ABSTRACT
The jews and the japanese were hardly aware of each other until modern times; and theories about earlier contacts are sheer speculation. During their centuries-long dispersion throughout the world, the Jews did reach East Asia, settling in India and China in the ninth and tenth centuries, but they probably never settled in Japan before the nineteenth century as Japan was too far, too poor, and for a long time closed to foreigners. The Hebrew language does not contain a name for Japan, as it does for India (Hodu) and China (Sin). Yapan, the modern Hebrew word for Japan, derives from German. The Shosoin storehouse of the Todaiji temple in Nara contains thousands of precious articles donated to the temple in the eighth century, including textiles bearing Persian designs and ornamental objects with Greek and Egyptian motifs. But of these objects, which may have arrived from the Middle East via China, none can be identified as Jewish.
