The Yayoi people (弥生人, Yayoi jin) were an ancient people that immigrated[1] to the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD) and are characterized through Yayoi material culture.[2][3][4][5] Some argue for an earlier start of the Yayoi period, between 1000 and 800 BC, but this date is controversial.[1] The people of the Yayoi culture are regarded as the spreaders of agriculture and the Japonic languages throughout the whole archipelago, and were characterized by both local Jōmon hunter-gatherer and mainland Asian migrant ancestry.[6]
Origin
The terms Yayoi and Wajin can be used interchangeably, though "Wajin" (倭人) refers to the people of Wa and "Wajin" (和人) is another name for the modern Yamato people.[7]
The definition of the Yayoi people is complex: The term Yayoi people describes both farmers and hunter-gatherers exclusively living in the Japanese archipelago, and their agricultural transition. The Yayoi people refers specifically to the mixed descendants of Jomon hunter-gatherers with Mainland Asian migrants, which adopted (rice) agriculture and other continental material culture.[8]
There are several hypotheses about the geographic origin of the mainland Asian migrants:
immigrants from the Southern or Central Korean Peninsula[9][10][11]
multiple origins from various regions of Asia, including Southeast Asia[13][14][15][16][17]
According to Alexander Vovin, the Yayoi were present on the central and southern parts of Korea before they were displaced and assimilated by arriving proto-Koreans.[18][19] A similar view was raised by Whitman (2012), further noting that the Yayoi are not closely related to the proto-Koreanic speakers and that Koreanic arrived later from Manchuria to Korea at around 300 BC and coexisted with the Japonic-speakers. Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.[20]
Genetics
To date, not much genetic data has been revealed about the Yayoi people. Two samples of "Northwestern Yayoi" from the Shimomotoyama site in northern Kyushu, in the Nagasaki Prefecture, have been analyzed and displayed mixed ancestry with a majority being derived from the local Jōmon hunter-gatherers, and varying degrees of Eastern Asian admixture.[21]
Based on studies on modern Japanese people, the Yayoi component makes up the majority ancestry of Japanese.[22][23] Another DNA analysis of four Yayoi remains revealed that the "immigrant Yayoi people were already mixed with the indigenous Jōmon people". The authors noted that "it is necessary to rethink the traditional theory of the formation of the Japanese population". The formation of the Japanese people and their culture is rooted in the local Jōmon hunter-gatherers which adopted Mainland Asian material culture and mixed with continental Asian immigrants, rather than being replaced. The Yayoi people represent the period of transition and formation of "Old Japanese" and their culture before receiving further influence from continental East Asia during the Kofun period.[24] Other geneticists support this reinterpretation.[25][26]
Wang and Wang argued in 2022 that Yayoi peoples in Japan had 60% Jōmon ancestry, with the rest being ancient Northeast Asian, which proved the coexistence between Jōmon and Yayoi. But this Jōmon ancestry was diluted to 13%-15% in Kofun peoples and modern Japanese due to subsequent introductions of north Han Chinese-related ancestries.[27]
Physical appearance
According to many scholars, early Yayoi immigrants resembled Neolithic Chinese. They had wholly large and flat features, large facial height, round orbits and large teeth.[28]
Sea People
Some historians call the Yayoi people The Sea people (海人族, Kaijinzoku, Amazoku, 海神族, Watatsumizoku) postulating that they migrated to Japan via the sea possibly from elsewhere, especially through the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.
^ a bShinya Shōda (2007). "A Comment on the Yayoi Period Dating Controversy". Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology. 1. Archived from the original on 1 August 2019.
^"Yayoi Period (300 BCE – 250 AD) | Japan Module".
^"Timelines: JAPAN | Asia for Educators | Columbia University".
^"Pitt Rivers Museum Body Arts | Bronze mirror".
^Keally, Charles T. (2006-06-03). "Yayoi Culture". Japanese Archaeology. Charles T. Keally. Retrieved 2010-03-19.
^Boer, Elisabeth de; Yang, Melinda A.; Kawagoe, Aileen; Barnes, Gina L. (2020). "Japan considered from the hypothesis of farmer/language spread". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2: e13. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.7. ISSN 2513-843X. PMC 10427481. PMID 37588377. S2CID 218926428.
^David Blake Willis & Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu: Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity, Archived 2017-01-06 at the Wayback Machine, p. 272: ‘“Wajin,” which is written with Chinese characters that can also be read “Yamato no hito” (Yamato person)’.
^Boer, Elisabeth de; Yang, Melinda A.; Kawagoe, Aileen; Barnes, Gina L. (2020). "Japan considered from the hypothesis of farmer/language spread". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2: e13. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.7. ISSN 2513-843X. PMC 10427481. PMID 37588377. S2CID 218926428. The term Yayoi has four uses, which can create much confusion. First, it is the designation of the period beginning with the introduction of rice agriculture around 1000 BC until the advent of the Mounded Tomb Culture in the third century AD. Yayoi is a period designation exclusive to Japan; it includes both farmers and hunter–gatherers and entails the agricultural transition in a time-transgressive and regionally disparate process. Second, 'Yayoi people' may refer to anyone living in the Japanese Islands in the Yayoi period, or third, Yayoi may refer specifically to admixed people (Mumun + Jōmon in varying in proportions and across great distances). Fourth, Yayoi may indicate acculturation: the adoption of (rice) agriculture (and other continental material culture) by Jōmon-lineage people in the Yayoi period. All of these conflicting aspects of Yayoi must be kept in mind and clearly defined in any discussion.
^Diamond, Jared. "In Search of Japanese Roots". Discover Magazine.
^Watanabe, Yusuke; Naka, Izumi; Khor, Seik-Soon; Sawai, Hiromi; Hitomi, Yuki; Tokunaga, Katsushi; Ohashi, Jun (17 June 2019). "Analysis of whole Y-chromosome sequences reveals the Japanese population history in the Jomon period". Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 8556. Bibcode:2019NatSR...9.8556W. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-44473-z. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 6572846. PMID 31209235.
^ロシア極東新石器時代研究の新展開 Archived 2017-08-26 at the Wayback Machine (in Japanese)
^Janhunen, Juha (2010). "Reconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia". Studia Orientalia (108): 281–304. there are strong indications that the neighbouring Baekje state (in the southwest) was predominantly Japonic-speaking until it was linguistically Koreanized.
^Vovin, Alexander (2013). "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics. 15 (2): 222–240.
^Whitman, John (2011-12-01). "Northeast Asian Linguistic Ecology and the Advent of Rice Agriculture in Korea and Japan". Rice. 4 (3): 149–58. doi:10.1007/s12284-011-9080-0. ISSN 1939-8433.
^Boer, Elisabeth de; Yang, Melinda A.; Kawagoe, Aileen; Barnes, Gina L. (2020). "Japan considered from the hypothesis of farmer/language spread". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2: e13. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.7. ISSN 2513-843X. PMC 10427481. PMID 37588377. S2CID 218926428.
^Boer, Elisabeth de; Yang, Melinda A.; Kawagoe, Aileen; Barnes, Gina L. (2020). "Japan considered from the hypothesis of farmer/language spread". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2: e13. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.7. ISSN 2513-843X. PMC 10427481. PMID 37588377. S2CID 218926428.
^Osada, Naoki; Kawai, Yosuke (2021). "Exploring models of human migration to the Japanese archipelago using genome-wide genetic data". Anthropological Science. 129 (1): 45–58. doi:10.1537/ase.201215. S2CID 234247309.
^"Analysis of the relationship between Jomon and immigrant Yayoi people using whole genome sequencing data". KAKEN. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
^Shinoda, Ken-ichi; Kanzawa-Kiriyama, Hideaki; Kakuda, Tsuneo; Adachi, Noboru (2019). "Genetic characteristics of Yayoi people in Northwestern Kyushu". Anthropological Science (Japanese Series). 127 (1): 25–43. doi:10.1537/asj.1904231. S2CID 198267247.
^Wang, Rui; Wang, Chuan-Chao (2022-08-08). "Human genetics: The dual origin of Three Kingdoms period Koreans". Current Biology. 32 (15): R844–R847. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.044. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 35944486. S2CID 251410856.
^Miyazato, Eri; Yamaguchi, Kyoko; Fukase, Hitoshi; et al. (2014). "Comparative analysis of facial morphology between Okinawa Islanders and mainland Japanese using three-dimensional images". American Journal of Human Biology – via Wiley Online Library.