Language similarities
edward moreno
Dear All: As part of my research on the Japanese presence in Latin America prior to Columbus’ arrival, I came across an item
in the ( 1978), Enciclopedia de Mexico (sic) mentioning that Mexican Anthropologist, Dr. Jorge Olvera, while doing research among the Mixe-Zoque Indians of Southern Mexico, had found three hundred terms (vocablos) that very closely resemble Japanese terms. Apparently, some of their social customs, too, resemble, more than lightly those of ancient Japan. Zoque tribes, now constantly dwindling, are spread over a large area of Southern Mexico, which includes parts of Veracruz, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Chiapas. Both Oaxaca’s and Chiapas’ coastlines front the Pacific Ocean. I’ve been trying to locate Dr. Olvera’s paper in which details his findings.(QUITE A CHORE!)
Other anthropologists (Emilio Estrada, Betty Meggers) seem to have found in the Valdivia Culture of Western Ecuador, similarities between pottery and ceramics produced by the Valdivia and those by the Japanese during the Jomon period (about 300BC). Ecuador’s coastline is also on the Pacific Ocean side. In both cases the assumption is that Japanese mariners (traders?) may have reached the Latin American coasts, way earlier than the Europeans, with some remaining there to integrate with the natives.
Does anyone have any more information on either of these issues?
I’ll be enormously grateful for it.
Ed Moreno
Joseph Elacqua
Though it doesn't relate to coincidences between Japan and Mexico, you
might want to check out Ann Kumar's recent book, "Globalizing the
Prehistory of Japan: Languages, Genes, and Civilization" which
explores similarities between Japanese and Javanese cultures. Though
at first glance the theory sounded a bit hokey, the more I read, the
more I was intrigued by the possibilities she presents (esp. the
linguistic ones).
If you put any stock in her work, you might also want to try checking
any Mexican-Japanese cognates you find against P.J. Zoetmulder's "Old
Javanese-English Dictionary" (which thankfully notes whether or not
its entries are derived from Sanskrit), just in case you find anything
really interesting.
-- Joseph P. Elacqua
Greve Gabi
lost continent and the groups fleeing from there, making their way to
Japan.
umi no sachihiko, the lost hook and the "shark (wani)" , they were
comparing legends.
Even now in Japan in some areas WANI is shark meat.
A similar legend about a young man from the sea who lost the hook of
his elder (father/brother) and lived with a princess who later turned
into a crocodile (wani) and about 8 islands created by the gods is
found in the island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands.
There might be a common origin of some mongoloid tribes that moved
from a lost paradise called Sundaland (near the Malay peninsula) to
the south and north ... and met at some time again in Japan.
Malaita (Auki)
Sundaland
スンダランド (Sundaland) とは、現在タイの中央を流れるチャオプラヤー川が氷河期に形成した広大な沖積平野である。
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89
http://www.kahaku.go.jp/special/past/japanese/ipix/3/3-02.html
Gabi from Japan
>
> Ed,
>
> Though it doesn't relate to coincidences between Japan and Mexico, you
> might want to check out Ann Kumar's recent book, "Globalizing the
> Prehistory of Japan: Languages, Genes, and Civilization" which
> explores similarities between Japanese and Javanese cultures. Though
> at first glance the theory sounded a bit hokey, the more I read, the
> more I was intrigued by the possibilities she presents (esp. the
> linguistic ones).
>
> If you put any stock in her work, you might also want to try checking
> any Mexican-Japanese cognates you find against P.J. Zoetmulder's "Old
> Javanese-English Dictionary" (which thankfully notes whether or not
> its entries are derived from Sanskrit), just in case you find anything
> really interesting.
>
> -- Joseph P. Elacqua
>
>> Dear All: As part of my research on the Japanese presence in Latin America
James M. Unger
Allow me to mention my recent book The Role of Contact in the Origins of the Japanese and Korean Languages (University of Hawai’i Press, 2008). As I explain there, it is doubtful that Japanese is a continuous development of a language spoken by inhabitants of the Japanese islands during the Final Jōmon period. Much more likely, proto-Japanese was associated with the migrations that brought the initial elements of Yayoi culture from the Korean peninsula to Northern Kyūshū.
J. Marshall Unger
Marc Adler
I’ve been trying to locate Dr. Olvera’s paper in which details his findings.(QUITE A CHORE!)
Michael Wachutka
Antoni, Klaus: "Zur Herkunft der Valdivia-Keramik in Ekuador (Jômon-Valdivia)". In: _Baessler-Archiv_, N.F., Bd XXV, 1972, pp. 401-420.
(available online at: www.uni-tuebingen.de/kultur-japans/Texte/Antoni_1977.pdf)
Best regards,
Michael Wachutka
From: EMORE...@roadrunner.com
Dear All: As part of my research on the Japanese presence in Latin America prior to Columbus’ arrival, [... snip ...]
Other anthropologists (Emilio Estrada, Betty Meggers) seem to have found in the Valdivia Culture of Western Ecuador, similarities between pottery and ceramics produced by the Valdivia and those by the Japanese during the Jomon period (about 300BC). Ecuador’s coastline is also on the Pacific Ocean side. In both cases the assumption is that Japanese mariners (traders?) may have reached the Latin American coasts, way earlier than the Europeans, with some remaining there to integrate with the natives.
Does anyone have any more information on either of these issues?
I’ll be enormously grateful for it.
Ed Moreno
Alexander Vovin
I am not an archeologist, so I have no opinion on ceramics, or on
other pans and pots (:-), but please allow me to say few words on the
linguistics side. I have not seen the book that Marc Adler kindly
informed the list about, but I will be extremely sceptical about any
possibility of genetic relationship or even contact between speakers
of Mixe-Zoque and Japonic. Japonic language family was compared with
almost everything on the globe: Sumerian, Basque, Mande, Lepcha,
Uralic, Indo-European, Dravidian (and more specifically with just
Tamil), Austronesian, Tibeto-Burman, Austronesian, "Altaic" (itself
not a valid language family), Papuan (there is no "Papuan" language
family -- at the very best we have several tentative filas there),
Korean, and the list goes on. I was guilty myself to defend "Altaic"
up to about 8-10 years ago, but I think nowadays that the only one
hypothesis that merits any kind of scholarly discussion is that of the
Koreo-Japonic relationship. But even here the opinions are sharply
divided: Jim Unger in his book that he has mentioned is inclined to
see the relationship as genetic; I, on the other hand, believe that it
is a contact one with layers upon layers of loanwords, predominantly
from Korean to Central Japanese only (details are in my forthcoming
book KOREO-JAPONICA, also from UH Press). We, nevertheless, agree on
one important issue -- Japonic entered the islands via Korean
peninsula, and the advent of Japonic speakers to Japan should be
associated with Yayoi period. This is not to say that there is no
disagreement -- some scholars still believe that Japonic languages
were indigenous to the islands, but they clearly constitute today a
very thin minority, so Yayoi-Japonic connection could be called a
teisetsu. As far as Jomon is concerned, I think that we have several
pieces of oblique evidence pointing to the fact that Jomon people were
the speakers of some form of (proto-)Ainu, albeit we have no direct
evidence -- no Jomon texts are extant (:-).
If you have an access to any Mixe-Zoque comparisons with Japonic, I
would be happy to look at them. I think 10 will be enough. The reason
is that similarities really do not count, one can find plenty of
similarities between Old Japanese and English:
woman -- womi1na
we -- wa 'I, we'
well -- wi
I [ai] -- a
etc.
Or we can try modern Mandarin Chinese:
gloss Mand. OJ
I wo3 wa
thou ni3 na
matter shi4 si (Ryukyuan)
mouth kou3 kuti
wh- na3 nani 'what'
etc.
Once I am back to Hawaii, I can add Eskimo or any other language on
the globe with 'similarities' of the same kind.
The major requirement for establishing any kind of relationship is the
existence of regular/recurrent phonetic correspondences between
comparanda that should be undertaken on the basis of basic vocabulary
or primary morphology. Let us now look at some examples from OJ/CJ and
Shuri dialect from Okinawa:
OJ/CJ Shuri
ko2re kuri
kuri kui
to2ri tui
ko2to2 kutu
are (CJ) ari
This kind of evidence is unassailable, because all the correspondences
are recurrent. Not so in the cases of OJ/English ot OJ/Mandarin above.
Let me emphacize again that I will be very surprized if
Mixe-Zoque/Japonic evidence produces the results comparable to OJ and
Shuri. But never say no -- let us look at the beef.
One last remark not connected to linguistics. If Mixe-Zoque and
Japonic had a common ancestor before the ancestors of American Indians
went from Asia to American continent, this will exceed the theshold of
modern comparative linguistics. Even if there were such a
relationship, it would be irretrivably lost. If, on the other hand,
there was a connection in the last 5,000 years or so, I wonder how it
could be possibly achieved. North Pacific with the exception of
Hawaiian and Aleutian island chains. It is so much unlike South
Pacific where one could (and did) island hopping. I briefly checked
the currents maps in North Pacific -- they are clearly prohibitive for
travelling from East Asia to America. Not so in the reverse direction,
but even in this direction I would tend to think that Magellan's
caravellas were the first to cross this huge expanse of water. You
really need big ships to do it. Given the record of Japanese "navy"
before the late 19th c. (just based on descriptions of naval
travel/battles in the Man'yooshuu, Tosa Nikki, Heike monogatari, and
Korean evidence from Imjin war), the Japanese boats would hardly be
fit for any trans-Pacific travel. Or so it seems to me.
Best wishes,
Sasha
============
Alexander Vovin
Interim Chair and Professor (2008-2009)
Department of the Japanese Language and Literature
University of Bochum, Germany
Professor of East Asian Languages (on leave 2008-2009)
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA
========================
iustitiam magni facite, infirmos protegite
James Guthrie
Having said that, I want to respond to Sasha's comment on how plausible it is that the Japanese could have sailed from Japan to South America. Let me start by saying that I'm not arguing that the inhabitants of Japan sailed to South America, just commenting on whether it might have been possible. We need to bear in mind that ca. 2000 BCE, the inhabitants of Japan (particularly the Tohoku region) were regularly sailing into the ocean to harpoon large sea mammals including whales. This required considerable seamanship to not only hunt down the whales, but to bring the carcasses back to the islands. It also required boats big enough to carry out this task. Additionally, going over some current charts myself, there are two possible currents that could carry boats to North or Middle America, one of which (the North Pacific Drift) seems quite plausible if you assume a starting point of the Tohoku region. So I think it is entirely plausible that Japanese sailors could have made that trip assuming they rode the right currents, but I don't think it is very likely that if they did it it would have been with any sort of regularity, and certainly not enough to affect another culture to the point we could see a discernable Japanese influence.
Just my 2 cents.
James Guthrie
> Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:39:45 +0200
> Subject: [PMJS] Re: Language similarities
> From: sasha...@gmail.com
> To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Alexander Vovin
Thanks a lot for your message -- besides the information on the North Pacific Drift, I learnt quite an interesting thing -- that inhabitants of Toohoku around 2000 BCE were sea mammal hunters. This does not fit with Japanese (and in any case speakers of Proto-Japonic were not in this region at this time), but what is even more interesting that it does not fit with Ainu either, since Ainu are not sea mammal hunters par excellence. The only primary sea mammal hunter culture in the region that I am aware of is that of Nivx (Gilyak). Some Tungusic tribes in Priamur region also have it, but it is quite clearly of Nivx provenance. I never thought of Nivx being ever located that much south, but your information certainly gives a stimulus to look into those Toohoku and Hokkaidoo placenames that are clearly not Ainu.
Let me also comment briefly on two of your points below by citation method.
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 5:49 AM, James Guthrie<rcg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> that I find a discernable linguistic connection between Japanese and a
> pre-modern South American Indian language unlikely, simply because of the
> differences between what we call Japanese today and what we would have
> called proto-Japanese 2000 years ago.
It really does not matter whether languages are closely or distantly related as long as we can show the system of regular correspondences. Cognate words may be really dissimilar looking today. One of my favorite examples is that of German was and Russian chto both meaning 'what'. Nothing can be more dissimilar, but in fact they are cognates, descending from Proto-Indoeuropean *k´we.
>
This required considerable
> seamanship to not only hunt down the whales, but to bring the carcasses back
> to the islands. It also required boats big enough to carry out this task.
Out of the three sea mammal hunting cultures I know something about -- Nivx, Eskimo, and Aleut -- none uses really big boats to do the job. There are local differences, but none of the boats used would be suitable for trans-Pacific travel. These are not caravellas or gallions -- in many cases just kayaks.
All the best,
Sasha
Michael Pye
I'm not at all an expert on these matters, but following the
correspondence, I have two questions in my mind:
a) Is there not more to linguistic comparisons than similarity and
dissimilarity of vocabulary, in particular, morphosyntax? I'm
wondering what the relative value of these aspects are in assessing
language relationships. Of course, there can be mere coincidences in
either respect.
b) Quite apart from the possibility that a few stray Japanese whalers
got to the Americas a mere 4000 years ago, the relevant
anthropological question (a popular one I know) is where did all the
other rather varied native Americans come from? Didn't some (but
perhaps not all, because there are many mysteries) probably come
across the Bering Straits, so....?
Best wishes,
Michael Pye
Michael Pye
Professor of the Study of Religions
University of Marburg, Germany (retired)
Visiting Professor, Otani University, Kyoto, Japan
Zitat von James Guthrie <rcg...@hotmail.com>:
> NEW mobile Hotmail. Optimized for YOUR phone. Click here.
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Ross Bender
Ross Bender
Ross Bender
http://rossbender.org
Alexander Vovin
I will be most happy to answer both, although my answer on b) is that of a generalist rather than a specialist. Please see below.
Dear list,
I'm not at all an expert on these matters, but following the
correspondence, I have two questions in my mind:
a) Is there not more to linguistic comparisons than similarity and
dissimilarity of vocabulary, in particular, morphosyntax? I'm
wondering what the relative value of these aspects are in assessing
language relationships. Of course, there can be mere coincidences in
either respect.
The most unassailable evidence for genetic relationship is in common paradigmatic morphology. The stress is really on paradigmatic: isolated morphological markers can be really borrowed, but paradigms are not. Indo-European was established exactly on this principle. The problem with application of the paradigmatic morphology is that there are languages with no or only very rudimentary morphology. In this case we have to look for evidence in lexicon, which is much less stable and wide open for borrowing. The problem with Japanese is that most of its morphology is secondary: it is quite apparent in Old Japanese, but becomes much more obscured in Classical. Syntax is practically useless for establishing genetic relationships. To give an example, 75% of the world's languages have the same word order as Japanese: SOV.
b) Quite apart from the possibility that a few stray Japanese whalers
got to the Americas a mere 4000 years ago, the relevant
anthropological question (a popular one I know) is where did all the
other rather varied native Americans come from? Didn't some (but
perhaps not all, because there are many mysteries) probably come
across the Bering Straits, so....?
I trust it is commonly believed that most of them (except the ancestors of Eskimo and Aleuts -- they are also from Asia, but much more recent migration -- you still have Easkimo languages in Asia) got over to Americas around 30,000 years ago during the Ice Age, but not accross the Bering Straits, but accross the Beringia -- a single land mass that was connecting Asia to Alaska like a bridge. Aleutian islands are the modern remainder of Beringia. There are no detectable connections between American Indian Languages and any language family of Asia, but, of course, various fantastic hypotheses do exist.
All the best,
Sasha
William Wetherall
This thread is getting very interesting. Having recently recovered from some arduous tans-Pacific flights (not from authorities), I am inclined to make a few contributions -- not to the linguistic debate (I fall somewhere between Alexander and James) -- but to questions of migration and peopling.
http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/yosha/yr/nationalism/Turk_2005_wake_of_jomon.html
This is a fairly recent review I did, reflecting quite a bit of reading I had been doing on early migrations to what is today the Americas, of Jon Turk's "In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific". Turk, the protagonist of a sort of Kon-Tiki adventure along the North Pacific rim, argues precisely that a kayak could have made the journey from a northeast coast of Asia to a northwest coast of the Americas.
http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/yosha/yr/nationalism/Japanese_roots.html
This is an older review of a variety of material in Japan, from journalistic to academic, involving more specifically the peopling of what is today Japan. My conclusion was that the first arrivals could well have walked -- over several generations -- all the way from Sunda. This article is more playful in that it ends with a poem that connects the dots between the motives of the earliest and the latest migrants.
http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/yosha/yr/nationalism/Rouse_1986_migrations_in_prehistory.html
This is a much older (and more obviously academically dated) review of Rouse's "Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movement from Cultural Remains" -- with some references to issues that were then current among Japanese pre-historians.
Please ignore the present state of confusion of some of the content of my websites, all of which are undergoing heavy reconstruction.
Bill Wetherall
Alexander Vovin
Let me just strart with a casual remark: nothing is impossible under the moon, and given that these kayaks carried enough of water and provisions, and in addition did not enjoy meeting stormy weather with waves over 21 feet, they could theoretically make it from Japan to North America. But then we are faced with the following two problems: a) there must be thousands of them, if not tens of thousands to make any significant impact on any North American tribal area where they would presumably landed. Compare the Norman invasion of England: it changed profoundly the nature of the English language, but even with these numbers Normans failed to make The English language a Romance one: it is pretty much Germanic up to this date, although the Norman influence is pretty much detectable. b) please correct me if I am wrong, but I am unaware of any Japanese proper using kayaks or any comparable vessels. Ditto for Ainu. So it could be only a pre-Ainu population.
Coming now to Japanese origins, alas, it is a very complex question. It probably cannot be solved without a meticuluos interdisciplinary approach. Several attempts have been made up to this day in interdisciplinary direction, but I am afraid I cannot fully subscribe to any one of them, at least as a linguist. To put it simply, no comparison so far produced the results comparable to those between Japanese and Ryukyuan that I tried to demonstrate the other day. I firmly believe now that any attempt to compare Japanese with Korean or 'Altaic' will lead us to a very wrong direction. Most likely, the major component of the Japanese complex is from the South (Given the fact that the Japanese culture is so rice-centered), but I see no proven connections with any language family in South China or South-East Asia.
Japanese, of course, could walked from Sunda or whatever, but they could not possibly arrive to the islands before 700 BCE. At this time, the glaciers have receded, and they would need rafts or at least primitive boats to cross over from Korea to Japan.
Finally, I trust that Egami Namio has never claimed that horseriders were the first Japanese to knock on the islands' door. Rather, he insisted that they were the guys responsible for the foundation of the Japanese state. This might make sense for linguistics, or at least for the linguistic scenario that I am currently adhere to.
All the best,
Sasha
Robert Khan
William Wetherall
Thanks for the many remarks. I would say I'm about 90 percent with you.
I am not a supporter of the kayak theory, at least not literally. A few people, in various kinds of vessels, may at times have accidentally drifted here or there. But I see no evidence of anything that would be called migration to, much less settlement in, the Americas. There are numerous skeletal remains and archaeological sites in the Americas that will remain paleoforensic and paleocultural mysteries. Ditto for Japan. The Japanese islands are a truly huge stretch of real estate, and any demographic or linguistic geography, especially for earlier times but even for the present, would have to take into account manifold elements at every level -- political, economic, cultural, linguistic, biological.
I was introduced to Altaic theory by a skeptic who was a specialist in North American languages. He did not buy Miller, and he also panned most of what Ono Susumu was peddling. He was attracted to the idea of complexity, possibly even hybridism, despite its somewhat outlaw status in his field. Certainly, as you say, most languages remain fairly true to their linguistic roots while undergoing all manner of change. And a multidisciplinary approach is essential to resolving issues about the origin -- or, I would argue, the origins -- of "Japanese". But linguistic theories essentially require linguistic arguments, and there is not a lot to work with -- though the body of credible data appears to be slowly increasing.
I would never, of course, argue that "Japanese" walked from Sunda or wherever. In fact, I have usually argued that Japanese never came to Japan. All kinds of people came to what is now called Japan, by various routes and means, over a period of tens of thousands of years -- probably not hundreds of thousands, but you never know. But not Japanese.
Japanese never came -- never walked, oared, sailed, or drifted -- to Japan. Japanese invented themselves in the territory they came to call Japan -- and did so fairly recently -- within historical times. From that point forward, the mainstream language of Japan can be called Japanese. In speaking of the "roots" of Japan, or of its population or language or whatever, we back track and stumble through a tangle of incomplete mostly prehistorical evidence, physical anthropological and archaeological, aided by some very hi-tech science. All received and synthesized evidence suggests the complexity of migration and mixture of people -- within and around what over the centuries became Japan -- that we would expect to find in such a large and convoluted territory. I think of early "Japan" like I think of early "California" with its enormous demographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity.
I am certainly not in disagreement about the predominance of southern origins. Such origins make more sense linguistically, and comport with reasonable conjectures about earlier migrations of people and diffusions of technologies -- without denying the obvious impact of later migrations and diffusions from the west (north Asia).
As you say, Egami did not imagine that "horseriders" were the first "Japanese" or whatever. He was merely attempting to explain what appeared to be an influential migration into the islands from the continent. Nor did he claim that the horses were ridden across the straits led by a Korean Moses. But people did ply the crossings in various kinds of boats -- loaded with beasts, dogs, mice, roaches, and diseases, and all manner of political, religious, economic, and even linguistic burdens -- both ways, though predominately eastward.
What we need are video tapes showing who came where and when, and who they encountered upon their arrival, and during their travels and travails -- with audio tracks recording what they said to each other, in what languages, and with what consequences to these language. Five millennia of such material -- predating the Nara years, and spanning the whole stretch of the present archipelago -- would be nice, no? Perhaps no, because that would take all the romance and excitement out of prehistorical linguistics.
Cheers,
Bill Wetherall
Alexander Vovin さんは書きました:
> Dear Bill and all,
>
> Let me just strart with a casual remark: nothing is impossible under the
> moon, and given that these kayaks carried enough of water and provisions,
> and in addition did not enjoy meeting stormy weather with waves over 21
> feet, they could *theoretically *make it from Japan to North America. But
Alexander Vovin
Many thanks for your highly interesting reply. And, yes, I think we agree on most issues. Although I am surrounded by suitcases that need to be packed at the moment, I could not resist the temptation to reply to several points below. But this probably is going to be the last message before I settle back in Hawaii at the beginning of August. Please see below.
Dear Alexander:
Thanks for the many remarks. I would say I'm about 90 percent with you.
I am not a supporter of the kayak theory, at least not literally. A few people, in various kinds of vessels, may at times have accidentally drifted here or there. But I see no evidence of anything that would be called migration to, much less settlement in, the Americas. There are numerous skeletal remains and archaeological sites in the Americas that will remain paleoforensic and paleocultural mysteries. Ditto for Japan. The Japanese islands are a truly huge stretch of real estate, and any demographic or linguistic geography, especially for earlier times but even for the present, would have to take into account manifold elements at every level -- political, economic, cultural, linguistic, biological.
Agreed 100%.
I was introduced to Altaic theory by a skeptic who was a specialist in North American languages. He did not buy Miller, and he also panned most of what Ono Susumu was peddling. He was attracted to the idea of complexity, possibly even hybridism, despite its somewhat outlaw status in his field.
Let me dive into 'Altaic' a little bit deeper. Like Uralo-Altaic that was disproven more than a century ago, but still survives in some encyclopedias and pseudo-scholarly literature up to this day, 'Altaic' itself, whether micro-'altaic' (Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic) or macro-'Altaic' (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic) is not a valid language family: it is a Sprachbund. The first decade of this century saw two very thick monographs trying to prove it again, but both were greeted with a number of devastating reviews and review articles. Inter alia, even R.A. Miller wrote a mildly negative review for the first one and devastating for the second. Since this salutation was conducted on the pages of journals that most Japanologists never read: Central Asiatic Journal, Ural-Altaische Jahrbuch, Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, etc., I will be happy to send my own contributions and whatever else I have in electronic form to interested parties, but please advise me about the size of attachement your e-mail can accept unless you are using gmail.
The pro-Altaic position seems to survive only in Moscow and Leiden these days, so the whole theory seems to be on its way out, although we should expect it to linger around like Uralo-Altaic for another century (Unless my message is to be misread, I haste to add that Uralic itself is very valid language family).
And a note: in his last years Ono Susumu was rather peddling his Japanese-Tamil hypothesis than 'Altaic'.
Certainly, as you say, most languages remain fairly true to their linguistic roots while undergoing all manner of change. And a multidisciplinary approach is essential to resolving issues about the origin -- or, I would argue, the origins -- of "Japanese". But linguistic theories essentially require linguistic arguments, and there is not a lot to work with -- though the body of credible data appears to be slowly increasing.
Actually let me humbly disagree with you on the last point. Regarding Japonic (=Japanese+Ryukyuan) there are tons of material to work with: the family is more diverse than Germanic. And we are extremely lucky to have written records in two different branches of Japanese -- Western and Eastern to eighth century CE, with fragmentary evidence for Western going back to at least sixth century. And oldest Ryukyuan written texts go back to sixteenth century. Only few marginal problems remain in the reconstruction of the Japonic proto-language, but they remain even in Indo-European that folks worked on for 200+ years. The significant problem that does remain is that of the external comparison: Japonic just does not "fit" with any of other known language families on the planet except with some fragmentary evidence that we have from some extinct languages on the Korean peninsula: the pseudo-Koguryo language, the Mimana language, and the pre-Korean language of Silla. We should not forget, however -- I believe I said it before, that Qin Shi Huangdi armies wiped out from the map most of the linguistic variety in China. So we might be locked in a vicious circle, but may be a century or so later, some unknown texts will emerge from excavations.
I would never, of course, argue that "Japanese" walked from Sunda or wherever. In fact, I have usually argued that Japanese never came to Japan. All kinds of people came to what is now called Japan, by various routes and means, over a period of tens of thousands of years -- probably not hundreds of thousands, but you never know. But not Japanese.
Japanese never came -- never walked, oared, sailed, or drifted -- to Japan. Japanese invented themselves in the territory they came to call Japan -- and did so fairly recently -- within historical times.
Again here I basically agree with you, and I would add that our current perception of "Japanese" is basically due to nationalist ideas developed in 18-20 centuries. Ditto for many other nation-states around the world. Sometimes it led to the creation of artificial states like Germany, which manifests itself that, e.g. in the Rhein area people seem to dislike Prussians more than French or Belgians. Much less so in Japan, although I have met many Okinawans who did not like to be called "nihonjin".
I am also not sure that a kind of national/tribal conscience was not in place prior to eighth century. It was clearly there in Heian: opening pages of the Hamamatsu chuunagon monogatari give you a clear dichotomy of "ware-ware nihonjin" and "they Chinese" when the main protagonist of the story arrives to China. I would say that the same is true for Nara -- wars with tsuchikumo desribed in the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki clearly indicate the dichotome "we the Japanese -- they the earth spiders". Given the fact that both the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki were compiled on the basis of Asuka period texts that are no longer extant, I would dare to suggest that the sense of 'I belong to the Japanese tribe' could go back to Asuka or even father. The same concept can be find between the lines in the Man'yooshuu. Of course, we do not have to call it necessarily 'Japanese' or 'Yamato', or 'Akitsushima' or Yashima' or whatever.
From that point forward, the mainstream language of Japan can be called Japanese.
Well, the language they spoke existed long before they would invent themselves whether in historic or prehistoric times. It might be different on many levels, but essentially it would be the same. Let me just give one example. The modern word for flower is hana, segmentally the same in both Kantoo and Kansai, but having different accent patterns. In Ryukyus we have variation: hana / fana / pana. In Old Japanese it was pana, so we can safely conclude that when ancestors of Japonic landed on the islands it was probably *pana. However, as I suggested a couple of times, if we get rid of pitch accent in Japonic (which does not fall from the sky like manna, but should come from the loss of certain segmental characteristics), the pre-Japonic form could only be *bana. And this form we cannot possibly geographically localize: it could be used before the pack arrived to the islands, or it could be a form that all of them used when already in the islands.
In speaking of the "roots" of Japan, or of its population or language or whatever, we back track and stumble through a tangle of incomplete mostly prehistorical evidence, physical anthropological and archaeological, aided by some very hi-tech science. All received and synthesized evidence suggests the complexity of migration and mixture of people -- within and around what over the centuries became Japan -- that we would expect to find in such a large and convoluted territory. I think of early "Japan" like I think of early "California" with its enormous demographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity.
Potentially, I would be in favor of the same point that is dictated by my Inner Asian Studies experience. But as a linguist, I do not see so far a single shred of evidence for anything besides Ainu and Japanese. I discovered last year what I believe to be a solid evidence of Ainu-Japanese bilingualism in Kantoo and also in Kyuushuu in eighth century. And I now think that this bilingualism was still in Toohoku in early Heian. But I fail to see the textual evidence of other languages so far. I thought initially that the enigmatic Fuzoku kayoo 27 (or 29?) would be in some variety of Austronesian, but there are difficulties, and my Austronesian colleagues are very sceptical. This still does not exclude the possibility that we can find someting in placenames, but this is extremely slippery territory.
Therefore, I think that there are differences between early Japan and early California. California is connected to a land mass, Japan is not (at least not in post-glacier period). Whoever comes next with a superior economy and superior weapons pushes the previous populations either North or South or subdues them. The only other option for the previous guys would be to jump into Pacific. California also has much more diverse climatic zones as compared to Japan: invading agriculturalists will not be interested in deserts.
I am certainly not in disagreement about the predominance of southern origins. Such origins make more sense linguistically,
Please see above -- they are *likely*, but evidence is still lacking.
and comport with reasonable conjectures about earlier migrations of people and diffusions of technologies -- without denying the obvious impact of later migrations and diffusions from the west (north Asia).
I do not think that anyone would deny this. Japanese certainly underwent 'Koreanization' at some stage, and it will be unbelievably stupid at our present stage of knowledge to deny the cultural influence from the Korean peninsula.
As you say, Egami did not imagine that "horseriders" were the first "Japanese" or whatever. He was merely attempting to explain what appeared to be an influential migration into the islands from the continent. Nor did he claim that the horses were ridden across the straits led by a Korean Moses. But people did ply the crossings in various kinds of boats -- loaded with beasts, dogs, mice, roaches, and diseases, and all manner of political, religious, economic, and even linguistic burdens -- both ways, though predominately eastward.
What we need are video tapes showing who came where and when, and who they encountered upon their arrival, and during their travels and travails -- with audio tracks recording what they said to each other, in what languages, and with what consequences to these language. Five millennia of such material -- predating the Nara years, and spanning the whole stretch of the present archipelago -- would be nice, no? Perhaps no, because that would take all the romance and excitement out of prehistorical linguistics.
It certainly would be nice (:-)
Cheers,
Sasha
William Wetherall
I hope you are resettled by now. I want to thank you for your detailed comments. I have made a few additional remarks to clarify my own views, and to mine the veins of gold in some of your observations. I've inserted my comments under yours, so kindly scroll down.
Warning: "Few" is a bit of an understatement. Some of my remarks are pretty long.
Bill
Alexander Vovin さんは書きました:
> Dear Bill and all,
>
Thanks for all this. Yes, even R.A. Miller was not as dogmatic as some of his critics have held. You are certainly right about the limitations of what American "Japanologists" have read -- and that would include yours truly in his day. Linguistics was not (in the late 60s, early 70s) a fashionable specialization within the field of "Japanese studies" as it developed in postwar America. Language-bound students like myself were barely aware that there was a world outside "US-Japan" relations. Most of the academic energy went into issues about "national character" or "intellectual history" with a focus on understanding why Japan had become the Japan it was then. It was not that Berkeley (where I was perhaps trained more than educated) lacked competent linguists. A few flirted with, but none dedicated themselves to, linguistics. The linguistic frontiers have expanded globally, and thanks to scholars like yourself, "Japanese" and "Ainu" and what not are getting more compa
rative attention.
I was, in fact, referring to Ono's Tamil hypothesis. He had not yet published it when I was in school. But he and others were busily pursuing non-Altaic origins, and the popular press was crawling with books speculating where Nihonjin or Nihon minzoku came from.
>> Certainly, as you say, most languages remain fairly true to their
>> linguistic roots while undergoing all manner of change. And a
>> multidisciplinary approach is essential to resolving issues about the origin
>> -- or, I would argue, the origins -- of "Japanese". But linguistic theories
>> essentially require linguistic arguments, and there is not a lot to work
>> with -- though the body of credible data appears to be slowly increasing.
>
>
> Actually let me humbly disagree with you on the last point. Regarding
> Japonic (=Japanese+Ryukyuan) there are tons of material to work with: the
> family is more diverse than Germanic. And we are extremely lucky to have
> written records in two different branches of Japanese -- Western and Eastern
> to eighth century CE, with fragmentary evidence for Western going back to at
> least sixth century. And oldest Ryukyuan written texts go back to sixteenth
> century. Only few marginal problems remain in the reconstruction of the
> Japonic proto-language, but they remain even in Indo-European that folks
> worked on for 200+ years. The significant problem that does remain is that
> of the external comparison: Japonic just does not "fit" with any of other
> known language families on the planet except with some fragmentary evidence
> that we have from some extinct languages on the Korean peninsula: the
> pseudo-Koguryo language, the Mimana language, and the pre-Korean language of
> Silla. We should not forget, however -- I believe I said it before, that Qin
> Shi Huangdi armies wiped out from the map most of the linguistic variety in
> China. So we might be locked in a vicious circle, but may be a century or so
> later, some unknown texts will emerge from excavations.
I have no dispute with any of this. What I meant was precisely that there is little graphic material before the 6th-8th blossoming of texts. That, to me, is recent. It allows you to extrapolate back to a "proto-Japanese" or "Japonic" that was spoken by someone, somewhere, at sometime -- and which branched into the variants or dialects that are evident in historical times. More about this below.
More also, below, about your very significant remark re: Qin armies wiping out linguistic variety in China.
>
>>
>> I would never, of course, argue that "Japanese" walked from Sunda or
>> wherever. In fact, I have usually argued that Japanese never came to
>> Japan. All kinds of people came to what is now called Japan, by various
>> routes and means, over a period of tens of thousands of years -- probably
>> not hundreds of thousands, but you never know. But not Japanese.
>>
>> Japanese never came -- never walked, oared, sailed, or drifted -- to Japan.
>> Japanese invented themselves in the territory they came to call Japan --
>> and did so fairly recently -- within historical times.
>
>
> Again here I basically agree with you, and I would add that our current
> perception of "Japanese" is basically due to nationalist ideas developed in
> 18-20 centuries. Ditto for many other nation-states around the world.
> Sometimes it led to the creation of artificial states like Germany, which
> manifests itself that, e.g. in the Rhein area people seem to dislike
> Prussians more than French or Belgians. Much less so in Japan, although I
> have met many Okinawans who did not like to be called "nihonjin".
> I am also not sure that a kind of national/tribal conscience was not in
> place prior to eighth century. It was clearly there in Heian: opening pages
> of the *Hamamatsu chuunagon monogatari* give you a clear dichotomy of
> "ware-ware nihonjin" and "they Chinese" when the main protagonist of the
> story arrives to China. I would say that the same is true for Nara -- wars
> with tsuchikumo desribed in the *Kojiki *and the *Nihonshoki *clearly
> indicate the dichotome "we the Japanese -- they the earth spiders". Given
> the fact that both the *Kojiki *and the *Nihonshoki* were compiled on the
> basis of Asuka period texts that are no longer extant, I would dare to
> suggest that the sense of 'I belong to the Japanese tribe' could go back to
> Asuka or even father. The same concept can be find between the lines in the
> *Man'yooshuu*. Of course, we do not have to call it necessarily 'Japanese'
> or 'Yamato', or 'Akitsushima' or Yashima' or whatever.
No argument with anything here. My own most recent work has been on the miscegenation of the Heavenly and Hayato gods that preceded the legendary eastern push. By the time all this is set down in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki (with variant accounts cited from texts that no longer exist), there has to have been a fairly strong sense of "tribal" commonality that could be called "national" or at least "proto-national". There is, to be sure, a well-formed and formidable political entity.
This sense of commonality is reflected in the level of political organization and social control that had already been established by the time the Kojiki and Nihon shoki are compiled and published. In fact, such texts would never have come into being had there not been a zealous collective sense of "Yamato" as an entity at par with (if not at certain boastful times superior to) China.
What is important -- para linguistically -- is the detail provided in Nihon shoki accounts, and continued in the Shoku Nihongi, of on-going consolidations of power and control in the peripheral "frontier" regions -- meaning practically all provinces and territories beyond the provinces that immediately surrounded and buffered the heartland Kinki provinces. Various Hayato / Kumaso groups inhabit the frontiers of Kyushu, and then there are the people on the islands to the south. East and north live the various Ezo / Emishi groups, and there are also reports of encounters with Mishihase. This is a short list of the variety of unassimilated "tribal nations" in terms of how they were labeled circa early 8th century. The keyword here is "various" because any one of these terms is sort of like speaking of "Indians".
Among the "assimilated" people in the provinces are numerous migrants, mostly refugees, from the peninsula, who are clearly contributing to the politico-religious and technological revolutions that motivated and enabled the compilation and publishing of texts like the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki. By Kanmu's time, the Shoku Nihongi is recording later developments in the expansion of "Japan" as a polity and "Japanese" as its subject population.
Unassimilated people who changed their allegiance by registration in the court's sovereign dominion became "Japanese" as surely as they have since the introduction of nationality laws during the Meiji period. Many were entrusted with the settlement and administration of newly incorporated territories. Shinsen shojiroku is compiled to clarify lineages at a time when some people seem to feel that family histories are being corrupted. Yet there is not a hint in the obituaries that Kanmu's mother -- whose descent from peninsula royalty is stated as a simple matter of fact that could only have been intended to reflect honor and glory on her lineage -- is other than "Japanese".
Kanmu's mother is not an ethnic or national entity. There is no "ethnicity" or "nationality" then. No "hyphens" or "minorities" or "victims" of "discrimination" or "reverse discrimination". Today some Zainichi-ists are "reclaiming" her as an "ethnic minority" in Japan on the eve of the Heian period. This is an example of what I call "counter romantic nationalism" as self-styled "victims" of history position themselves in the debate about the racioethnic "origins" of Japan, its inhabitants, and their languages.
Romantic nationalism would not be possible if there were not something in the past to which to emotionally anchor it -- and that would be, as you suggest, the strong sense of "tribal" or "national" self that emerges in the earliest literary texts. Motoori Norinaga and other Kokugakusha may take these emotions to a new level, but they did not invent the sense of "Yamato" or "Japan" as a territorial and demographic entity.
The pressing question, though, is what all this has to do with "Japanese" as a language -- BEFORE the gathering of political momentum that led to the spread of Yamato/Japanese power.
You mentioned the impact that Qin armies had on linguistic diversity in China. I would think the same argument would apply to the impact of Yamato conquest of non-Yamato territories. Over the several decades or centuries it took to reach the creation of Jinmu's dynasty (which is not to say that the legends should be taken at face value) -- how many local tribes with their own distinct languages were wiped out by conquest and/or co-option, followed by amalgamation and absorption into the Yamato fold? We will never know -- because "history" accounts for only what is "remembered" at the time it begins or is later discovered or invented.
How long did a small, fairly local "tribe" that spoke "Japonic" survive before it began to thrive and spread its influence -- through some combination of political power and social control, facilitated by state-of-the-art technology and administrative methods, much of it acquired through contact with the peninsula, imported by returnees and/or introduced by migrants?
What, in other words, was the "big bang" that started the "expansion" of the population which spoke what is being called "Japanese"?
The spread most likely came in spurts -- not a smooth, continuous evolution, but more in the manner of a "punctuated equilibrium" -- punctuated by changing conditions within the islands, on the peninsula, and between the islands and the peninsula.
I would argue -- again without intending to take the received genesis accounts too literally -- that if "Japonic" is to have southern origins, then its spread would probably have been from south to north, in the form of leaps along coasts and by overland migration. Divisions in the ranks, periods of separation and isolation, probably resulted in multiple loci of power.
Any movement of a "Japonic" group to a territory occupied by a "non-Japonic" group would probably have engendered some kind of conflict -- if not war, then at least rivalry over land, water, game, and other resources. And conquest or not, there would have been biological mixing.
Some Yamato expeditions to the northern frontiers resulted in footholds that later broke away when an expedition leader -- or a descendant, possibly born to a local woman -- decided to rule the region himself. As for conflicts with local people, whether natives or descendants of settlers, there were a number of last-stand sort of battles, from which some local people retreated in an effort to remain independent. But most local people who resisted the court's outreach were persuaded to accept its embrace and quickly assimilated into its regulatory and administrative arms.
The "nation" that was thus formed fell apart a few times as local rivalries led to civil wars. Armed rivalry between territorial power holders continued to characterize the "nation" and threaten to tear it apart until the Meiji period, when local domains, their polities and their inhabitants, were truly "nationalized" for the first time. Expansion, however, continued as peripheral but already tethered territories -- Ezo, Ryukyu, Ogasawara, for example -- were incorporated into "Japan" -- as were the Kuriles, then Taiwan, Karafuto, and Korea as Chosen.
Imagine the Empire of Japan were it still to exist today. What would be the vitality of "Ainu" as a composite of several variants? Would we be hearing "Uchinaaguchi" on network television? What would be the dominant language of Taiwan and Chosen? How long would it take the various tribal languages spoken on Taiwan to die of starvation? How long would it take Chosengo to wither within the peninsula, within migrant Chosenese communities in the Interior, or in Chosenese settlements in Manchoukyo? "Korean" would probably have survived.
How long did it take most Native American languages to reach near or actual extinction -- once their lands were overrun by mostly English speaking settlers? Not long. More about this below.
>> From that point forward, the mainstream language of Japan can be called
>> Japanese.
>
> Well, the language they spoke existed long before they would invent
> themselves whether in historic or prehistoric times. It might be different
> on many levels, but essentially it would be the same. Let me just give one
> example. The modern word for flower is hana, segmentally the same in both
> Kantoo and Kansai, but having different accent patterns. In Ryukyus we have
> variation: hana / fana / pana. In Old Japanese it was pana, so we can safely
> conclude that when ancestors of Japonic landed on the islands it was
> probably *pana. However, as I suggested a couple of times, if we get rid of
> pitch accent in Japonic (which does not fall from the sky like manna, but
> should come from the loss of certain segmental characteristics), the
> pre-Japonic form could only be *bana. And this form we cannot possibly
> geographically localize: it could be used before the pack arrived to the
> islands, or it could be a form that all of them used when already in the
> islands.
Sure. This is certainly an argument for the relative spread of "Japonic" -- or at least of some of its vocabulary -- though I realize you are not speaking of "hana" as a loan word. I find your last remark, though, to be the most important.
Even if "hana" was a word "all of them used when already in the islands", the word "hana" did not -- to borrow your manna expression -- just fall from the sky. It started somewhere, with some individual uttering it, then others used it and its usage spread. As it spread within the extended family of "Japonic" speakers, it acquired the traits of their speech as these traits changed -- systematically, I believe you would argue, and I would agree.
No matter where a word comes from, it will be systematically "localized" by its speakers, just as English and other European language loans have been Japanized -- and such Japanizations literally speak volumes about contemporary Japanese linguistic traits. Which is what makes written records with phonetic clues so valuable.
Supposing, though, that "hana" arrived with a pack of "Japonic" speakers. Did it arrive in the south and move north? Did it arrive somewhere in the middle and move south and north? Did it arrive north and move south? All are possible, but which is probable -- given what we know or can reasonably conjecture about migration in the region and diffusion of regional languages?
Or, supposing that "Japanic" developed somewhere within the islands from earlier forms that are beyond the reach of linguistic extrapolation (reconstruction) -- what is the most likely locality for such a development -- again, given what we know from traces of settlements and their material cultures, and what they tell us about their social and possibly political organization?
Watanabe Shoichi supposes -- provocatively -- that Yamato kotoba and its kotodama are essentially "native" to the islands. He might admit that the roots of such a "native" tongue had to have been elsewhere -- given the unlikelihood that its first speakers did not parachute, or otherwise fall, from the sky -- but that is what the early genesis legends in effect say. And I suppose that is what we should expect they would say.
But the genesis legends also say something else. They say the earthly migration came out of Kyushu. Why? Simply to bolster the court's view in the late 7th and early 8th centuries that Hayato were naturally expected to join the its fold, since they were essentially already enfolded?
Why go to so much trouble, to repeat so many versions of the genesis story in the Nihon shoki, just to legitimize the assimilation of a small, peripheral group, so far from Kinki -- an assimilation that had already essentially taken place? I would think the real reason for the repetition -- the emphasis -- is that there was a strong oral tradition of southern origins and Hayato connections.
To follow the logic of your "national/tribal conscience" thread -- I would think that the compilers of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, and the Yamato court which commissioned their compilation, had to have had an emotional mindset about the court's geographic if not demographic roots -- in Kyushu.
I am not, in the following statements, arguing with you, but pursuing the logic of your thread, as I argue mostly with myself.
Never mind the actual historical conditions of the court within the few centuries leading up to the end of the 7th century. Never mind that some of the earliest putative tenno lived impossibly long lives and were otherwise drawn larger than life. Never mind that some of the earlier accounts may have been spun out of imaginary yarn.
What is important is the sheer tenacity of the Kyushu-origin genesis story.
The story (in several versions) tells of encounters between heavenly (Yamato) gods and earthly (mountain and sea) gods. The encounters span three generations of miscegenation and incest -- on earth -- before a certain mixed-blood prince -- who is 1/8 heavenly god, 7/8 earthly god (1/8 mountain god [Hayato], 6/8 sea god) -- establishes his earthly court as Jinmu.
I have a hard time picturing the compilers sitting around and saying, "Hey, how do we put a spin on this story that is favorable to the court?" They have the opportunity to fabricate a genesis story that claims Kyushu origins. But where is the motive? And why would anyone bother to fabricate not one, but several versions? To fake their antiquity? "Hey, why not create several different versions, with slight differences, so people will think they branched off a single original story and then changed a little over time?"
I rather think the compilers passively accepted what by then had become the received accounts -- and simply passed them on -- out of sheer conviction that, true or not, they must have made sense to the people who transmitted them over the years, and apparently recorded them here and there -- losing some details, embellishing others -- but hey, what is a fish story for except to make the fish larger and more difficult to catch? Presumably the fisherman and the fish were real, and the fish didn't get away.
So I would think that -- if there is anything to gain para linguistically from the Kyushu genesis stories -- it is that the heavenly and earthly gods who mixed their genes on Kyushu shared -- eventually -- more than a few rolls in the proverbial rice straw. They probably shared, or came to share, the language they used when expressing their joy and indignation and rage and jealousy and grief. And that would suggest that -- if the language of the names of the heavenly and earthly gods and of the songs recorded in the genesis stories was Jinmu's language -- then "Japonic" most likely came out Kyushu.
Nor do I -- and I am not a linguist -- see a lot of evidence for more than, say, "Japanese" (including Ryukyuan) and "Ainu" (as a composite of what survives of northern languages).
My point about California is somewhat different than how you seem to have taken it.
Yes, California was connected to the continent -- but so were the islands of Japan. The waters that separated the islands were no greater barriers than the deserts and mountains that essentially limited migration to California to the coasts.
I get the impression that the area that is now California was peopled mainly by coastal migration, first -- followed by inland migration across coastal ranges and valleys and up river basins in the Sierras and other mountains. This accounts for the distribution of so many small tribes that essentially defended rivers and ridges from neighbors -- and their relative isolation and "underdevelopment" in terms of technology and political organization from the plains, northeastern, and even south and southwestern tribes.
My hunch is that what the general area that now includes California defined mostly a coastal corridor, and even then was somewhat of a backwater or eddy at practically an "end of the trail" in terms of early north-to-south migration.
Russians, too, came down the coast. Spanish speakers, of course, came up the coast and overland from the south. The Sierras were true barriers in winter, and the desserts to the east of the Sierras and south discouraged and defeated a lot of people.
The gold rush settlers came anyway they could, but the heaviest and perhaps most significant traffic was through coastal ports -- until the Sierras were breached by the transcontinental railroad. I have translated the 1872 newspaper report of an eye-witness account by a member of the Japanese mission that traveled east on the railroad through a Sierra blizzard and arrived somewhat late in Salt Lake in 1872. The writer was impressed by both the awesomeness of the storm and Mormon polygamy. The Mormons, having previously braved the dessert to reach what is today the the heart of southern California, decided its lack of water didn't qualify it as promised land, so back to the Salt Lake oasis for them.
My point about California would be that -- within the span of just few decades after the gold rush -- or two centuries if you include the Spanish incursions into the area -- the vast majority of the native tribes and their languages had ceased to exist as such. All that diversity -- wiped out by the intensity of migration and settlement of aliens. I would argue that this could have happened in Japan -- though we have only the final chapters of the story -- as told by court-appointed "ethnographers" from about the 7th century.
Japan is geographically more convoluted than California -- more rivers, more valleys, more ravines, more "niches" for small communities of hunters and gatherers. The Yamato expansion was partly driven by the desire to cultivate new land within the court's dominion, and this expansion was achieved at the expense of existing communities of mostly hunters and gatherers. The scenario in North America generally, including California, is not essentially different.
If not for the rise of interest in ethnography in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- if not for a few chauvinistic dead-white anthropologists and linguists at Berkeley, say, since I am speaking of "California Indians" -- there would be virtually nothing left today -- nothing to which a few descendants of vanished tribes could take to a court of law and argue -- in English -- that they qualify as remnants of an "unrecognized tribe" and therefore have the right to build and operate a casino.
That would be my point about California -- its example as a place where so much was lost so quickly -- and all that remains is the work of late-hour "salvage anthropology" and "salvage linguistics".
Ainu and Ryukyuan were still very much alive as multi-dialect languages around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. But image what would have happened if Ezo and Ryukyu had come under the full impact of the Yamato court at about the same time as northern Honshu and southern Kyushu tribes. There would be no 16th century records of Ryukyuan. Probably no traces of Ainu either, except in place names that linguists might associate with the tribes that the chronologies claim were subjugated and assimilated -- but nothing else.
Again, my point is not to dispute the value of what exists as evidence for linguistic research in Japan. As you say, the evidence does not show "a single shred of evidence for anything besides Ainu and Japanese" -- and by "Japanese" I understand that you include Ryukyuan.
However -- the evidence should not be taken to mean that those were the only two languages in contention in the islands. We know from experiences in other parts of the world how easily entire events go unrecorded or unacknowledged. We are witnessing a period of time when we obsessively-compulsively gather information and store it. This was barely beginning -- and on a very selective basis -- when "history" began to be written anywhere. Japan would not be an exception. Most of what transpired over the centuries and millennia before the compilation of Kojiki and Nihon shoki will never be known -- because it never made it into collective "memory". But we know that most large complex geographical formations like the islands that are now "Japan" are also ethnographically very complex -- until which time one group emerges to dominate others to the extent that the others disappear as distinct entities.
I would also argue that most of the pieces to the ethnographic and linguistic puzzles of southern Kyushu and northern Honshu -- in early historical times -- will also remain forever missing -- because the people whose business it was to record "events" in these regions were commissioned to record only politically significant detail -- meaning who was promoted to what rank, who fought whom -- who won, who lost. You wouldn't learn a lot about the languages of "Indians" in the Americas by reading just the political accounts of the encounters written in the languages of the victors. Mostly they would be "savages" and may or may not have tribal names. Their customs would be described in the most superficial terms -- and in terms understandable to the writer and presumed reader.
Bilingual guides, often "halfbreeds", made good informants, but linguistics wasn't in their job description. Some Christian missionaries romanized Indian languages in order to speed the conversion and assimilation of their flocks. Later came various kinds of recording devices that ethnographers and linguists could lug around in the "field" to capture actual speech and stories of surviving old-timers. Similar things happened in Japan.
That only "Japanese" (including Ryukyuan) and "Ainu" appear to have existed in Japan may be little more than an artifact of the timing in which "history" began to be written -- and the timing of events such as your 16th-century records of Ryukyuan -- and, of course, the timing of the wealth of material which began to be more systematically collected since the late 19th century.
Of course we can only know what we know or think we know. We can't know what is not available for us to know. But I think we can fairly conjecture that Japan's ethnographic and linguistic past was probably more complex than meets the "historical" and even "archaeological" eye.
>>
>> I am certainly not in disagreement about the predominance of southern
>> origins. Such origins make more sense linguistically,
>
>
> Please see above -- they are *likely*, but evidence is still lacking.
Agreed. Lacking. Perhaps commonsensical, but, yes, lacking.
>> and comport with reasonable conjectures about earlier migrations of people
>> and diffusions of technologies -- without denying the obvious impact of
>> later migrations and diffusions from the west (north Asia).
>
>
> I do not think that anyone would deny this. Japanese certainly underwent
> 'Koreanization' at some stage, and it will be unbelievably stupid at our
> present stage of knowledge to deny the cultural influence from the Korean
> peninsula.
No one is denying the influence today. Certainly the compilers of the earliest texts, and even as late as the Nihon shoki and Shinsen shojiroku, were not denying the influence. If anything, they were most boasting about having been such good students of continental civilization. Much of the interest in Japanizing Korea in the late 19th century was pretexted on the idea of rescuing Korea from China and Russia. The move to Yamatoize Chosen during the 1920s and 1930s was pretexted on the notion that Koreans had become too Sinified -- and deserved to be returned to their racioethnic "roots" -- which presumably they shared with the ancestors of Japanese way back when. One big family reunion, so to speak. But even at the height of Yamatoist ideology in the early half of the 20th century, Japanese ethnologists were not denying the complexity of "Yamato" origins. If there was any "purity" in the race, it was the purity of hybridism. And I this awareness of hybrid origins in
antiquity went a long ways to accommodate (without necessarily promoting) miscegenation throughout the expanding Empire of Japan.
>> As you say, Egami did not imagine that "horseriders" were the first
>> "Japanese" or whatever. He was merely attempting to explain what appeared
>> to be an influential migration into the islands from the continent. Nor did
>> he claim that the horses were ridden across the straits led by a Korean
>> Moses. But people did ply the crossings in various kinds of boats -- loaded
>> with beasts, dogs, mice, roaches, and diseases, and all manner of political,
>> religious, economic, and even linguistic burdens -- both ways, though
>> predominately eastward.
>>
>> What we need are video tapes showing who came where and when, and who they
>> encountered upon their arrival, and during their travels and travails --
>> with audio tracks recording what they said to each other, in what languages,
>> and with what consequences to these language. Five millennia of such
>> material -- predating the Nara years, and spanning the whole stretch of the
>> present archipelago -- would be nice, no? Perhaps no, because that would
>> take all the romance and excitement out of prehistorical linguistics.
>
> It certainly would be nice (:-)
It would be, I must admit. There would still be plenty of problems left to solve -- in fact probably more.
Sorry for all the rambling.
Yosha
No kidding. That's my handle -- and my official seal name.