JAPANESE
Excerpts from Wikipedia.org
The Japanese people (日本人, Nihonjin) is the dominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as Nikkeijin (日系人, Nikkeijin). The term "Japanese people" may also be used in some contexts to refer to a locus of ethnic groups including the Yamato people, Ainu people, and Ryukyuans.
Language
The Japanese language is a Japonic language that is usually treated as a language isolate, although it is also related to the Okinawan language (Ryukyuan). The Japanese language has a tripartite writing system based upon Chinese characters. Domestic Japanese people use primarily Japanese for daily interaction. The adult literacy rate in Japan exceeds 99%; however, this may not accurately reflect functional literacy rates due to the complex nature of the Japanese writing system.
Ainu People
Ainu (アイヌ) (also called Ezo in historical texts) are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaidō, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. It has been speculated that parts of northern Honshū and the southernmost third of the Kamchatka peninsula also may have been inhabited by Ainu people in pre-modern times. Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word aynu, which means "human" (particularly as opposed to kamuy, i.e., divine beings) in the Hokkaidō dialects of the Ainu language. There are most likely over 150,000 Ainu today; however the exact figure is not known as many Ainu hide their origin or, in many cases, are not even aware of it, as their parents have kept it from them in order to protect their children from racism.
Ainu culture dates from around 1200 CE and recent research suggests that it originated in a merger of the Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures. Their economy was based on farming as well as hunting, fishing and gathering.
Ainu men generally have dense hair development. Many early investigators proposed a Caucasian ancestry, although recent DNA tests have found no traces of Caucasian ancestry. Genetic testing of the Ainu people has shown them to belong mainly to Y-haplogroup D. The only places outside of Japan in which Y-haplogroup D is common are Tibet and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. In a study by Tajima et al. (2004), two out of a sample of sixteen (or 12.5%) Ainu men were found to belong to Haplogroup C3, which is the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among the indigenous populations of the Russian Far East and Mongolia; Hammer et al. (2005) tested another sample of four Ainu men and found that one of them (1/4 or 25%) belonged to haplogroup C3. Some researchers have speculated that this minority of Haplogroup C3 carriers among the Ainu may reflect a certain degree of unidirectional genetic influence from the Nivkhs, with whom the Ainu have long-standing cultural interactions. According to Tanaka et al. (2004), their mtDNA lineages mainly consist of haplogroup Y (21.6%) and haplogroup M7a (15.7%). Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup Y is otherwise found mainly among Nivkhs, as well as at lower frequency among Koreans, Mongols, Tungusic peoples, Koryaks, Itelmens, and Austronesians; haplogroup M7a, on the other hand, is found elsewhere almost exclusively among Japanese, Ryukyuans, and Koreans. A recent reevaluation of cranial traits suggests that the Ainu resemble the Okhotsk more than they do the Jomon. This agrees with the reference to the Ainu culture being a merger of Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures referenced above.
Some have speculated that the Ainu may be descendants of a prehistoric race that also produced indigenous Australian peoples. In Steve Olson's book Mapping Human History, page 133, he describes the discovery of fossils dating back 10,000 years, representing the remains of the Jōmon, a group whose facial features more closely resemble those of the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and Australia. After a new wave of immigration, probably from the Korean Peninsula, some 2,300 years ago, of the Yayoi people, the pure-blooded Jōmon were pushed into northern Japan. Genetic data suggest that modern Japanese are descended from both the Yayoi and the Jōmon.
A Mahalanobis generalized distance survey of 29 male groups categorized Taiwanese as a separate subgroup of Northern Asian different from Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, associating Taiwanese closer to groups from Hainan, Korea, Ainu (Japan) and Atayal (Pietrusewsky 2000:400-409).
Ainu People
Yayoi People
Around 400-300 BCE, the Yayoi people began to enter the Japanese islands, intermingling with the Jōmon. Most modern scholars say that the Yayoi emigrated from the southern part of the Korean Peninsula to northern Kyūshū, though it has also been proposed that they came from southeastern China. The Yayoi brought wet-rice farming and advanced bronze and iron technology to Japan. Although the islands were already abundant with resources for hunting and dry-rice farming, Yayoi farmers created more productive wet-rice paddy field systems. This allowed the communities to support larger populations and spread over time, in turn becoming the basis for more advanced institutions and heralding the new civilization of the succeeding Kofun Period.
Chinese Origin of Yayoi Culture: A theory publicized in the early Meiji period argued that the Yayoi culture was brought to Japan by migrants from China. The emergence of the Yayoi culture was sudden. The Yayoi culture was very advanced compared to the Jōmon-period culture it replaced. It introduced skills to Japan such as the manufacturing of bronze and copper weapons, bronze mirrors, bells, as well as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. The most notable fact that lends evidence to this claim is that three major symbols of the Yayoi Culture - the bronze mirror, the sword, and the royal seal stone - are exactly the same symbols used by Qin Dynasty China.
In recent years, more archaeological and genetic evidence have been found in both eastern China and western Japan to lend credibility to this argument. 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 BCE-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 Jōmon 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.
Possible Connection of the Wu People with Ancient Japan: The first Wu Kingdom was united by Taibo during the Spring and Autumn Period. Originally considered a barbarian state, the people of the Wu Kingdom became Sinicized during the Warring States Period. Ambassadoral visits to Japan by the later Northern Chinese dynasties Wei and Jin Dynasty (265-420) recorded that the Wō people of Japan claimed to be descendants of the Grand Count (Tàibó) of the Kingdom of Wu. Historical records also show that the ancient Japanese had similar lifestyles and customs as pre-Sinicized inhabitants of the Wu Kingdom, including tattooing, ritual teeth-pulling, and baby-carrying on backs. The Japanese tradition of eating raw fish is common in the Wu area of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Tattooing examples are found on Haniwa statues with red paint on hands and faces. However, the Japanese language can be directly linked neither to the Wu dialect nor to any other Chinese language. (Note: The Japanese language appears to be similar to the language of the Qiang, an ancient people in China according to (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BE%8C%E6%97%8F). Taibo was from the State of Zhou before Zhou became powerful enough. Historically, Zhou people and Qiang people were very closely related.).
Korean Origin of Yayoi Culture: A theory publicized in the early Meiji period argued that the Yayoi culture was brought to Japan by migrants from Korea. Some scholars have concluded that archaeological findings from the Yayoi period "clearly derive from Korea". These include "bunded paddy fields, new types of polished stone tools, wooden farming implements, iron tools, weaving technology, ceramic storage jars, exterior bonding of clay coils in pottery fabrication, ditched settlements, domesticated pigs, jawbone rituals, and megalithic (keyhole) tombs." This theory also gains strength due to the fact that Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi pottery, burial mounds, food preservation was discovered to be very similar to the pottery of southern Korea. In addition, there was a significant Japanese population in southern Korea (Gaya) around 300 CE, with each nation today claiming the other was a vassal, "[m]any other elements of the new Yayoi culture were unmistakably Korean and previously foreign to Japan, including bronze objects, weaving, glass beads, and styles of tools and houses."
However, some argue that the increase of roughly four million people in Japan between the Jōmon and Yayoi periods cannot be explained by migration alone. They attribute the increase primarily to a shift from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural diet on the islands, with the introduction of rice. It is quite likely that rice cultivation and its subsequent deification (see Inari (mythology)) allowed for mass population increase.
Regardless, some archaeological evidence supports the idea that there was an influx of farmers from Korea to Japan that absorbed or overwhelmed the native hunter-gatherer population. Direct comparisons between Jōmon and Yayoi skeletons show that the two peoples are noticeably distinguishable. The Jōmon tended to be shorter, with relatively longer forearms and lower legs, more wide-set eyes, shorter and wider faces, and much more pronounced facial topography. They also have strikingly raised browridges, noses, and nose bridges. Yayoi people, on the other hand, averaged an inch or two taller, with close-set eyes, high and narrow faces, and flat browridges and noses. By the Kofun period, almost all skeletons excavated in Japan, except those of the Ainu and Okinawans, resemble those of modern day Japanese.
Genetic evidence also supports this theory. The modern Japanese are believed to be descendants of the incoming Yayoi colonists mixed with the indigenous Jōmon people, while the Ainu are believed to be relatively purer descendants of the Jōmon people, with some intermingling of genes from Nivkhs and from Yayoi colonists.
Mix of the Native Jōmon with Immigrants from China and/or Korea: Some pieces of Yayoi pottery clearly show the influence of Jōmon ceramics. In addition, the Yayoi lived in the same kind of pit-type or circular dwellings as that of the Jōmon. Other examples of commonality are chipped stone tools for hunting, bone tools for fishing, bracelets made from shells, and lacquer skills for vessels and accessories. The National Science Museum of Japan once held an exhibition named "Long Journey to Prehistorical Japan" which theorized that the Yayoi came from southern China because bones resembling theirs were discovered there.
Today the theory, the Yayoi people are that mix of the native Jōmon with immigrants from China and Korea, is believed widely and most textbooks of Japan have described that.
Emergence from the Jōmon Culture with Only Limited Immigration from China and/or Korea: In this version of the theory, the practice of intensive wet-rice farming is thought to have been passed from southern China via Okinawa, and perhaps through southern Korea before it reached northern Kyūshū. The different physical types of people living in Japan today can be explained by changes in diet and way of life. The fact that the Japanese are a relatively homogeneous people (with the exception of the Ainu people and Ryukyuans) suggests to some that the bulk of Japanese did not originate from China. This theory has met with criticism.
Yamato People
The Yamato people (大和民族, Yamato-minzoku) are the dominant native ethnic group of Japan. It is a term that came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the residents of the mainland Japan from other minority ethnic groups who have resided in the peripheral areas of Japan such as Ainu, Ryukyuans, Nivkhs, Uilta, as well as Koreans, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese aborigines who were incorporated into the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century.
The name "Yamato" comes from the Yamato Court that existed in Japan in the 4th century. It was originally the name of the region where the Yamato people first settled in Nara Prefecture. In the 6th century, the Yamato people founded a state modeled on the Chinese states of Sui and Tang which were the most advanced polities in Asia at the time. As the Yamato's influence expanded on the island, their language replaced Old Japanese becoming the common spoken language. Ryukyuan, the languages of the Okinawa Islands, split from Old Japanese somewhere between the 3rd and 5th centuries.
There is however a controversy on whether to include the Ryukyuans in the Yamato, or identify them as an independent ethnic group, or as a sub-group that constitutes Japanese ethnicity together with the Yamato because of close similarities suggested by genetics and linguistics. Shinobu Origuchi (折口信夫) argues that Ryukyuans are the "proto-Japanese" (原日本人), whereas Kunio Yanagita suggests that they were a part of the ancestors of the Japanese who came from the south and parted at the Ryukyu Islands from the rest who eventually reached the Japanese archipelago and became the Yamato.
Asia Ex-Japan
The first Japanese emigration to the rest of Asia was noted as early as the 12th century to the Philippines; early Japanese settlements included those in Lingayen Gulf, Manila, the coasts of Ilocos Norte and in the Visayas. A larger wave came in the 1600s, when red seal ships traded in Southeast Asia, and Japanese Catholics fled from the religious persecution imposed by the shoguns, and settled in the Philippines, among other destinations. Many of them also intermarried with the local Filipina women (including those of pure or mixed Spanish descent), thus forming the new Japanese-Mestizo community. During the American colonial era, the number of Japanese laborers working in plantations rose so high that in the 1900s, Davao soon became dubbed as a Ko Nippon Koku (Little Japan in Japanese) with a Japanese school, a Shinto temple and a diplomatic mission from Japan. There is even a popular restaurant called "The Japanese Tunnel", which includes an actual tunnel made by the Japanese in time of the war.
There was also a significant level of emigration to the overseas territories of the Empire of Japan during the Japanese colonial period, including Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and Karafuto. Unlike emigrants to the Americas, Japanese going to the colonies occupied a higher rather than lower social niche upon their arrival. However, after World War II, most of these overseas Japanese repatriated to Japan. Only a few remained overseas, often involuntarily, as in the case of orphans in China or prisoners of war captured by the Red Army and forced to work in Siberia. During the 1950s and 1960s, an estimated 6,000 Japanese accompanied Zainichi Korean spouses repatriating to North Korea, while another 27,000 prisoners-of-war are estimated to have been sent there by the Soviet Union.
In recent years, Japanese migration to Australia, largely consisting of younger age females, has been on the rise. There is also a community of Japanese people in Hong Kong largely made up of expatriate businessmen.
* Japanese Settlement in the Philippines
* Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state in northeastern China
Japanese Occupation may refer to:
- Occupation of Japan, the occupation of Japan by United States forces following World War II
- Japanese occupation of Burma
- Japanese occupation of Guam
- Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
- Japanese occupation of Indonesia
- Japanese occupation of Malaysia
- Japanese occupation of the Philippines
- Japanese occupation of Singapore
- Japanese occupation of Thailand
- Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Imperial Japanese Army occupied significant portions of China
Taiwan Under Japanese Rule
The Japanese colonial period, Japanese rule or the Imperial Japanese occupation, in the context of Taiwan's history, refers to the period between 1895 and 1945 during which Taiwan was a Japanese colony. The expansion into Taiwan was a part of Japan's general policy of southward expansion during the late 19th Century.
It has been argued that Japanese rule in Taiwan was markedly different from in Korea and other parts of Asia. As Taiwan was Japan's first overseas colony, Japanese intentions were to turn the island into a showpiece "model colony". As a result, much effort was made to improve the island's economy, industry, public works and culture. However, Japanese rule of Taiwan also had a negative side, such as the prostitution of Taiwanese women as comfort women.
The relative failures of immediate post-World War II rule by the Kuomintang led to a certain degree of nostalgia amongst the older generation of Taiwanese who experienced both. This has affected, to some degree, issues such as national identity, ethnic identity and the Taiwan independence movement. The comparative lack of anti-Japanese sentiment amongst Taiwanese society is often not understood by overseas Chinese communities and mainland Chinese.
1912 Map of Japan including Taiwan
Imperial Japan had sought to control Taiwan since 1592, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi began extending Japanese influence overseas. In 1609, the Tokugawa Shogunate sent Haruno Arima on an exploratory mission. In 1616, Murayama Toan led an unsuccessful invasion of the island. In 1871, an Okinawan vessel shipwrecked on the southern tip of Taiwan and the crew of fifty-four were beheaded by the Paiwan aborigines. When Japan sought compensation from Qing China, the court rejected the demand on the grounds that the "wild"/"unsubjugated" aboriginals (台灣生番) were outside its jurisdiction. This open renunciation of sovereignty led to a Japanese invasion of Taiwan. In 1874, an expeditionary force of three thousand troops was sent to the island. There were about thirty Taiwanese and 543 Japanese casualties (twelve in battle and 531 by endemic diseases).
Qing China was defeated in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in perpetuity in the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Inhabitants wishing to remain Chinese subjects were given a two-year grace period to sell their property and remove to mainland China. Very few Taiwanese saw this as plausible. On May 25, 1895, a group of pro-Qing high officials proclaimed the Republic of Formosa to resist impending Japanese rule. Japanese forces entered the capital at Tainan and quelled this resistance on October 21, 1895.
The Japanese were instrumental in the industrialization of the island; they extended the railroads and other transportation networks, built an extensive sanitation system and revised the public school system. Still, the ethnic Chinese and Taiwanese aborigines were classified as second- and third-class citizens. Large-scale violence continued in the first decade of rule. Around 1935, the Japanese began an island-wide assimilation project to bind the island more firmly to the Japanese Empire. By 1945, just before Japan lost World War II, desperate plans were put in place to incorporate popular representation of Taiwan into the Japanese Diet to make Taiwan an integral part of Japan proper. Japan's rule of Taiwan ended when it lost World War II and signed the Instrument of Surrender on August 15, 1945.
