"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." "CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS"