Yamato people
Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox ethnic group The Template:Nihongo or Template:Nihongo<ref name="google272">David Blake Willis and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu: Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity,, p. 272: "Wajin," which is written with Chinese characters that can also be read "Yamato no hito" (Yamato person).</ref>, also known as the Japanese,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> are an East Asian ethnic group that comprises over 98% of the population of Japan and are the primary Japanese people. Genetic and anthropometric studies have shown that the Yamato people predominantly descend from the Yayoi people, who migrated to Japan from the continent beginning during the 1st millennium BC, and to a lesser extent the indigenous Jōmon people who had inhabited the Japanese archipelago for millennia prior.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref>
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 Template:Nihongo. Around the 6th century, the Yamato clan set up Japan's first and only dynasty. The clan became the ruling faction in the area, and incorporated the natives of Japan and migrants from the mainland.<ref name= "Tignor">Template:Cite book</ref> The clan leaders also elevated their own belief system that featured ancestor worship into a national religion known as Shinto.<ref name= "Tignor"/>
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 the then Empire of Japan, including the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Nivkh, as well as Chinese, Koreans, and Austronesians (Taiwanese indigenous peoples and Micronesians) who were incorporated into the empire 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.<ref name="Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1998 354–375">Template:Cite journal</ref> Ever since the fall of the Empire, Japanese statistics only count their population in terms of nationality, rather than ethnicity.
Etymology
Template:Further 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 Template:Lang, which translated to "dwarf", until the 8th century, when the Japanese found fault with it, replacing it with Template:Lang "harmony, peace, balance". Retroactively, this character was adopted in Japan to refer to the country itself, often combined with the character Template:Lang, 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, 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, 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 Template:Lang. Carr<ref name="carr">Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Rp surveys prevalent proposals for the etymology of Wa ranging from feasible (transcribing Japanese first-person pronouns waga Template:Lang "my; our" and ware Template:Lang "I; we; oneself") to shameful (writing Japanese Wa as Template:Lang implying "dwarf"), and summarizes interpretations for *ʼWâ "Japanese" into variations on two etymologies: "behaviorally 'submissive' or physically 'shortTemplate:'". The first "submissive; obedient" explanation began with the (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. It defines Template:Lang as Template:Lang Template:Lang "obedient/submissive/docile appearance", graphically explains the "person; human' radical with a Template:Langwěi Template:Lang "bent" phonetic, and quotes the above Shi Jing poem. "Conceivably, when Chinese first met Japanese," CarrTemplate:R suggests, "they transcribed Wa as *ʼWâ 'bent back' signifying 'compliant' bowing/obeisance. Gestures of respect is noted in early historical references to Japan." Examples include "Respect is shown by squatting",<ref>Hou Han Shu, tr. Tsunoda 1951, 2.</ref> and "they either squat or kneel, with both hands on the ground. This is the way they show respect."<ref>Wei Zhi, tr. Tsunoda 1951, 13.</ref>
Koji Nakayama interprets Template:Lang Template:Lang "winding" as "very far away" and euphemistically translates Template:Lang Template:Lang as "separated from the continent". The second etymology of Template:Lang Template:Lang meaning "dwarf (variety of an animal or plant species), midget, little people" has possible cognates in Template:Lang Template:Lang "low, short (of stature)", Template:Lang Template:Lang "strain; sprain; bent legs", and Template:Lang Template:Lang "lie down; crouch; sit (animals and birds)". Early Chinese dynastic histories refer to a Template:Lang Template:Lang "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.
History of usage
After Meiji restoration
Propaganda
Template:See also Scientific racism was a Western idea that was imported from the late nineteenth century onward. Despite 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.<ref name="Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1998 354–375"/> 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.<ref name="Tessa Morris-Suzuki 1998 354–375"/> The concept of "pure blood" as 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
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.<ref name="Eiji 2002">Template:Cite book</ref> Imperial Japanese propaganda started to place an emphasis on the ideas of racial purity and the supremacy of the Yamato race when the Second Sino-Japanese War intensified.<ref name="Eiji 2002"/> 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
According to Aya Fujiwara, a professor of history at Alberta 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 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 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 a transnational myth that would promote Japanese Canadians' sense of racial pride as God's chosen people in the world."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Discrimination also occurred against non-Yamato races in Japan such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Contemporary usage
At the end of 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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 the leaders who were responsible for the creation and manifestation of prewar race propaganda.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In present-day Japan statistics only counts their population in terms of nationality, rather than ethnicity, thus the number of ethnic Yamato and their actual population numbers are ambiguous.<ref name="国籍・地域別 在留資格（在留目的）別 在留外国人">Template:Cite web</ref>
Origin
The earliest written records about Japanese people are from Chinese sources. These sources spoke about the Wa people, the direct ancestors of the Yamato and other Japonic agriculturalists.<ref name=":4">Template:Cite web</ref> Early Chinese historians described the land of Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Third-century Chinese sources reported that the Wa 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 (Template:Zh), 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.<ref>魏志倭人伝, Chinese texts of the Wei Zhi, Wikisource</ref> When asked about their origins by the Wei embassy, 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>最古級の奈良・桜井"3兄弟古墳"、形状ほぼ判明 卑弥呼の時代に相次いで築造 Template:Webarchive, Sankei Shimbun, 6 March 2008</ref> The Wa of Na also received a golden seal from the Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han dynasty. This event was recorded in 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.<ref name=":4" />
Archaeological evidence shows that Japonic speakers were first present in the southern and central regions of the Korean Peninsula. These peninsular Japonic-speaking agriculturalists were later replaced/assimilated by Koreanic-speakers, from southern Manchuria, likely causing the Yayoi migration and expansion within the Japanese archipelago.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref> Whitman (2012) argues that the Yayoi agriculturalists were ethnically distinct from proto-Koreans and were present in the Korean peninsula during the Mumun pottery period. According to him, proto-Japonic languages arrived in the Korean peninsula around 1500 BC and was introduced to the Japanese archipelago by the Yayoi agriculturalists at around 950 BC, during the late Jōmon period. Koreanic languages 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Overall, the most well-regarded theory is that present-day Japanese primarily descend from the Yayoi people<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and arguably, continental East Asian migrants from the Kofun period,<ref name="Cooke212">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="EE">Template:Cite web</ref> and to a lesser extent, the pre-existing heterogenous Jōmon population in the Japanese archipelago.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Genetics
Overall, the Yamato Japanese are related to other modern East Asians like Koreans and Han Chinese<ref name=":3">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> but especially with Koreans.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Yamato Japanese are also genetically intermediate between the Chinese/Korean and Ryukyuan clusters<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and show some affinities with other Asian populations such as the Dingjie Sherpa people and Oceanian populations.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Their genetic formation involved admixture between Koreanic migrants and indigenous Jōmon hunter-gatherers between the Yayoi and Kofun periods, followed by genetic drift.<ref name=":32" /> Some studies suggest the separate introduction of Northeast Asian and East Asian ancestries during the Yayoi and Kofun periods respectively<ref name="Cooke21">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":6">Template:Cite journal</ref>or continuous migrations from the Korean peninsula until the Kofun period.<ref name=":32">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":02">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Different subgroups of modern Yamato Japanese differ in their Jōmon affinities<ref name=":62">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":5">Template:Cite journal</ref> and to some extent, their affinities with East Asian and Northeast Asian populations.<ref name=":5" />
Relations with the Ryukyuans
Template:See also Major disagreements exists as to whether 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 cuisine, history, language, religion and traditions.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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 the ideological viewpoint that they were a sub-group of the Yamato people. The Ryukyuans were assimilated with their ethnic identity, tradition, culture and language suppressed by the Meiji government.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="MasamiIto2009">Template:Cite news</ref> Today, the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands are mostly a mixture of Yamato and Ryukyuan.
See also
- Emperor of Japan
- Ethnic groups of Japan
- Japanese battleship Yamato
- Japanese nationalism
- Minzoku (Volk)
- Nihonjinron
- Race and ethnicity in Japan
- Yama-bito
- Yamato (disambiguation)
- Yamato nadeshiko
- Yamato-damashii—"the Japanese spirit"
- Yamato period
References
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