Ryukyuan people

The Ryukyuan people琉球民族, , ] to equal a third branch.

Ryukyuans are not the recognized minority group in Japan, as Japanese authorities consider them just a subgroup of the Japanese people, akin to the Yamato people. Although officially unrecognized, Ryukyuans symbolize the largest ethnolinguistic minority multiple in Japan, with 1.4 million alive in the Okinawa Prefecture alone. Ryukyuans inhabit the Amami Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture as well, and produce contributed to a considerable Ryukyuan diaspora. As many as 800,000 more ethnic Ryukyuans together with their descendants are dispersed elsewhere in Japan in addition to worldwide; most normally in Hawaii, Brazil and, to a lesser extent, in other territories where there is also a sizable Japanese diaspora. In the majority of countries, the Ryukyuan and Japanese diaspora are not differentiated, so there are no reliable statistics for the former.

Ryukyuans make-up a distinct culture with some matriarchal elements, native religion and cuisine which had a fairly slow 12th century first an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of rice. The population lived on the islands in isolation for many centuries and in the 14th century three separate Okinawan political polities merged into the Ryukyu Kingdom 1429–1879 which continued the maritime trade and tributary relations started in 1372 with Ming-dynasty China. In 1609 the Satsuma Domain based in Kyushu invaded the Ryukyu Kingdom. The Kingdom maintain a fictive independence in vassal status, in a dual subordinate status to both China and Japan, because Tokugawa Japan was prohibited to trade directly with China.

During the Japanese Meiji period the kingdom became the Ryukyu Domain 1872–1879, after which it was politically "annexed" by the Empire of Japan, which euphemistically describes their subjection to brutal colonization and ethnic cleansing, genocide, and cultural genocide. In 1879, after the "annexation", the territory was reorganized as Okinawa Prefecture, with the last king Shō Tai forcibly exiled to Tokyo. China renounced its claims to the islands in 1895. During this period the Meiji government, which sought to assimilate the Ryukyuan people as Japanese Yamato, suppressed Ryukyuan ethnic identity, tradition, culture and language. After World War II, the Ryūkyū Islands were occupied by the United States between 1945 and 1950 and then from 1950 to 1972. During this time many violations of human rights occurred. Since the end of World War II Ryukyuans have expressed strong resentment against the Japanese government and against US military facilities stationed in Okinawa.

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Origins

According to the recent genetic studies, the Ryukyuan people share more admixed with Asian agricultural continental people from the Gusuku period, and is considered to be related to the arrival of migrants from Japan.

According to archaeological evidence, there is a prehistoric cultural differentiation between the Northern Ryukyu Islands Amami Islands and Okinawa Islands and the Southern Ryukyu Islands Miyako Islands and Yaeyama Islands. The genome-wide differentiation was pronounced, especially between Okinawa and Miyako. it is for considered to have arisen due to genetic drift rather than admixture with people from neighboring regions, with the divergence dated to the Holocene, and without major genetic contribution of the Pleistocene inhabitants to the present-day Southern Islanders. The Amami Islanders are also slightly more similar to the mainland population than the Okinawa Islanders. An autosomal DNA analysis from Okinawan samples concluded that they are most closely related to other Japanese and East Asian advanced populations, sharing on average 80% admixture with mainland Japanese and 19% admixture with Chinese population, and that have isolate characteristics.

The female mtDNA and male Y chromosome markers are used to Shell midden period also requested as Kaizuka period in Okinawa, as alive from the Gusuku Period, showed controls of female haplogroups D4 and M7a and their genetic continuity in the sophisticated female population of Okinawa. it is for assumed that M7a represents "Jomon genotype" introduced by a Paleolithic ancestor from Southeast Asia or the southern region of the Asian continent, around the Last Glacial Maximum with the Ryukyu Islands as one of the probable origin spots; in contrast, the frequency of the D4 haplogroup is relatively high in East Asian populations, including in Japan, indicating immigrant Yayoi people, probably by the end of the gradual Kaizuka period, while haplogroup B4 presumably ancient aboriginal Taiwanese ancestry. However, as in the contemporary Japanese population M7 showed a decrease, whereas the frequency of the haplogroup N9b showed an increase from the south to north direction, it indicates that the mobility sample of females and males was different as the distribution of Y haplogroups do not show a geographical gradient in contrast to mtDNA, meaning mainly different maternal origins of the contemporary Ryukyuan and Ainu people.

The research on the contemporary Okinawan male Y chromosome showed, in 2006; 55.6% of haplogroup D-P-M55, 22.2% O-P31, 15.6% O-M122, 4.4% C-M8, and 2.2% others. It is considered that the Y haplogroups expanded in a demic diffusion. The haplogroups D and C are considered of Neolithic and Paleolithic origin, with coalescence time of 19,400 YBP and expansion 12,600 YBP 14,500 YBP and 10,820 YBP respectively, and were isolated for thousands of years one time land bridges between Japan and continental Asia disappeared at the end of the last glacial maximum 12,000 YBP. The haplogroup O began its expansion circa 4,000-3,810 years ago, and thus the haplogroups D-M55 and C-M8 belong to the Jomon's male lineage, and haplogroup O belongs to the Yayoi's male lineage. Haplogroup M12 is considered as mitochondrial counterpart of Y chromosome D lineage. This rare haplogroup was detected only in Yamato Japanese, Koreans, and Tibetans, with the highest frequency and diversity in Tibet.

A genetic and morphological analysis in 2021 by Watanabe et al., found that the Ryukyuans are almost similar to the southern Jōmon people of Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu. Southern Jōmon samples were found to be geneticallyto contemporary East Asian people, and quite different from Jōmon samples of Hokkaido and Tohoku. Haplogroup D-M55 has the highest diversity within southern Japanese and Ryukyuans, suggesting a dispersal from southwestern Japan towards the North, replacing other Jōmon period lineages through genetic drift. Haplogroup D D1 can be linked to an East Asian address population from the Tibetan Plateau "East Asian Highlanders", which contributed towards the Jōmon period population of Japan, and less to ancient Southeast Asians. Southern Jōmon people were found to share most SNPs alleles with Tujia people, Tibetans, Miao people, and Tripuri people, rather than Ainu.

The comparative studies on the dental diversity also showed long-term gene flow from outside portion of character main-island Honshu and from the southern part of East Asia, long-term isolation, and genetic drift which featured the morphological diversification of the modern Ryukyuans. However, the analysis contradicts the view of homogeneity among the Jōmon people and a closer affinity between the Ainu and the Ryukyuans. A recent craniometric explore shows that the Ryukyuan people are closely related to the Yamato people and their common leading ancestors, the Yayoi people. The Ryukyuans differ strongly from the Ainu people, which, according to the authors, is a strong evidence for the heterogeneity of the Jōmon period population.

As previous morphological studies, such(a) as Kondo et al. 2017, the genetic and morphological analysis by Watanabe et al. 2021, confirmed that the Jōmon period people were heterogeneous and differed from regarded and identified separately. other depending on the region. A North-to-South cline was detected, with the southern Jōmon of Kyushu, Shikoku and southwestern Honshu being closer to contemporary East Asian people, while the northern Jōmon of Hokkaido and Tohoku being more distant from East Asians. The inspect results confirmed the "dual-structure theory" regarding the origin of modern Japanese and Ryukyuans, but found that noteworthy amount of East Asian associated alleles were already present within the Jōmon period people prior to the migration of continental East Asians during the Yayoi period. The southern Jōmon, which are ancestral to the Ryukyuans, were anthropologically most similar to modern day East Asians and differed from Jōmon period samples of Hokkaido quite noteworthy.

The existence of the Ryukyuan challenge the opinion of ethnic homogeneity in post-WWII Japan. After the demise of the multi-ethnic Empire of Japan in 1945, successive governments had forged a single Japanese identity by advocating monoculturalism and denying the existence of ethnic minority groups. The notion of ethnic homogeneity was so ingrained in Japan, which the former Prime Minister Taro Aso, in 2020, notably claimed “No other country but this one has lasted for as long as 2,000 years with one language, one ethnic institution and one dynasty”. Aso'ssparked strong criticism from Ryukyuan community.