Misplaced Pages

#144855

68-566: Wajin may refer to: Wajin (和人): Yamato people Wajin (倭人): Wajin (ancient people) Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Wajin . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wajin&oldid=916965629 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

136-487: A Zhūrúguó 侏儒國 "pygmy/dwarf country" located south of Japan, associated with possibly Okinawa Island or the Ryukyu Islands . Carr cites the historical precedence of construing Wa as "submissive people" and the "Country of Dwarfs" legend as evidence that the "little people" etymology was a secondary development. Scientific racism was a Western idea that was imported from the late nineteenth century onward. Despite

204-655: A Korean form, and the other is also found in Ryukyuan and Eastern Old Japanese, suggesting that the former is an early loan from Korean. He suggests that to eliminate such early loans, Old Japanese morphemes should not be assigned a Japonic origin unless they are also attested in Southern Ryukyuan or Eastern Old Japanese. That procedure leaves fewer than a dozen possible cognates, which may have been borrowed by Korean from Peninsular Japonic. Most Japonic languages have voicing opposition for obstruents , with exceptions such as

272-527: A Southwestern branch. Kyushu and Ryukyuan varieties also share some lexical items, some of which appear to be innovations. The internal classification by Elisabeth de Boer includes Ryukyuan as a deep subbranch of a Kyūshū–Ryūkyū branch: She also proposes a branch consisting of the Izumo dialect (spoken on the northern coast of western Honshu) and the Tōhoku dialects (northern Honshu), which show similar developments in

340-513: A basic subject–object–verb word order, modifiers before nouns, and postpositions . There is a clear distinction between verbs, which have extensive inflectional morphology, and nominals, with agglutinative suffixing morphology. Ryukyuan languages inflect all adjectives in the same way as verbs, while mainland varieties have classes of adjectives that inflect as nouns and verbs respectively. Most Japonic languages mark singular and plural number , but some Northern Ryukyuan languages also have

408-403: A combination of internal reconstruction from Old Japanese and by applying the comparative method to Old Japanese (including eastern dialects) and Ryukyuan. The major reconstructions of the 20th century were produced by Samuel Elmo Martin and Shirō Hattori . Proto-Japonic words are generally polysyllabic, with syllables having the form (C)V. The following proto-Japonic consonant inventory

476-659: A criterion for the uniqueness of the Yamato minzoku began circulating around 1880 in Japan, around the time some Japanese scientists began investigations into eugenics . Initially, to justify Imperial Japan's conquest of Continental Asia , Imperial Japanese propaganda espoused the ideas of Japanese supremacy by claiming that the Japanese represented a combination of all East Asian peoples and cultures, emphasizing heterogeneous traits. Imperial Japanese propaganda started to place an emphasis on

544-580: A mixture of Koreans (91%) with a limited genetic heritage from a basal East Asian lineage related to Jōmon (9%)." A 2024 study clarified that the Japanese people descended from indigenous Jōmon, East Asians (i.e. Han Chinese) and Northeast Asians (i.e. peoples in the Korean Peninsula and early non-Jōmon Japanese). Jōmon ancestry is dominant in South Japan, especially Okinawa (28.5%), followed by Northeast Japan (19%) and West Japan (12%). East Asian ancestry

612-481: A partial distinct ancestry component, possibly deriving from Paleolithic Siberians, next to an East Asian ancestry component. The Jōmon period population, although heterogeneous, were closest to contemporary East Asians and Native Americans. In 2021, research from a study published in the journal Science Advances found that the people of Japan bore genetic signatures from three ancient populations, rather than just two as previously thought. Two of these populations were

680-498: A postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University, in an attempt to have some influence over the Japanese diaspora in Canada, Imperial Japanese authorities used the term Yamato as race propaganda during World War II, saying that: "For Japanese-Canadians in particular, the Emperor was the most natural symbol to promote primordial national sentiment and superiority of the Yamato race — the term that

748-434: A simple (C)V syllable structure and avoiding vowel sequences. The script also distinguished eight vowels (or diphthongs), with two each corresponding to modern i , e and o . Most of the texts reflect the speech of the area around Nara , the eighth-century Japanese capital, but over 300 poems were written in eastern dialects of Old Japanese . The language experienced a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary after

SECTION 10

#1732851761145

816-440: A small population of elderly speakers. The Ryukyuan languages were originally and traditionally spoken throughout the Ryukyu Islands , an island arc stretching between the southern Japanese island of Kyushu and the island of Taiwan . Most of them are considered "definitely" or "critically endangered" because of the spread of mainland Japanese. Since Old Japanese displayed several innovations that are not shared with Ryukyuan,

884-443: A transnational myth that would promote Japanese Canadians’ sense of racial pride as God’s chosen people in the world." World War II and Holocaust historian Bryan Mark Rigg noted in 2020 how Yamato master race theory was included in government propaganda and schools in the decades leading up to World War II and how Gaijin were regarded in Japan as subhumans . Discrimination also occurred against non-Yamato races in Japan such as

952-583: Is 89% East Asia, 2% Finland and Northern Siberia, 2% Central Asia, and 7% Southeast Asia & Oceania, making Japanese approximately ~100% East-Eurasian. The Yamato show a close genetic relationship with other modern East Asians such as the Han Chinese and Koreans . Genealogical research has indicated extremely similar genetic profiles between these three East Asian ethnic groups, making them nearly indistinguishable from each other and ancient samples. Yamatos were also found to share high genetic affinity with

1020-454: Is a language family comprising Japanese , spoken in the main islands of Japan, and the Ryukyuan languages , spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . The family is universally accepted by linguists , and significant progress has been made in reconstructing the proto-language , Proto-Japonic . The reconstruction implies a split between all dialects of Japanese and all Ryukyuan varieties, probably before

1088-418: Is based on a subsyllabic unit, the mora . Each syllable has a basic mora of the form (C)V but a nasal coda , geminate consonant , or lengthened vowel counts as an additional mora. However, some dialects in northern Honshu or southern Kyushu have syllable-based rhythm. Like Ainu, Middle Korean , and some modern Korean dialects , most Japonic varieties have a lexical pitch accent , which governs whether

1156-522: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Yamato people It can also refer to the first people that settled in Yamato Province (modern-day Nara Prefecture ). Generations of Japanese archeologists, historians, and linguists have debated whether the word is related to the earlier Yamatai ( 邪馬臺 ) . Around the 6th century, the Yamato clan set up Japan's first and only dynasty. The clan became

1224-625: Is dominant in West Japan and gradually decreases to the east. In contrast, Northeast Asian ancestry is dominant in Northeast Japan and gradually decreases to the west. These trends explain why variants of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are associated with herediatry breast cancer, are common in the east and west of Japan respectively. These genes came from Northeast Asian-related Japanese and continental Asians. Major disagreements exists as to whether

1292-525: Is fragmentary evidence suggesting that now-extinct Japonic languages were spoken in the central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula. Vovin calls these languages Peninsular Japonic and groups Japanese and Ryukyuan as Insular Japonic  [ fr ] . The most-cited evidence comes from chapter 37 of the Samguk sagi (compiled in 1145), which contains a list of pronunciations and meanings of placenames in

1360-611: Is generally agreed upon, except that some scholars argue for voiced stops *b and *d instead of glides *w and *j : The Old Japanese voiced consonants b , d , z and g , which never occurred word-initially, are derived from clusters of nasals and voiceless consonants after the loss of an intervening vowel. Most authors accept six Proto-Japonic vowels: Some authors also propose a high central vowel *ɨ . The mid vowels *e and *o were raised to Old Japanese i and u respectively, except word-finally. Other Old Japanese vowels arose from sequences of Proto-Japonic vowels. It

1428-678: Is noted in early historical references to Japan." Examples include "Respect is shown by squatting", and "they either squat or kneel, with both hands on the ground. This is the way they show respect." Koji Nakayama interprets wēi 逶 "winding" as "very far away" and euphemistically translates Wō 倭 as "separated from the continent". The second etymology of wō 倭 meaning "dwarf (variety of an animal or plant species), midget, little people" has possible cognates in ǎi 矮 "low, short (of stature)", wō 踒 "strain; sprain; bent legs", and wò 臥 "lie down; crouch; sit (animals and birds)". Early Chinese dynastic histories refer to

SECTION 20

#1732851761145

1496-606: 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,

1564-883: The Book of the Later Han compiled by the Chinese historian Fan Ye in the 5th century AD. The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century. Early Chinese historians described Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities. Third-century Chinese sources reported that the Wa/early Yamato 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. The Wei Zhi ( Chinese : 魏志 ), which

1632-586: The Ainu and Ryūkyū peoples. At the end of the World War II , the Japanese government continued to adhere to the notions of racial homogeneity and racial supremacy, with the Yamato race at the top of the racial hierarchy. Japanese propaganda of racial purity returned to post-World War II Japan because of the support of the Allied forces. U.S. policy in Japan terminated the purge of high-ranking war criminals and reinstalled

1700-572: The Korean peninsula around 700 to 300 BC by wet-rice farmers of the Yayoi culture and spread throughout the Japanese archipelago , replacing indigenous languages. The former wider distribution of Ainu languages is confirmed by placenames in northern Honshu ending in -betsu (from Ainu pet 'river') and -nai (from Ainu nai 'stream'). Somewhat later, Japonic languages also spread southward to

1768-463: The Ryukyu Islands . There is fragmentary placename evidence that now-extinct Japonic languages were still spoken in central and southern parts of the Korean peninsula several centuries later. Japanese is the de facto national language of Japan , where it is spoken by about 126 million people. The oldest attestation is Old Japanese , which was recorded using Chinese characters in the 7th and 8th centuries. It differed from Modern Japanese in having

1836-595: The Ryukyuans are considered the same as the Yamato, or identified as an independent but related ethnic group, or as a sub-group that constitutes Japanese ethnicity together with the Yamato. Ryukyuans have a distinct culture from the Yamato, with its own native cuisine , history , language , religion and traditions. From the Meiji period —during which the Ryukyuan's kingdom was annexed by Japan—and onward, Japanese scholars such as Shinobu Orikuchi and Kunio Yanagita supported

1904-414: The dual . Most Ryukyuan languages mark a clusivity distinction in plural (or dual) first-person pronouns, but no Mainland varieties do so. The most common type of morphosyntactic alignment is nominative–accusative , but neutral (or direct), active–stative and (very rarely) tripartite alignment are found in some Japonic languages. The proto-language of the family has been reconstructed by using

1972-428: The (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. It defines 倭 as shùnmào 順皃 "obedient/submissive/docile appearance", graphically explains the "person; human' radical with a shùnmào wěi 委 "bent" phonetic, and quotes the above Shi Jing poem. "Conceivably, when Chinese first met Japanese," Carr suggests, "they transcribed Wa as * ʼWâ 'bent back' signifying 'compliant' bowing/obeisance. Gestures of respect

2040-478: The 7th century. The Hachijō language , spoken on the Izu Islands , is also included, but its position within the family is unclear. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula with the Yayoi culture during the 1st millennium BC. There is some fragmentary evidence suggesting that Japonic languages may still have been spoken in central and southern parts of

2108-436: The 8th century, when the Japanese found fault with it, replacing it with 和 "harmony, peace, balance". Retroactively, this character was adopted in Japan to refer to the country itself, often combined with the character 大 , literally meaning "Great". The historical province of Yamato within Japan (now Nara Prefecture in central Honshu ) borders Yamashiro Province (now the southern part of Kyoto Prefecture ); however,

Wajin - Misplaced Pages Continue

2176-512: The Japanese used to distinguish themselves from others. This term meant a noble race, the members of which saw themselves as “chosen people.” The modernization of Japan, which began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, produced a number of historical writings that tried to define the Japanese under the official scheme to create a strong nation. Imported to Canada by Japanese intellectuals, a “common myth of descent” that Japanese people belonged to

2244-643: The Jōmon and the Yayoi. According to the researchers, Japanese people have approximately 13% and 16% genetic ancestry from these two groups, respectively. The remaining 71% of genetic ancestry was found to come from migrants that arrived around 300 AD during the Kofun period , and had genetic makeup mainly resembling the modern Han Chinese population. This migrant group was said to have brought cultural advances and centralised leadership to Japan. According to Shigeki Nakagome, co-leader of

2312-425: The Korean peninsula (see Peninsular Japonic ) in the early centuries AD. Possible genetic relationships with many other language families have been proposed, most systematically with Koreanic , but no genetic relationship has been conclusively demonstrated. The extant Japonic languages belong to two well-defined branches: Japanese and Ryukyuan. Most scholars believe that Japonic was brought to northern Kyushu from

2380-725: The Miyako dialect of Ōgami. Glottalized consonants are common in North Ryukyuan languages but are rarer in South Ryukyuan. Proto-Japonic had only voiceless obstruents, like Ainu and proto- Korean . Japonic languages also resemble Ainu and modern Korean in having a single liquid consonant phoneme. A five-vowel system like Standard Japanese /a/ , /i/ , /u/ , /e/ and /o/ is common, but some Ryukyuan languages also have central vowels /ə/ and /ɨ/ , and Yonaguni has only /a/ , /i/ , and /u/ . In most Japonic languages, speech rhythm

2448-509: The Tokyo dialect has several western features not found in other eastern dialects. The Hachijō language , spoken on Hachijō-jima and the Daitō Islands , including Aogashima , is highly divergent and varied. It has a mix of conservative features inherited from Eastern Old Japanese and influences from modern Japanese, making it difficult to classify. Hachijō is an endangered language , with

2516-495: The Yamato share more than 90% of their genome with the Yayoi rice agriculturalists and less than 10% with the heterogeneous Jōmon period groups. A later study by Gakuhari et al. 2019 estimates that the Yamato people have between 92% and 96.7% Yayoi rice-agriculturalist ancestry (with the 3.3% to 8% from the heterogeneous Jōmon period tribes) and cluster closely with other Koreans and Han Chinese, but are slightly shifted towards eastern Siberians. Based on archaeological evidence and

2584-466: The Yayoi migration and expansion within the Japanese archipelago. Whitman (2012) suggests that the Yayoi agriculturalists are not related to the proto-Koreans but that they were present on the Korean peninsula during the Mumun pottery period . According to him, Japonic arrived in the Korean peninsula around 1500 BC and was brought to the Japanese archipelago by the Yayoi agriculturalists at around 950 BC, during

2652-612: The ancient (~8,000 BC) sample from Devil's Gate Cave in the Amur region of Northeast Asia . The earliest written records about people in Japan are from Chinese sources. These sources spoke about the Wa people , the direct ancestors of the Yamato and other Japonic agriculturalists. The Wa of Na received a golden seal from the Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han dynasty . This event was recorded in

2720-425: The central "Kunigami" branch comprising varieties from Southern Amami to Northern Okinawan, based on similar vowel systems and patterns of lenition of stops. Pellard suggests a binary division based on shared innovations, with an Amami group including the varieties from Kikai to Yoron, and an Okinawa group comprising the varieties of Okinawa and smaller islands to its west. Southern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in

2788-405: The etymology of Wa ranging from feasible (transcribing Japanese first-person pronouns waga 我が "my; our" and ware 我 "I; we; oneself") to shameful (writing Japanese Wa as 倭 implying "dwarf"), and summarizes interpretations for * ʼWâ "Japanese" into variations on two etymologies: "behaviorally 'submissive' or physically 'short ' ". The first "submissive; obedient" explanation began with

Wajin - Misplaced Pages Continue

2856-608: The fall of the Empire, Japanese statistics only count their population in terms of nationality, rather than ethnicity. The Wajin (also known as Wa or Wō ) or Yamato were the names early China used to refer to an ethnic group living in Japan around the time of the Three Kingdoms period . Ancient and medieval East Asian scribes regularly wrote Wa or Yamato with one and the same Chinese character 倭 , which translated to "dwarf", until

2924-453: The former kingdom of Goguryeo . As the pronunciations are given using Chinese characters , they are difficult to interpret, but several of those from central Korea, in the area south of the Han River captured from Baekje in the 5th century, seem to correspond to Japonic words. Scholars differ on whether they represent the language of Goguryeo or the people that it conquered. Traces from

2992-426: The gene pool of present-day Japan". These people are thought to have caused the displacement of the indigenous Jōmon people, causing a significant diminishment of Jōmon genomes in the regions. It was deduced that this event (and the populations remaining genetically homogeneous since then) was what caused modern Koreans and Japanese to share the majority of their genetic makeup as the latter group "can be represented as

3060-694: The genetic similarity between Yamato and Koreans, the American geographer and historian Jared Diamond said that the Yayoi people, the ancestors of the Yamato people, migrated from the Korean peninsula. Watanabe et al. 2021 found that the Jōmon people were a heterogeneous population and that Japanese from different regions had different amounts of Jōmon-derived SNP alleles, ranging from 17.3% to 24% represented by southern Jōmon, and 3.8% to 14.9% represented by northern Jōmon. Southern Jōmon were genetically similar to contemporary East Asians (especially Tujia people , Tibetan people and Miao people ), while northern Jōmon had

3128-672: The ideas of racial purity and the supremacy of the Yamato race when the Second Sino-Japanese War intensified. Fuelled by the ideology of racial supremacy, racial purity, and national unity between 1868 and 1945, the Meiji and Imperial Japanese government carefully identified and forcefully assimilated marginalized populations, which included Okinawans, the Ainu, and other underrepresented non-Yamato groups, imposing assimilation programs in language, culture and religion. According to Aya Fujiwara,

3196-418: The introduction of Buddhism in the 6th century and peaking with the wholesale importation of Chinese culture in the 8th and the 9th centuries. The loanwords now account for about half the lexicon. They also affected the sound system of the language by adding compound vowels, syllable-final nasals, and geminate consonants, which became separate morae . Most of the changes in morphology and syntax reflected in

3264-487: The late Jōmon period. The language family associated with both Mumun and Yayoi culture is Japonic. Koreanic arrived later from Manchuria to the Korean peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families. A genetic study (2019) estimated that

3332-534: The later discredited ideological viewpoint that they were a sub-group of the Yamato people. The Ryukyuans were forcibly assimilated into Japanese (Yamato) people with their ethnic identity, tradition, culture and language suppressed by the Meiji government . Many modern day Japanese people today that colonized the Ryukyu Islands are a mixture of both Yamato and Ryukyuan. Japonic languages Japonic or Japanese–Ryukyuan ( Japanese : 日琉語族 , romanized :  Nichiryū gozoku ), sometimes also Japanic ,

3400-649: The leaders who were responsible for the creation and manifestation of prewar race propaganda. In present-day Japan, the term Yamato minzoku may be seen as antiquated for connoting racial notions that have been discarded in many circles since Japan's surrender in World War II. " Japanese people " or even "Japanese-Japanese" are often used instead, although these terms also have complications owing to their ambiguous blending of notions of ethnicity and nationality. In present-day Japan statistics only counts their population in terms of nationality, rather than ethnicity, thus

3468-498: The modern language took place during the Late Middle Japanese period (13th to 16th centuries). Modern mainland Japanese dialects , spoken on Honshu , Kyushu , Shikoku , and Hokkaido , are generally grouped as follows: The early capitals of Nara and Kyoto lay within the western area, and their Kansai dialect retained its prestige and influence long after the capital was moved to Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1603. Indeed,

SECTION 50

#1732851761145

3536-449: The moras of a word are pronounced high or low, but it follows widely-different patterns. In Tokyo-type systems, the basic pitch of a word is high, with an accent (if present) marking the position of a drop to low pitch. In Kyushu dialects, the basic pitch is low, with accented syllables given high pitch. In Kyoto-type systems, both types are used. Japonic languages, again like Ainu and Korean, are left-branching (or head-final ), with

3604-574: The names of both provinces appear to contain the Japonic etymon yama , usually meaning "mountain(s)" (but sometimes having a meaning closer to "forest", especially in some Ryukyuan languages ). Some other pairs of historical provinces of Japan exhibit similar sharing of one etymological element, such as Kazusa (<* Kami-tu-Fusa , "Upper Fusa ") and Shimōsa (<* Simo-tu-Fusa , "Lower Fusa") or Kōzuke (<* Kami-tu-Ke , "Upper Ke ") and Shimotsuke (<* Simo-tu-Ke , "Lower Ke"). In these latter cases,

3672-561: The noble Yamato race headed by the Emperor since the ancient period was one of the core elements that defined Japanese-Canadian ethno-racial identity in the 1920s and the 1930s. The evolution and survival of an ethnic community, Anthony D. Smith argues, relies on the complicated “belief-system” that creates “a sacred communion of the people” with cultural and historical distinctiveness. During this period, Japanese intellectuals, scholars, and official representatives sought to keep Japanese Canadians within their sphere of influence, thereby reinforcing

3740-565: The northern part of the chain, including the major Amami and Okinawa Islands . They form a single dialect continuum , with mutual unintelligibility between widely separated varieties. The major varieties are, from northeast to southwest: There is no agreement on the subgrouping of the varieties. One proposal, adopted by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger , has three subgroups, with

3808-522: The notion being hotly contested by Japanese intellectuals and scholars, the false notion of racial homogeneity was used as propaganda due to the political circumstances of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan, which coincided with Japanese imperialism and World War II . Pseudoscientific racial theories, which included the false belief of the superiority of the Yamato character, were used to justify military expansionism, discriminatory practices, and ethnocentrism. The concept of " pure blood " as

3876-540: The number of ethnic Yamato and their actual population numbers are ambiguous. The most well-regarded theory is that present-day Yamato Japanese are descendants from both the Yayoi people and the various local Jōmon people . Japanese people belong to the East Asian lineages D-M55 and O-M175 , with a minority belonging to C-M217 and N-M231 . The reference population for the Japanese (Yamato) used in Geno 2.0 Next Generation

3944-401: The pairs of provinces with similar names are thought to have been created through the subdivision of an earlier single province in prehistoric or protohistoric times. Although the etymological origins of Wa remain uncertain, Chinese historical texts recorded an ancient people residing in the Japanese archipelago, named something like * ʼWâ or * ʼWər 倭 . Carr surveys prevalent proposals for

4012-507: The people of Wa claimed to be descendants of the people of Wu , a historic figure of the Wu Kingdom around the Yangtze Delta of China, however this is disputed. Japonic speakers were also present on the southern and central Korean Peninsula . These Peninsular Japonic-speaking agriculturalists were later replaced/assimilated by Koreanic-speakers (from southern Manchuria) likely causing

4080-515: The pitch accent that she attributes to sea-borne contacts. Another alternative classification, proposed by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology as part of their Glottolog project, splits the Hachijō language into an independent branch of Japonic, in addition to splitting the divergent Kagoshima and Tsugaru dialects into independent branches of a "Japanesic" family. There

4148-402: The ruling faction in the area, and incorporated the natives of Japan and migrants from the mainland. The clan leaders also elevated their own belief system that featured ancestor worship into a national religion known as Shinto . The term came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the settlers of mainland Japan from minority ethnic groups inhabiting the peripheral areas of

SECTION 60

#1732851761145

4216-677: The south of the peninsula are very sparse: According to Shirō Hattori , more attempts have been made to link Japanese with other language families than for any other language. None of the attempts has succeeded in demonstrating a common descent for Japonic and any other language family. The most systematic comparisons have involved Korean , which has a very similar grammatical structure to Japonic languages. Samuel Elmo Martin , John Whitman, and others have proposed hundreds of possible cognates, with sound correspondences. However, Alexander Vovin points out that Old Japanese contains several pairs of words of similar meaning in which one word matches

4284-520: The southern part of the chain, the Sakishima Islands . They comprise three distinct dialect continua: The southern Ryukyus were settled by Japonic-speakers from the northern Ryukyus in the 13th century, leaving no linguistic trace of the indigenous inhabitants of the islands. An alternative classification, based mainly on the development of the pitch accent , groups the highly divergent Kagoshima dialects of southwestern Kyushu with Ryukyuan in

4352-504: The study, "Chinese characters started to be used in this period, such as Chinese characters inscribed on metal implements, for example swords." In a study in 2022 conducted by the University of Xiamen, researchers discovered that despite finding evidence of the Jōmon people on the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago , there were little to no traces left of their genetic impact in their respective people's gene pools. According to

4420-571: The study, Ancient Koreans were composed of "Northeast Asian-related ancestry and indigenous Jōmon-related ancestry" where the "Northeast Asian ancestry was suggested to be related to the Neolithic West Liao River farmers in northeast China." The finding indicated that the "West Liao River-related farmers might have spread the proto-Korean language as their ancestry was found to be predominant in extant Koreans" and these "Proto-Korean groups, in turn, introduced West Liao River-like ancestry into

4488-522: The then Japanese Empire , including the Ainu , Ryukyuans , Nivkh , as well as Chinese , Koreans , and Austronesians ( Taiwanese indigenous peoples and Micronesians ) who were incorporated into the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century. The term was eventually used as race propaganda . After Japan's surrender in World War II, the term became antiquated for suggesting pseudoscientific racist notions that have been discarded in many circles. Ever since

4556-513: The two branches must have separated before the 7th century. The move from Kyushu to the Ryukyus may have occurred later and possibly coincided with the rapid expansion of the agricultural Gusuku culture in the 10th and 11th centuries. Such a date would explain the presence in Proto-Ryukyuan of Sino-Japanese vocabulary borrowed from Early Middle Japanese . After the migration to the Ryukyus, there

4624-562: Was limited influence from mainland Japan until the conquest of the Ryukyu Kingdom by the Satsuma Domain in 1609. Ryukyuan varieties are considered dialects of Japanese in Japan but have little intelligibility with Japanese or even among one another. They are divided into northern and southern groups, corresponding to the physical division of the chain by the 250 km-wide Miyako Strait . Northern Ryukyuan languages are spoken in

#144855