Peopling of Japan

▪ 1998

      Perhaps the most universal of heirlooms passed down from parent to child are stories of family—stories that address the questions, Who are we? Where did we come from? Like others, the peoples of Japan had been asking these questions for generations. Archaeological, linguistic, and other anthropological data all supported the idea that at least two major migrations brought human populations from the Asian continent to the Japanese archipelago: the Jomon people, who were principally hunters, fishers, and foragers, were thought to have entered Japan some 10,000-12,000 years ago via a land bridge, and the Yayoi people, who farmed rice, were thought to have traveled by boat to Japan starting about 2,300 years ago. At least three different hypotheses had been raised, however, to explain the relative contributions of each wave of immigrants to the modern Japanese. Recent genetic studies finally helped to resolve at least some of the uncertainty.

      Michael Hammer of the United States and Satoshi Horai of Japan, together with their colleagues, applied studies of genetic polymorphisms (variations in the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA molecule) in both the mitochondrial DNAs and Y chromosomal DNAs of a variety of East Asian populations and found differences in the relative frequencies of these polymorphisms that enabled clear distinctions to be made between the different groups. Polymorphisms in both mitochondrial and some Y chromosomal DNAs can be particularly useful for identifying and tracking human populations because both are passed from parent to child without recombination (a process by which the majority of genes in the nucleus of a cell may "mix and match," which thereby uncouples them from their neighbours). Mitochondrial DNA is passed only from mothers to their children, and Y chromosomal DNA is passed only from fathers to their sons. By comparing the relative frequencies of specific sets of polymorphisms, called haplotypes, in the peoples of Japan and other Asian nations, the researchers were able to distinguish populations exhibiting similar haplotypes from those exhibiting clearly different haplotypes.

      The results of Hammer and Horai's work indicated that the modern mainland Japanese resulted from genetic contributions of both the ancient Jomon people and the Yayoi immigrants. They thereby supported the "hybridization" model and refuted the "replacement" and "transformation" models. Indeed, about 65% of the gene pool of the mainland Japanese was now suspected of reflecting gene flow from the continent of Asia after the Yayoi migration. Only the Ainu inhabitants of the northern island of Hokkaido and the Ryukyuans living on the island of Okinawa appeared to represent the true modern descendants of the Jomon people. Furthermore, whereas the Yayoi were believed to have come from the Korean peninsula or from mainland China, the geographic origins of the Jomon remained unclear. The family history was not yet complete.

JUDITH L. FRIDOVICH-KEIL

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