The Koofun Period

During the kofun period, relation between Korea and Japan became more active in this era. Korean Peninsula was in Three Kingdoms period, such as Koguryo in the north, Paekche, Kaya and Silla in the south. In Kofun period, there are a large number of Korean people leave the Korean Peninsula choose to move to Japan. According to William Ruddiman’s point of view is that there are two reasons can explain why a large number of Paekche people suddenly migrated to Japan. First of all, the first reason is that the declined of the Han Chinese empire and mainland China divided into many countries and the invasion of the northern nomads. For this reason, the mainland of China internal division will directly affect the security and stability of the Korean
peninsula. The second reason is that the consequences of climate change has brought the plague and natural disasters, such as famine and drought. Since these two reasons that Paekche people leaved their home country and pursuit of a peace and stability life in Japan. From a certain perspective, War, famine and climate change disaster on the Korean Peninsula, but Korean migrated to promote the cultural and social development of Japan. This is the second for wave of migration from Korean Peninsula to Japan which called “Kofun Wave”.
The origin of Proto-Japanese people and Proto-Japanese language are controversial, because the ancient Japanese people gene and language is different from the modern one.
Ethnic and language have close relations, because different people will have different effect on language, the language will change with the passage of time. In general, people think that Japan is a nation state with a single nation, however, Japan is a multi-ethnic country since ancient time. In the Jomon period, Jomon people lived in the Honshu region and then the Ainu people came from Siberia and they lived in the northern Japan region of Hokkaido, and the Ryukyuans is belong to the branch of “Malayo-Polynesian” who lived in the far southern of island. The Jomon culture is the Neolithic civilization and the Jomon people’s main lifestyle is hunting, fishing and gathering. The formation and development of proto-Japanese language and the proto-Japanese nation also has two periods. In the Yayoi period, Korean people migrant from the Korean Peninsula to Japan, but the Korean immigrants did not replace the Jomon people who live in the mainland Japan, only part of the Korean intermarriage with the Jomon indigenous. On the Japanese nation aspect, according to Keiji Imamura’s research, “he found that the mainland Japanese are more similar to the Korean on the gene than the Ainu and Ryukyuans.” Because, many Korean people moved to mainland Japan, thus less impact on Ainu and Ryukyuans gene in the Yayoi period. During the Yayoi period, the proto-Japanese people was including the Ainu, Ryukyuans and the Kaya people, they were called “Wa-jin”. However, the ethnic Composition was changed which the Paekche people as the newcomer from Korean Peninsula, the Paekche people replace the position of the Kaya people in the Kofun period, they were called “Yamato-jin” by the scholars. The Yamato people as well as the ancestors of the modern Japanese
people.