Hej,
det finns en del info om Martinus resa till Japan i tidigare nummer av tidskriften Kosmos (bl a nr 8 1954). Kosmos (årgång 1933-71) kan läsas på nätet:
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/

Sök på japan.

Bl a kommer följande upp:

Martinus, Omkring min japansrejse:
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/kosmos/1954/parser.php?fil=kos1954-08-113&nr=1

Martinus afrejse til Japan:
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/kosmos/1954/parser.php?fil=kos1954-09-129&nr=1

ANMELDELSE AF »Menneskeheden og Verdensbilledet« fra Japan:
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/kosmos/1954/parser.php?fil=kos1954-03-046&nr=1

Sen finns ju anekdoten om att Martinus lär ha sagt att Japan ska bli första land att använda TT i offentlig undervisning, eller nåt i den stilen. Men jag vet inte var det står (kanske i nån av minnesböckerna?)...

vh
markus

Hi Markus,

This is the English part of the forum - please keep all messages in English.

Thank you 

Best regards,
Torben

I can offer a brief summary in English as thanks for Markus' excellent advice to search for "Japan" in the Kosmos archives:

There is really not anything to be found about Martinus' visit per se, apart from an article in Kosmos 1954/8 telling about the letter he got inviting him to Japan

Omkring min Japansrejse
("About my trip to Japan")
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/kosmos/1954/parser.php?fil=kos1954-08-113&nr=8

Anyhow, this was enough to set me out on a search on Google and I soon found out that the translator of "I can offer a brief summary in English as thanks for Markus excellent advice to search for "Japan" in the Kosmos archives:

There is really not anything to be found about Martinus' visit per se, apart from an article in Kosmos 1954/8 telling about the letter he got inviting him to Japan

Omkring min Japansrejse
("About my trip to Japan")
http://kosmos.martinus.dk/da/kosmos/1954/parser.php?fil=kos1954-08-113&nr=8

Anyhow, this was enough to set me out on a search on Google and I soon found out that Norija ESUMI, the translator of the Japanese edition of "The Ideal Food", also has been published at

http://www.oomoto.or.jp/Esperanto/esKuljap/esenco/index.html

Probably also as translator here, if "Tradukis" means that (which seems very likely).

The organization inviting Martinus to Japan is actually an off-spring from the Oomoto movement/religion and I am currently trying to learn more at

http://www.oomoto.or.jp/English/index-en.html

I have already written to their International Division to see if they have more information to offer. Rather exciting 

Aha, I didn't realise this was the English section!
Actually, I thought suwedenjin (=swedish guy in katakana) used the english language because he wasn't fluent in danish! (Seriously...) So therefore I used swedish.
Sorry.

About Martinus' trip to Japan, I really hope suwedenjin finds out more.

good luck,

markus

Hehe! No, I am not fluent in Danish, at the very least WRITING Danish. OTH I have no problems whatsoever READING Martinus in Danish. I actually have all seven parts of LB in Danish as well as in Swedish.

So far no luck in finding more information about Martinus trip to Japan. But I am find LOTS of information about what is called the new religions or "New Religious Movements" (新宗教) in Japan.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinsh%C5%ABky%C5%8D

This particular ANANAI-KYO 'sect' inviting Martinus does not even seem to have a web presence, as far as I have been able to see.

ANANAI-KYO is written in a very strange way in Japanese: 三五教 = the characters for three + five + religion (or teaching).

The official site of the town where they have their HQ is a mess with almost everything, including the images:

http://www.town.shimizu.shizuoka.jp/

Reading a few pages (from 215 and forward with a few pages missing in the preview) in a book called "On Sharing Religious Experience: Possibilities of Interfaith Mutuality" gives quite a few hints why there was a mutual sympathy between Martinus and the likes of Ananaikyō (which is the correct to transcribe it today). Extremely interesting!

Shorted link: http://tinyurl.com/5peje5

A summary of Ananaikyō can be found in the Encyclopedia of Shinto
http://eos.kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=374

From 1932 to 1940 Nakano studied Honda Chikaatsu’s "spirit studies" (reigaku)

I think it looks like this (since the word is not in any dictionary I have):

[align=center][/align]

I really like that! Spirit Studies and not Spiritual Studies!

There is even a book with the title

The report of the sixth world religion correspondence congress : Under the auspices of the Ananai-Kyo.
Imprint: Simizu-city : The International General Headquarters of Ananai-kyo, [1955]
Description: 278 p.
http://libcat.mcmaster.ca/index.jsp?Ntt1=598435&Ntk1=Bib+No.&Ntx1=mode+matchallpartial

But Martinus write about "DEN ANDEN VERDENSRELIGIONS KONGRES" which is the second congress!?!?! A "second" congress in 1954 and a report of a sixth congress published in 1955??

To make things even MORE confusing there is a book on Amazon.co.uk

The Third World Religion Correspondence Congress, 1954. Sponsored by the Ananai-Kyo International Headquarters
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Correspondence-Sponsored-Ananai-Kyo-International-Headquarters/dp/B0017XX2XQ

Well, mysteries are given us to be solved, aren't they? Eventually we'll know if there is a report from the congress where Martinus attended.

BTW, Markus: Do you also mess around with Japanese? Not too many people are able to spit out a KATAKANA identification!  But I prefer my KANJI name.

Best,

Hi again,
Yes, interesting about Ananaikyō. They seem interested in some interfaith thing, and maybe Martinus saw them as part of the new world impulse? At least Martinus seems to have thought that TT would become big in Japan someday. Actually, Martinus wrote some letters about his sights in Japan, and interesting to read is his meeting with the big Buddha statue. The letter is not in english, it was published in Kosmos but in one of the later issues not available on Internet. It was discussed on the swedish forum (STT) so here is the link to the whole letter and the discussion:

http://www.thirdtestament.com/web/phorum/read.php?f=5&i=64072&t=64072

Martinus was fascinated by the spiritual energy emanating from this statue which made it seem alive, at least to the initiated. He writes: "Generations of permanent concentration of thought and prayer to the highest being through this dead metal face have gathered like a magicial power, which reflects the recieved mass of sympathy back to the onlooker as if from a living being. From the face of the dead buddha flows the inkling of a higher world, an inspiring force or elevated blessing. It is possible, that hundreds of foreign tourists come and see the buddha without noticing its curious mystique..." (my translation)

There should be more letters, and it would also be interesting to hear his japanese hosts tell about the visit. But it was more than 50 years ago now.

I’m not exactly fluent in danish either, but I have read some Martinus in danish and it works ok.

Yes I am a little familiar with katakana. I have been to Japan a couple of times and actually tried to learn the signs, but I gave up. Maybe I’ll try again as I really like the country.

Good luck with Your research about Ananaikyō and Martinus trip to Japan, make sure to post here or on the swedish forum if You find out something more.

All the best,

Markus

Hello

suwedenjin wrote:

I am contemplating the start of a web project aiming at a broad discussion of Martinus work as the reference point to look at other "theories of life". If my contemplations bear fruit, so to say, my first ambition is to publish in English with a simple Japanese version as a complement. "Simple", because my Japanese is not at all sophisticated, more like school book language But even the most complex content can be expressed in (grammatically) simple language.

Sounds interesting. Let us know when the page is up and we will make a link

I am not totally sure what the problem is, but I am pretty sure that Martinus Institut has the paper based book in Chinese if that is what you are looking for. I have seen copies of the Eternal World Picture in Chinese.

Best regards,
Lasse

Thanks again, Markus!

Very valuable help. I am currently reading the thread you sent.

I have also "given up" Japanese several times - since it so extremely difficult - but then I got back on the track again. There seems to be a lot of interest in learning Japanese these days, but the drop out frequency from university studies also seems to be rather extreme. I always recommend people to learn Chinese instead, since it is 1) much, much easier as a language and 2) it's the language of the future. Japanese is easier for us Swedes to pronounce, but spoken Japanese makes rapid languages like Italian to sound really slow  Despite knowing all the words in a sentence and being able to speak it myself I have terrible troubles following an ordinary Japanese spoken version of the same text. Every time I watch a Chinese movie I think "Wow! This is really ultra-rapid (slow motion) compared with Japanese".

Enough of linguistic excesses ....

No more luck with Ananaikyō yet. I managed to transcribe the name of the founder (Nakano Yonosuke) as either

中野与之助 or 

中野與之助

but it has not been to much help so far. Actually it was more luck than skill that I at all managed to find the characters, since Japanese names is an occult science in itself!

http://occult.system.to/dic/0009.html

Suggests that there were 125000 "believers" in Ananaikyō 1992.

Even if it so far seems to be impossible to find a direct link to the Ananaikyō HQ, founder Nakano Yonosuke has left many traces on the web. Just recently (we're talking minutes and hours now  ) I found this extremely ambitious project

The Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement International
http://www.oisca.org/e/

and here it is stated that Nakano Yonosuke the first president for OISCA (or its )
http://www.oisca.org/e/about/history/index.htm

Here you can learn that OISCA has started a "Japanese-teaching kindergarten" in Bangkok (via a news clip posted in Belgium 2008/1/30):
http://www.newsclip.be/news/2008130_017496.html

so the searching at least gives some interesting information apart from up-to-date info about the secret Ananaikyō organization. Its original intentions to create "Heaven on Earth" maybe nowadays are only expressed via organizations like OISCA???

BTW: there is a minister in the Church of Sweden with a vast knowledge on the "mother-organization" Ômoto. Leif Nordenstorm wrote his dissertation for Doctor in Theology on the subject of Ômoto and its use of Esperanto as a means to spread its teaching to the world. It is written in Swedish, but there are summaries in both English and Esperanto. I quote the first lines

The full text is available at

http://www.diva-portal.org/diva/getDocument?urn_nbn_se_uu_diva-1932-1__fulltext.pdf

Have a great day!

Hi again,
yes, that thread contains some interesting comments about Martinus, I find the discussion about 'Thomsen' vs 'Martinus' very interesting.

About japanese, I didn't know that chinese is considered "easier". I'll think about that, and yes chinese shoud be some kind of language of the future (or wasn't it esperanto? ). Maybe I'll try, actually I think chinese sounds very nice (at least mandarin does).

Interesting about the japanese Ananaikyō. One wonders how Martinus thought of them. Did he see them as part of the new world impulse? Their interest in esperanto is a connection to Martinus, maybe it even was from them he got that idea about esperanto as the future global language?

Good luck with your investigations!

vh
markus

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Lasse!

The pages are actually "up" at http://abriefhistoryofgod.blogspot.com/ and http://kaminorekishi.blogspot.com/ but I have not decided where to host the material. First I tried at Wordpress - http://abriefhistoryofgod.wordpress.com/ - but I didn't like that at all so now there is an abandoned blog with Ole Therkelsen talking about his book with nobody listening  :-X.

Then I found XANGA.com http://www.xanga.com/suwedenjin a couple of days ago, and it seems to offer huge advantages:

Chinese and Japanese versions of the blog system. At least I have seen a link where you can choose language.

The first ever blog entry about Martinus in Chinese can now be found at

http://www.xanga.com/martinus_cosmology

I also grabbed a blog with the terribly long, but FULL name of my Japanese version

http://www.xanga.com/kamisama_no_kantan_na_rekishi

So, yes: I am leaning towards xanga.com as the host.

Audio support:

Rupert Sheldrake and Ken Wilber
Part 2: The Inner Life of Atoms and Molecules
http://audio.xanga.com/suwedenjin/b122c2480516/audio.html

Rupert Sheldrake is probably the most "advanced" scientist - biologist - on this earth right now. His theories about "morphic fields" and so on is not anything else but a different description of how talent kernels work etc. Nothing else. If you have 23 minutes to spare this dialogue (second of four) I urge you to listen to it (even if I think Wilber should have kept quiet much more  . "Holons" mentioned is also a different way to express Martinus' "life units within life units", actually a term pioneered by Arthur Koestler.

Also thanks for confirming that the Eternal World Picture in Chinese do exist (not merely in my imagination  ). I actually have a semi-finished letter to the Institute so I will soon know.

Have a splendid day!

Good morning, Markus (or Good Day?),

If you once again read the Kosmos article you linked to you will see that it doesn't seem that it was "One wonders how Martinus thought of them", but more the other way around: One wonders how the Japanese hosts found out about Martinus!

The question regarding Japanese vs. Chinese it's rather complex. There is a lot more excellent - sometimes even brilliant - material for Japanese studies published in English so far, even if the Chinese material is growing steadily. My own studies in Chinese haven't really begun yet. Thanks to the fact that it's basically - but only basically! - the same Chinese characters used in Japanese, I have one difficult aspect partly solved: I am not totally alien to the Chinese writing system.

But for us Swedes there is a certain advantage since we have an excellent course - "Kinesiska, språket i mittens rike" av Johan Björkstén - which probably have no equal in English. (I also own a HUGE box of tapes and books published by Beijing Language Institute, but it's not as easily accessible as the Swedish course.) No matter what people say about the Japanese language there is NO WAY to get around the fact that almost EVERYTHING is extremely difficult, apart from pronunciation.

I would not be surprised if Chinese will be much more difficult than I think now, but I am 100% convinced  that my view of the grammar as so much easier than Japanese will not change. In Japanese almost everything is inflicted apart from nouns. The verbs create a huge tree of various endings, the adjectives have different forms in almost any situation etc. akai = is red, atatakunai = isn't red, atataku arimasen = isn't red (polite), akatakunakatta = wasn't red, akakereba = if it's red, akappoi = redish and on and on it goes!! I have BOOKS about only adjectives and do I have to use them? Yes! That's the reason why I happily gave up my attempts to SPEAK Japanese: I neither have that sort of mind nor the patience to memorize all these variants. When writing I can always look them up. And reading is also different since it's not that difficult to grasp the meaning in context.

Back to Ananaikyō

Hi Suwedenjin,

Congratulations on the new blog

Let me know when you have decided where to put the blog and I will add it to the forum's collection of links.

Greetings from Klint...

-Lasse

Thanks, Lasse

I will use Xanga as my main instrument, but will also post copies to Blogger (blogspot.com) since I am not yet sure how people will react to the fact that they have to become members of the Xanga community to post comments. Neither am I yet sure what it will take to produce Japanese versions of my posts. There you see ONE reason to my search for Ananaikyō etc. in Japan. I am pretty sure I will need heavy hand-holding from a person fluent in Japanese before my posts will be acceptable  😮

A Brief History of God
http://www.xanga.com/a_brief_history_of_god

Waiting for the future

Japanese: Kamisama no Kantan na Rekishi
http://www.xanga.com/kamisama_no_kantan_na_rekishi

Chinese: An Introduction to Martinus' Cosmology
http://www.xanga.com/martinus_cosmology

The latter blog in Chinese will remain as is for a couple of years (when I hope to know enough to write basic baby-Mandarin), unless a person willing to translate into this language materializes.

Greetings back to Klint!

Oooops!

Forgot another reason why I will post at blogger for a while> support for Japanese and Chinese "translations"

I have not had time to really scrutinize the following page yet, but a first look gave a much optimistic view than I had when first checking this tool out. Could at least be used as a skeleton for a revised version .... Perhaps ....

(160 characters long URL reduced to) http://tinyurl.com/5jmjzn

Maybe no need for that, computers will do the job, if I´m told correct google has created a chat program that translate so you can chat with a person for ex. in china on your own language and same for the person i china,  a "robot" translates, further on it will probably not be long before phone calls etc. can be translated close to realtime.

TT translated to Japanese by a computer ? 

Hi,

The computers can not translate good enough yet to translate books (if they ever will be able to). That applies to 'normal' texts, but is even more complicated when it comes to Martinus, because he has invented his own words to explain his (or the) cosmology.

Of course, the automatic translaters can be used in cases where we don't have humans or qualified humans to translate. It is kind of nice to be able to translate e.g. a web page on the fly.

Sounds good

-Lasse

Well, translation is not an exact science. Translations are difficult and computers can't do it well. This is because even if the computer knows all the words and their counterparts in the other language, communication is as much about understanding, meaning, metaphor and context. And one word can have several different meanings, several words don't have counterparts in other languages and so on... This can only be appreciated by a human being. Even human-made translations often leave something out of an original text, and important works often have more than one translation. Which one is correct is totally subjective.
Also, I really want to be able to speak and understand japanese through myself, not through a computer. In the same way that I want to visit Japan in person, not see it on TV.

About TT, it's interesting to note that even translations from danish to swedish (two very similar languages) has been contested. The LB1 translation to swedish was recently given several updates. And some people actually think TT must be read in it's original danish, that is no translation and without modernisations of phrases and words!
Something always gets lost in translation.

vh
markus

Hello Markus, nice to see you again 

I looked a bit more closely at the machine translation I linked to above, but it was rather useless as anything but a raw draft for a proper translation. It might be just as easy to write something from scratch, using my own baby-Japanese. Just one tiny example: "Book of Life" was translated with the word for book as in reserve (a seat or ticket etc.) and the word order suggests a "life's Reservation/booking". There is a word for "Bog" in English so even Livets Bog turned out to become "'livets' Swamp". Not a bad description now and then, but not what I wanted 

Have a nice day!

suwedenjin wrote:

Hello Markus, nice to see you again 

I looked a bit more closely at the machine translation I linked to above, but it was rather useless as anything but a raw draft for a proper translation. It might be just as easy to write something from scratch, using my own baby-Japanese. Just one tiny example: "Book of Life" was translated with the word for book as in reserve (a seat or ticket etc.) and the word order suggests a "life's Reservation/booking". There is a word for "Bog" in English so even Livets Bog turned out to become "'livets' Swamp". Not a bad description now and then, but not what I wanted 

Have a nice day!

Hi suwedenjin, nice to see you too
Haha, "'livets' Swamp", (and "ticket of life"), what a good example, that's exactly what I mean.  Machine translations are, as you say, may be good for drafts, but not for real communication (not to mention novels or philosophical works...)

Btw, I have wondered about the english title translation of Martinus "Vägen till invigning"(sv)... It is translated as "The Road to Initiation". I find the word "Road" as a little misplaced here, as a "road" is - at least in my dictionary - "a way intended for vehicles". "Path" feels more accurate: "a way or track laid down for walking or made by continual treading" or "the course or direction in which a person or thing is moving"... It may be technically correct (or not wrong), but it feels strange, and computers don't feel (not yet anyway. A computer making a re-translation maybe would choose "Gatan till invigning"... )

Just as another illustration of the trickiness of translations. No machine can ever decide upon which is more adequate: "road" or "path". A human is needed.

vh
markus