Origin of the Yayoi people The origin of Yayoi culture and the
Yayoi people has long been debated. The earliest archaeological sites are Itazuke or Nabata in the northern part of Kyūshū. Contacts between fishing communities on this coast and the southern coast of Korea date from the
Jōmon period, as witnessed by the exchange of trade items such as fishhooks and obsidian. During the Yayoi period,
cultural features from Korea and China arrived in this area at various times over several centuries, and later spread to the south and east. This was a period of mixture between immigrants and the indigenous population, and between new cultural influences and existing practices. Chinese influence was obvious in the bronze and copper weapons,
dōkyō,
dōtaku, as well as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. Three major symbols of Yayoi culture are the bronze mirror, the bronze sword, and the royal seal stone. Between 1996 and 1999, a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan's
National Museum of Nature and Science, compared Yayoi remains found in Japan's
Yamaguchi and
Fukuoka prefectures with those from China's coastal
Jiangsu province and found many similarities between the Yayoi and the Jiangsu remains. bell, 3rd century AD Further links to the Korean Peninsula have been discovered, and several researchers have reported discoveries/evidence that strongly link the Yayoi culture to the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.
Mark J. Hudson has cited archaeological evidence that included "bounded 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, and jawbone rituals". The migrant transfusion from the Korean peninsula gains strength because Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi pottery, burial mounds, and
food preservation were discovered to be very similar to the pottery of southern Korea.
bronze mirror excavated in Tsubai-otsukayama kofun,
Yamashiro, Kyoto However, some scholars argue that the rapid 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 allowed for a slow and gradual population increase. Regardless, there is archaeological evidence that supports the idea that there was an influx of farmers from the continent to Japan that absorbed or overwhelmed the native hunter-gatherer population. These
Peninsular Japonic languages, now extinct, were eventually replaced by
Koreanic languages. Similarly Whitman suggests that the Yayoi are not related to the proto-Koreans but that they (the Yayoi) were present on the Korean peninsula during the
Mumun pottery period. According to him and several other researchers, Japonic/proto-Japonic arrived in the Korean peninsula around 1500 BC and was brought to the Japanese archipelago by Yayoi
wet-rice farmers at some time between 700 and 300 BC. Whitman and Miyamoto associate Japonic as the language family of both Mumun and Yayoi cultures. Several linguists believe that speakers of Koreanic/proto-Koreanic arrived in the Korean Peninsula at some time after the Japonic/proto-Japonic speakers and coexisted with these peoples (i.e. the descendants of both the Mumun and Yayoi cultures) and possibly assimilated them. Both Koreanic and Japonic had prolonged influence on each other and a later
founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.
Languages Most linguists and archaeologists agree that the
Japonic language family was introduced to and spread through the archipelago during the Yayoi period.
Emergence of Wo in Chinese history texts said to have been granted to the "King of
Na in
Wo" by
Emperor Guangwu of Han in 57 AD. It is inscribed
King of Na of Wo in Han Dynasty (漢委奴國王) The earliest written records about people in Japan are from
Chinese sources from this period.
Wo, the pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan, was mentioned in 57 AD; the
Na state of Wo received a golden seal from the
Emperor Guangwu of the Later
Han dynasty. This event was recorded in the
Book of the Later Han compiled by
Fan Ye in the 5th century. The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century. Wo was also mentioned in 257 in the
Wei zhi, a section of the
Records of the Three Kingdoms compiled by the 3rd-century scholar
Chen Shou. Early Chinese historians described Wo as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities rather than the unified land with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the 8th-century work
Nihon Shoki, a historical but heavily narrative streamlined account of Japan which dates the foundation of the country at 660 BC. Archaeological evidence also suggests that frequent conflicts between settlements or statelets broke out in the period. Many excavated settlements were moated or built at the tops of hills. Headless human skeletons discovered in
Yoshinogari site are regarded as typical examples of finds from the period. In the coastal area of the
Inland Sea, stone arrowheads are often found among funerary objects. Third-century Chinese sources reported that the
Wa people lived on raw fish, vegetables, and rice served on bamboo and wooden trays,
clapped their hands in worship (something still done in
Shinto shrines today), and built earthen-grave mounds. They also maintained vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, and observed mourning. Society was characterised by
violent struggles.
Yamataikoku ,
Sakurai, Nara The
Wei Zhi (), which is part of the Records of the three Kingdoms, first mentions
Yamataikoku and Queen
Himiko in the 3rd century. According to the record, Himiko assumed the throne of Wa, as a spiritual leader, after a
major civil war. Her younger brother was in charge of the affairs of state, including diplomatic relations with the Chinese court of the
Kingdom of Wei. When asked about their origins by the Wei embassy, the people of Wa claimed to be descendants of the
Taibo of
Wu, a historic figure of the
Wu Kingdom around the
Yangtze Delta of China. For many years, the location of Yamataikoku and the identity of Queen Himiko have been subject of research. Two possible sites,
Yoshinogari in
Saga Prefecture and
Makimuku in
Nara Prefecture have been suggested. Recent archaeological research in Makimuku suggests that Yamataikoku was located in the area. Some scholars assume that the
Hashihaka kofun in Makimuku was the tomb of Himiko. Its relation to the origin of the
Yamato polity in the following
Kofun period is also under debate. == See also ==