Japanese people

The widow of Japan’s Emperor Chuai rules as Empress Jingo following her hiusband's death in 209.

The legend of Jingū's invasion of the Korean peninsula is based on the traditional Japanese interpretation of the Kwanggeto Stele found in Manchuria, which proclaimed Goguryeo's dominion over Manchuria and the northern part of Korea.

Closer examination has revealed that this traditional interpretation was based on conjecture, since several critical letters of the text are missing, and in context would correlate more with Goguryeo's immediate southern neighbors, Silla and Baekje.

Baekje had very close relations with Japan, including exchanges between the two courts, and it was a primary conduit of continental culture to Japan.

The culture of the Yayoi people from about 300 BCE to CE 250 shows a marked change in orientation and is more recognizably Japanese in character.

Wet-rice cultivation and bronze technology appear to have been introduced from Korea by way of Kyushu.

As opposed to the robust vigor of Jomon wares, Yayoi ceramics are made with finer clay, are turned on a wheel, and are generally more utilitarian in character, having more casual and at times elegant decoration.

The large settlements of the Yayoi people, centered in southwestern and central Japan, apparently became increasingly stratified under religious leaders.

Bronze weapons, mirrors, and bells, originally close to their Asian prototypes, are evidently used in rituals that have led to the exaggeration of their forms; the bells, especially, suggest the growth in authority of powerful clans that may have governed large areas.

The Kofun period is a critical stage in Japan's evolution toward a more cohesive and recognized state.

This society is most developed in the easternmost part of the Inland Sea (Seto Naikai), and its armies establish a foothold on the southern tip of Korea.

Japan's rulers of the time even petition the Chinese court for confirmation of royal titles; the Chinese, in turn, recognize Japanese military control over parts of the Korean Peninsula

The earliest written records about Japan are from Chinese sources from this period.

Wa (the Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan) was first mentioned in CE 57.

Early Chinese historians described Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, not the unified land with a seven hundred-year tradition as laid out in the Nihongi, which puts the foundation of Japan at 660 BCE.

Third-century Chinese sources report that the Wa people live on raw vegetables, rice, and fish served on bamboo and wooden trays, have vassal-master relations, collect taxes, have provincial granaries and markets, clap their hands in worship (something still done in Shinto shrines), have violent succession struggles, build earthen grave mounds, and observe mourning.

Himiko, a female ruler of an early political federation known as Yamatai, flourishes during the third century.

While Himiko reigns as spiritual leader, her younger brother carries out affairs of state, which included diplomatic relations with the court of the Chinese Wei Dynasty (CE 220-65).

The increasing concentration of power in the hands of the great clans of central Japan, symbolized by massive mounded tombs, culminate in the unification of the nation under the imperial clan during Japan’s Tumulus period, lasting from the mid-third through the sixth century.

Whereas the artifacts such as mirrors found in the earlier tombs indicate continuation of the ritual orientation of the Yayoi culture, the later tombs contain equestrian trappings and weaponry suggestive of invasion or infiltration by a warlike Mongoloid people from northeast Asia.

The culture of the later Tumulus period is most vividly represented in the haniwa clay figures set around the center and later the borders of the great tombs.

These lively, mass-produced grave guardians include figures of shamans, crowned figures, soldiers, court ladies, dancers, houses, ships, and animals; they provide very literal images of the daily life of this period and, in addition, seem to indicate a much changed attitude toward the afterlife.

The Japanese clans’ construction of massive mounded tombs on the Yamato Plain inaugurates Japan’s so-called Kofun period, an era in the history of Japan from around 250 to 538.

The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mounds dating from this era.

Following the Yayoi period, the Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period.

While conventionally assigned to the period from 250 CE, the actual start of Yamato rule is disputed.

The Kofun period is illustrated by an animistic culture which existed prior to the introduction of Buddhism.

Politically, the establishment of the Yamato court, and its expansion as allied states from Kyushu to the Kanto are key factors in defining the period.

Also, the Kofun period is the oldest era of recorded history in Japan.

However, as the chronology of the historical sources are very much distorted, studies of this age require deliberate criticism and the aid of archaeology.

The archaeological record, and ancient Chinese sources, indicate that the various tribes and chiefdoms of Japan did not begin to coalesce into states until 300, when large tombs began to appear while there were no contacts between western Japan and China.

Some describe the "mysterious century" as a time of internecine warfare as various chiefdoms competed for hegemony on Kyūshū and Honshuū.

The oldest Japanese kofun is said to be Hokenoyama Kofun located in Sakurai, Nara, which dates to the late third century.

Japan, having assimilated Chinese culture for the past four centuries, develops an extremely complex writing system by adapting the script of China’s monosyllabic language to convey Japanese phonemes.

Geunchogo, the second son of Biryu, the eleventh king of Baekje, had become king in 346 upon the death of the twelfth king, Gye.

His reign seems to have marked the permanent ascendancy of the descendants of the fifth king Chogo (reflected in Geunchogo's name) over those of the eighth king, Goi, and ended the alternating kingship of the two lines.

Having set set out to solidify the royal power within the Baekje state upon ascending the throne, he has reduced the power of the aristocracy and set up a system of local government with regional heads appointed by the court.

He has married a wife from the Jin clan, setting a precedent for his successors, and he has moved the capital to Hansan, today's southeast Seoul.

The first Korean envoy to Japan, an emissary of the government of Baekje, reportedly arrives in 366.

In this year, Geunchogo allies with Silla, which borders Baekje on the east, maintaining a rough balance of power among the Three Kingdoms.

The Yamato polity, which emerges in the mid-Kofun period, is distinguished by powerful great clans or extended families, each with its dependents.

Each clan is headed by a patriarch who perform sacred rites to the clan's kami to ensure the long-term welfare of the clan.

Clan members are the aristocracy, and the kingly line that controls the Yamato court is at its pinnacle.

A hereditary court aristocracy begins to replace Japanese tribal elites, and status, not clan, becomes the basis for official influence.

Japan, having assimilated Chinese culture for the past four centuries, develops an extremely complex writing system consisting of Kanji, adopted Chinese characters, and Kana, a pair of syllabaries (like phonetic alphabets), by adapting the script of China’s monosyllabic language to convey Japanese phonemes.

Japan's first encounters with Chinese characters may have come as early as the first century CE with the King of Na gold seal, said to have been given by Emperor Guangwu of Han in CE 57 to a Japanese emissary.

However, it is unlikely that the Japanese become literate in Chinese writing any earlier than the fourth century CE.

Japan’s Kofun period (the "Kofun-Jidai") sees the establishment of strong military states, each of them concentrated around powerful clans (or zoku).

The establishment of the dominant Yamato polity is centered in the provinces of Yamato and Kawachi from the third century CE until the seventh century, establishing the origin of the Japanese imperial lineage.

This polity, by suppressing the clans and acquiring agricultural lands, maintains a strong influence in the western part of Japan.

Close relationships between Japan and the Three Kingdoms of Korea begins during the middle of this period, around the end of the fourth century.