Ama

A Japanese tribe, of numerical insignificance, with genetic links to populations
directly descended from the Jomon Culture of the ninth millennium B.C.
Today, the Ama live around the Saheki Gulf (Ohita prefecture). Their oldest
known settlements were at Minami Amabe-gun (Ohita prefecture), Amabe-cho
(Tokushima prefecture), Kaishi-cho in Sado (Niigata prefecture) and Itomancho
(Okinawa prefecture). These areas coincide with some of the country’s oldest
habitation sites. The Ama believe they are direct descendants of foreigners from a
high civilization across the sea in the deeply ancient past. The visitors, remembered
as the Sobata, preached a solar religion, and its symbol, a rising sun, became the
national emblem of Japan. It also signified the direction from which the Sobata
came; namely, the eastern Pacific Ocean. Their island kingdom, Nirai-Kanai, was
eventually overwhelmed by a great flood and now lays at the bottom of the sea.
To commemorate these events, the Ama still conduct an annual ceremony at
the eastern shores of Japan, held in early April or October. At dawn, the celebrants
gather on the beach to face the dawn and pray for the souls of their ancestors, the
Sobata. Following purification with seawater, a designated leader walks into the
ocean, up to his neck, bearing a small tree branch in his hand. After a pause, he
turns to face the shore. Emerging from the water, he is greeted with the wild
beating of drums and joyful chanting, as though he had survived some catastrophe.
In The Lost Continent of Mu, James Churchward stated that the sunken civilization
of the Pacific was symbolized by the Tree of Life. The word for “timber” in
Chinese is mu. In Japanese and Korean, mu signifies that which does not exist,
referring perhaps to the vanished Nirai-Kanai signified by the tree branch carried
through the water by the Ama celebrant.
(See Mu, Nirai-Kanai, Sobata)