Oomoto and Esperanto – The Language of Heaven

What's up guys Evildea here and today
I'm going to do another video on an

interesting historical aspect of the
Esperanto community this time I'm going

to be focusing on our Oomoto which is a
Japanese religion and its links with

Esperanto the created language or in
this case the language of heaven I'll

get into more detail about what that
means later in the presentation I got

the vast majority of these materials
from this book "Rakontoj el Oomoto"

which basically translates as stories
from a Oomoto it's an excellent read but

only available in Esperanto if you can
read Esperanto I highly recommend that

you get this book so I guess I need to
first explain what is Oomoto so Oomoto

is a Japanese religion founded in 1892
which means it was founded about roughly

the same time in history when Esperanto
was created Esperanto. Esperanto was first

published in 1887 so you can see they
came around in the time in history when

they were experiencing similar things
now the name of Oomoto translates to

roughly great foundation or great source
something along those lines it's not a

massive religion but it's still sizable
to any extent it's got a hundred and

seventy thousand official members and I
think I read that there's about two

hundred people who work full-time and
different religious organizations within

the religion itself and in fact there's
a fair few people who speak Esperanto

and work within those organizations
you'll hear more about that later it's a

new religion which is based on Shinto
but also under writings of Deguchi Nao

it's a kind of a single deity
religion but also not at the same time

so you've got to remember that Western
religions and Eastern religions are

quite different so the idea of God in
this religion is of one single thing but

it's made up of many different aspects
and these aspects are called

Kami and they basically are layered
but they all make up the same thing even

though they had their own personalities
and whatnot so you could say it's a

single deity religion or you could say
it's a multi-deity religion it's really

just based on perspective and it has a
really unique history entwined with

Esperanto which is what got me
interested in it

in the first place so the religion was
founded by Deguchi Nao in 1892 now

when she founded the religion
she was actually 55 years old and she

didn't establish the religion herself so she
had lived quite a miserable life it was

quite poor she lost family members her
husband died and when she was 55 years

old she woke up one day possessed by a
spirit and said prophesizing the end of

the world and an eventual savior she
didn't say who the Savior was and it's

not really clarified but that's what she
started stating now she was illiterate

she couldn't write she couldn't read but
in spite of this she managed to write

over 200 thousand pages of prophecies
which is quite quite amazing if you

don't know how to read or write
now she used a method which is called

automatic writing you've probably all
seen it in the movies where like

someone's possessed by spirit they just
they kind of just like writing away but

they're not really focused on what
they're writing they didn't write that

it's like the spirits using them to
write it and all of these writings were

collected together and were put together
into something called Fudesaki

now I'll go into detail about how that
happened so at this time when she was

having these prophecies she was
basically searching out what was

happening to her and she was going to
all these different religious groups

that were forming around her this part
of Japan at this time in history was

like full of religious revival and
religions like new religions it was

basically a new religion in every town
and she was trying to find out who could

tell her what was happening eventually
she joined several different groups but

she realized she was just being you know
taken for the run though just using her

and she decided to create her own
religion in a sense now it wasn't like

she'd just wake up when I'm gonna create
my own religion but she started talking

about her prophecies and a religion
formed around her now this guy here

Onisaburo Deguchi, he married her
daughter and he started organizing all

the writings together into one
set of Scripture which basically

codified the religion now it wasn't called
Oomoto at this stage in history and

had a different name as happens a lot of
religions and eventually it became

Oomoto it was just like this small little
group of individuals who came together

and they kind of started growing from
there so an interesting aspect of this

religion is that the spiritual leaders
have generally been women

the only real exception to that is the
previous guy because he played an

important role in codifying the religion
but apart from him the majority of

leaders have been women and as I stated
there's several levels to their belief

in God
you've got your main god at the top

then you've got a guide of having a God
of Earth and under they've got Kamis

and all of them considered gods but all
of them kind of separate but at the same

time all kind of one now the Kamis
generally are like small spiritual gods

like less of gods and it's interesting
that a lot of the Kamis actually are

spirits of historically important people
especially religious people but one of

the Kamis which is where it gets
interesting is actually Zamenhof so

Zamenhof is considered a lesser God in
this religion so you're probably

wondering how it got to that and I guess
we need to go through some of the

history of Oomoto itself so its
started with persecution it always

starts with persecution so there's one
part of the Oomoto belief system which

basically the emperor didn't like they
believed that there was two original

Kami and they were driven out
of Japan by the Kami, the ancestors of

the Imperial line so basically they were
at odds with the Emperor you've got to

remember at this time everyone believed
that the Emperor was God and they were

saying that yes he's a God but he's not
the original God so that causes a lot of

problems and obviously the secret police
at that time got involved. Every nation

had a secret police at that time so in
1921 a lot of the followers of Oomoto

were arrested, their property was
confiscated and their shrines were

destroyed by the secret police and Onisaburo himself he was briefly

arrested but they didn't go to hardcore
they basically just walked him destroyed

everything and went they'll teach you
guys now pray to the Emperor and it's

exactly at this same time in history
when Onisaburo was reading about and

learning about Esperanto
he actually had heard about Esperanto

because there was an Esperanto speaker
who was a friend and a secretary of his

and he was becoming interested in
Esperanto and then there's a local

course that kind of popped up at a
university near him and that was run by

some Esperanto speakers who had come in
from Tokyo because it big earthquake

there at the time and he really wanted
to go to this course and learn

about Esperanto but he couldn't he knew
the secret police were watching him and

if he went to some course and learned
about an international language well

they would just think well he's
definitely trying to spread his belief

system outside the country and that's
just bad so instead he sent a woman in

his place a young woman now he did this
because at that time in history young

women or just women in general weren't
considered to be politically dangerous

in any form so he sent her there and the
secret police completely ignored it she

learned Esperanto came back reported to
him and she actually became a really

important figure in the Oomoto community
haha screw you secret police after that

in 1925 when the emperor finally passed
all this persecution basically came to

an end because there was really no need
for it anymore and I'm guessing that the

follow up Emperor / Empress whoever was
next in charge wasn't really interested

in Oomoto much at that time you
can remember this is now leading up to

World War two and as a result comes the
second incident and this was the worse

of the two incidents so in 1935 over
1000 Oomoto leaders and founders were

arrested and jailed and Onisaburo
himself was put on trial and

then imprisoned for six years this
persecution of Oomoto followers continued

until the end of World War two so
they're basically they'll completely

shut down because the Japanese could not
have a pacifist religion which was kind

of against the emperor existing while
they were at war the rest of the world

now the persecution ended after World
War two and the government, the new

Japanese government actually offered to
pay up all the damages for all you know

all the stuff that was destroyed
property I was taking people arrest and

jailed but the followers of Oomoto
actually rejected this saying that they

didn't want to be a burden on the
rebuilding of Japanese society so you

can see that they were really pacifist
in this regard so Oomoto today is still

primarily a Japanese religion now it's
religious texts are only available in

Japanese but some parts of them have
been translated to Esperanto and to a

lesser extent English. Zamenhof is
seen as a lesser God within this

religion and this is actually what they
stated when they made him a lesser god

the spirit of Zamenhof even now
continues to act as a missionary

of the angelic Kingdom therefore his
spirit was deified in the Senrei-Sha

shrine. Esperanto actually entered Japan
very early during the history of

Esperanto itself but it kind of died off
after a little bit of time then in 1919

the Japanese Esperanto Institute was
founded and they basically started

promoting Esperanto in the newspapers
and that's how Onisaburo first heard

about it now at the same time in history
there was a lot of bahai followers

coming into japan and promoting their
religion through Esperanto and basically

the two movements Oomoto and the
Baha'i met each other using Esperanto and

talked a lot now as you can see here it
was a Haruka Katoo who was secretary to

Onisaburo who first learned
Esperanto and then promoted it to Onisaburo

and in 1923 after Onisaburo
became interested

he started promoting it within the Oomoto community and then 130 people took

up the first course and started learning
Esperanto and after that more and more

people who were followers of Oomoto started taking up and learning Esperanto

just one course after another after
another and this was at that time during

the second persecution
well the secret police were starting to

get a little bit afraid of this to the
point where they start sending secret

police not like as secret police but
disguised to these courses to learn

Esperanto to find out what the Oomoto
were interested in so on the 24th of

November 1923 on Onisaburo
basically declared after 10 years all

people, I'm doing a rough translation,
which don't know how to speak Esperanto

certainly will become left behind for
this period of history now obviously

that didn't happen right away but maybe
happen in the future

and after that he subsequently declared
that Esperanto is not just a language

that all followers of Oomoto
should learn it's actually the language

of heaven and he stepped up religious
efforts to spread Esperanto in Japan and

internationally so this is speech that
Onisaburo Deguchi gave which sums

up basically his beliefs regarding
Esperanto and I think it's a an

excellent little piece it's only
available in Esperanto so if you can read Esperanto

you can just pause and read it, but I'm going to give a summary in English so basically

he said there are some board members and some members of the Oomoto community who

are kind of fighting for the use of
Japanese as opposed to Esperanto in

spreading Oomoto around the world and
he basically replied saying Japanese is

not a language which has like some great
hero like Napoleon who's going to go

around conquer the world and then spread
Japanese and even if that happened that

only a few people would actually learn
Japanese he said it would actually be

better and more in line with the beliefs
of Oomoto if we used a neutral

language to spread our scripture our
word as they put it so that's why he was

promoting Esperanto now kinda to sum
this up Esperanto still has a very

important place in Oomoto if anything
it's actually increased in importance

I have a friend who's traveled to Japan a
few times and most of the Esperanto speakers

he's met there are actually
followers of Oomoto and he stayed in

some of their institution some of their
religious places so this is a stone that

was erected by some of their Oomoto
followers on the 14th of july in 1963

300 people attended the event presented
by the 3rd spiritual guide Naohi Deguchi

and it basically says one god,
one world, one bridge language so you can

see that this is almost a core belief of
Oomoto. Now I've reached the end of

this video before I close up I just
wanted to ask you guys your opinion on

these types of videos if you like them
you don't like them let me know in the

comments you can even propose ideas that
I speak about so that's it if you like

this video, like it, share it around, sub
to the channel and I'll see you all in

the next video and if you're not there
well I hope you're reading this book