This is what Wikipedia says about the Ainu....

Ainu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For "Ainu" in J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Arda, see Ainur.

The Ainu (a word meaning "human" in the Ainu language; Ezo, or Yezo, (蝦夷) in old Japanese; Utari now preferred by some members) are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaido, the northern part of Honshu in Northern Japan, the Kurile Islands, much of Sakhalin, and the southernmost third of the Kamchatka peninsula. There are over 150,000 Ainu today, however the exact figure is not known as many Ainu hide their origins or in many cases are not even aware of them, their parents having kept it from them so as to protect their children from racism.


Group of Ainu people, 1904 photograph.
Total Population

* 50,000 people with half or more Ainu ancestry
* 150,000 Japanese people with some Ainu ancestry
o (some estimates on the number of Japanese with some Ainu blood range as high as 1,000,000; the exact number is unknown)
* Pre-Japanese era: ~50,000, almost all pure Ainu

Significant Populations in:

* Japan
* Russian Federation

Language Ainu is the traditional language, but today somewhere between 1% and 5% of Ainu can speak it fluently, between 5% and 10% are passive speakers or partial speakers, and about 50% of Ainu have a very basic command of the language
Related ethnic groups No ethnic groups have been proven to be related to the Ainu, but they are usually grouped with the non-Tungusic peoples of Sakhalin, the Amur river valley, and the Kamchatka peninsula:

* Nivkhs
* Itelmens
* Chukchis
* Koryaks
* Aleuts (and sometimes Eskimos in general as well)




History

The origins of the Ainu are uncertain. Although their traditional homeland has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age, it is impossible to track the movements of the peoples of Northeastern Asia until well after the beginning of the historical period. At first, contact with the Japanese people was friendly and both were equals in a trade relationship. However, eventually the Japanese started to dominate the relationship, and soon established large settlements on the outskirts of Ainu territory. As the Japanese moved north and took control over their traditional lands, the Ainu often gave up without resistance, but there was occasional resistance as exemplified in wars in 1457, 1669, and 1789, all of which were lost by the Ainu. Japanese policies became increasingly aimed at reforming the Ainu in the Meiji period, outlawing their language and restricting them to farming on government-provided plots. Ainu were also used in near-slavery conditions in the Japanese fishing industry. Japan used to called the Ainu's home island "Ezo", but changed the name to "Hokkaido" during the Meiji Restoration.

The Ainu are now governed by Japanese laws and judged by Japanese tribunals, but in former times their affairs were administered by hereditary chiefs, three in each village, and for administrative purposes the country was divided into three districts, Saru, Usu and Ishikari, which were under the ultimate control of Saru, though the relations between their respective inhabitants were not close and intermarriages were avoided. The functions of judge were not entrusted to these chiefs; an indefinite number of a community's members sat in judgement upon its criminals. Capital punishment did not exist, nor was imprisonment resorted to, beating being considered a sufficient and final penalty, except in the case of murder, when the nose and ears of the culprit were cut off or the tendons of his feet severed. Intermarriages between Japanese and Ainu are not infrequent, and at Sambutsu especially, on the eastern coast, many children of such marriages may be seen.

Today, many Ainu don't like the term Ainu and prefer to identify themselves as Utari ("comrade" in the Ainu language). In official documents both names are used.
[edit]

Geography

For historical reasons (the Russo-Japanese war and World War II), nearly all Ainu live in Japan. There is, however, a small number of Ainu living on Sakhalin, most of them descendants of Sakhalin Ainu who were evicted and later returned. There is also an Ainu minority living at the southernmost area of the Kamchatka Peninsula and on the Kurile Islands. However, the only Ainu speakers remaining (besides perhaps a few partial speakers) live solely in Japan. There, they are concentrated primarily on the southern and eastern coasts of the island of Hokkaido.

Due to intermarriage with the Japanese and ongoing absorption into the predominant culture, few living Ainu settlements exist. Many "authentic Ainu villages" advertised in Hokkaido are simply tourist attractions.
[edit]

Culture

Traditional Ainu culture is quite different from Japanese culture. Never shaving after a certain age, the men have full beards and moustaches. Men and women alike cut their hair level with the shoulders at the sides of the head, but trim it semicircularly behind. The women tattoo their mouths, arms, clitorides, and sometimes their foreheads, starting at the onset of puberty. The soot deposited on a pot hung over a fire of birch bark is used for colour. Their traditional dress is a robe spun from the bark of the elm tree. It has long sleeves, reaches nearly to the feet, is folded round the body, and is tied with a girdle of the same material. Women also wear an undergarment of Japanese cloth. In winter the skins of animals are worn, with leggings of deerskin and boots made from the skin of dogs or salmon. Both sexes are fond of earrings, which are said to have been made of grapevine in former times, as also are bead necklaces called tamasay, which the women prize highly. Their cuisine consists of the flesh of the bear, the fox, the wolf, the badger, the ox or the horse, as well as fish, fowl, millet, vegetables, herbs, and roots. They never eat raw fish or flesh, but always either boil or roast it. Their habitations are reed-thatched huts, the largest 20 ft. square, without partitions and having a fireplace in the centre. There is no chimney, but only a hole at the angle of the roof; there is one window on the eastern side and there are two doors. The house of the village head is used as a public meeting place when one is needed. Instead of using furniture, they sit on the floor, which is covered with two layers of mats, one of rush, the other of flag; and for beds they spread planks, hanging mats around them on poles, and employing skins for coverlets. The men use chopsticks and moustache-lifters when eating; the women have wooden spoons.
[edit]

Religion

The Ainu believe in animism, or that everything in nature has a "kamui" (spirit or god) on the inside. There is a hierarchy of the kamui. The most important is grandmother hearth (fire), then kamui of the mountain (animals), then kamui of the sea (sea animals), lastly everything else. They have no priests by profession. The village chief performs whatever religious ceremonies are necessary; ceremonies are confined to making libations of wine, uttering prayers, and offering willow sticks with wooden shavings attached to them. These sticks are called Inau (singular) and nusa (plural). They are placed on an altar used to sacrifice the heads of killed animals. The Ainu people give thanks to the gods before eating and pray to the deity of fire ("Huchi") in time of sickness. They believe their spirits are immortal, and that their spirits will be rewarded hereafter by ascending to kamui mosir (Land of the Gods) or punished in hell.

Some Ainus in the north are members of the Russian Orthodox Church.
[edit]

Institutions

There are many different organizations of Ainu trying to further their cause in many different ways. There is an umbrella group of which most Hokkaido Ainu and some other Ainu are members, called the Hokkaido Utari Association, originally controlled by the government with the intention of speeding Ainu assimilation and integration into the Japanese nation-state but which now operates independent of the government and is run exclusively by Ainu.

I read a bit about the Ainu and have access to an Ainu-English-Japanese dictionary at a near by library.

Despite claims of being caucasian or even a lost tribe of Israel, the Ainu are NOT white. Maybe they look more caucasian in comparison to other Asian races, but that is about it

It is believed that the Ainu and their ancestors, the Jomon were from South East Asia, possibly Micronesian. They settled in the Ryukyu islands (Okinawa), the main Japanese island, and the northern areas, Hokkaido, Sakhalin and Kuriles.

Sometime in history there was an invasion either through Korean peninsula, or from the Amur, across to Sakhalin then down to the main Japanese islands. The identity of this invaders is not clear, but most likely either a Tungus race or Korean (or both) and then mixed with most of those early settlers.

There was some DNA testing done and it seemed that those inhabitting Honshu had the least percentage of jomon blood, while the Okinawans had a greater number and the Ainu having the most.

If you ever see an Okinawan (plenty in Hawaii), they look significantly different than the Japanese. the Okinawans tend to have a squarer jaw line, stockier build, shorter height, and alot of body hair. Many have tan complexions with some passing as Filipinos (some not all). the Ainu is also known to be short, stocky and especially hairy. Chinese sources often mention their body hair.

The area they traditionally inhabit can be shown here, this is the maximum estimate.




some pure blooded Ainu, old picture.



Maybe 25-50 years ago you can find some Pure blooded Ainu, but most now are mixed Japanese are mostly Japanese, as you can see from these pictures





There used to be Ainu on Sakhalin, Kuriles and even on the Russian Asian mainland, but they were all kicked out during WWII. There are some mixtures remaining, I'm sure you can find an Ainu-Nanai or Ainu-Nivkh in Russia because I knew one who was Ainu-Nanai.

Population of Ainu is all guestimates, this is because in Japan, many Ainu claim Japanese descent as Ainu are still look down upon, infact only couple years ago they finally recognize the Ainu as a national minority! it is still hard for the Ainu to advance up the social and professional ladder in Japan. It is believed there is anywhere between 20-80,000 Ainu in Japan.

---
As for History

Historically the Hokkaido Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu and Kurile Ainu tend to fight with each other, usually in low scale combat (they had a small population).

On Sakhalin Island there was three races, the Ainu in the south, the Oroks/Uilta in the central areas.. (they were reindeer breeders who descended from the Jurchen and are distantly related to the Manchu), and the Nivkh in the north (known to wear fish skin and an Asian race not related to any other race). They would often trade and war between each other.

During the Yuan Dynasty, the Nivkhs and Ainu fought a long 40 year war according to Russian sources.. with the Mongols finally winning, but eventually withdrawing shortly after.

Ainu's appearance reminds me of Eskimos.

I've heard of them described as short and dark skinned, I've heard of them as tall and light skinned. A white-supremacy site even claimed them to be white, and founders of the Samurai class

Thanks for the info Karakhan!

I've read of that theory too, and although it comes from a racist site, it shouldn't necessarily be discounted (although the Caucasian claims are very dubious to say the least).
In the 8th and early 9th Century, the government in Heiankyo (Kyoto) were forcing the northern boundary of their authority northwards, against the Emishi (predominantly Jomon-descended people, the ancestors of the modern Ainu). By the 810s, the campaigns had effectively ended, with most of the Emishi either defeated or integrated. Many of these tribes then served on the frontier as military servants of the provincial governors (the people of central Japan looked down upon the provinces) in the North and made the military path their route to a livelihood under the yoke of the southern invader.
It is noticeable that the leading samurai of the 12th-16th Centuries nearly always emerged from the East and North (the Hojo, Minamoto, Date, Matsudaira (later Tokugawa), Oda, Uesugi, Takeda, &c), while the samurai of the Sengokujidai were clearly more endowed with facial hair than the rest of the population. It's just a theory, but without any white-supremacist BS attached.

True, Japanese can grow some powerful beards (Toshiro Mifune, what a mane).
It'd be something interesting to look into, why they come from these regions where the Ainu were. Perhaps it'd have to do with more conflict in the region in the first place. As far as I know, the original mainland colonists into Japan were already pretty aggressive and warlike.

Initially, there was conflict throughout the Japanese archipelago. Whether you follow the mythological tales presented in the Kojiki or Nihonshoki / Nihongi, or the theories regarding arrivals from the Asian mainland (who probably introduced the Yayoi-culture which displaced the Jomon-culture), from Kyushu the leading Uji (clans) moved northward to the region of Asuka (south of present-day Nara), but they (ie, Wi, later Wa) were then (according the the Wajinden compiled by visitors from the Jin Dynasty in the 3rd Century) just one leading clan amongst many.

big news. The Diet finally recognized the Ainu as being native to Hokkaido!

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&c...thuCCLshx_7FGTw

20,000 is the low estimate, 1 million is the high estimate. I personally suspect it may be about 100,000.
There's lots of people from Hokkaido that I've met that have more "Jomon" features, but they quickly try to deny they are Ainu.
One of my classmates from Hokkaido told me that in school, there was one Ainu girl that everyone made fun of because she was Ainu
and looked slightly different.

Like Okinawans, looks of Ainu can range. some look no different from Japanese, others look kinda mixed Japanese and white or Japanese and Polynesian.

The Ainu samurai theory was proposed by one American anthropologist named C. Loring Brace. He based this conclusion off measurements done on skulls found at a Kamakura battlefield, and extrapolated these to explain what he considers to be the "atypical" features of Japanese nobility.

I really don't see the samurai as having much more Ainu ancestry than the rest of the Japanese population. While it is conceivable that the Ainu would have been recruited as mercenaries from time to time, one must consider that the samurai were the Ainu's bane, the Ainu were held by the Japanese to be inferior barbarians, and the title of Shogun itself was derived from a longer title meaning "General who subdues barbarians". It would be like the vanguard of the American continental army being predominantly composed of Cherokee.

As for the European Ainu theory, that is an idea with which even Brace does not agree. The Ainu cluster genetically with other East Asians, and exhibit dental sundadonty, placing them close to native Oceania as well. The idea that the Ainu are a lost white race exists only in the minds of white supremacists. From this, of course, ridiculous extensions have been made, including claims that the Ainu were "Celtic".

thats the problem with people un used to relatively obscure ethnicities. They might have a certain feature that looks "non asian" and they easily get classified as something else.. like Ainus with Caucasoids. I've seen quite a few who've mistakingly classified Okinawans too simply because some Okinawans have dark skin and bigger eyes.

I believe some study show that the Ainu are related to the asiatic peoples of Siberia. Similar to the Inuit/Eskimo.

Pics of modern day Ainu youth



This group in particular is interesting. While many may be ashamed of their Ainu ancestry (similar to Burakumin minority), this group is very vocal about their Ainu ancestry. Many of them can easily pass as Okinawan imho

They have cool clothing. I like those characteristic robe patterns of theirs.

Ainus look exactly like Japanese people in general. I wish people would quit trying to exoticize them.

Only a few of them look a bit too "Korean" or "Nivkh" to be considered average Japanese, like the girl on the left (wearing the yellow shirt) in this photo:


And a few of them look like they might be mixed with Russians or something. Overall, though, they look just "plain Japanese."

Anymore old photos?

Ok. There are just as many people with small eyes in Japan and there are just as many people with big eyes in Korea yet small-eyes people in Japan look "Korean or Nivkh" and big-eye people in Korea look "Japanese"? Am I the only one who thinks this is ***** up?

No, there are not just as many people with small eyes in Japan as there are in Korea (unless you are talking about absolute numbers, because the total population of Japanese is almost twice as much as the total population of Koreans), and there should be plenty of scientifically collected anthropological evidence for this. And not only the eyes, but the facial outline and nose on the girl wearing the yellow shirt are typical of Nivkhs (I think I have also seen some Inuits who resemble her), and very rare among Japanese. These facial features (eyes, nose, lips, etc.) are all very common among Koreans, too, although Koreans usually have a different shape to the facial outline; Koreans tend to have broader, shorter faces.

speaking of which, assuming they are all sisters.. the girl in yellow looks similar to the one on the right.. but the younger one in blue doesn't seem to resemble her older sisters very much.

No, I was not talking about absolute numbers. Do you have like a statistics? Because about 80% of Japanese has the same gene as Koreans and the other 20% are different but still similar like Mongolians which would mean the factors that makes the difference is the climates and foods. The climate should not be that different since it is not like Japan is located thousands of miles away from Korea and I have never heard of any scientist claiming eating less meat makes your eyes bigger. Also, there are about 8 types in Korean face. How does anything can be common when there are 8 types?

Well, genetically speaking, Human & Chimps conservatively would have more than 95% idential DNA (even though few studies have also claimed that we share more than 98.5% of our genes with the chimps) therefore your assertion of 80% genetic sharing among the Japanese & Koreans would be vastly underestimated ...

Yes, the Koreans & Japanese may be closer in genetic term still as I've asserted before ... the Jews & the Palestines are much closer ... still they wouldn't claim one another as "brothers & sisters" though as we know of!

Actually, it is close to 100%, different depending on the individual due to gene mutations over time. I meant about 80% of people more or less. The Jews and the Palestines do not really think of each other as brothers and sisters. Personally, I support the Jews.

Ahem ... they're ' Japanese ' period.

Yamato miltary conquest of Tōhoku Region obsorbed Emishi into the general population,it's false to say they were wiped-out entirely.Various indigenous peoples of Japan have always been part of Japanese race.

Japanese and Koreans are more related to each other linguistically and genetically than they are any other groups around them.

Still this is not saying much.

Both populations have lived where they are for a very long time with limit admixture, it is safe to say that Koreans are more admixed than Japanese, but only because the Japanese lived on islands and appear to have started from smaller populations that branched out from Southern Kyushu and Honshu. Yes Proto-Ainu and Proto-Ryukuans were absorbed into the Japanese family, but for the most part, the Japanese are some of the most homogeneous people in Asia...still there is clear evidence of early admixture with Chinese (less so) and Koreans (much more so) around Kyoto in the early period of Japanese recorded history.

This is very complicated.

It is best to say that Koreans and Japanese share significant ancestry and have had gene flow back and forth, but not enough to significantly shift the populations in the last 1500 years.

I think Japanese and Koreans should get over their nationalism and admit they are cousins...and like all families people fight.

Kind of like people in the Netherlands or Swedes arguing how totally different they are from Germans. LOL

2,000 years ago they were all the same people who spoke mutually comprehensible dialects of the same German language. There is very limited genetic distance between the populations and that is mainly with the Germans due to their proximity to Slavs and Hungarians...other than that most of it is just due to "genetic drift"...

Or it is like the English saying they are not related to the Dutch or the Dutch are oh so different from them. LOL Angles, Saxons, Frisians, etc lived in present day Netherlands, Northern Germany, and Denmark. 1,500 years did not radically change genes but for inter-mixture of the English with the French and Celts.

Some times I think nationalism (especially in Korea) has made people lose their mind in the way they try to pick at little insignificant things to show absolute relation or absolute difference, in an attempt to show superiority...its really silly.

As far as Ainu, there are hardly any "pure ones left" many have intermarried with people North of them or the Japanese...or been completely absorbed. It is thought the pro-Ainu or Emishi were related to the Jomon, but the skulls do not match exactly, it is thought because the Jomon of the North were pushed there by the ethnic-proto-Japanese from mainland Asia and mixed with the Nivk (sp), some what change them. Nivk (sp) do not look like the pictures of pure Ainu I have seen.

Pure Ainu looked like this:







To me they look like de-pigmented Australian Aborigines with more body hair, basically Austroloids who continued to evolve in North East Asia.



What this means is that Ainu share common genetic affinity with people in the Sakhalin islands to the North (like Nivkhi) but also D Y-Haplogroup seems to be an Ainu marker and since it is found in about 35% of Japanese (the highest of East Asians outside of Tibetans, which have a slightly different D marker, which would suggest a very ancient relationship) Ainu were a unique population, many who of where absorbed into the main Japanese family.

The D Haplogroup can also be found in Korea but at a very very low % (I believe less than 2%) and in Mainland Chinese it exist but it is very low...it can be found among some Chinese minority groups in Sichuan though.

I would imagine in the next 200 years the Ainu will be completely absorbed on a genetic level and there will only be Japanese who are 1/8 or less Ainu saying they are Ainu. LOL Similar to blond hair and blue eyed or nearly West African looking blacks saying they are Native American in America today. I always think that is funny.

A couple of years ago my wife and I had genetic Haplogroup test and convinced (my reluctant father-in-law to do it since there are no boys in the family). He is Y Haplogroup D and my wife is MtDNA M8.

Both are thought to be Ainu markers. Then again about over 30% of Japanese men have this Haplogroup, so that is not surprising. This man is from Central Honshu and does not know of any Ainu ancestors and thought the test was incorrect. :-) M* is found Japan, in moderate amounts (forgot how much) but almost absent in Han Chinese and very rare in Koreans. So this is why it is thought to be Ainu. Strangely it can be found in South East Asia as well in low frequencies. It is thought to be over 60K years old, so from some of the first people to come to East and Southeast Asia.

I guess it is not shocking, historically the genetic variation of women in a region is much higher than male. Most of history shows related groups of war-like males invading other groups and killing off the local males and taking the local women as wives and also bringing some of their women in as well (look at Latin America or Central Asia)...

The Japanese and Korean are nothing like the different Germanic people. All evidence points to the fact that early Japanese spoke a different language than the Koreans and that they were not mutually comprehensible. The claim that early Japanese mixed with early Koreans more than with the Han Chinese is also quite baseless.

I have to agree with the last poster. There's simply not enough conclusive evidence to link Japanese to Korean, and these two to the Altaic family since we're at it.
There's quite a bit of similarities in grammar and even some vocabulary, but the question remains whether they are genetically inherent or something they borrowed from each other which is possible do to proximity (the same can be said for the altaic family too). Dutch, German, English, etc may no longer be comprehensible, but there's very strong indicators of a common language, and are very very closely related.

My own personal opinion is that there probably is a relation, however any split would've happened very very long ago, beyond the split among Indo-European languages. Its often hypothesized that many European languages split around 2000 years ago. Its also hypothesized that Ryukyuan and Japanese split around the same time (and these two still show strong similarities to each other despite mutual incomprehensibility), thus any split between Japanese family and Korean.. would have occurred even further. However this is all theoretical talk and we should judge things based on existing evidence and the facts are, there's not enough evidence, just possibilities.

Torai-jins ( 渡来人 ) contributed 10%-15% to modern Japanese gene pool,they were the Chinese & Korean connections to Japanese population.

秦氏 ( Hata clan ),西文氏,東漢氏, 西漢氏 were assimilated immigrant-heritage of ( 帰化民 ) Chinese-origin became members of Japanese aristocracy ( 豪族 ).

Notable surnames of 秦氏 ( Hata ) descendants,羽田 - 畑 - 端 - 波田 - 川勝 etc.

I am someone more incline to believe Wa-jins ( 倭人: Japanese ) were a mixture of Mongolic & Tungusic ( indigenous tribes of NE Asia ) tribes arrived in Japonic islands earlier.

* CHF Chinese readers,click on below link for interesting read on

例如在比較中國與三韓移民身分地位時，指出獲得“朝臣”高姓的五支氏族全部出自朝鮮移民，而中國移民只能獲得較低的“宿祢”姓.繼而從擔任四位以上公卿要職的十名移民中，朝鮮移民有七人，而中國移民僅佔三人的情況，得出“日本仿效唐 朝制度文化，但並沒有因此特殊優待中國移民”的結論（ p.89 ），令人信服.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=z...2US233%26sa%3DG

Your are correct sir ....

Nashime ( 難升米 ） and Toshi Nori （ 都市牛利 ） were 2 envoys dispatched to Chinese imperial court in Daifang Commandery ( 帶方郡 ) by shaman Queen Himiko ( 卑弥呼 ) of Yamatai Kingdom.No entry in any Chinese history chronicles indicated they spoke a language identical to native populations of Korea peninsula.

As you all can read both ' Nashimi ' & ' Toshi ' have pronunciation close to modern Japanese tongue.

Records of Three Kingdoms 三国志 ( dated 189AD-280AD ) documented similiar spoken tongues of Puyo,Koguryo, Eastern Ye & Okcho.Also,these tribal kingdoms shared same ethnic root branched out from Yemaek ( 穢貊 ).

Daifang Commandery located in southwestern Korea peninsula ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daifang_Commandery

No, we are not! Up to recent years, this kind of claim has never surfaced and only it has surfaced nowadays because of political reasons to justify Japan and get rid of anti-Japan feelings. Basically, their logic is "you wouldn't stay mad at your brother or sister right?" I am not denying there hadn't been any connections at all between Koreas and Japan but it is wrong to claim such a thing. Also, some people claim the linguistic relationship because Japanese have some loanwords from Paekje which some people mistake as Kokuryeo but 99% of Korean vocabularies today are loanwords from Han Chinese but Han Chinese language, at least today's Han Chinese language, is not even Altaic. Koreans and Japanese also have loanwords from America but Altaic languages and English have no relationship at all. Also, it is wrong to say British people are related to Italians because English has its root in Latin. NE Asians are all related and Japanese and Koreans are not specifically related especially in comparison with others. It all came from politics and nothing more than politics.



You just listed all the ancient Korean kingdoms. By the way, in the older days, there was no "Korean peninsula", the term or the concept, as Koreas included more than the peninsula. Also, you forgot to include Paekje. It is not entirely correct to list Okjeo and Kokuryeo together because it was Okjeo that evolved into Kokuryeo. The only differences between Puyeo and Okjeo were the Ondol and the ceremony for the heaven. The customaries were the same but they performed the ceremony at the different time of the year. Kokuryeo followed the Okjeo customary while Paekje had closer bond to Puyeo. This is why Paekje changed its name to Puyeo after the original Puryeo was annexed by Kokuryeo. Paekje literally means "The White", and white was the color that was worshiped by Puryeo. When you talk about ancient Korean language, you always have to remember that Kokuryeo and Paekje spoke different language from Shilla. Many historians, especially from Kyungsang province, argue with this especially because Shilla people were originally from Manchuria as well but there were more than one race in Manchuria at the time. Many references just differentiate between Ko-Paek Koreans and Malgals but there might have been something else which might answer the earlier post Shilla might be a Turkic kingdom.

Incorrect ...

* According to archaeologist Oka Masao,the Japanese people came from 5 population groups.

(1) north-eastern Asiatic Tungusic
(2) Austro-Asiatic
(3) Altaic group
(4) south-eastern Asiatic group of Austronesian origin
(5) ethnic group of Melanesian origin

Professor Masao Oka on " Race,Ethnicity,Migration of Japan "

http://books.google.com/books?id=_ffOut-Ay...IXXqo&hl=en

However, the similarities between Japanese and Korean are confined to general grammatical features and about 15 percent of their basic vocabularies, rather than the detailed shared features of grammar and vocabulary that link, say, French to Spanish; they are more different from each other than Russian is from English.

Who in Asia is more related to the Japanese than Koreans?

Please show some genetic evidence from a study.

As far as Korean and Japanese language similarities...

When people compare languages they don't just look at vocab, the more important thing is grammar, that changes the least, vocab is relatively easy to change overtime, sentence structure is not.

As far as language, there is some argument about if Japanese is related to any of their neighbors, and some argument if Japanese is related to the Koguryo language, which is quite divergent from Modern Korean. The argument is that Japanese is closer to Koguryo than modern Korean, because after Koguryo was broken up their language did not become standard Korean, but Silla did and they were likely not mutually intelligible.


http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/20...o-japanese.html




Look at this comparison:

http://www.msu.edu/~jk13/Abs.Beckwith.pdf


If you have some other proof, please present it.

Well they are closer than English and Russian in grammar, I studied Russian before Mandarin...trust me, Spanish is closer to English than Russian is by far. Russian is on the other side of the IndoEuropean language divide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European...entum_languages


In many ways Russian is far closer to Persian than to English...but for some mutual German loan words. Korean and Japanese sentence structure is much more similar.

Early as in what?

We don't have records of what Yayoi Japanese sound like, even 2,000 years ago.

That's like me saying...well Romanian and French are incomprehensible 500 years ago.


The claim that Early Japanese mixed with Koreans more than Han means what?

Mixed with in what way? Biologically? Culturally? biologically, Japanese are more related to Koreans than Han Chinese...by far, they group very close.






http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal...486445/abstract






http://www.pnas.org/content/95/20/11763.full

This shows that Northern Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans do group with Japanese...but the article above shows that between Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese...Japanese and Koreans are much more related.

It also shows that genetically Koreans and Japanese were closely related to other Altaic Speaking groups and if you read further in the article, quite distant from Southern Chinese, Taiwanese Aborigines, etc.



On this site, a book by the foremost population genetic researcher, Dr. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza he states that:

He says that although Koreans are quite distant from Ryukuans and Ainu they are very similar to Japanese on the main Islands. You can find that at the bottom of the first column.

Pg 231 (above the page I just mentioned) it shows quite clearly...are more related to the majority of Japanese, than Northern Chinese or anyone else in the region. The people in Southern Honshu around Kinki and people in Kyushu (he says in the text, Southern Kyushu) are outliers for some reason but the majority of Japanese in Hokkaido and Honshu are very close to Koreans.

Even some people in Bhutan seem to be more closely related to the Japanese than Northern Chinese, which I find quite interesting, but I'm not sure the population size measured, that seems odd. If you look at the chart at the top of pg. 231, you can see that Southern Chinese are very divergent (once again) from Japanese and Korean.




this is on the female side only though.

http://genome.cshlp.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/10a/1832



http://www.springerlink.com/content/n71jacqer4f19jlf/
What evidence do you have to refute this?


So let me repeat, Japanese and more closely related to Koreans linguistically and genetically than any other people presently alive in East Asia. I see nothing that refutes that.

I don't think I need to post more studies, it is kind of obvious where this is going.

I don't really want to derail this thread by going off into Korean and Japanese relationships so please comment more here.

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=27770

Ainu certainly look different from East Asians. I don't think they were the original Jomon people either, but rather influenced by Nivkhs.

Well the Jomon skulls are different from the average Ainu skulls, but Ainu seem to be an intermediate group between Jomon and Yamato Japanese...wish we knew more about the Emishi...if the Emishi were pre-Ainu or just a semi-related group...

Anyway...there is significant admixture between Nivkh and Ainu but it does not appear they are or were the same group...it seems though that the people most closely related to Ainu outside of Japan are the Nivkh...but that is quite distant...the closest people to the Ainu are Yamato Japanese.

Let me clarify one misconception.

Ainu are the remaining non-Yamatoized ' indigenous ' people of Japonic islands.There were countless thousands of Jomon-jin ( pre-Yayoi ) have already assimilated into the general Japanese ( Yamato ethnicity ) population.

right, the Ainu and Nivkh have some significant differences and most similarities are due to the eventual contact between them. The Okhotsk people, based on whats known about them, appear to be intermediates between the Ainu and the Nivkh.

Emishi is believed to be descended from the Jomon, but different from the Ainu.. however some were assimilated to the Ainu.

and some references (since lately people have been straying away from such things and relying on eyeball observations.

Source:
Origins and genetic features of the Okhotsk people,
revealed by ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis
Takehiro Sato Æ Tetsuya Amano Æ Hiroko Ono Æ
Hajime Ishida Æ Haruto Kodera Æ Hirofumi Matsumura Æ
Minoru Yoneda Æ Ryuichi Masuda
Received: 27 March 2007 / Accepted: 11 May 2007 / Published online: 14 June 2007
The Japan Society of Human Genetics and Springer 2007

"The
phylogenetic relationships inferred from mtDNA sequences
showed that the Okhotsk people were more closely
related to the Nivkhi and Ulchi people among populations
of northeastern Asia. In addition, the Okhotsk people had a
relatively closer genetic affinity with the Ainu people of
Hokkaido, and were likely intermediates of gene flow from
the northeastern Asian people to the Ainu people. These
findings support the hypothesis that the Okhotsk culture
joined the Satsumon culture (direct descendants of the
Jomon people) resulting in the Ainu culture, as suggested
by previous archaeological and anthropological studies."

"Frequencies of 16 mtDNA haplotypes identified
from the Okhotsk people in modern Asian populations
The 16 mtDNA haplotypes identified from 37 Okhotsk
people were compared with haplotypes of 1,019 individuals
from 16 modern Asian populations. About six haplotypes
(types 2, 5, 6, 10, 15, 16) were specific to the Okhotsk
people and not found in any of the compared Asian populations
(Table 1). No nucleotide substitutions common to
all six specific haplotypes were found.
The other ten haplotypes (types 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12,
13, 14) were shared by the people of other Asian populations
at various frequencies (Table 2). Haplotypes from the
Okhotsk people were especially shared by Nivkhi (43%),
Ulchi (38%), Koryak (40%) and Negiadal (39%) with
higher frequencies. Interestingly, 16% of the Ainu people
shared 5 haplotypes (types 1, 3, 4, 7 and 12) with the
Okhotsk people (Table 2); this value is relatively higher
compared with other populations with the exception of
northeastern Asian populations (Fig. 2)."

"To investigate the phylogenetic relationships between the
Okhotsk people and modern Asian populations, the NJ
relationships among the 17 Asian populations were constructed
(Fig. 3). In this phylogenetic tree, the Okhotsk
people were clustered with the Nivkhi, Ulchi, Negidal,
Koryak, and Even. Among them, the Nivkhi and Ulchi
were much closer to the Okhotsk people, and clustered with
more than 70% bootstrap values. The close relatedness
among the three populations was in congruence with the
high degree of sharing of mtDNA haplotypes. On the other
hand, the Ainu people were phylogenetically distant from
the Okhotsk people (Fig. 3). However, the dA distance
(0.068%, Table 3) between the Okhotsk people and the
Ainu was smaller than those between the Okhotsk and
other populations except the Nivkhi and Ulchi. Moreover,
multidimensional scaling analysis (two-dimensional display,
Fig. 4) of the genetic relationships among the 17
Asian populations based on dA distances showed that the
Nivkhi, Ulchi, Negidal and Ainu were much closer to the
Okhotsk people than the other Asian populations. These
findings demonstrate that the Okhotsk people are closely
related to modern populations distributed around the
Sakhalin and downstream of the Amur River as well as to
the Ainu people of Hokkaido."

some links worth reading
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ase/112/2/161/_pdf
http://www.springerlink.com/content/1623061n3013666w/

Thank you. We are in agreement.

from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin

"The Chinese in the Ming dynasty knew the island as Kuyi (Chinese: 苦兀; pinyin: Kǔwù), and later as Kuye (Chinese: 庫頁; pinyin: Kùyè). "

Its Japanese name, Karafuto (樺太) comes from Ainu Kamuy-Kara-Puto-Ya-Mosir (Kara Puto), which means "God of mouth of water land".

______________________________________________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands

"The name Kuril originates from the autonym of the aboriginal Ainu, the islands' original inhabitants: "kur", meaning man. It may also be related to names for other islands that have traditionally been inhabited by the Ainu people, such as Kuyi or Kuye for Sakhalin and Kai for Hokkaidō."

______________________________________________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido#Nami...f_Hokkaid.C5.8D

"When establishing the Development Commission (開拓使), the Meiji Government decided to change the name of Ezochi. Matsuura Takeshirō submitted six ideas, including names such as Kaihokudo (海北道) and Hokkaidō (北加伊道) to the government. The government eventually decided to use the name Hokkaidō, but decided to write it as 北海道, as a compromise between 海北道 and because of the similarity with names such as Tōkaidō (東海道). According to Matsuura, the name was thought up because the Ainu called the region Kai. Historically, many peoples who had interactions with the ancestors of the Ainu called them and their islands Kuyi, Kuye, Qoy, or some similar name, which may have some connection to the early modern form Kai. The Kai element also strongly resembles the Sino-Japanese reading of the characters 蝦夷 (Sino-Japanese /ka.i/, Japanese kun /emisi/), which have been used for over a thousand years in China and Japan as the standard orthographic form to be used when referring to Ainu and related peoples; it is possible that Matsuura's Kai was actually an alteration, influenced by the Sino-Japanese reading of 蝦夷 Ka-i, of the Nivkh exonym for the Ainu, namely Qoy."

________________________________________________

Ainu Language map:

http://starling.rinet.ru/maps/maps12.php?lan=en

I've read about the Ainu and there are very few pure Ainu left, if any. Ainu and Nivkh relation isn't really supported by their anthropological aspects.

I think because that they are people from isolated region which never really have been exposed to other people.
Normally they don't fall under Asian looking people because of their unique look.

Ainu have almost no representation in Japan until very recently too, and their population is hardly shown any impact on average Japanese people.

Just in case in case anyone's interested, sacred-texts.com has some translations of Aino folktales and what appears to be an epic poem of some sort.

Well,the ainu assimilation situation is fairly recent

Other languages in the japonic family other than ryukyuan and mainland japanese got extinct is because of the policy that favored the direct ancestor of the japanese language(the language that turned *p>h except before /u/),the ancestor of modern japanese and identical to some dialects of modern japanese,the yotsugana ones(except for dissapearance of certain phonemes),this was already documented by diego collado that some dialects in japan retain the f like sound(other than before /u/) i think those described dialects might be separate languages,the dialects in kyushu have similarities with ryukyuan languages is because the language that was once spoken in those areas were closely related to ryukyan languages and so they left a substratum.