Quote Originally Posted by Nakan
No, I'm not confusing, and I recognize the difference between 陸稲(rice cultivated in dry field) and 水稲(rice cultivated in water field). But 陸稲(rice cultivated in dry field) is also rice. And it had been "cultivated" long before the beginning of cultivation of 水稲(rice cultivated in water field).
And Even 水稲(rice cultivated in water field) already cultivated in BC.

http://www.tamagawa.ac.jp/sisetu/kyouken/nakazato/

I think your(Westerner's) information is too old.
Ok, ok. So you have the latest archeological evidence that rice was cultivated in paddies in 350BC in Kyushu, and around 200BC in some parts of the Kanto. But that doesn't change much to the fact that Japan was one of the last countries (if not the last) in Asia to cultivate rice in paddies, nor that agriculture came to Europe long before Japan. Just look at the history of Britain, one of the last places in Europe to adopt agriculture (source):

"Around 4,500 BC the first farming settlements began to emerge, as immigrants from Europe brought farming skills with them. By 3,500 BC farming settlements existed in most of Britain."

Quote Originally Posted by Nakan
Only China in East Asia has a history which can rival that of Greece in length.
But Ancient Greece was not the tiny country it is now (and China was only about half its present size). Greece included settlements all around the Black Sea (in today's Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey...), all along the Western and Southern coast of Turkey, most of Southern Italy (shared with Carthagenians from Phoenicia, present-day Lebanon), and other places in the South of France (Nice, Marseilles, Montpellier were all Greek cities), and Catalonia (near Barcelona). So it streched on an area as wide as present-day China (check on a map, from the Caucasus to Spain), eventhough it was always less populated than China.

Add to this the even older presence of the Phoenicians (influenced by the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures), in the South of Spain (the oldest European city, Gades/Cadiz is in Spain, not Greece).

Of course, we know as much about the Celtic and Germanic tribes of Central and Western Europe as of the Chinese "kingdoms" of the same period. And that is also part of European history. Paris and London were both originally Celtic towns long before the Romans came. The name "Paris" come from Celtic tribe name "Parii". Isn't that a compelling evidence of the continuity from the Antiquity to this day ?

Then the relation of modern countries with Ancient Greece and Rome so strong that they are considered as the founders of European or Western civilization. Of course, you could argue that China had a similar influence on Japan. But do Japanese study Ancient Chinese history as part of Japanese history, in the same way that all Europeans start with Greece and Rome ? Maybe they should, although most Japanese do not want to be considered as offspring of the Chinese (but the early Yayoi era immigration from the mainland to Japan proves it).