Yamato people

Etymology

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 倭, which translated to "dwarf", until the 8th century, when the Japanese found fault with it, replacing it with 和 "harmony, peace, balance". Retroactively, this character was adopted in Japan to refer to the country itself, often combined with the character 大, 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 (

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 倭. Carr surveys prevalent proposals for the etymology of Wa ranging from feasible (transcribing Japanese first-person pronouns waga 我が "my; our" and ware 我 "I; we; oneself") to shameful (writing Japanese Wa as 倭 implying "dwarf"), and summarizes interpretations for *ʼWâ "Japanese" into variations on two etymologies: "behaviorally 'submissive' or physically 'short. The first "submissive; obedient" explanation began with the (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi dictionary. It defines 倭 as shùnmào 順皃 "obedient/submissive/docile appearance", graphically explains the "person; human' radical with a shùnmàowěi 委 "bent" phonetic, and quotes the above Shi Jing poem. "Conceivably, when Chinese first met Japanese," Carr 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 Gestures of respect is noted in early historical references to Japan."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", and "they either squat or kneel, with both hands on the ground. This is the way they show respect."

Koji Nakayama interprets wēi 逶 "winding" as "very far away" and euphemistically translates Wō 倭 as "separated from the continent". The second etymology of wō 倭 meaning "dwarf (variety of an animal or plant species), midget, little people" has possible cognates in ǎi 矮 "low, short (of stature)", wō 踒 "strain; sprain; bent legs", and wò 臥 "lie down; crouch; sit (animals and birds)". Early Chinese dynastic histories refer to a Zhūrúguó 侏儒國 "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

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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."

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. Discrimination also occurred against non-Yamato races in Japan such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan peoples.{{cite web|url=https://apjjf.org/2020/20/Zohar.html|title= Introduction: Race and Empire in Meiji Japan|first=Ayelet|last=Zohar|publisher=The Asia-Pacific Journal|date=15 October 2020|access-date=12 November 2023}}

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. 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.

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. "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.

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.

Origin

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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. 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.

Overall, the most well-regarded theory is that present-day Japanese primarily descend from the Yayoi people and arguably, continental East Asian migrants from the Kofun period, and to a lesser extent, the pre-existing heterogenous Jōmon population in the Japanese archipelago.

Genetics

Main article: Genetic history of East Asians#Japanese people, Genetic and anthropometric studies on Japanese people

Overall, the Yamato Japanese are related to other modern East Asians with Koreans being their closest relatives. They are also related to Northern Han Chinese populations and act as the genetical intermediate between the continental clusters and the indigenous Ryukyuan clusters. In regards to Han Chinese subgroups, the Yamato Japanese are related to populations found in Inner Mongolia, Northeastern China (e.g. Liaoning, Shandong etc.) and Shaanxi. Among non-East Asians, the Yamato people show affinities with populations such as the Dingjie Sherpa people, Northeast Siberians and Oceanian populations.

Relations with the Ryukyuans

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.

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. Today, the inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands are mostly a mixture of Yamato and Ryukyuan.

References

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