Review of Ancient Aliens S21E17: “Secrets of Japan”

​The History channel moved Ancient Aliens yet again following its week off, shifting the show from 8 PM to 9 PM, sandwiched between reruns. I suppose there must be some ratings reason for it, but since Nielsen stopped reporting cable ratings (highlights for sports and cable news are released a week after), I’m not sure how Ancient Aliens currently performs. Not that many people would notice much of a difference between new episodes and reruns anyway. This week’s episode is a case in point. “Secrets of Japan” follows the season’s pattern of organizing episodes by geographic region but otherwise remaking past productions. “Secrets of Japan” calls to mind the 2017 episode “A Spaceship Made of Stone,” which similarly was devoted to Japan, though the former episode leaned more into ancient material and this week’s episode into modern UFO sightings. (Some of the same Japanese talking heads even appear in both.)

​Segment 1
The show opens with the 2011 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan and the subsequent tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear leak. The show claims that social media videos of lights in the sky prove that aliens were doing fly-bys during the earthquake. They also claim that the UFOs returned following another earthquake that hit Fukushima in 2021. This led to the 2024 Japanese parliamentary effort to investigate UFOs. This was part of the broader global effort to mimic the U.S. government’s quixotic pursuit of flying saucers, and in the Japanese case, it was obvious that the government doesn’t think UFOs are alien spacecraft, since they issued orders to shoot them down, which you likely wouldn’t want to do with an alien ship that could presumably be connected to a superior force that could destroy us all.
 
The show then looks at 1950s-era Japanese UFO sightings and the Cosmic Brotherhood Association, an early Japanese UFO cult, and its efforts to build a massive altar to attract UFOs. The Brotherhood, as was popular at the time, identified ancient Japanese gods with aliens.
 
Next, we hear about the sighting of a tiny UFO in Kochi Prefecture in August 1972. Some boys allegedly caught an 8-inch, bell-shaped, silvery UFO that subsequently vanished. Then we hear about a 1975 encounter between children and a flying saucer from which an alien emerged and tapped a kid on the shoulder.
 
None of these stories have much support beyond hearsay and, apparently, phosphorus-32 in the ’75 incident, and the show is uninterested in doing anything more than listing them and moving on.
 
Segment 2
The second segment returns to one of the original ancient astronaut claims from back in the ideas middle twentieth century heyday—the famous Dogū statues from the late Jōmon period, mostly made between 1000 and 400 BCE. Tsoukalos calls them “one of the smoking guns of the ancient astronaut theory.” While ancient astronaut theorists identify their bulging eyes and stylized heads as goggle-wearing, helmeted aliens (this applies only to the subset of Shakōkidogū), the majority of the statues are female, many pregnant, and may have represented fertility or mother goddesses. The show identifies the large thighs and buttocks of the exaggerated female forms as men in puffy spacesuits.
 
Following this, the show outlines the Shinto religion and alleges that the gods are space aliens. There isn’t much to this lengthy discussion other than identifying various mythological beings and creatures as ETs and tech. A three-legged crow called Yatagarasu is alleged to be “drone technology.” In actuality, he’s probably derivative of a Chinese three-legged crow whose three legs are numerologically related to the sun, whom he represents. Many East Asian myth systems borrow this same sun crow.
 
Segment 3
The third segment looks at the Japanese imperial family and the imperial regalia, three objects (sword, jewel, and mirror) which were discussed in the previous episode on Japan. (They reuse the same b-roll.) The show pulls a fast one by claiming that “some” have said that the objects, claimed to be divine gifts, are extraterrestrial devices. Those “some” would be—wait for it—the ancient astronaut theorists. This time, the show adds that the mirror in the regalia is “similar to a tablet”—meaning an ET iPad. The sword is claimed to be radioactive and to kill those who handle it.
 
Segment 4
The fourth segment discusses Japanese monoliths, repeating most of the same material about the Ishi-no-Hōden (“Stone Treasure-House”) from the episode devoted to it linked above. Other, similar stone structures are also discussed, particularly the Masuda no iwafune, which the show describes as the collapsed end of a bridge between heaven and earth, though this is a recent myth ascribed to it, since its origin and even age are unknown. (It is thought to have been a burial marker or astronomical observation point, but this is uncertain.) These monoliths’ sleek lines and curves cause the talking heads to compare them to spaceships and other technology.
 
The show then repeats familiar material about the natural formation that Graham Hancock has long promoted as the so-called “Yonaguni Monument,” following the claims of a Japanese professor who advocated for its artificiality. Geologists—even fringe geologists like Robert Schoch—agree it is natural, but the show pretends it is not.
 
Segment 5
The fifth segment notes that the area around the Yonaguni Monument is called the “Dragon’s Triangle” (better known as the “Devil’s Sea”), and like the Bermuda Triangle, it supposedly is a hotbed of nautical disaster. It will surprise no one to discover that the Devil’s Sea was invented by none other than Charles Berlitz, popularizer of the Bermuda Triangle, in his 1974 book The Bermuda Triangle, and Larry Kusche debunked the claim in 1975. (He found that no one in Japan had ever hear of the triangle, nor was the area declared a “danger zone” as Berlitz had claimed.) Despite the lack of evidence for any paranormal hotspot or exceptional number of nautical losses, the show treats the claim as though it were an established fact, and the three major talking heads (Giorgio Tsoukalos, William Henry, and David Childress) all claim that the sunken ships are the result of space alien activity around a “sunken base.”
 
The show then repeats material about the Utsuro Bune, a fictional folktale from 1803, from the earlier episode, which I covered at the time.
 
Segment 6
The show finishes with Matthew Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853 and the supposed UFO sighting he had in Tokyo Bay. His crew and the residents of Tokyo saw a large blue meteor. Lt. John Duer recorded in his journal that Perry considered it as a good omen for American-Japanese relations. The show recounts the events from Francis L. Hawks’s 1856 book on the Perry expedition compiled from official sources. Here is how Hawks reported it:

An interesting meteorological phenomenon was observed in the course of the night by Lieutenant Duer, in command of the watch, who describes it as a remarkable meteor seen from midnight until four o'clock in the morning. It made its appearance in the southward and westward and illuminated the whole atmosphere. The spars, sails, and hulls of the ships reflected its glare as distinctly as though a blue light were burning from each vessel at the same time. From the southward and westward, and about fifteen degrees above the horizon, it pursued a northeastwardly course in a direct line for a long distance, when it fell gradually toward the sea and disappeared. Its form was that of a large blue sphere with a red, wedge-shaped tail, which it could easily be observed was formed of ignited particles which resembled the sparks of a rocket as they appear upon its explosion. 

Obviously, they did not cower in terror thinking they saw a spaceship.
 
“What the heck is that?” Tsoukalos says before the narrator claims that it was sent by space aliens to signal their approval of American intervention in Japanese affairs. The talking heads claim that “ancient aliens” established and protected the Japanese imperial family, ordered the modernization of Japa, and “watch over it today.”
 
They glide right over the whole empire of murder and rape that led to World War II. Did they aliens take those years off? Or did they order that, too?