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Chosen Peoples and
Promised Lands
JEWISH history starts with the patriarch Abraham; Japanese history begins with Emperor Jimmu. The stories of Abraham and Jimmu, despite their different components of myth and history, exhibit a decisively similar element: Both traditions trace the origins of their respective peoples to a divinely inspired migration, and both associate that migration with the concepts of a chosen people and a promised land.
The Middle Eastern patriarch Abraham (first called Abram) was, according to the biblical account, seventy-five years old when God commanded him to leave his home in Haran and proceed with his household to the land of Canaan. Abraham was a nineteenth-generation descendant of the father of all mankind, Adam, and was chosen by God to become the progenitor of "a great nation," blessed for all time. God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, described as "a land flowing with milk and honey": "Raise your eyes and look from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west, for I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever. . . . Up, walk about the land, through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you." Abraham obeyed the divine order. He traveled the land of Canaan from north to south, establishing ties with local rulers, erecting altars to his One God, and renaming the places that he visited.
The East Asian chieftain Kamu Yamato Ihare Biko no Mikoto (much later, Emperor Jimmu) was, according to the ancient chronicles of Japan, the Kojiki and the Nihongi, forty-five years old when, with divine help, he led his army from the island of Kyushu to the plain of Yamato in central Japan. Jimmu was the great-great-grandson of the sun goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, and the grandson of Ninigi no Mikoto, the first deity to become an earthly monarch. During Jimmu's campaign, which took place on land and sea, he conquered many regions and changed the names of various places. After subjugating the Land of Yamato, he established his capital there and became the first emperor of Japan. The country that the gods helped Jimmu conquer was "the reed-plain-fifteen-hundred-autumns-fair-rice-ear land," a "fair land encircled on all sides by blue mountains." Jimmu inherited the blessing that had been given to his divine grandfather: "Do thou, my August Grandchild, proceed thither and govern it. .. . May prosperity attend thy dynasty, and may it, like Heaven and Earth, endure forever."
The southwestward migration of Abraham begins the history of the Jewish people. The northeastward expedition of Jimmu marks the historical beginning of the Japanese. The disparity in the ages of Abraham and Jimmu when they embarked upon their respective expeditions reflected the difference between the ages of the two peoples they led. Abraham, if he indeed existed, lived in the twentieth or nineteenth century before the common era (B.C.E.). The mythological date of Emperor Jimmu's conquest of Yamato is 660 B.C.E., but if he was a historical figure, he probably lived in the third or fourth century of the common era (C.E), more than two thousand years after Abraham.
Abraham's migration was to repeat itself, as both he and then later his descendants, the Jewish people, would leave the land of Canaan and return to it time after time, with each absence longer and more painful than the previous one. Emperor Jimmu's conquest of Yamato established him and his people on the islands of Japan, which they have never left nor been driven from since that time.
Like most other peoples in the world, the Jews and the Japanese have regarded themselves as unique nations. The Bible does not tell us why Abraham was chosen, from among all the people of his day, to receive the divine blessing and become the father of God's Chosen People. However, once he received the heavenly command, he proved himself worthy of the choice through his belief and obedience. But the status of a Chosen People was not accorded automatically to Abraham's descendants, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob's later name). God made a "Covenant" with Abraham and his seed and continued divine favor was contingent upon faithfulness to the covenantal obligations: faith in God and the practice of justice and righteousness. Thus, in Judaism, the concept of a Chosen People had a dual implication: It referred to a particular ethnic group, the Children of Israel, who were bound by blood ties, and at the same time was conditional on their behavior toward God and one another. More often than not, according to the biblical view of history, this resulted in suffering a punishment rather than in enjoying the blessings. Yet, the covenantal relationship between God and the Jews was eternally valid, even when it was temporarily suspended by way of punishment.
Neither do the ancient chronicles of Japan tell us why Jimmu, of all the divine descendants of his time, was chosen to become the founder of the Japanese empire. Yet, he too proved himself worthy of the honor, conquering the land of Yamato and establishing a reign that was to last a long time. The blessing of Jimmu was also bestowed upon his descendants for all time, and his divinity was bequeathed to all future emperors of Japan. The divinity of the emperors did not depend on a covenantal relationship; it was biologically determined and only the descendants of Emperor Jimmu could possess it. For this reason, unlike in other countries, no other family ever tried to occupy the imperial throne of Japan. But divinity was not inherited automatically: The imperial sons who did not become emperors did not possess it, emperors acquired it only upon accession to the throne, and they lost it when they abdicated.
The Japanese concept of a chosen people, which in the twentieth century drove them to imperialistic megalomania, was based on belief in the divinity of the emperors and on the assumption that the Japanese people constituted one family with the emperor as its permanent sacred head. This sanction was not conditional on the moral behavior of either the rulers or the ruled. It also lacked the Chinese Confucian provision for the monarch to lose the mandate of heaven if he acted inappropriately. Nevertheless, it possessed a moral element of its own: As divine monarchs, the Japanese emperors were to provide a moral model for the people, which many of them ostensibly did. Moreover, as alleged members of one great family, the Japanese were expected to treat each other in a moral way, an ideal that they have often claimed to cherish.
Among the Jews as well as among the Japanese, the concept of a chosen people was linked to the concept of a promised land. In neither case was the promised land a paradise on earth. The semi-arid land of Canaan, later known as the Land of Israel, was neither the richest nor the most fertile in the Middle East. Yet it became a Holy Land, the place where God wanted his abode to be erected and offerings made to him. Japan was far more blessed with rain than the Land of Israel, but compared with China or the lands of Southeast Asia, it was poor in natural resources. Nevertheless, according to Shinto, the native religion of Japan, it was a divine land, the place where the gods dwelt and the country that they protected.
The claim of the Jews and the Japanese to be chosen peoples and to inhabit divine lands had little objective substance. These were, after all, two relatively small and unimportant peoples, living in not very impressive countries on the fringes of the great empires of their time. Their own images as blessed nations were hardly self-evident, and they had to make great efforts to realize them. This gap between a subjectively assumed superiority and an objectively perceived inferiority created among both the Japanese and the Jews a tension that proved to be highly productive. The unabated dynamism that has historically characterized both peoples can be regarded as a recurring attempt to bridge this gap. In this sense, both Abraham and Jimmu may still be on their way to the promised land.
Abraham was not born a Jew. According to the biblical account, his family migrated to Haran from Ur of the Chaldees, an important political and cultural center in Mesopotamia. It was only after he arrived in the land of Canaan that Abraham and his descendants began to regard themselves as a distinct people, later to be called Jews. The Jews were one of many Semitic peoples who inhabited the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Another such tribe were the Arabs, who trace their ancestry to Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham and his Egyptian concubine, Hagar. Therefore, Abraham was not only the first Jew but also the first Arab; today, both Israelis and Arabs invoke in their
