Japan: Indigenous Occupation

Introduction

Ainu people and culture have been marginalized in the colonial politics of Japan. Their existence as an Indigenous people was denied over a long period, and many Japanese remain ignorant about this ethnic group (Weiner 1997). On the other hand, the Ainu people gathered much attention as direct descendants of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Japanese Archipelago, who were pushed off to the north by the agricultural ancestors of current Japanese since the Yayoi period. Early investigators proposed a Caucasian ancestry as the origin of Ainu, but this theory was rejected by later anthropological studies.

It has often been assumed that the Ainu people are direct descendants of the Jomon people, but the relationship between the Ainu and the Indigenous population of Japan is not so simple. Recent genetic analysis has confirmed that the Ainu people in Hokkaido and the native Okinawan people share similar characteristics in spite of their geographic distance (Japanese Archipelago...