Check out this article on the origins of the Japanese from Discover Magazine.
Unearthing the origins of the Japanese is a much harder task than you might guess. Among world powers today, the Japanese are the most distinctive in their culture and environment. The origins of their language are one of the most disputed questions of linguistics. These questions are central to the self-image of the Japanese and to how they are viewed by other peoples. Japan’s rising dominance and touchy relations with its neighbors make it more important than ever to strip away myths and find answers.
The search for answers is difficult because the evidence is so conflicting. On the one hand, the Japanese people are biologically undistinctive, being very similar in appearance and genes to other East Asians, especially to Koreans. As the Japanese like to stress, they are culturally and biologically rather homogeneous, with the exception of a distinctive people called the Ainu on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. Taken together, these facts seem to suggest that the Japanese reached Japan only recently from the Asian mainland, too recently to have evolved differences from their mainland cousins, and displaced the Ainu, who represent the original inhabitants. But if that were true, you might expect the Japanese language to show close affinities to some mainland language, just as English is obviously closely related to other Germanic languages (because Anglo-Saxons from the continent conquered England as recently as the sixth century a.d.). How can we resolve this contradiction between Japan’s presumably ancient language and the evidence for recent origins?
Found via ZR5 Asian News.
The Japanese are descended from the Sun Goddess. Of course their language is different.
@Edward. Thank you for a very interesting read.
@MarkD. planning to visit Yasukuni Shrine anytime soon?
Why do they have such a tough time accepting that they came from Korea? So the Japanese are just Korean descendants–no big deal.
The Japanese are extra-terrestials - its been kept secret for quite a few hundreds of years - their brains are different from Earthlings.
http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37769
remora
There IS a mainland language that is very similar to Japanese: Korean. Grammar is very close. Both languages are Subject-Object-Verb, for example. “Are you going to the store?” is “Gage e gase yo?” Gage being store and gase being go. The e is just like Japanese ni or e and the yo at the end is just like Japanese ka, indicating a question. In Japanese, “Are you going to the store?” is “Mise e ikimasu ka?”
Some vocabulary is also very close, though this is probably due to the fact that many words in both Japanese and Korean were borrowed from Chinese and the Chinese pronunciation entered both languages.
But the extraterrestrial theory is hard to ignore, I agree!
I read in an article that Japanese descendants were genetically 30% Korean, 30% Chinese and 40% Johmon people (who were the original inhabitants in Japan islands and genetically close to Ainu).
As for the Japanese language, Japanese, Korean and some other central Asian languages like Kazafstan language are in the same language group. Therefore their grammars are similar.
@TofuUnion and Kudan: Try to give the whole article which Edward linked to a read, what is posted here is a VERY small exert. I’d wager that the articles author has made quite a bit more thorough researc into this matter than anybody who will be commenting on it here. It is a very interesting read indeed.
I wonder how the Genghis Khan gene figures into the Japanese bloodline.
@Kudan:
Yes, grammar of Japanese and Korean resemble each other. But phonations of both languages are very different. For example, Korean language is closed syllable language. Japanese is open syllable language. And it hasn’t changed from 3rd century (conjecturable from ancient text of China).
So we feel more relaxing when listen to Austronesian language (like Hawaiian or Tagalong) than listen to Korean language.
I have wondered about the Mongol connection, too. According to sources I read, a good part of the invading Mongol forces in Kyushu negotiated a surrender. They were stranded here, but held off the counter-attacking Japanese (who were not yet, strictly speaking, Japanese) to a stalemate. The locals eventually agreed to cease hostilities and allow them to live.
I wonder what happened after that…
this makes for some very strange reading..the Ainu Theory!
http://business.gorge.net/zdkf/kufol/kol-ran.html
remora
I can’t find any sensible sane site which actually nominates the exact place where the spaceship landed “on a hill beside the Saru River in Hokkaido” except this wacky place.
http://www.iwasabducted.com/schroeder/mindcontrol.htm
*come to think of it, sometimes I feel as though I’ve been abducted*
rem.
[…] guess. Among world powers today, the Japanese are the most distinctive in their culture and environhttp://japundit.com/archives/2008/02/21/7922/Ainu language and Japan&39s Ancient HistoryCollection of papers concerning the history and possible […]