Yayoi people

The Yayoi people (弥生人, Yayoi jin) were an ancient people 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]

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]
• immigrants from Jiangnan near the Yangtze River Delta in ancient China^[12]
• multiple origins from various regions of Asia, including Southeast Asia^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

According to Alexander Vovin, the Yayoi were present on the central and southern parts of Korea 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 Korea 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]

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]

Based on studies on modern Japanese people, the Yayoi component makes up the majority ancestry of Japanese.^[22][23] 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.^[24] Other geneticists support this reinterpretation.^[25][26]

Wang and Wang argued in 2022 that Yayoi peoples in Japan had 60% Jōmon ancestry, with the rest being ancient Northeast Asian, which proved the coexistence between Jōmon and Yayoi. But this Jōmon ancestry was diluted to 13%-15% in Kofun peoples and modern Japanese due to subsequent introductions of north Han Chinese-related ancestries.^[27]

According to many scholars, early Yayoi immigrants resembled Neolithic Chinese. They had wholly large and flat features, large facial height, round orbits and large teeth.^[28]

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.

• Japanese people
• Yayoi culture