Origin of the Japanese People and Language
This is a reprint of a post made by muchan on the sci.lang.japan newsgroup. This is but one of many such postings you'll find there. I suggest all serious users look into subscribing to this Usenet group.
The author states that this post is not a definitive piece of work, but presented more to satisfy some curiousity among readers of the sci.lang.japan group. The origins of the Japanese people and language are unusally difficult to trace, but this post makes a good beginning overview to the issues and periods involved. Thanks to muchan for taking the time to present this to us!
This post appears as originally presented, The bold headings are added only to ease browsing
The Origin of the Japanese People & Language
I am posting this message to
(1) Preface
We can read the oldest written form of Japanese from the 7th century. Since that time, the Japanese language has changed, but we can see
the continuity very clearly, and we can safely conclude that this is
basically the same language that is spoken now on the same islands.
Calling this oldest known form "Old Japanese", this message is about
the time before that, how this language was formed and where
the people who spoke this language came from--about the origin and
prehistory of the Japanese people and language.
Because it is about a time before the written history, studies
and even many guesses in the fields of archeology, anthropology,
mythology, etc., together with linguistical analysis, are also
important to knowing the past.
This message does not give the definitive answer to the question,
but is just to illustrate the image of prehistory that we can have
from the studies that have been done up till now. The author of this
message is not an academic researcher in this field, and so this is
just to be informative to Usenet readers who are wondering about the
origin of us, the Japanese, and to show our own point of view.
Most of information here is based on the Book 'Nihongo-no kigen'
(Origin of the Japanese Language) by Susumu Oono, Iwanami. I'd be
happy to hear if there are some newer findings to replace or confirm
he basic image of prehisory that I'm presenting here.
(2) Legends
In Chinese classical literature, at least two texts mention the
prehistory of Japan.
Wei Zhi - Dong Yi Chuan (Official history of Wei, about Eastern
Strangers, /Gishi-touiden/ -- jp, or known as /Gishi-wajinden/)
reports about Japanese in AD 3c. Beside a description of the female
governor and the tattooed faces of men, there is a part that says,
"When asked, everyone answered they were descendants of TaiBo of Wu
(/taihaku/ of /Go/ -- jp )".
Sima Qian (/Shibasen/ -- jp) wrote that Xu Fu (/Johuku/ -- jp) said
to Shi Huang Di of Qin (/Shikoutei/ of /Shin/), that he was leaving
for the Eastern Sea to search for a medicine for eternal life in
Fenglai (/Hourai/ -- jp) islands, which the Chinese people consider
to be Japan. He left with about 3000 people, but didn't come back
because he became the king there.
From these texts, still many people seem to believe Japanese is
just a branch of Chinese. It's too arrogant to ignore these texts,
but too naive to believe the legend blindly...
(3) Timetable
To illustrate the prehistory of Japan, I'd put two lines on the
timetable. The first line comes around 400 to 300 BC. This is the
time when wet rice culture and iron processing came to the Japanese
Islands, and the way of life there changed. Yet an older form of the
Japanese language started to be spoken from that time. I'd call this
phase of the language "proto-Japanese", which later evolved to our
Old Japanese.
The second line comes around 200 to 300 AD. By this time, the
transformation of people, culture, and language is almost complete,
and we see the Yamato people, who will later reign over all the
islands of Japan. From this time on until the 7th century, about 2/3
of Japan was under the Yamato people, who spoke Old Japanese.
The historical time between these two lines is called the Yayoi era,
named from the name of place where the typical wheel-turned pottery
of this time was found.
(4) Pre-Rice Culture Era
Studies of archeology and anthropology suggest that there were at
least three groups of people who lived in the Japanese islands before
the wet rice culture came.
4.a The Ainu People
In the Hokkaido islands and the northernmost part of Honshuu, there
were the Ainu people. Biological study suggests that the Ainu people
are closer to the people who form European nations. Linguistically,
the Ainu language has similar syntax structure to Japanese, but
differs in the use of pronouns used as verbal prefixes. Some
linguists consider the Ainu language as a distant family of the
Finno-Ugric subgroup of Ural-Altaic language group. Some archeological
findings and anthropological studies suggest that the Ainu people are
probably a branch of a group of people who originally came from the
North Ural mountains, and spread from Finland to Northeast Siberia
between 700 BC to 700 AD. This is from the cultural & religious
similarity found in old ruins, but culture can be transfered by
contact of people, so the origin of Ainu people is still not known
for sure.
4.b Aduma-hito, People of the Northeast region of Japan
There still remains a sharp distinction of people, culture, language
(dialect) northeast and southwest of a line accross the Honshuu,
the Japanese main land. The line is almost identical to the Southwest
borders of Niigata, Nagano, and Aichi prefectures now. Northeast of
this line, there lived people who probably called themselves Emchu,
Enju, or Enzo as a word for man (human being). Probably this word
was transformed to Emisi or Ezo in the Japanese language, which later
just meant 'northern strangers', so the same word is used to name
Hokkaido and the Ainu people a thousand years later. From this word
"Ezo", some people wonder if the Ainu people lived in half of Honshuu
before, but this wasn't the case. These people had a culture with
beautiful earthen vessels, which normally are called "Joomon-style
vessels". Joomon-style vessels were made in the Southern part of
Japan, too, but the center of this culture was more in the north,
and later, when the southern people started to use a more advanced
style of vessels, these people continued to use Joomon vessels.
Here we can see the continuity of the people to a later time.
Most of what are now the Hokuriku, Chuubu, and Kantoo regions were
under the Yamato people's control until the late 6th century. Natives
of the seized land were then called 'tori-no saezuru Aduma-hito' or
"Bird-song Easterners", who spoke Old Japanese with strange accents.
(/Adzuma/ in modern Japanese means "East", as does the word /higashi/,
but East as direction in Old Japanese was /himugashi/ "the wind to
the sun", /Aduma/ was used to refer to the region). Many males of
the Aduma region were sent to Kyuushuu as a guard force.
From the 10th century, the Yamato people tried to seize the Northern
part of Honshuu, Michinoku, but here the native people, then called
Ezo, maintained their autonomy until the end of the 12th century.
The origin of these people (for prehistory they are called Joomon-
jin) is not well known. They seem to be a Northern branch of the
'Mongolian' race, and their language is more consonant oriented than
the languages of their Southern neighbors. But the language they
spoke before contact with the Yamato people is not known. Someone
has suggested that Mt.Fuji meant "Fire Mountain" in their language,
but we don't have any evidence.
4.c People of the Southwest Coastal Region
The rest of Japan, before the wet rice culture, was populated by
people who probably came from the South by sea. Some cultural
characteristics of the Japanese are thought to be from these groups
of people. Males had tattoos on their faces, and there was a
widespread custom of removing the canine teeth. Women's teeth were
dyed black when they married. Marriage and families followed
maternal lines, the husbands visiting their wives. The young members
of the society were organized into groups of same generations, etc.
Their language, though we don't know what syntax structure it had,
must have had the open vowel syllables which remain in the Japanese
language today. Modern Japanese still conserve many of the words for
body parts from this time.
As a conclusion, these people probably belong to the Malay-Indonesia-
Polynesia group, and their closest relations are now found on some
islands in Polynesia and Micronesia. I'm interested, but I don't know
where these people originated, or how they spread over the Pacific
Ocean.
(5) Rice Culture, Shock Wave from Korea
Here we will see about how the wet rice culture was introduced into
Japanese life. It changed life and language, and surely we imagine
there was a movement of people who came with rice and started to live
on the Japanese islands. But before that, we'll look around to see
who near Japan had wet rice culture at that time.
5.a. The Origin of Rice, and the Mon-Khmer People
Wet rice culture is started in the area around aroung the current
border between Myanmar and China. In around 400 BC, it spread widely
over the lower Yangtze region, where the Han (Chinese) people had not
yet come. Here in the region, now the southern part of China
(Zhejiang, Fujian, etc.), many kinds of people seem to have been
living. Chinese literature of the time describes the people in this
southern region as strangers, with customs like tattooing, dying and
removing teeth, etc.
Among them, people called "Mon" attract our attention. The Mon people
were widespread over the lower Yangtze and had their peak in about
the 7th century AD. Now they are living as a minority nationality in
China and Myanmar. One of 1996 issues of the Japanese edition of
_National Geographic_ had an article on visiting this people. The
reporter was impressed by their having faces very similar to
Japanese, and found customs to similar some commonly found in Japan,
such as carrying babies on the mothers' backs, etc. Their language,
belongs to the Mon-Khmer language group. However, it is not
considered to be close to Japanese, except some of the words for body
parts and the system of indexing pronouns, known as ko-,so-, a-,
idu(do) in Japanese. This pronoun system for distinguishing near,
near(common), far, and indefinite things are common to Korean
and Japanese but not in Northern neighbors of Altaic languages.
5.b. Rice Moving to the Southern Part of the Korean Peninsula
It was still during the time that the Han people considered these
southern parts of China as a land of strangers, so we don't know
exactly which of the people among those who were here with rice
started to move out. It seems that they didn't go directly to Japan,
but settled first in the southern part of the Korean peninsula until
300 BC. The reason for their moving is unknown, but I imagine it was
the time of war between countries in the ancient world of China,
and people may have moved out seeking a peaceful land.
Takasi Akiba studied the ethnology of the Korean people, and wrote
about the custom of binding rope as a religious ceremony ("shimenawa"
in Japanese). This culture must be bound to rice culture, and it can
be found widely in the half of today's Korea on the south side of 38
degree line. It indicate that this was the boundary of rice culturing
people.
5.c. South Korea, Where the North and South Waves Met
The fact that rice culture didn't came directly to Japan, but it was
buffered in Korean peninsula, is an important thing. The rice as
southern culture didn't came alone, but it was imported to Japan with
many factors of Northern Tungusic cultures together. This mixing of
North and South occurred in southern Korea just before it started to
move to Japan.
Northern factors: They had a paternal family system. (ul, kara in
Korean, udi, kara in Japanese), "5" as a religious number, a three-
layered idea of the universe: Heaven(ama)-Middle(nakatu)-Earth(ne),
the belief that gods descended from Heaven to a mountain, etc. These
factors are common to Tungusic culture and Japanese Shintoism. Many
linguistical characteristics of Japanese, common to most of Altaic
language groups, are of course among those we count as Northern
factors.
5.d. the Wave from Korea
An interesting study shows that the average Korean (163 cm) was
taller than the average Japanese (160 cm) throughout history. (Now
the younger generation of both countries is taller than that. This is
a historical average). The study shows that the average Japanese
before rice culture was about 160 cm, but this increased to about
163 cm, but later, in the 5th century AD, it came back to 160 cm.
The interpretation is that there was a wave of immigration from
Korea, which was big enough to change the average height of the
Japanese, but not enough to change the nature of the gene pool on the
Islands entirely, and that wave was not followed by any more waves.
As time went by, these immigrant people were mixed and assimilated in
the sea of native people.
5.e. After the Rice Came
From a cultural point of view, this wave was a shock that changed the
way of life entirely. Wet rice culture requires organization of people
in a village to make collective work effective. The possession of land
and the accumulation of wealth leads to wars and bigger political
forces. Rice culture and new technologies changed life in the
southern half of Japan, then this new way gradually influenced the
Eastern Aduma people's life. From a linguistical point of view, this
wave changed the syntax of the language, and replaced many of the
basic words.
5.f. Proto-Japanese and Korean
During the early Yayoi era, probably the language of South Koreans
and our proto-Japanese were identical. But as time went by, the
language on the island started to be influenced by the phonetics
of native islanders. Island people didn't have consonant ending
syllables so they couldn't hear them clearly. Susumu Oono show many
examples to corresponding words.
(Bart mentioned here that the evidence is getting pretty strong that
early Korean didn't have consonant-final syllables either.)
Between Ancient Korean and Ancient Japanese, over 20 phonetical
corresponding rules were found:
The basic vocabulary of body part names from Korea didn't replace
Japanese words, but it was transformed into verbs, related to the
part of body originally in ancient Korean.
As for syntax structure, Japanese and Korean are very close, and
Japanese, especially in its ancient form, can be thought of as an
Altaic language.
(6) The Yamato Expansion
Yamato is the name of a place where the people settled who later
seized all of Japan. When these people came to the Yamato region (in
Nara prefecture), is not yet known clearly, but their orally
inherited myths talk about the war when they came east to settle in
Yamato. I think these people were the last wave from the Korean
peninsula, who organized politically and started to conquer people
who had wet rice culture from former waves. Their myths talk about the
war against Idumo in the West, Kumaso (or Hayate) in the South, and
later Ezo or Aduma people in the East. As they expanded their
territory, their language prior to Old Japanese became the common
language on the island.
Ryuukuian, or the language of the Okinawa Islands separated from
Old Japanese somewhere between the 3rd and 5th centuries. So, it
is either the closest language or the most distant dialect of
Japanese.
(7) Civilization
Chinese civilization had one of its peaks in the 6th century. The
Yamato people learned from the most advanced civilization of the time
by bringing scholars and artisans from Korea. Half of the clans in
Yamato were considered to be native clans of this place, and the rest
of the clans, which got stronger and stronger later, were those who
settled as conquerors and still had stronger ties with the Korean
people. Many Korean people immigrated to Japan during this time,
bringing technologies and thought like Confucianism and Buddhism,
and, yes, knowledge of Chinese characters, too. Later, Japan sent
intellectuals to China, to study and absorb their civilization
directly. As a result, Japanese borrowed many words from Chinese,
but it didn't change the language. The Japanese language is not
related to Chinese.
(8) End of Altaic Vowel Accordances
In 1909, Shinkichi Hashimoto found that Old Japanese had two groups
of the vowels /i/, /e/, and /o/, so there were 8 vowels and everyone
could distinguish them clearly, except those from the distant Aduma
people in the East. Further studies on the usage and distinction of
these vowels indicate that Old Japanese had vowel accordance,
something close to vowel harmony, which is characteristic of Altaic
languages like Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages. It's one
of important aspects that indicates the relation of Altaic languages
and Japanese, but this vowel accordance and even the distinction of
two groups of vowels disappeared by the 10th century. Isn't this a
linguistic version of same phenomena, that the average Japanese
became 160 cm tall hundreds of years after the shock wave from Korea?
As time passes, the Japanese language has been losing the
characteristic Altaic part of its origin.
Phonetically speaking, Japanese belongs to the Southern Islanders
languages.
Japanese and Korean thus separated about 1800 to 2300 years ago.
Korean seems to have been losing its Southern elements, and Japanese
has been losing its Northern elements. So, it's not easy for students
of today's forms of both languages to find similarities between the
two, except for syntax structure and common borrowed words from
Chinese.
Return to Tumbleweed's Resources for Japanese
or
check out sci.lang.japan.
mil -> midu (water), nunmil -> namida (tear),
nat -> nata (hatchet), pat -> pata (farm),
kot -> kusi (spit), sal -> sa (arrow) -- /sa/ of /ikusa/
kama = kama (sickle), mail -> mura (village)
k-k, s-s, s-ch, t-t, n-n, P(F)-p, m-m, s.z-r.l, etc. ip (mouth) -> ipu (to say)
ko (nose) -> kagu (to smell)
kui (ear) -> kiku (to hear)
al (egg) -> aru (to be born), etc.
(examples are from "Origin of the Japanese Language" by Susumu Oono)