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Encyclopedia: Japanese people, List of Japanese people, List_of_Japanese_people, Talk:Japanese people, Talk:List of Japanese people, Category:Japanese people, Category:Japanese people by occupation, Category talk:Japanese people, Category:Japanese people stubs, Category:Lists of Japanese people

Japanese people|日本人|nihonjin, are the ethnic group that identifies as Japanese by culture or by ancestry. The term is often used more broadly to refer to people having Japanese nationality. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are Japanese. Of these, approximately 127 million people are residents of Japan.

Culture

main|Culture of
Japanese culture has evolved greatly over the years, from the country's original Jomon culture to its contemporary hybrid culture, which combines influences from Asia, Americas and Europe.

Language

main|Japanese
The Japanese language is the mother tongue of the majority of the world's Japanese. It is a Japonic language that is usually treated as a language isolate, although it is also related to the Okinawan language (Ryukyuan). The Japanese language has a tripartite writing system based upon Chinese characters. Domestic Japanese people use primarily Japanese for daily interaction, and the adult literacy rate in Japan exceeds 99%. https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ja.html#People

Religion

main|Religion in
The Japanese people's concern towards religion is mostly related to mythology, traditions, and neighborhood activities rather than the source of morality or the guideline for one's life, for which sometimes Confucianism, or even Taoism, tends to serve as the basis for the moral code. According to the CIA World Factbook, when asked to identify their religion, most (84%) profess to believe both Shinto and Buddhism.

Origins of Japanese

thumb|250px|left|Location Map of Japan
seealso|History of

Introduction

Archaeological evidences indicates that Stone Age people lived in the Japanese Archipelago during the Paleolithic period between 33,000 and 21,000 years Japan was then connected to mainland Asia by at least one land bridge, and nomadic hunter-gatherers crossed to Japan from East Asia, Siberia, and possibly Kamchatka. They left flint tools, but no evidence of permanent Under Carleton Coon's dated interpretation of race, their features were considered to be "prototypical" of a Northern Mongoloid physical type. A recent study has shown genetic similarity to people of the region surrounding Lake
Studies of classical genetic polymorphisms generally place the Koreans in a tight cluster with the Mongols and Manchus to their west and north. However, recent advances in the study of polymorphisms in the human Y-chromosome have produced evidence to suggest that the Korean people have a very long history as a distinct, mostly endogamous ethnic group, as male Koreans display a high frequency of Y-chromosomes belonging to Haplogroup O2b1 that are more or less specific to Korean populations. At least several thousand years before present, a few of these proto-Korean Haplogroup O2b1 patrilines appear to have crossed from Korea into the Japanese Archipelago, where they now comprise a very significant fraction of the male lineages extant among the Japanese and Ryukyuan populations. These apparently proto-Korean descendants in Japan, however, seem to have experienced extensive genetic admixture with the long-established Jomon Period populations of the Japanese Archipelago, which has resulted in modern Japanese populations' displaying a somewhat different genetic profile from the current inhabitants of the Korean peninsula.

Jomon and Ainu people

The world's first known pottery was developed by the Jomon people in the Upper Paleolithic period, 14th millennium BCE. The name, "Jomon" (縄文 Jōmon), which means "cord-impressed pattern", comes from the characteristic markings found on the pottery. The Jomon people were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, though at least one middle to late Jomon site ca. 1200-1000 BCE had a primitive rice-growing agriculture (南溝手 Minami misote site). They relied primarily on fish for protein. It is believed that the Jomon had very likely migrated from North Asia or Central Asia and became the Ainu of today.

Research suggests that the Ainu retain a certain degree of uniqueness in their genetic make-up, while having some affinities with different regional populations in Japan as well as the Nivkhs of the Russian Far East.(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14997363 Tajima 2004) Based on more than a dozen genetic markers on a variety of chromosomes and from archaeological data showing habitation of the Japanese Archipelago dating back 30,000 years, it is argued that the Jomon actually came from Northeastern Asia and settled on the islands far earlier than some have proposed.

Yayoi people

Around 400-300 BCE, the Yayoi people began to live in the Japanese islands, intermingling with the Jomon. Some scholars say that the Yayoi migrated through Korean Peninsula to Northern Kyūshū. but others suggest that they came from southeastern Mainland China. The Yayoi are believed to have brought continental's advanced technology to Japan. Although the islands were abundant with resources for hunting and gathering, a far more productive rice-growing agriculture slowly spread and Japan began to make its steps towards a more advanced civilization. The Yayoi built large pit houses with the floor below ground level.

Controversy and Reference

The most accepted theory is that present-day Japanese are primarily descendants of both the Jomon people and the Yayoi people. There are various disputes about the origin of ancient Japanese people. Its topics are where Jomon and Yayoi people came from. Particularly, scholars dispute where Yayoi people came from. Some of them point out possibility related some Asians (East Asians, Southeast Asians, and etc). Some of non-Japanese academics argue that the Japanese are primarily descended from the Yayoi, who probably migrated from a continent, and subsequently either displaced or intermarried and absorbed the native population of Jomon. The question of whether there is any such thing as a Japanese 'race' certainly shows a divide between academics.

However, a clear answer does not exist.
(→ See reference
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news146.htm
http://www.pitt.edu/~annj/courses/notes/jomon_genes.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11810301&dopt=Abstract
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200508/03/200508032242451609900090409041.html
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news111.htm
http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-98/features/japaneseroots1455/
http://cwis.livjm.ac.uk/lng/teaching/japanese/japanroo.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/losttribes3.html
http://www.compulink.co.uk/~archaeology/world/stories/fareast/jomon/jomon.htm
pdfhttp://www.geocities.com/vetinarilord/korean.pdf
pdfhttp://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Japan.pdf)

Imperial Japan period

During the Japanese colonial period, the word "Japanese people" referred not only to ethnic Japanese, but also people from foreign areas who held Japanese nationality, such as Taiwanese and Koreans. There was a strong awareness of Imperial Japan being a multiethnic the proper term during those days for referring to ethnic Japanese was naichijin (内地人), literally "inland person".cite journal|volume=Volume 36|number=Number 3|date=September 2004|pages=pp. 355-382|doi=10.1080/1467271042000241586|title="Korean Japanese"|author=Eika

Some of the Nivkhs and the Ulta people who lived in Karafuto (south Sakhalin) were of Japanese nationality, and were forcibly repatriated as "Japanese people" to Hokkaidō by the Soviet Union after the end of World War However, of 150,000 Koreans on Karafuto, also Japanese nationals at the war's end, roughly 1/3 were refused repatriation by the Japanese government.cite news|last=Lankov|first=Andrei|publisher=The Korea Times|date=2006-01-05|accessdate=2006-11-26|title=Stateless in

Japanese living abroad

Missing information|the history of Japanese emigration to South America and the populations of Japanese descendants in areas once held by the Empire of

The number of Japanese citizens living abroad is over one million, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of By country, the highest number were living in the United States, followed by the People's Republic of China, Brazil, and the United

The term is used to refer to Japanese people who either emigrated from Japan or are descendants of a person who emigrated from Japan. The usage of this term usually excludes Japanese citizens who are living abroad. In the United States, these groups were historically differentiated by the terms issei (first generation nikkeijin), nisei (second generation nikkeijin), and sansei (third generation nikkeijin). According to the Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad, there are about 2.5 million nikkeijin living in their adopted countries. The largest of these foreign communities are in the Brazilian states of São Paulo and .

Japanese migration to the Americas started with migration to in the first year of the Meiji era in 1868. Approximately one million Japanese people have immigrated to the United States in the last 140 years. About 750,000 of these emigrated from Japan before World War II, and about 250,000 emigrated after the In recent years, however, the number of people who emigrate from Japan to the United States has been very

External links

*https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ja.html#People CIA The World Fact Book 2006
*http://www.jadesas.or.jp/ The Association of Nikkei & Japanese Abroad - International Language
*http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/ Discover Nikkei - What is Nikkei, Japanese migrants and their descendants
*http://www.clas.berkeley.edu:7001/Research/graduate/summer2005/tinker/Rivas/index.html Jun-Nissei Literature and Culture in Brazil - by Zelideth Maria Rivas, Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley
*http://www.mofa.go.jp/index.html The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan - English, Information of Japanese abroad
*http://www.nig.ac.jp/index-e.html Japan National Institute of Genetics
*http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/index.html The National Museum of Japanese History
*http://event.yomiuri.co.jp/2005/jomon_vs_yayoi/ Exhibit Jōmon versus Yayoi - Japanese Page
*http://www.habri.co.uk/ Japanese society and culture

Category:Ethnic groups in Japan
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Category:People involved with Shinto
Category:Cultures in the standard cross cultural sample

cs:Japonci
cy:Japaneaid
de:Japaner
ko:일본인
hr:Japanci
ka:იაპონელები
nl:Japanners
ja:日本人
pl:Japończycy
pt:Japoneses
ru:Японцы
sr:Јапанци
th:ชาวญี่ปุ่น
tr:japon
uk:Японці
zh:日本人