Mt. Fuji in Summer from around TokyoReincarnation to be Allowed by the God
More than 100 years ago, a notable foreign writer in Japan once wrote about a report on a child who was born in the late samurai era before modernization of Japan and claimed that he had been reborn.
Koizumi Yakumo (June 1850 – 26 September 1904), born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Greek: Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν), was a writer. He worked in the United States before moving to Japan and becoming Japanese. He was of Greek-Irish descent. He wrote about Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In the United States, he is also known for his writings about New Orleans, based on his decade-long stay there. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn)The child, Katsugoro, living in a farming village around Tokyo (then called Edo) said, when he was 8 years old, that he had been reborn here. He had once been born in a family, not known to his current family members, in another village several miles from the current one more than a decade ago but had died of a disease there when he had been six years old. First Katsugoro hinted his rebirth to his elder sister and then to his parents, and finally told a detailed story as asked by his grandmother who later stated the story to officials (samurais) coming from Edo.
His claim of rebirth was identified and proved by his current and former family members. And his story reached Edo, so that some notable scholar in the capital of Japan wrote about it, which took attention of Hearn who was interested in spiritual matters and religions. Accordingly Hearn wrote abut the boy to readers in the U.S., etc.:
"The Rebirth of Katsugoro
I
The following is not a story—at least it is not one of my stories. It is only the translation of an old Japanese document—or rather a series of documents—very much signed and sealed, and dating back to the early part of the present (i.e. the 19th) century. Various authors appear to have made use of these documents, especially the compiler of the curious collection of Buddhist stories entitled Bukkyo-hiyakkwazensho, to whom they furnished the material of the twenty-sixth narrative in that work. The present translation, however, was made from a manuscript copy discovered in a private library in Tokyo. I am responsible for nothing beyond a few notes appended to the text... (https://www.bps.lk/olib/bl/bl094_Hearn_The-Rebirth-of-Katsugoro.html)"
According to Katsugoro, when he died, his soul left his body and met an old man who looked like the grandfather in the new family where he was later reborn. After three years of moving to various places with the boy, the old man, pointing to a house, said to Katsugoro that he had to be reborn again in this house, since there was a good old woman: “Now you must be reborn—for it is three years since you died. You are to be reborn in that house. The person who will become your grandmother is very kind; so it will be well for you to be conceived and born there.”
Accordingly, Katsugoro entered into the body of the wife of the house to be reborn. However, we may doubt the story and suspect that his grandmother instilled the story of rebirth to her grandson Katsugoro for some reason. However, "Grandmother, never forget to offer warm food to the honourable dead [Hotoke Sama], and do not forget to give to priests—I am sure it is very good to do these things." Put simply, the grandmother was a kind of devotional and benevolent women sometimes found in local Japan. She never forgot to help and give any little money to traveling poor monks. It is unthinkable that his grandmother brainwashed Katsugoro for any reason.
Rather, we should take Katsugoro's story as face value. For some reason, at the end of the samurai era and before the start of modernization of Japan in the 19th century, the God made a plan to have a boy who died at six years old get reborn in a new family as a grandson of a devotional and benevolent woman. Additionally, Katsugoro lived from 1814 to 1869 as a rich farmer according to official records.
However, Katsugoro's case has been taken by today's Japanese as just one of strange spiritual stories, generated due to old superstition, recoded in the samurai era or before modernization of Japan. Nonetheless, Ian Pretyman Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007), a Canadian-born American psychiatrist who studied reincarnation examples all over the world, paid an attention to Katsugoro's case.
Anyway, reincarnation cases must have background religious stories like Katsugoro's case. There must be some reason for reincarnation to be allowed by the God.
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Acts 7, King James Version
15 So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers,
16 And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.
17 But when the time of the promise drew nigh, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt,
18 Till another king arose, which knew not Joseph.