Japanese language scholarship? ;) (was Jap/Ger merger?)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> A friend trained in folklore told me that the Germans and Japanese have
> done a lot of shared-language studies, whatever that means, but when I
> asked for details he never replied.  :-/
Actually, I've read some rather interesting work expounding on the
literally thounsands of shared words between Japanese and Ancient
Hebrew. The claim is that the Japanese are a fragment of the lost exiled
tribes of (the northern kingdom of) Israel.

IIRC, it's pretty well accepted that the Jews in Ethiopia are the
remnants of the tribe of Dan (my name!), and there's some island off the
coast of Tunisia whose population is almost entirely Cohen (Levi, the
priestly class). There's a group in eastern India that call themselves
Manasseh. Some nomadic group has the tribal divisions of Simeon, Reuben,
Gad, and some others, I think. Then there's this guy
("http://www.ask.ne.jp/~remnant/isracame.htm") who, IIRC, claims that
the Japanese (not the aboriginals, of course) are the remnant of Asher.

> YHL
--
Daniel Seriff
microtonal@sericap.com
http://members.tripod.com/microtonal

Si iterum insanum me appelles, oculum alterum tuum edem.