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By Harry K. Honda
Published Aug. 21, 2009
A BUDDY OF MINE, Ed Moreno, and I have been pursuing Pre-Modern Japan Studies (PMJS) and Pre-Siberian Human Migrations to the Americas (PSHMA), obviously an academic quest into the movement of Asians following animals for food crossing the Bering Sea eons ago when it was a frozen mass to the continent now known as the Americas — a cool subject for midsummer August!
Ed “at last” found interest among scholars in Japan. Michael Hoffman in The Japan Times, July 12, traces some risings and settings among commentators of pre-historic and early history of Japan. Then he highlights Japan’s recorded history through St. Francis Xavier, Tokugawa, Commodore Perry and how the Hinomaru arose as a national flag, replacing the separate banners of the Shogun and daimyo.
Historian Grant Goodman in “Japan: the Dutch Experience” (1986) notes, “When the sun rises and sets in Japan … pointed to the remarkable coincidence of the Copernican system of the sun and the central role of Amaterasu Omikami in the Shinto tradition.”
Among the pathways by which people made their way to Japan, wanderers from northern Asia came through Kamchatka peninsula and Sakahlin; and the south from tropical Indies, Southeast Asia or along the China coast, the Philippines, Formosa and the Ryukyus. The Black Current (Kuro-shio) from the south also moved past the Philippines, the Ryukyus and Japan.
Migrations from the north would appear to be voluntary for a warmer clime. They would be the Caucasoid Ainu.
Ethnic studies scholars have determined the Japanese are Mongoloid, mainly people from Mongolia (central Asia) and China, who came through Korea and gradually spread throughout the islands and were seafarers who worshipped the Sun Goddess, according to Takeshi Matsumae in “The Cambridge History of Japan” (1988).
Legends exist that the Lost Tribe of Israel migrated to Japan and is a possible source of Japan’s Imperial Family, as mentioned in James Oda’s “The Jewish and Alien Heritage of Ancient Japan” (1997).
The eighth century “Kojiki” (“Record of Ancient Matters”) relates the mythical spirits Izanagi and Izanami, who created the islands of Japan, birth of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and down to a human descendant, the first emperor Jimmu Tenno.
What is now Shinto (The Way of the Gods) rests heavily on the “Kojiki” (712 A.D.) and “Nihon-ki” (720 A.D.), the collection of ancient chronicles. Ancient traditions and nature worship eventually merged with Buddhism and Confucianism, and since 1868 a religion of the state with several branches.
But historian W.G. Beasley (“The Japanese Experience,” 1999) notes the earliest evidence of human settlement in Japan dates from 30,000 years ago or more when there was a land bridge between Japan and the Asian continent.
Starting about 10,000 B.C., one group came and produced a rope-pattern pottery, or Jomon. They used tools, made weapons of stone, and lived by hunting, fishing and gathering shellfish. Millennia later, they added plants and rice to their diet.
Of the pre-Siberian migrations to the Americas, we limit focus on the northerners around the North Pole. The polar people, the Inuits, Komi, Sami and Yakuts are relatively numerous today (87,000). The Inuits of Canada have won some powers of home rule in the Arctic territory of Nunavut.
Autonomous since 1993, Greenland has just elected a new prime minister, promising to act as“equal partners” with Denmark.
A greater story is bound to unfold with climate change and the exploitation of natural resources on the agenda.
Harry K. Honda is the Pacific Citizen editor emeritus.
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