What's the origin of the Japanese people ?

[allq]

The Japanese originated from Korea. This is borne by western research studies on genetics, cultural and linguistics which all agree on the Korean origination hypothesis, although Japanese and Chinese researchers themselves have a personal bias and hidden agenda and would rather obscure this tie with Korea. But the relationship is obvious first from the similarity of the language---as someone pointed out earlier, Korean sounds like another dialect of Japnese---to even anyone who is unfamiliar with any studies. Here are some more facts: 1) The first horses that appeared on Japanese islands came from Korea 2000 years ago. 2) Korea and Japanese grammar is nearly identical. 3) Kyushu which is closest to the Southern tip of Korea is hypothesized as the place as where Japanese cultural bloom began because it is the area in which you will find the oldest and culturally significant early Japanese artifacts. As mentioned, Kyushu is closest to the Southern tip of Korean. The early Japanese artifacts unearthed are identical to artifacts unearthed in the area of Southern Korea in the same time period

I would recommend the book Korean Impact on Japanese Culture: Japan's Hidden History by Jon Covell and Alan Covell for those interested in this topic.

[caster51]

korean does not have a DNA YAP+ at all that 50% of japanese men have.

I would recommend the book Korean Impact on Japanese Culture: Japan's Hidden History by Jon Covell and Alan Covell for those interested in this topic.

they are neither archeologist nor histrian.
they are art scholar............

[tokapi]

korean does not have a DNA YAP+ at all that 50% of japanese men have.

That's right caster51,Korean males share more DNA markers with Chinamen


Study of Korean Male Origins (abstract)[5]

Sunghee Hong, Seong-Gene Lee, Yongsook Yoon, Kyuyoung Song
University of Ulsan College of Medicine, 388-1 Poongnap-dong, Songpa-ku, Seoul, Korea

Population studies of genetic markers such as HLA variation and mitochondrial DNA have been used to understand human origins, demographic and migration history. Recently, diversity on the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome (NRY) has been applied to the study of human history. Since NRY is passed from father to son without recombination, polymorphisms in this region are valuable for investigating male-mediated gene flow and for complementing maternally based studies of mtDNA. Haplotypes constructed from Y-chromosome markers were used to trace the paternal origins of Korean. By using 38 Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphism markers, we analyzed the genetic structure of 195 Korean males. The Korean males were characterized by a diverse set of 4 haplogroups (Groups IV, V, VII, X) and 14 haplotypes that were also present in Chinese. The most frequent haplogroup in Korean was Group VII (82.6%). It was also the most frequent haplogroup in Chinese (95%) as well as in Japanese (45%). The frequencies of the haplogroups V, IV, and X were 15.4%, 1%, and 1%, respectively. The second most frequent haplogroup V in Korean was not present in Chinese, but its frequency was similar in Japanese. We have tried to correlate the Y variation with surname to determine how well the clan membership corresponds to Y variation. There were 37 surnames in our sample but genetic variation structure did not correlate with surnames. "

[tokapi]

The Japanese originated from Korea.

http://www.hanbooks.com/hanofkor.html

The Koreans originated from China & Mongolia

[kireikoori]

The Koreans originated from China & Mongolia

Mostly Mongolia. I agree with allq that they are more Siberian than they are Chinese.

[tokapi]

But the relationship is obvious first from the similarity of the language---

There certainly isn't any evidence that Korean and Japanese are Altaic languages.It's just something some Finnish Scientist made up and everyone else just assumed to be true.

Korean is similar, if not related, to Japanese.They are grammatically pretty identical whereas vocabulary wise they are no.

Racial characteristics do not always correlate with the langage spoken by particular people.

Since when did language groups denote race ?

[kireikoori]

There certainly isn't any evidence that Korean and Japanese are Altaic languages.It's just something some Finnish Scientist made up and everyone else just assumed to be true.

Finnish scientist? What Finnish scientist? And how do you know that there isn't any truth to what this so called Finnish scientist said?

[tokapi]

Japanese and Chinese researchers themselves have a personal bias and hidden agenda.

How about Koreans re-examine own idiocy of extremism & fanaticism


Hyung Il Pai, Constructing "Korean" Origins.A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2000. 543 pages. ISBN: 0-674-00244-X.

Source: http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr01-10.htm

Nationalism has been a major force in the creation of the Korean state in the 20th Century. It was fueled during the colonial period when it underpinned the struggle for independence. Korean intellectuals promoted patriotism, and with it a sense of nationhood, yet the question of identity suddenly became an important issue when Japanese archaeologists began digging into Korea's past. Their activities and those of anthropologists, paid for largely by the Japanese government, focused on the history and culture of Korean civilization. The Japanese military government planned to assimilate the Korean people and the outcome of the studies, so it hoped, would serve to facilitate the assimilation process. It also made efforts to prevent expressions of a distinct Korean identity. For that purpose it imposed strong censorship and ruled that, among other things, the Korean Confucian institution was to be broken down, Korean history books rewritten, and Japanese taught as the primary language at schools.

After the liberation, the ensuing strong anti-Japanese sentiments helped the state to further boost nationalism, this time in order to increase competitiveness and productivity, improve national unity, and preempt criticism of the government. The success of South Korean president Park Chung Hee's policy of cultural indoctrination, in particular, was such that today most South Koreans share the same ideas about their unique cultural heritage and 5,000-year history. Park's nationalism focused on the threat from foreign powers and the uniqueness of Korea's national identity. It involved advocating old Confucian values that underscored the responsibility shared by all strata of society in achieving the state's economic and political objectives. Perhaps under the influence thereof, many Koreans, both scholars and laymen, began dealing with their colonial past their own way. They did so either by blaming the Japanese for stripping the country of its cultural treasures and economic resources, and leaving the country in ruins, or by rewriting the history of Korea, which they considered to have been greatly contrived by the Japanese during the colonial period. The starting point was to "prove" the historical truth of the myth of Tan'gun, who allegedly founded the first Korean state as early as 2333 B.C. Popular support for adopting the Tan'gun theory was significant, and was further gained under Park's rule. Due to this widespread support, and the fact that many of these historians gained prestigious positions in the academic world, the misconceptions stand largely uncorrected and continue to thwart objective Korean historiography.

In Constructing Korean Origins, Hyung Il Pai tackles most of the post-colonial historiographical constructions. With great dexterity she examines how and whether Korean historians have used the available data in formulating their many preconceived theories on the existence of Tan'gun's very early and purely Korean civilization, which, so they argue, was one of formidable cultural development and influence. Based on her findings, she shows that, instead, the first Korean state was not an isolated culture and cannot have been formed until much later.

In terms of the number of pages, the book is divided in two sections. The first part is made up of seven chapters, and the second of a relatively long section (127 pp.) of appendices, followed by the notes, bibliography, glossary and index. In the introduction, "The Formation of Korean Identity" (pp. 1-22), Pai summarizes the factors that led to the current trends in historiography. She outlines the nationalist cultural policy of South Korea's post-war governments and the nationalist activities of scholars, and explains how they have managed to shape the Korean identity. Urged on by the fast industrialization and urbanization, the government has become the arbiter in terms of which archaeological sites are salvaged from destruction by building projects. According to Pai, it is now "the supreme authority over the 'authentic domain of identity'" (p. 13).


* Author ( ethnic Korean ) Hyung Il Pai was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea

http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/content/people_pai.html

[tokapi]

1) The first horses that appeared on Japanese islands came from Korea 2000 years ago.

3) Kyushu which is closest to the Southern tip of Korea is hypothesized as the place as where Japanese cultural bloom began because it is the area in which you will find the oldest and culturally significant early Japanese artifacts.

1) J. Edward Kidder, Jr. (who released a 400+ page book on the history, archaeology, and mythology surrounding Himiko and the location of Yamatai this Spring) covers the history of horses in Japan in his article "The Archaeology of the Early Horse-Riders in Japan". You can read it in "The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan". He also provided some great evidence that discredits a few pillars of Egami's horseriders theory.Of course,every theory has aspects that reflect cultural/social/historical currents.

I recommend you guys checking out his article. I'll only lay out a few points he made in this post.

-The Kiso horse is indigenous to Japan, yet it's presently endangered. The horse that spread throughout the archipelago was imported from Korea.

-Horses began to be ridden widely in the 5th century.

-It was expected that aristocrats know how to ride horses.

-The native horses were from the Late Jomon period (1000 B.C.-300 B.C.)

-He gives 114.5 cm as an average height for the indigenous horses (measured up to the "withers")

-Yayoi horses are, on average, 132 cm (again, "withers")

-Jomon and Yayoi (300 B.C.-250 A.D.) sites don't imply the eating or sacrifice of horses. I believe Farris mentioned they were beasts of burden, however they apparently weren't ridden, yet.

-After the Yayoi period, horses began to be used in religious rituals. They were sacrificed. The Taika Reforms of the 7th century prohibited the sacrificing of horses (among other mourning practices after one's lord/leader had died).

-Horse sacrifice is actually a bit debated, as Kidder wonders why the Japanese would sacrifice the few horses that lived on the islands during the first years of the Kofun period.

-The use of horse haniwa around kofun seems to imply that the Japanese believed that horses were mediums or intouch with the spiritual world. 8th century rituals involving horse figures attest to this.

There's a lot more information in the short article. If you can get your hands on it, it'd go nicely with Walter Edwards rebuttal of Egami's theory. Both are from an archaeological standpoint.

A reputable Japanese archaeologist 樋口隆康 noted 2 Chinese migration routes

* China's lower Yangtze River ( today China's coastal provinces of Jiangsu & Zhejiang ) > northern Kyūshū 九州 of Japan

* southern China via Taiwan and Ryukyus ( Okinawa ) > southern Kyūshū 九州 of Japan

日本考古学研究家 " 樋口隆康 "

http://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%A...3&start=0&sa=N

『日本人はどこから来たか』(樋口隆康著、講談社現代新書)は、考古学者の日本人起源論である。樋口は日本 人を「日本列島に住み、同じ体質を持ち、日本的な文化を持つ一群の人類群」と定義した上で、「日本人の起源 とは日本文化の起源である」という立場から、起源を、日本文化の形成過程に求めている。他分野の知見も参考 にし、石器や土器、稲作の伝来や農具など発掘から得たデータをもとに考察する樋口は、文化は樺太、朝鮮半島、(中国)東シナ海、台湾・南西諸島、小笠原諸島の5ルートから日本に移入されていて、その合成により日本文化は形成されたが、中でも中国江南地域から東シナ海を通って伝えられた文化が最も重要な役割を果たしており、形成時期は弥生時代であ る、という仮説をたてる。

Source: http://shinshomap.info/theme/roots_of_japanese_g.html

Japanese-English translation website: http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/