The Yayoi people (弥生人, Yayoi jin) were an ancient ethnicity 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]
According to
Alexander Vovin, the Yayoi were present on the central and southern parts of the
Korean Peninsula 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 the Korean peninsula 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] Geneticists have called for a reinterpretation of the Yayoi people, which did not replace the hunter-gatherer populations of the Jōmon period, but emerged through admixture and hunter-gatherers adopting agriculture and material culture from Mainland Asia through transition.[22][23]Genetic testing on Neolithic to Bronze Age samples from the southern Korean peninsula revealed varying degrees of Jōmon ancestry, which ranges from around 10 to 95%. In contrast, modern Koreans have only little amounts of Jōmon ancestry or may lack it completely.[24][25] Based on studies on modern Japanese people, the Yayoi component makes up the majority ancestry of Japanese.[26][27] 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.[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.
^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.
ISSN2513-843X.
PMC10427481.
PMID37588377.
S2CID218926428. 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.
^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.