2013/12/10

When I started working with rice, I became interested in the roots of rice cultivation.

I realized that this is tracing the roots of the Japanese people, which is almost the same as thinking about the formation of the nation.

The global origin of rice dates back to ancient times, near the current border between Thailand and China. The exact location is unknown, but the oldest rice fossils have apparently been found in the area. This spread westward, and rice cultivation first began in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Meanwhile, rice cultivation is said to have begun to develop a settled culture around 5000 BC, during the Xia Dynasty of the Yellow River civilization. Agriculture created a gap between the haves and the have-nots, that is, between the rich and the poor. Eventually, the haves gained power, becoming powerful clans and kings, and nations were formed.

This began in China 7,000 years ago, but in Japan it began only during the Yayoi period, a mere 2,500 years ago. As you will learn in textbooks, shortly before the time of Himiko, tribes in Kyushu formed villages and countries and sent emissaries to China in an attempt to be recognized as "Kings of Wa."

It is said that rice cultivation was first introduced to Kumamoto or Miyazaki from near Shanghai in China, or to Kitakyushu via the Korean Peninsula. There is also a theory that it came to Miyazaki from Southeast Asia via Taiwan.

In any case, it seems that rice cultivation, the gap between rich and poor, and the presence or absence of power - in other words, the fundamental principles of nation-building - were introduced to Japan in this way.

It's important to know who said it.

The start of the Yayoi period coincided with the time when China was unified by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The royal families of each dynasty must have fled somewhere, most likely to the south towards Vietnam, across the sea to Kyushu in the west, or north from northeastern China to Korea, and possibly even further to Kitakyushu or Izumo.

Newly discovered continents, like America, become countries of people who, having been oppressed in their homelands, came to the continent in search of opportunity. In America, they massacred the Indians, in Australia, the Aborigines, and in New Zealand, the Maori, and then reigned as the new rulers.

It seems that something similar happened in Japan around 2,500 to 2,000 years ago.

It is also a well-known fact that the facial features and languages ​​spoken by the Neolithic Jomon people and the rice-growing Yayoi people were different. The Yayoi people were taller and had flatter faces than the Jomon people. The Japanese people who came into being in this way appear to have been formed by the interbreeding of continental people and the Jomon people.

I spent about 3.5 years in New Zealand, where a new breed of New Zealander was born from the intermingling of the indigenous Polynesian Maori people and British Europeans.

The Jomon people were a hunting tribe known as Emishi during the Nara and Heian periods, but because they were Jomon people, they must have originally been found all over Japan. However, they were driven to the outskirts of Japan by immigrants and the interbreeding of the immigrants and the Jomon people.

As evidence, there is apparently genetic similarity between the Ainu of Hokkaido and the people who have lived in Okinawa for a long time.