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NARRATOR: Japan is a land rich with ancient mysteries.
WILLIAM HENRY: In Japanese history there's been hundreds
of sightings of mysterious lights
that fly in the air and then also enter into the oceans.
DAVID CHILDRESS: We have these underwater cities there
that have strange energy associated with them.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: You have these statues that look
eerily similar to modern-day astronauts.
NARRATOR: And recently, Japan has also become known
as a hot spot for unidentified aerial phenomena.
The Japanese government actually
issued a policy to shoot down UFOs.
NARRATOR: Could it be that the entire history of this island nation
has been directed by extraterrestrial visitors?
Ancient aliens brought Japan into the modern world.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: At 2:46 p.m., the region is rocked
by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake--
the most powerful to ever hit the island nation.
A little over 30 minutes later
a tsunami with 130-foot-tall waves smashes into the area.
Among the hardest hit locations is the nearby
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
The power was cut out.
The cooling system went down, and just this enormous
amount of radiation went into the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Authorities evacuate the region and order a small team to stay
behind to prevent a larger catastrophe from occurring.
But days later,
videos posted on social media
show these workers
were not alone.
TSOUKALOS: The video that we have of Fukushima,
you see these bright golden orbs,
many of them flying in formation.
And of course, with all these orbs that we see,
we know it's something technological.
NARRATOR: Curiously, almost exactly ten years later,
on February 13, 2021,
the region is rocked by another powerful earthquake.
Over the next two months,
mysterious yellow orbs are observed
hovering above the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
TRAVIS TAYLOR: Recently, Japanese people
have reported seeing UAPs in the region
near the Fukushima reactor meltdown.
It radiated a major part of Japan,
but for some reason people are seeing
UFO activity in the area.
NARRATOR: What are the mysterious lights
that have been seen flying
over the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant?
It's a question that prompted
the Japanese government to take action.
On May 28, 2024, the Japanese parliament
announced the formation of an investigation
unprecedented in modern Japan.
In 2024 the Japanese government issued a mandate for
a bipartisan 80-member panel
to investigate the UAP situation.
Now, why did they do that?
I think mainly, the Japanese people were
getting concerned with the things flying over
their infrastructure and wanted to take precautions.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): I have been deeply involved
and I participated in the first
general meeting and the second one as well.
I believe that the government is taking the UAP issue
more seriously from the viewpoint
of national defense or national security.
NARRATOR: Government officials have refrained
from commenting on the events at Fukushima
and other UAP sightings in Japan.
But Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada
recently issued radical new protocols
for Japan's Air Self-Defense Force in the event
of encountering UFOs in highly restricted areas like Fukushima.
The Japanese government actually
issued a policy, a guideline, to actually shoot down
UAPs if they don't leave the areas
over sensitive infrastructure like a nuclear reactor facility.
So this shows that the government of Japan,
and the military of Japan,
take UFOs and UAPs very seriously.
And that this is something that, you know,
they are intensely interested in.
NARRATOR: But while the Japanese government
has only recently begun
its first official UFO investigation,
the people of Japan
have shown a strong interest
in unidentified flying objects for decades.
Aviation journalist Yusuke Matsumura
is leaving his house early in the morning
when he spots a metallic disc hovering in the sky.
Fortunately, Matsumura is carrying a camera,
and takes the first ever photograph of a UFO in Japan.
Inspired by his sighting, Matsumura created a group called
the Cosmic Brotherhood.
When the UFO craze really began in the 1950s,
in Japan it was quite sedated.
Reports were filed and basically forgotten
as something a bit strange-- there was a weather balloon
in the vicinity at that time,
maybe it was a Korean spy plane.
There was one exception, which was
the Cosmic Brotherhood Association.
And that was founded by Yusuke Matsumura.
And he said, "No, no, no. All these UFOs are alien craft."
In '64, the Cosmic Brotherhood Association started to build
an altar in Biratori in Hokkaido,
which is an absolutely massive thing as their place of contact.
NARRATOR: The Cosmic Brotherhood built this altar as a place
to communicate with extraterrestrials,
and they selected the mountain
because it was believed to be the landing spot of a god
who traveled to Japan thousands of years ago.
They chose Biratori because that was where the god Okikurumi
had either come down to Earth or left Earth again.
Which sounds like an ancient people
trying to describe a first contact.
So it seemed like, you know, a good spot.
HENRY: The Cosmic Brotherhood organization
emerged in Japan with a fascinating theory.
They maintained that the very spot where
Okikurumi is believed to have landed was considered to be
a meeting place to meet extraterrestrial visitors.
NARRATOR: 15 years after the Cosmic Brotherhood
was formed, Japan was electrified by
a series of extraordinary incidents that, to this day,
remain the country's most famous UFO events.
13-year-old junior high student Michio Seo
observes a very small and peculiar object flying
above a rice field, zigzagging back and forth.
Later that night, he and several friends find the object again,
only now it's emitting a pulsating silver light.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): It's about this big, just about.
A small object shaped like a doorknob.
And this thing was flying.
Finally, it fell into a rice paddy.
So they caught it and then they went home
and the people at home saw it.
NARRATOR: The boys reported that the mysterious
silver object was less than
eight inches in diameter and weighed only three pounds.
The bottom surface was perforated with an array
of tiny holes and imprinted with curious designs.
But before it could be further examined,
the object disappeared again.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): There was more than one witness.
A number of junior high school students saw the incident,
and it definitely happened.
NARRATOR: Another sensational incident
involving schoolchildren
occurred in Japan just three years later,
and this time it included
a face-to-face encounter with an alien entity.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): In this incident,
a UFO landed and an alien appeared from inside.
Two elementary school children encountered the alien,
and one of them was tapped on the shoulder by the alien.
Later, when a scientist analyzed the soil where it landed,
they found a radioactive substance, phosphorus-32,
which cannot be found in nature.
The fact that phosphorus-32 was produced
is evidence that there was an object that emits radiation.
So, there was definitely an incident.
NARRATOR: While reports of UFO sightings throughout the 20th century
received little attention from the Japanese government,
recent encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena
have sparked a call to action.
And Japan is now at the forefront
of investigating UFO activity.
But why does Japan seem to be experiencing such
an increase in unusual sightings?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining ancient figurines
that are believed to depict otherworldly beings.
NARRATOR: American archaeologist Edward Sylvester Morse
is excavating an ancient shell mound
when he unearths unique cord-marked pottery.
The artifacts are among the oldest ever discovered
in Japan and Morse uses the term "Jomon,"
meaning "cord-marked" to identify the mysterious
ancient culture that made them.
The Jomon are one of the main Indigenous peoples
of Japan, historically.
They dominated the archipelago
from about 15,000 BCE to 300 BCE.
And not much is known about them.
It's a fairly mysterious or poorly understood culture.
What we know about Jomon culture is
restricted to material culture.
It's the stuff that we dig up from the ground.
The striking thing about the Jomon people
and Jomon culture is that it is unusually
advanced for what we would expect
for a hunter-gatherer group.
Jomon pottery is very elaborate and the idea
that a "hunter-gatherer" group of people
would even develop pottery
is itself-- kind of flies in the face of
traditional anthropological distinctions
between hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist people.
NARRATOR: The Jomon's most mysterious artifacts
are small statues depicting strange-looking figures
that are referred to as the Dogu.
The Dogu statues are one of the smoking guns
of the ancient astronaut theory.
You have these statues that look like some type of beings inside
of a pressurized suit completely hermetically sealed.
You have these helmet-type enclosures on top of their heads
with giant goggle eyes.
And an engineer by the name of Vaughn Greene
wrote a book and proposed
that what we're looking at here is a modern-type space suit.
He compared and contrasted modern-day
space and diving suits with these Dogu statues.
And for 30 points they matched exactly.
And what's so interesting too is that the correlation
between the Dogu figures and their mythology is
that these beings descended from the sky.
NARRATOR: Although the Jomon people left no written records,
it is believed that they developed Shinto,
Japan's Indigenous religion.
Shinto beliefs hold that thousands of gods
descended on Japan from the sky.
STEAVU: The Shinto religion is the only Indigenous
Japanese religious tradition.
Shinto translates as "the way of the gods"
or "the way of the Kami,"
the Kami being these divine beings or gods.
Kami in the Japanese native religion of Shinto
can take on a variety of forms.
This included the heavenly Kami who are
the ones who live in heaven,
and earthly Kami who live in the Japanese archipelago.
STEAVU: These heavenly Kamis intermingled and
procreated with the earthly ones
and eventually this formed the human race as well.
So, from the moment in which humans appear,
this is a different era in this Shinto cosmology,
which is known as the era of humans.
And this is when we have a kind of hybrid race,
a mixture of human and divine Kami stock.
The idea that a divine race is breeding with humans
is fundamentally the basis of Japanese religion.
It's the basis of Shinto.
NARRATOR: According to the Shinto tradition,
before the establishment of the Japanese emperor,
the island nation was ruled by gods.
GRAHAM PHILLIPS: The first emperor was thought to have reigned around 700 BC.
The period before that was known in Japanese mythology
as the Age of the Gods.
The reason is because it was said
that the gods walked amongst humans,
which is very similar to the ancient Egyptian mythology
where the Pyramid Texts
describe the early period of
Egyptian history as the golden age of the gods.
NARRATOR: As told in the ancient Japanese texts, the Kojiki,
a man named Jimmu, a divine descendant of the Sun goddess
Amaterasu is chosen by the gods to be Japan's first emperor.
But in order to take the throne,
Jimmu must journey from the southern island of Kyushu
to the Yamato Province,
roughly 500 miles to the northeast,
navigating mountainous terrain
and battling warlords along the way.
What's so fascinating about the ascent of Jimmu
to the throne around 600 BC is the fact
that this is, in my opinion, one of those legends
that perfectly fits into the ancient astronaut theory
because it involves misunderstood technology
and a celestial visitor.
It is said that Jimmu was guided by
a three-legged crow called Yatagarasu.
And this so-called crow
was given to Jimmu by Amaterasu--
the first goddess that descended from the sky.
PHILLIPS: The stories are that this
three-legged crow was huge
and it was surrounded by a white globe of light.
(crow cawing)
TSOUKALOS: The ancient astronaut theory
tries to understand
what it is our ancestors tried to
explain to us because one thing is crystal clear:
There is no three-legged crow, so the question then is,
well, why, how did that come about?
This to me sounds like some type of an aerial
drone technology with which to survey the ground
that our ancestors witnessed
without knowing anything about technology.
NARRATOR: Does the story of Jimmu reveal
extraterrestrial intervention in ancient Japan?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining mysterious relics of immense power
that the imperial family
has hidden from the public for centuries.
NARRATOR: Japan celebrates the ascension of its new emperor
Naruhito, who takes the throne at age 59.
He is the latest emperor in the longest running
royal family on earth.
Japan's imperial family known as the Chrysanthemum Throne
dates back an incredible 2,700 years.
Most dynasties, if they last several hundred years,
that's a good run.
Monarchies do not last 2,700 years,
so it's extraordinary
that Japan's imperial family has lasted this long.
NARRATOR: The elaborate ceremony involved a series of sacred rituals,
but the most important of these events
is also the most mysterious.
In the state room of the Imperial Palace,
the new emperor was presented
with several boxes that are filled
with treasures so secret,
they've never been seen in public.
They contain Japan's imperial regalia.
STEAVU: The imperial regalia are a set of three divine treasures.
The first one is a sacred sword.
The second is a sacred mirror, or divine mirror.
And the third is a curved jewel, which is also divine in nature.
TSOUKALOS: They're being kept under lock and key because
not only are they sacred, but some people have proposed
that they are of otherworldly origin.
And it's accepted as fact.
HENRY: These sacred items
are the ultimate treasures of Japan.
In fact, at the end of World War II,
Emperor Hirohito was deathly afraid that should
Japan be invaded, these sacred treasures
could ultimately be possessed by
the United States Army or some other invading power.
And this was said to be one of the reasons why he surrendered
to General MacArthur, was to actually protect these relics.
NARRATOR: According to legend, the imperial regalia
are gifts from the Sun goddess Amaterasu
that were passed down to Japan's first emperor, Jimmu,
who was her direct descendant.
Legend has it that each of the three objects
possess supernatural powers.
The most mysterious is the curved jewel.
The jewel is a big question mark.
We don't really see it referred to in-in other myths.
It's not clear what its purpose or provenance is.
CHILDRESS: These three objects are held in boxes.
And ancient records in Japan say that there was an emperor
who decided to open one of these boxes with the jewel in it.
And that a white smoke started coming out of it.
And so he ordered it closed again.
So you just have to wonder, what's in this box?
Could it be some extraterrestrial device
that has an energy coming out of it?
NARRATOR: While very little is known about the jewel,
much more has been written about the mirror,
which is said to provide a direct connection
to otherworldly beings.
Amaterasu's mirror was supposedly given to the daughter
of the 11th emperor of Japan, Yamato Hime.
And she wandered Japan for 20 years looking
for the right place to
build the shrine that the mirror would be held in.
MATSUURA: She came to a spot in what is now Mie Prefecture.
And there was some kind of
communication through the mirror where,
this is where the Amaterasu
wanted her shrine to be built.
And it was built.
To this day it's still there,
the Grand Shrine of Ise.
NARRATOR: In addition to communicating with Amaterasu,
the mirror could also be used to see what was
happening worldwide in real time.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): I think this is probably a tablet.
Using something like FaceTime communicating with the gods.
But it only works for people who have been chosen to use it.
(speaking Japanese)
NARRATOR: Could it be that Amaterasu's mirror
was an extraterrestrial device
similar to what we know today as a tablet?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest further evidence that the imperial regalia
contains advanced alien technology can be found by
examining the third object, the sacred sword.
STEAVU: Yamato Takeru, the 12th emperor of Japan,
famously discovered that the sword had a magical power.
He was trapped by a treacherous warlord,
who intended to eliminate him by burning him
alive in a field of grass.
And when Yamato Takeru started hacking away at the grass to
remove the fuel from the fire, he noticed that the swings
of his swords were actually producing wind
and pushing the flames in the opposite direction.
So he used this magical power that he discovered
to actually fan the flames in the direction
of the warlord and his troops and burn them.
The last time this sword was viewed publicly
was in the 1600s.
A priest named Masanou had gathered some other priests
and they went to the shrine where the sword was located,
intent on doing repairs.
STEAVU: They happen to open the box in which the sword is contained
in order to better clean it and maintain it.
And he describes this sword as being made
of a very brilliant white metal,
almost supernatural type of metal.
And it didn't show any signs of age,
or rust, or any decay on it.
Everybody around the sword
developed some kind of affliction and died soon after
opening it and then looking at it.
But one priest survived to report what happened.
TSOUKALOS: This is interesting to me, because there is a connection
between celestial objects and people dying.
For example, the Ark of the Covenant comes to mind.
Whoever did not know how to operate the Ark died
of unknown conditions
and the unknown conditions are
boils on the skin, the falling out of fingernails and hair.
Well, what unknown disease is that?
It's radioactive fallout.
That's the only way that this really can happen.
So, is it possible that there are potentially
radioactive extraterrestrial artifacts here on Earth?
The answer is a resounding yes.
NARRATOR: Could the closely guarded ancient relics
that have been hidden from the public
for thousands of years be extraterrestrial in origin?
And if so, have they been used over the centuries
to keep the Japanese royal family in power?
The true nature of the imperial regalia
may only ever be known to the emperor,
but ancient astronaut theorists suggest other artifacts
that point to Japan's extraterrestrial past
are hiding in plain sight.
NARRATOR: One of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world
is why enormous stone structures
appear on nearly every continent.
And at one time, megalithic monuments
could be found throughout the islands of Japan.
Not many people know this, but ancient Japan was strewn
with megaliths and henges.
The ancient peoples of Japan had these stone monuments
all over the place.
During the samurai era, which was war all the time,
most of them were ripped up and used to make castle walls
and castle foundations.
Some survived because they're so weird.
NARRATOR: Perhaps the most curious,
and awe-inspiring, of Japan's megaliths
is Ishi-no-Hoden,
a giant stone monument near Osaka carved out of the bedrock
and believed to date back 16,000 years.
The Ishi-no-Hoden megalith is
sometimes called the heavenly floating rock.
It's huge, probably around 500 tons.
It's about a 20-foot square cube that has been
built in such a strange way that underneath it,
there's a base that holds it up above the ground,
so it appears for all the world to be hovering in the air.
It is said to commemorate
a god that once came to Earth in a huge
cubic-shaped object and landed somewhere in that area.
TSOUKALOS: In Japanese mythologies and legends,
it says that long ago
physical gods were amongst our ancestors
that had the capability of flying or of flight.
So, the fact that they used this water mirror underneath
this stone to show as if it is hovering and floating
in the air, to me, is to signify flight.
NARRATOR: Curiously, Ishi-no-Hoden is not the only Japanese megalith
that appears to document
an ancient extraterrestrial visitation.
STEAVU: The Masuda-no-Iwafune, which translates to
"the stone ship of Masuda,"
is another megalithic structure.
This is an even larger granite megalith
30 feet across and about 20 feet in width
and 15 or so in height that has a central depression or trough.
PHILLIPS: This monolith is said to have marked the Earth side
of a so-called floating bridge
that connected Earth to the heavens.
Now, what is a floating bridge?
It's described as something that the gods descend in.
STEAVU: There is a story in Shinto annals
about the bridge that unites
the earthly realm with the heavenly realm
collapsing and falling onto the Earth.
So, these megaliths, according to some,
are the remnants or the building blocks of this
celestial bridge that has since collapsed.
This floating bridge sounds exactly like the bridge
Bifrost of the Nordic tradition upon which the gods would come
and go from the Earth into the heavenly realms, or Asgard.
This suggests that the same people
are descending to these various cultures.
NARRATOR: Might the Ishi-no-Hoden
and Masuda-no-Iwafune megaliths
have an extraterrestrial connection?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest the most intriguing of Japan's
megalithic structures can be found
beneath the sea.
On the western tip of the Japanese archipelago
lies the tiny island of Yonaguni.
In 1986, scuba divers exploring
just off the coast make a shocking discovery.
60 feet beneath the ocean surface,
they find a massive rectangular structure roughly 328 feet long
and 196 feet wide.
It has since become known as the Yonaguni Monument.
PHILLIPS: The Yonaguni Monument is huge,
and it looks for all the world like an artificial construction.
There are steps.
There are what appear to be columns
and all sorts of geometric formations
that seem to have been artificial constructions.
Professor Masaki Kimura spent ten years
examining the structure with divers
and the most sophisticated equipment at the time,
and he was convinced beyond any doubt
that it was an artificial formation.
TSOUKALOS: Yonaguni boggles the mind
because at some point that was a land bridge that existed
when the water levels were lower and that means
we're talking around the last ice age,
which was 10,000 or so BC.
Now, that means that back then
a culture must have existed
to carve Yonaguni the way it appears today.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the possibility
that the Japanese were building
sophisticated megalithic monuments
as much as 12,000 years ago
is highly significant
because in numerous cultures around the world,
there are ancient stories about advanced civilizations
that inhabited the Earth right around that time.
If the Yonaguni monument is as old as we think it is,
then this aligns this Japanese site with other sites
in the Pacific, most notably Lemuria and Mu,
which are thought to be pre-flood civilizations
that had achieved an advanced state of civilization
but were destroyed by cataclysm.
NARRATOR: Could Yonaguni have been part of an advanced, prehistoric
civilization that was submerged at the end of the last ice age?
And did some of the survivors populate Japan?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by looking at the ocean region where Yonaguni lies,
which is a hot spot of mysterious activity called
the Dragon's Triangle.
NARRATOR: The Japanese freighter Kaiyo Maru
is en route to California when suddenly,
the ship's instruments begin to fluctuate wildly.
Just after 8:30 p.m., the crew watches in astonishment
as a huge elliptical-shaped object
suddenly appears on their radar.
The mysterious craft,
which is larger than a supertanker,
circles them for several minutes,
before it makes a sharp turn and heads straight for them.
(speaking Japanese)
(translated): A large object on radar approached the ship
and passed overhead when they thought
it was going to hit them.
This was reported in newspapers at the time,
especially in a scientific magazine called Nikkei Science,
so it is known as a very famous incident.
NARRATOR: This is just one of thousands of encounters reported
in a part of the Pacific Ocean
that stretches south of Japan down to Guam
and the area of the Yonaguni Monument.
It is known as "the Dragon's Triangle."
1,500 vessels have disappeared
in the Dragon's Triangle.
Planes have disappeared in the triangle.
What happened? But more important, why?
Beginning in 1950, the Japanese government was so concerned
about this area
that they sent a research ship out
and it too vanished with 22 crew and nine scientists aboard.
TSOUKALOS: Is it possible that some ships have disappeared
because of calamities and, you know, accidents?
Sure.
But is it also possible
that perhaps some of these boats disappeared
due to extraterrestrial interference?
The answer to that is a resounding yes as well,
because there are stories of other ships witnessing
things happening with lights
and objects hovering over the ocean and things like that.
NARRATOR: Disappearances and strange sightings
have not only been reported in this area in modern times
but going back centuries.
HENRY: Adding to the intrigue of the Devil's Triangle
is the fact that in Japanese history there's been
hundreds of sightings of mysterious lights
that reach out from within the sea
and absorb or sink these ships.
Today we think of these as submersibles
or transmedium craft that have the ability to
fly in the air and then also enter into the ocean.
CHILDRESS: You have to wonder if there's some underwater UFO base.
And there's some hyperspace portal going on, or vortex.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that hidden beneath the Pacific Ocean,
somewhere within the Dragon's Triangle,
there is an extraterrestrial base?
Curiously, there have also been reports
of sea monsters in this area dating back centuries.
And the Dragon's Triangle was the location
of Japan's most famous historical UFO encounter,
known as the Utsuro Bune sighting.
CLEMENTS: There's a really odd story from 1803 in Hitachi
where a woman washes up on shore on the beach
in a very strangely shaped boat.
And when she comes out of the boat,
she has white or pink skin.
She has red hair with white tips,
and she doesn't speak Japanese.
And during this time, Japan is closed to the outside world,
and it's a capital offense to interact with foreigners.
So the people on the shore
were absolutely terrified of this woman.
They didn't know what to do.
They put her back in the boat and they pushed it out again.
And they reported it to the local lord,
and they referred to her ship as the "utsoro bune,"
"the hollow ship."
There are at least 11 different
people who came forward and documented it.
They drew pictures of it.
There's paintings of what
the ship looks like and what happened.
HENRY: Her craft looks exactly like a flying saucer,
a contemporary flying saucer.
But this is in 1803, suggesting that this is one
of the most extraordinary UFO sightings, perhaps not only
in Japanese history but in all human history.
NARRATOR: Does the Dragon's Triangle provide compelling evidence
that an alien presence has existed on Earth
in this area of Japan for thousands of years?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes,
and suggest further evidence can be found
by examining a sensational event that happened
in Tokyo Bay, involving the U.S. military.
NARRATOR: U.S. Naval officer, Commodore Matthew C. Perry,
arrives with his American fleet
to force Japan to end its policy of isolation.
American ships were sent to Japan to try and get Japan to
open up to the world because it had been pretty much
closed off for centuries
during the time of the Shogunate,
the military rule in Japan.
The emperor had continued to rule
but only really as a puppet ruler.
NARRATOR: The night Perry's fleet arrived in the bay,
both the Americans and the Japanese
were awed by a spectacular sight.
PHILLIPS: Perry, he wrote a log,
and he said that while they were in Tokyo Bay
a strange, glowing blue object
was seen in the skies that hovered over the ships.
So bright was it at night,
that it literally lit up all the ships.
Underneath it was what he wrote and described
as like the sparks from a rocket.
And it hovered around the skies and eventually
descended into the water.
What we have in the case of Commodore Perry
in Tokyo Bay in 1853 is a sighting that lasted
four hours of a gigantic blue sphere
up in the sky with a red wedge tail.
What the heck is that?
And it just stood there
illuminating the entire Tokyo Bay.
NARRATOR: Perry's mission not only led to the opening up
and modernization of Japan,
but also to the overthrow of the shoguns
and the restoration of the imperial family to power.
STEAVU: This re-initiated imperial rule
that has lasted up until nowadays
and brought it, if you will,
back to Emperor Jimmu,
establishing essentially an imperial rule
of over 2,600 years.
NARRATOR: According to some researchers, the remarkable UFO
seen by Commodore Perry's fleet may have been a sign of approval
from otherworldly beings who have been protecting
the imperial family since its foundation.
Ancient aliens established the Japanese imperial family,
ancient aliens protected the Japanese imperial family
and brought Japan into the modern world.
HENRY: This is taken by some
as an affirmation that perhaps
while Commodore Perry is practicing gunboat diplomacy,
maybe so too are the extraterrestrials who had
a hand in the founding of the Imperial Dynasty.
CHILDRESS: When we look at Japan and all of this ancient activity,
the gods coming down, interacting and creating
semi-god, semi-human hybrids and things.
We have these underwater cities there.
We have these special artifacts
that have strange energy associated with them.
All this really seems to add up that,
you know, ancient astronaut theory
is very much validated by the history of Japan.
NARRATOR: From an imperial dynasty that traces its lineage
to the gods,
to a sensational mass UFO sighting
occurring at a critical moment in history...
to new government investigations into unexplained phenomena,
has alien intervention
been taking place in Japan for thousands of years?
Perhaps the mysterious ancient megaliths
that still stand on the island serve as a testament
to an enduring connection with otherworldly beings
who continue to watch over Japan even today.
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