RATHER PUT A CANDLE UNDER THE BED”
Ryotaro Shiba, who died in 1996, was not awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but he is still the most popular writer among the Japanese from ex-prime ministers to students.
It is said he adopted the pen name in order to show his respect to Si-ma Qian (called Shiba-Sen in Japanese), the best historian in China who lived and died in the 1st century BC and whose history book can be virtually comparable to the Bible from a view point of literature.
The pen name “Ryotaro Shiba” means that he humbly admits that he is very inferior to great Sima Qian, but has his own vision in literature and history.
There are two interesting incidents the eminent writer Ryotaro Shiba once reported:
* * *
In early 70’s, a Japanese husband and wife was traveling in Afghanistan during their wandering journey over the Eurasian Continent.
In a village, when the couple was standing with their baby girl in their arms, here coming was a man riding on a horse and scurrying like a caballero in the Middle Ages. The country caballero on a horse quickly took up the baby from their arms, holding her up in the air, running several times around the couple so astonished, and dashing to a certain direction to disappear from their eyesight.
The husband and wife got terribly shocked, understanding that their baby was stolen, and kept just standing there in void of the village.
When a certain time elapsed, here coming back was the man riding on a horse and scurrying like a caballero in the Middle Ages. The country caballero gave back the baby to her parents still standing at the spot.
Later, the Japanese wandering man and wife moved to New York, and their daughter grew up in the city.
In early 1990’s when the eminent Japanese writer visited New York, he met the very wandering husband, and thus the above odd memory was recorded.
At that time, the eminent writer also met two Japanese in New York: a professional painter and an editor of a publication company.
One day the painter and the editor went to Williamsburg, a neighborhood in northern Brooklyn, to paint the street. While the two were making a sketch, an old lady, who apparently looked to be Jewish, came to them, unfriendly saying, “What are you doing here?” Their exchange of words unhappily did not end with only this barbed question. She tried persistently to show her hostility and contempt to the two Japanese cultural figures who happened to be making an innocent sketch of her residence area.
(It was almost a year before 1993 when the first World Trade Center bombing attack was conducted by a terrorist group.)
* * *
In a village of Afghanistan in early 1970’s, there was an extraordinarily uplifted man, on a horse running around a village, who shocked a Japanese man and wife with their baby in their arms.
On a corner of New York before the first terrorist attacks, there was an extraordinarily alerted, old Jewish lady who unpleasantly embarrassed a Japanese artist and an intellectual.
As New York was severely attacked in 2001 by terrorists who were instructed by their leaders hiding in Afghanistan and supporting anti-Israeli terrorism, the above two incidents might be interesting to some readers.
But the eminent Japanese writer did not formulate a story linking two incidents as a kind of apocalypses, to my chagrin.
“WHO WOULD RATHER PUT A CANDLE UNDER THE BED”
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Samurai’s Yasukuni
Samurai’s Yasukuni
New York Times in its online version has spotlighted Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman of the Yomiuri Group, the most influential media group in Japan.
He also controlled the most popular baseball team in Japan, Yomiuri Giants, which led him once to direct confrontation with Livedoor Corp, a Japanese Enron of its poor IT business version.
In 2004, the president of Livedoor, Mr. Takafumi Horie, had tried to buy one of professional baseball teams in vain, mainly due to opposition of Mr. Watanabe.
After the 9/11 election Mr. Horie had run for but lost, he reportedly asked the director-general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to help him acquire another baseball team. Mr. Watanabe was again rigidly opposed to it. As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is also the head of LDP, the relationship between Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Watanabe got uptight.
What’s more, Mr. Watanabe has been expressing his dissent over Mr. Koizumi’s going and worshipping at the Yasukuni Shrine where souls of many soldiers who died in past wars are enshrined.
The issue is that Yasukuni, meaning putting the nation in pease, also deifies Japanese supreme leaders in WWII.
Believe or not, the Spirit told me the other day that Japanese Prime Minister at heart would not like to recommend some others to visit Yasukuni. Nobody has ever suspected such possibility. So, only the Spirit told me so.
On his last visit, Mr. Koizumi walked on the main path of Yasukuni and prayed before the altar, slipping the 500-yen coin into an offertory box. It is a style for ordinary people when visiting Yasukuni. In his previous visits, the prime minister followed an authentic course.
There must be a reason that Mr. Koizumi cannot stop his visit to the shrine, if he so wishes.
Mr. Watanabe is said to keep hamsters as his pet or animal companion. In a TV interview, he said that he had read a magazine article telling that a certain Diet (national parliament) member keeps hamsters, and then he called her to come and help him buy and keep them.
Someday, Mr. Koizumi may ask Mr. Watanabe to help make a pet of a hamster.
* * *
Nonetheless, samurai won’t buy and keep hamsters. Until the end of WWII, Japan had been actually governed by samurai and their direct offspring.
Even after late 19th century when the last samurai regime and shogun were abolished, samurai of other clans than the shogun family controlled the government of the Empire of Great Japan.
Most of high-ranking officials in Imperial Japan during and before WWII were from ex-samurai families, but most of soldiers and citizens were not.
The Yasukuni Shrine is rather new, compared with other shrines mostly functioning for 1500 years or so along with venerable myths. Yasukuni was established by the Meiji government with full of ex-samurai to appease the spirits of soldiers who died in wars, including one that had put an end to the shogun regime.
So, until 1945, Japan had been in effect under control of spirit of samurai for almost 750 years, which makes its tradition deeply rooted in part of Japan and the Japanese.
* * *
On August 15, 2005, Japan’s Minister of Environment Yuriko Koike visited the Yasukuni Shrine (as a private person), which helped her win her own 9/11 election. Her brilliant election campaign boosted LDP in the election, decisively contributing to victory of the prime minister.
On August 15, 1945, Emperor Showa declared unconditional surrender to the allied, putting an end to WWII and the Empire of Great Japan eventually.
For some, Yasukuni may be the most reasonable place to commemorate on August 15 the extinct Empire above any political and international disputes, for the deceased have nothing to do with worldly sins any more.
“IF YOU HAVE EARS, THEN LISTEN TO WHAT SPIRIT SAYS”
New York Times in its online version has spotlighted Mr. Tsuneo Watanabe, chairman of the Yomiuri Group, the most influential media group in Japan.
He also controlled the most popular baseball team in Japan, Yomiuri Giants, which led him once to direct confrontation with Livedoor Corp, a Japanese Enron of its poor IT business version.
In 2004, the president of Livedoor, Mr. Takafumi Horie, had tried to buy one of professional baseball teams in vain, mainly due to opposition of Mr. Watanabe.
After the 9/11 election Mr. Horie had run for but lost, he reportedly asked the director-general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to help him acquire another baseball team. Mr. Watanabe was again rigidly opposed to it. As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is also the head of LDP, the relationship between Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Watanabe got uptight.
What’s more, Mr. Watanabe has been expressing his dissent over Mr. Koizumi’s going and worshipping at the Yasukuni Shrine where souls of many soldiers who died in past wars are enshrined.
The issue is that Yasukuni, meaning putting the nation in pease, also deifies Japanese supreme leaders in WWII.
Believe or not, the Spirit told me the other day that Japanese Prime Minister at heart would not like to recommend some others to visit Yasukuni. Nobody has ever suspected such possibility. So, only the Spirit told me so.
On his last visit, Mr. Koizumi walked on the main path of Yasukuni and prayed before the altar, slipping the 500-yen coin into an offertory box. It is a style for ordinary people when visiting Yasukuni. In his previous visits, the prime minister followed an authentic course.
There must be a reason that Mr. Koizumi cannot stop his visit to the shrine, if he so wishes.
Mr. Watanabe is said to keep hamsters as his pet or animal companion. In a TV interview, he said that he had read a magazine article telling that a certain Diet (national parliament) member keeps hamsters, and then he called her to come and help him buy and keep them.
Someday, Mr. Koizumi may ask Mr. Watanabe to help make a pet of a hamster.
* * *
Nonetheless, samurai won’t buy and keep hamsters. Until the end of WWII, Japan had been actually governed by samurai and their direct offspring.
Even after late 19th century when the last samurai regime and shogun were abolished, samurai of other clans than the shogun family controlled the government of the Empire of Great Japan.
Most of high-ranking officials in Imperial Japan during and before WWII were from ex-samurai families, but most of soldiers and citizens were not.
The Yasukuni Shrine is rather new, compared with other shrines mostly functioning for 1500 years or so along with venerable myths. Yasukuni was established by the Meiji government with full of ex-samurai to appease the spirits of soldiers who died in wars, including one that had put an end to the shogun regime.
So, until 1945, Japan had been in effect under control of spirit of samurai for almost 750 years, which makes its tradition deeply rooted in part of Japan and the Japanese.
* * *
On August 15, 2005, Japan’s Minister of Environment Yuriko Koike visited the Yasukuni Shrine (as a private person), which helped her win her own 9/11 election. Her brilliant election campaign boosted LDP in the election, decisively contributing to victory of the prime minister.
On August 15, 1945, Emperor Showa declared unconditional surrender to the allied, putting an end to WWII and the Empire of Great Japan eventually.
For some, Yasukuni may be the most reasonable place to commemorate on August 15 the extinct Empire above any political and international disputes, for the deceased have nothing to do with worldly sins any more.
“IF YOU HAVE EARS, THEN LISTEN TO WHAT SPIRIT SAYS”