Japanese people

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The Template:Nihongo are the Yamato, Ainu, Ryukyuans, Uilta and Nivkhs of the Japanese Archipelago. While most Japanese live on the islands, some emigrated, predominantly to Hawaii, the west coast of the United States and Canada, Latin America (particularly, Brazil), and Russia, (particularly, Sakhalin and Primorsky Krai).

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Origins

Archeological evidences show that Stone Age people lived in Japanese Archipelago between 33,000 and 21,000 years ago in the Paleolithic period. Japan was then connected to Asia by land bridges, and nomadic hunter-gatherers crossed over from the continent. They left flint tools, but no evidence of permanent settlements. The most accepted theory is that present-day Japanese are descended principally from both the Jomon, a paleo-Asiatic people, and the Yayoi, a neo-Asiatic people, with cultural influences from the Korean Gaya confederacy and Baekje kingdom, and also from the Sui, and Tang Dynasty of China. The Ainu, Koreans, and Japanese are believed to be somewhat largely derived from the Tungusic group which is often speculated as related to Altaic Template:Fact. But the extent of relationship are still contested.

The Northern Mongoloid peoples of North Asia and Central Asia, have relatively tall statures, well-defined features (such as longer noses, and higher cheekbones), and relatively hairy bodies and faces, features that are considered to define the "prototype" Mongoloid physical type. The Japanese and Ainu inherit these prototypical physical features. The Japanese trace their ancestry to the Jomon people and the Yayoi people, and then perhaps the Koreans Template:Fact, various Chinese peoplesTemplate:Fact, Mongolians Template:Fact, Malays, Indonesians, and Polynesians, thus making their Mongoloid traits unique. Their comparatively shorter-nosed and hairless Asian counterparts to the south, however, are believed to be due to adaptation to the damper climates, and to their mixing with Austronesian prototypes, when migrating to the Pacific Ocean.

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Jomon and Ainu people

Pottery was first developed by the Jomon and Ainu people in the 14th millennium BC. The name, "Jomon" (繩紋 Jōmon), which means "cord-impressed pattern", comes from the characteristic markings found on Jomon pottery. The Jomon people were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, though at least one middle to late Jomon site ca. 1200-1000 BC had rice agriculture (南溝手 Minami misote site). They had, very likely, migrated from Central Asia, or from the North Asia, farther north from the believed origins of the Yayoi peoples.

The genetic study suggests that the Ainu retain a certain degree of their own genetic uniqueness, while having higher genetic affinities with other regional populations in Japan and the Nivkhi among Asian populations. (Tajima 2004) Based on more than a dozen genetic markers on a variety of chromosomes and from archaeological data showing habitation of Japan dating back 30,000 years, Nei argued that the Jomon actually came from northeastern Asia and settled in Japan far earlier than supporters of the Southeast Asia theory had proposed.

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Yayoi people

Around 400-300 BC, the Yayoi people began to intermingle with the Jomon. The Yayoi people were called "Wa-jin"(倭人) in the Chinese history "Gishi-Wa-jin-den"(魏志倭人伝).

Most scholars believe Yayoi culture was brought to the Japanese archipelago by immigrants from Korea and China. The Yayoi are believed to have brought agriculture into Japan. The Jomon people accepted this new concept, and like the Chinese Wu and Yue peoples living around the Yangtze Delta at the time, they relied on fish as their main source of protein. Agriculture slowly spread, making hunting and gathering unnecessary.

Between 1996 and 1999, a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan's National Science Museum, compared Yayoi remains found in Japan's Yamaguchi and Fukuoka prefectures with those from early Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-8) in China's coastal Jiangsu province, and found many similarities between the skulls and limbs of Yayoi people and the Jiangsu remains. Two Jiangsu skulls showed spots where the front teeth had been pulled, a practice common in Japan in the Yayoi and preceding Jomon Period. The genetic samples from three of the 36 Jiangsu skeletons also matched part of the DNA base arrangements of samples from the Yayoi remains. This finding, according to the Japanese team of scientists, suggests that some of the first wet-rice farmers in Japan might have migrated from the lower basin of China's Yangtze River more than 2,000 years ago.

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Modern demography of Jomon and Yayoi

The human geneticist found that YAP-positive chromosomes appeared with much greater frequency in the southern and northern islands of Japan than in the central islands (Honshu, Kyushu) of Japan. Hammer and Horai hypothesized that the YAP element was originally carried to Japan by the Jomon and that the Yayoi, Koreans lacked the marker. Hammer and his colleagues are also studying a second Y chromosome marker that may serve as a sign of the Yayoi migration. This marker is common in Koreans and appears most frequently in the central islands of Japan. Hammer contends that the two markers tell a story of an initial Yayoi migration into central Japan and a subsequent spread of the people toward the north and south. Since both Y chromosome markers are still found in varying degrees throughout Japan, it appears that the genes of the Jomon and Yayoi peoples did intermingle significantly. (Travis, Pittsuburgh)

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Genetics and physical anthropology

Skeletons of the Jomon and Yayoi people have been examined, and detailed DNA studies have been made in recent years. Most Jomon and Yayoi skeletons are readily distinguishable. The Jomon people were shorter, with relatively longer forearms and lower legs, more wide-set eyes, shorter and wider faces, and much more pronounced facial topography, with strikingly raised brow ridges, noses, and nose bridges, while the Yayoi people averaged an inch or two taller, with close-set eyes, high and narrow faces, and flat browridges and noses. (Diamond 1998)

Studies of teeth show two distinct patterns — sundadonty and sinodonty. The former represents Southeast Asians, Micronesians, and Polynesians, and the latter is found in it's highest frequencies among northern Chinese and northern native Americans. The former is pre-eminent among pure-blooded Ainu and Ryukyuan people. The teeth evidence supports the thesis that "ancient demic diffusion, commencing with the Yayoi era around 300 BC, when an immigrant population from Continental Asia entered the archipelago in north Kyushu, and expanded eastward, assimilating the aboriginal inhabitants". (Riley 2002)

The most recent genetic study on the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome shows that the four distinct population of Japanese (Honshu, Kyushu, Ainu, and Ryukyuans) exhibited the unique hapltotype at various high frequencies, not found in other East Asian populations. Coalescence analysis in the Y-haplotype tree in the same study shows that the separation of the three lineages from North Asian, Han chinese and South East Asian occurred from 53,000 to 95,000 years ago.(Tajima 2002, Human Genetics)

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Japanese people abroad

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See also

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External links

cy:Japaneaid de:Japaner hr:Japanci ja:日本民族 ka:იაპონელები ko:일본인 ru:Японцы th:ชาวญี่ปุ่น tr:japon zh:日本人

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