Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands

In its examination of the process of ethnogenesis - the formation of ethnic groups - in the Japanese islands, this book offers an approach to ethnicity that differs fundamentally from that found in most Japanese scholarship and popular discourse.;Following an extensive discussion of previous theories on the formation of Japanese language, race and culture and the nationalistic ideologies that have affected research in these topics, the author presents a model of a core Japanese population based on the dual origin hypothesis favoured by physical anthropologists. According to this model, the Jomon population, which was present in Japan by a least the end of the Pleistocene, was followed by agriculturalists from the Korean peninsula during the Yayoi period (c.400 BC-300 AD). The author analyzes further evidence of migrations and agricultural colonization in a summary of cranial, dental and genetic studies and in an examination of the linguistic and archaeological records.