A0704: Why is Japan special? – Part 5

The Wanderers had a lot of work to do to prepare the move to the new dwellings, because although they could not salvage much from the sunken spaceship, they could use what they took wisely, so there were some utensils they had to conceal so that the villagers would not become suspicious when the technology was obviously on display. The emergency shelters were dismantled to the extent that they could be quickly rebuilt if necessary. The arrival of the Wanderers was to resemble a procession so that the villagers would also be impressed when the embodied spirits entered the village. When the time of day was arranged, the Wanderers did not choose dawn for nothing, because the morning of a day also symbolises the beginning and the Wanderers intended to use this first day wisely to win the favour of the villagers. Their appearance was the biggest hurdle, so they came up with all kinds of mischief to influence the mood in the village positively. They knew the legends of the people and they had devised a plan to integrate themselves into these legends without influencing the basis of the legends too much. Legends are there to impress the listener properly, so that there is always a spark of truth in it and much is woven around it to be able to embellish the story properly. The belief in ghosts stems from the fact that people on all planets live in constant fear and are also incredibly curious at the same time. This always leads to the fact that events that seem uncanny are immediately associated with ghostly beings in order to be able to explain them somehow. The more a species develops, the less it believes in ghosts, because the species learns that almost everything can be explained, even if the knowledge about it often seems even more incredible than the belief in ghosts. Therefore, the extraterrestrial explorers knew what they had to do to redefine the belief in such a way that the Japanese people would one day figure out for themselves who these Wanderers really were. So many clues have been laid down in Japanese folklore about this that today you can put one and one together to come to this conclusion as well. The extraterrestrial explorers had from the beginning the urgent need that the future Japanese from their folklore one day recognise who the embodied spirits really were and these fifteen extraterrestrial explorers have done much to ensure that this knowledge is still present in the culture of the Japanese today, even if it has not yet been discovered as what it actually represents. When the procession of embodied spirits arrived in the village, the embodied spirits did many things that you would call hoaxes today and the villagers were deeply confused as to what the newcomers were actually doing until the first laughter broke out because an embodied spirit was acting so hilariously in front of the villagers and the villagers could not help but burst out in peals of laughter. This raised the general mood in the village to such an extent that even the children imitated the embodied spirits and moved hilariously. The embodied spirits had prepared all kinds of attractions, which they ignited one by one. When the procession came to a halt, everything suddenly calmed down and an eerie silence overcame the village. Now the village elder and his village headman stepped out of the crowd of villagers and spoke the following words.

“Dearly friends, today is a memorable day because after such a long time a group of the embodied spirits are coming to us to share their knowledge. They have made the arduous journey to us so that we may learn their way of life, because their area of origin offers many possibilities that we cannot even imagine. We will have much to learn from them, so we should cherish this day to remember for all eternity what a memorable day it is. We will shelter these spirits as if they belong to our community, as if they belong to our family. For this I thank you, my friends, and I thank the embodied spirits for seeing our village as worthy. Now let us celebrate the rest of the day a festival of joy so that we will never forget it”

So the village elder concluded his speech and all the villagers gathered in a nearby field to eat and drink and especially to look at the newcomers, because the appearance of the embodied spirits was on the one hand exceedingly shocking and on the other hand the villagers were caught by their curiosity, which now seemed stronger than the previous fear of these beings. Children had it the easiest and got used to the telepathic connection to the embodied spirits quite quickly. The adults still had great problems at first because they did not understand at all why it actually worked. When each villager had introduced himself to at least one embodied spirit, there was another speech, this time given by the head of the embodied spirits.

“Friends, we have arrived here today and we are pleased that you welcome us. However, we do not come just so that you can have a celebration, but we have undertaken a task that brought us to you. We are now almost like you, but we have brought many secrets that we may reveal to you, but for that you must first prove that you are worthy and you show us that by listening carefully to what we will teach you. If you are eager, you will receive many of our secrets that will make your lives much easier and more progressive. You will learn how to work your fields properly and what plants you can grow that will not cause you so much trouble. We will teach herbalism as well as the art of healing. You will be given new tools that you can put to good use and we will train you in something that will preserve your secret knowledge without it one day being reproduced in a distorted way. All of you are now also part of our community that we want to protect, so we will teach you the art of war so that together we can face any future danger calmly. We have brought all kinds of magic tricks that you can learn without harming yourselves. We look forward to the future time when we may return home again, when our task has been satisfactorily completed. So I ask you to listen well and try your hardest in learning the skills. Thank you for this feast, it is honourable and full of great food. Thank you friends, let us eat and drink”

The leader of the embodied spirits concluded his speech, which was delivered by the villager who knew the true identity of the wanderers. The feast was a resounding success and many more profound telepathic conversations were held that evening. The village headman had the task of assigning the embodied spirits to the villagers so that each being would also have a place to live. Not many villagers agreed to take in an embodied spirit, but after the festival, many villagers were happy that these embodied spirits appeared much more pleasant than expected, even though their appearance was the topic of conversation in the village community for a long time, until one day even their appearance was only secondary for the villagers when the embodied spirits were discussed. Many children were beside themselves because the embodied spirits were constantly doing something unpredictable that amused them. But all the villagers were aware that these embodied spirits were not there to play jokes but to do their job. Many villagers also realised quite quickly what this meant for the whole village community. First, the fields were newly cultivated and much of what the villagers did before for the upcoming harvest now seemed to be obsolete, because the embodied spirits brought completely new knowledge about farming into the village community. After the first trainings took place there, a lesson plan was also created in which many arts were passed on. One of them was the art of self-defence, because the villagers were often visited by marauding gangs of murderers, who not only claimed part of the harvest for themselves, but also did many things that deeply frightened the villagers. These lessons were also an end in themselves, because combative acts could be carried out by the Wanderers, but there were only fifteen of them and that is always a disadvantage. When the villagers were taught these arts, the main focus was on defence, so while strategic warfare was a topic, more and more emphasis was placed on defence so that the villagers or their descendants would not one day become conquerors who wanted to claim more and more land for themselves in order to expand their power. This did come later in the course of Japanese history, but that was never the intention of the Wanderers. All training was first given only by the embodied spirits, and some time later sub-groups formed, taught by very teachable villagers, so that the training system took shape. The arts of self-defence were conducted more and more intensively, so that one day a caste was formed from them, which then led to the legendary samurai, but many thousands of years passed before this was the case. In the next part, we will focus on the progress of the villagers, because this village lives on for all time in the stories of the Japanese.