Los Angeles Times, Friday 24th January 1947 (Page 5)

'Sun Goddess Jiko' Just a 'Japanese Crackpot'

    KANAZAWA, (Japan) Jan. 23. (AP) - Japanese police today arrested for questioning by psychiatrists the self-proclaimed Sun Goddess Jiko, who defies Gen. MacArthur's directives and orders her cultists: Bow first to me, then to the Emperor.
    No. 3 in her 10 commandments is: practice the divine peoples rule (that Japanese are the world's superior people).
    Psychiatrists who sat in on a police questioning of Jiko and her followers - two of whom went into a trance when the interrogation became rugged - said, "They definitely are mentally unbalanced."
    As for Jiko, the doctors' verdict was: religious paranoia.

ARRESTED - Futabayama, former wrestling champion of Japan, subdued in riot.

Wrestler Berserk

    Futabayama, 45, former grand champion wrestler of the Sumo world and a Jiko follower, became so overwrought at her arrest that he battered police with chairs and clubs. Finally he was subdued by a judo expert after seriously injuring several policemen. He was loaded into a fire engine and taken to jail, along with Jiko and several followers.
    Police said Jiko, 41, is the eldest daughter of Marquis Ikeda of Okayama Prefecture but changed her name to Yoshiko Nagaoka. She swooned in September, 1934, and thereafter declared herself transformed into a living sun goddess who never grows old or ill and who never dies.
    Police said she has a hypnotic influence over her followers, who give her an amazing 250,000 yen ($17,000) monthly plus rice and goods. They said her followers utterly disregard all advice except hers.
    As police arrived at her home she announced that a tidal wave had swept Tokyo four hours earlier and "confusion prevails." Police told her they just had talked by telephone from this west coast town to Tokyo headquarters and no disaster had occurred.
    "God tells me such things and I simply convey them to the people," she retorted.
    Jiko says she and Emperor Hirohito are one, although of different bodies, but insists she be worshiped above him.
    Police charged her with violation of a MacArthur directive forbidding Emperor worship and forbidding teaching that the Japanese are superior among peoples of the world.