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Answerman - Who Are The Ainu People?

John Thacker wrote:

And even this is controversial in a sense, as lots of Japanese archeologists have attempted to demonstrate that the Yamato people (Japanese) were actually the ones descended from the Jomon people, in order to emphasize the Japanese/Yamato connection to the islands in antiquity, and minimize the idea that the Yamato people are descended from the Yayoi people only, who migrated from Asia (probably the Korean peninsula.)

Japanese archaeologists know the Yamato are descendants of the Yayoi people, who were ancient Koreans of the southern portion of the peninsula, and Chinese of the Yangtze River Delta. You're talking about some pseudoscience quacks, who notably got caught with their pants down in late 2000. Honestly, I don't see why when modern Koreans and Chinese are quite different anyway, following centuries of Mongol and Tatar conquest.

minimize the idea that the Yamato people are descended from the Yayoi people only

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It wasn't until 1997 that the law forcing the Ainu to assimilate was repealed, and not until 2008 that Japan officially recognized the Ainu people.

It's regrettable that this is a modern country we're talking about. Not the first time Japan have tried to keep on blindfolds about misdeeds in its history, and still very much try about certain events in the not so distant past...

In a culture where conformity and keeping the face is be all end all, well... in the end that will only make a clown of yourself.

And while the Ainu certainly didn't fare well, someone here mentioned the Mongols, who exacted a kind of industrial killing in the 13th Century world that is hard to describe as it is the manual killing by hand of millions.

They come up now & then in Japanese entertainment. Problem is that Japan often treats Hokkaido (particularly the period Golden Kamuy is set in) as their snowy equivalent of the American West & as such Ainu, if they're there at all, are often little more than Japanese pastiches of American caricatures of Native Americans (& like in Hollywood films, said Ainu are usually just mainland Japanese actors in makeup). Haven't seen Kamuy yet, but just from promo images & descriptions it's clearly carrying some of that baggage, whether or not it plans to do anything more meaningful with it.

He's also later referring to real genetic testing via Haplogroup, not speculation based (faked) archeological finds. It's almost impossible to positively determine anything from archeolgical finds anyways, especially regarding people, only negatively determine it (i.e. it couldn't have been from these people/period due to carbon dating of soil/organic material the artificat is found in)

The genetic data itself is concrete, it's the conclusions that are not. Neither is it clear cut that: proto Koreans -> Yayaoi -> Japanese. It is likely a mix of all of the above. There is non-genetic historical evidence for a non-pure (not pure both ways) lineage. There is known intermixing of Emishi--related to Ainu, descendants of Jomon--with ancient Japanese and recorded history Emishi tribes allied with Yamato and also taking Japanese names. It's likely why we see different Japanese populations or peoples have certain phenotypes (i.e. physically observable traits) and genotypes (biological/cellular traits) while others do not yet have no record of intermarriage with other ethnicity at least back to classically traceable times. It also explains certain borrowing of myths, clothing and some culture that was not part of the Sino-asiatic peoples.

It is the same science that allows us to determine very ancient ancestry such as certain populations having certain % of Neatherdal and certain % of Denisovan, etc. So while Japanese clearly did not purely descend from Jomon or native paleolithic tribes, it is also clear that Japanese are not purely proto-Korean descendants either. So this much of what he says is certainly true:

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minimize the idea that the Yamato people are descended from the Yayoi people only

The Ainu language isn't just unique--it's a language isolate, meaning it is the only surviving language of its family. If there are less than 15 speakers of this language, then that means most of its vocabulary has been lost, and it'll take a massive effort to understand this language further. (I'm pretty sure it has a written script, at least--I mean, ancient Egyptian was a lost language for thousands of years, but thanks to the existence of translatable hieroglyphs, people were able to read it and write it, then speak it.)

Yeah, I didn't realize that it was so recently that the Japanese government acknowledged the Ainu. I know about Japanese history classes trying to conceal the existence of comfort women during World War II, however. Japan does NOT have a rosy history. (Then again, what country does?)

Top Gun wrote:

The two-part episode of Samurai Champloo that centered around an Ainu man was really well done. If I remember correctly, the one insert song during it was by a native Ainu singer.

if I recall,he was never explicitly mentioned as Ainu,though,probably to avoid controversy...
Do Nakoruru from Samurai Shodown and Horo Horo from Shaman King count?

Ainu people are a race native to Hokkaido, Russia, and Northeast Honshu (the main island of Japan). There aren't many Ainu left these days -- officially 25,000 (with another few hundred in Russia), although the actual number may be much larger, as many Ainu have assimilated into Japanese society generations ago.

Lemonchest wrote:

They come up now & then in Japanese entertainment. Problem is that Japan often treats Hokkaido (particularly the period Golden Kamuy is set in) as their snowy equivalent of the American West & as such Ainu, if they're there at all, are often little more than Japanese pastiches of American caricatures of Native Americans (& like in Hollywood films, said Ainu are usually just mainland Japanese actors in makeup). Haven't seen Kamuy yet, but just from promo images & descriptions it's clearly carrying some of that baggage, whether or not it plans to do anything more meaningful with it.

I can't say what those pastiches are, I'm not much of a western watcher; but I have been reading the manga and there's a lot of information in it, even a reference list in the back of each book. It doesn't seem stereotyped to me.
It does remind me a bit of Dances with Wolves though, in that there's a similarity of a soldier finding solidarity with the 'natives' and being in conflict with the army.

It's not a question of whether comfort women existed, which most people will acknowledge, instead whether they were recruited and paid or coerced into sexual slavery. American army reports toward the end of World War II conclude the former (especially as we used them in the subsequent Korean War), which is the adopted official Japanese narrative. Korea claims the latter based on a few token "survivors," and calls the report biased. Yet, the Japanese government did apologize to South Korea in 1965 and set up a compensation system to the survivors, but the South Korean government never honored it and used the money on infrastructure instead. A few years ago, the Japanese apologized again and South Korea accepted, but the new left-wing government in power basically threw that out the window.

The Glendale statue shouldn't exist because it's not America's problem. I have a feeling an underlying factor exists where Korean expats are attacking the United States for finding absolutely no evidence of forced sexual slavery, and even used many of the same comfort women during the Korean War. The original statue, which helped open old wounds, faces Japan's Embassy in Seoul, illegally on a public sidewalk, and their local government ignores the law.

it wasn't until the Muromachi period (1336-1573) that they found themselves in a full-out war with Japan. They lost, their leader was killed, and many were placed under Japanese control.

"cease their ancestral practices"

Especially going back over three millennia, genetics basically tells us people came from f**ck all, and easily can be manipulated in studies, depending on who you pick for your samples. I'm more inclined to look at archaeology, culture, and history, which genetics could certainly support and vice versa. This article, albeit almost twenty years old, provides a good summary of what we're talking about with some interesting points, although the reference about Japanese as a language being Altaic clearly is unlikely.

The Ishvalan people from Fullmetal Alchemist were based by Hiromu Arakawa on the Ainu people. Being from Hokkaido, she probably had some familiarity with the Ainu.