Origin of the Japanese | Fact & information

Origin of the Japanese

The origin of the Japanese people is still obscure. mysterious, and dispute” by anthropologists, historians, and scientists. but many people believe that they are the products of mixed ancestry of immigrants from central parts of Asia the southern region of China. Southeast Asia and the South Pacific islands: Observing their physical traits. biological characteristics, and a Mongoloiq resemblance, and the geographical location of Japan, it is not very difficult tr} come to a conclusion that the dominant group of migrants had entered from mainland Asia via the Korean peninsula; although other races like the Ainu were believed to be living in the Japanese archipelago before the arrival or modern Japanese.

Modern Japanese might be the descendants from a fusion of several races of migrants. The people who came from mainland Asia, mainly by the way of the Korean Peninsula, might have played the dominant role. Among these, the Manchu-Koreans, Chinese, or Mongols may have had a major part in this fusion, Some anthropologists strongly believe that the Japanese are a mixture of a southern Malayo-Polynesian strain and Mongolian characteristics. The Malayo-Polynesian strain may have entered Kyushu and the western end of the main island from the Southeast Asian islands. According to this theory, some early immigrants entered Japan from Southeast Asia via Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands; however, there is no archeological evidence to support this idea. Ainu are believed to be the other group who were also part of the creation of modern Japanese people. Nevertheless, the Japanese are believed to be closely connected to the Mongoloid race, and they might have been the product of extensive racial mixture with other races who might have entered Japan from the southern and northern parts of Japan in different phases of its long history. The racial affinities to East Asian and the structural similarity of the Japanese language to Korean also indicate the 1 close relationship of their origin. Linguistically, the Mongoloids were considered Altaic-speaking tribal communities. The Altaic family is a group of languages that include Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese. On the basis of linguistic relationship, the major source of Japanese people could be Central Asia. The structural components of Japanese, in which consonants are followed by vowels, show similarities to Finnish and Hungarian-Magyar.

Some anthropologists believe that the first Japanese came on foot to the Japanese peninsula when it was connected by land to the continent of Asia during the glacial age (about 1,000,000-10,000 BC). Archeological evidence shows that some human activity in Japan began as early as 30,000 BC. Based on historical and archaeological research, it is widely believed that the earliest inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago were hunter-gatherers and fishermen, or Ainu, a primitive tribal people who are considered ethnically distinct from the rest of the Japanese population of Mongoloid origin. Many scholars believe that the Ainu were the descendants of early Caucasoid peoples of northern Asia. The Ainu are considered pro-Caucasoid people, who had split off from the white race in the early stage of development of human beings and before the characteristics of this race had fully developed. They differ from all other East Asians and Japanese in the facial appearance and body hair.


The origin of the Ainu is also not clearly identified; they might have migrated and entered the northern part of Japan from Siberia by the way of Sakhalin Island and present Hokkaido more than 12,000 years ago during the Jomon period. Historians believe that the Jomon period ran at least 10,000 years ago, to approximately 300 BC until the beginning of Yayoi period. In the first and second millennia BC, the Ainu might have populated most of the Japanese archipelago, until a wave of migrants and invaders came from across the sea with advanced technology and knowledge. Some others believe that horse-riding nomadic people from northern Asia entered via Korea and invaded Japan during the late third or fourth centuries and imposed their rule on the country. Many others disagree with this theory and claimed that no single group of people ever invaded and conquered Japan.

Later, during the Yayoi period (300 BC-3OO AD), the invading people came mainly from China and Korea, traveling in ships, and began conquering the Japanese archipelago. They might have entered from the Korean peninsula to Tsushima Island and thereafter to Kyushu, which was the shortest route from mainland Asia, of about one hundred twenty miles. These immigrants entered Japan in fluctuating groups from 200 BC to the latter half of the seventh century, and became the major source of imported foreign cultural elements into Japan. Some historians have estimated that Japan had received several million immigrants from Korea during the Yayoi period, while the number of J omon people in Japan was thought to have been around seventy-five thousand during that time.

Archeological evidence shows that large numbers of early peoples coming to the islands were from Korea and northeast Asia, and the flow of people to this archipelago continued until the eighth century. The Japanese archipelago, gradually, seems to have been overrun by this flood of migration. After the arrival of the Yayoi people, the Japanese archipelago marked the beginning of both technological and ethnic revolution. The Yayoi people were distinguished from the earlier Jomon people from their style of pottery, the way they used tools in agriculture, and the techniques of irrigation they used in rice cultivation. They produced pots by wheels and practiced advanced techniques in agriculture. The Jomon people used to make pottery by hand, not by wheel, used stone weapons and collected roots for living. The rope-pattern design designated their name as Jomon.

The original inhabitants-probably Ainu and other tribes of huntergatherers were gradually pushed towards the northern parts of Hokkaido from Honshu Island, or some others might have perished, in the same way as the Native Americans perished and were pushed towards the interior part of America by European immigrants. The commander Sakanouye Tamura Maro, under the Emperor Kammu, defeated the Ainu and extended the domains of Japan to the eastern end of Honshu at the beginning of ninth century. He achieved a brilliant success in bringing under his full command the unruly northeastern domains in 795 AD and later between 800 and 803 AD. For his extraordinary success in unifying the northeastern territories and subduing the Ainu, the Emperor granted Tamura Maro the title of sei-tai-shogun, barbarian-subduing generalissimo, and he became the first person in the history of Japan to hold the title of Shogun. The word Shogun became a popular and coveted title for military men throughout the centuries until the downfall of the Tokugawa period in 1868. Today fewer than twenty thousand Ainu are surviving on the Kuril Islands and in reservations of Hokkaido, as a culturally identifiable tribe. Only a very few hundred of them have remained full-blooded members of their race because of intermarriage with mainstream Japanese and other factors. They are on brink of assimilation and absorption within the mainstream modern Japanese, culturally, linguistically, and racially, and are gradually losing their original identity.

Recent archeological evidence and research of DNA taken from burial remains have revealed that modern Japanese are of close genetic kin to Koreans and Chinese. In the same research, it has been revealed that the first inhabitants of the islands had little in common with the most modern Japanese, but were almost identical to Ainu.2 But, still, fierce debate among anthropologists and scientists over whether the Jomon or the Yayoi were the true ancestors of modern Japanese is going on. Some other genetic DNA tests suggest the Jomon, the original inhabitants, and Yayoi, immigrants from Korea and mainland China,contributed significantly to the genes of most modern Japanese.3 According to several genetic studies, the Yayoi gene is more dominant than the Ainu-like Jomon gene.

The overwhelming waves of immigrants from Korea and China, who came around 300 and 400 BC, seized a foothold in the new world of the Japanese archipelago. They introduced fishing, hunting, weaving, cultivation of rice, and the use of tools of iron and bronze. Gradually, western Japan and southern Korea formed a strong cultural bond and a closely related cultural sphere. The rice culture was brought originally into Japan around 100 BC. Later on, rice cultivation formed the basic culture of Japanese people and became the major staple food and is even today for modern Japanese. It is believed that rice arrived in Japan via Korea from the Yangtze River basin of central China. Agriculture in Japan emerged around 300AD with the incoming of these immigrants.

There was a constant flow of migration from Korea and China as refugees fled from the dynastic wars in their own country. Extensive wars were going on between the rulers of China and nomadic tribes to the north during the T’sin and Han dynasties. The Han dynasty invaded the Korean peninsula and conquered it in 108 BC. As a result, there was a constant flow of Chinese immigrants towards the Korean peninsula and thereafter to Japan. Early in the fourth century the population of whole villages crossed over to Japan from Korea, and in the fifth and sixth centuries a large number of people from China migrated to the Japanese archipelago. Many of them were believed to be Chinese Korean, and highly skilled artisans and farmers. In one chronicle, it has been mentioned that people o‘fT’sin numbered over seven thousand households and a total of over one hundred thousand individuals migrated to Japan in 540 BC.“ Edwin Reischauer and John Fairbank have mentioned that a book of noble genealogies of 815 AD shows that over 33 percent of 1,182 families of Yamato nobility were of foreign origin, mainly from Korea.’ In addition, during the conflict between the regional rulers of Korea in the fifth to seventh centuries, a number of Korean immigrants entered Japan. When Silla rose as a powerful kingdom on the Korean peninsula and conquered Paekche in 562 AD and Koguryo in 668 AD, numbers of refugees entered Japan from that region. These refugees, who were known as kika-jin or torai-ijin, crossed over to Japan to avoid social and political upheaval in their homeland. They were given land and settled in different parts of Japan.“By the end of seventh century, according to the Shojiroku, a peerage of that time, over one-third of the noble families of Japan claimed to be the origin of Chinese or Korean families.”

These political refugees had higher skills and knowledge. As a result, they commanded respect, and occupied high rankings and important positions in the Yamato period. These newcomers introduced many foreign elements into Japanese society. They brought in the Confucian doctrine and introduced Chinese writing, which became a vital part of literary and official scripts. They played important roles as craftsmen and artists in the advancement of culture and civilization in Japan. In this manner, these immigrants played a vital role in the advancement of culture and civilization. At the same time, the indigenous language, social patterns, and religion of the original inhabitants were displaced by these newcomers.



Written by Gopal Kshetry
Taking From Book:Foreigners in Japan