When it comes to cultural exchanges between China and Japan, the Tang Dynasty was the time when the two countries had the closest exchanges. This period of exchange not only covered many fields such as language, literature, and art, but also profoundly influenced the formation and development of Japanese culture. For example, in terms of language, kanji is widely used in Japanese, and even now you can see it everywhere in the streets of Japan.
However, the Tang Dynasty was not the starting point of cultural exchanges between China and Japan, and if you really want to trace it, it can be traced back to the time of Qin Shi Huang. Speaking of which, many people have probably heard the story of Xu Fudong crossing Yingzhou to find the elixir of life for Qin Shi Huang.
Therefore, many people believe that this is the earliest time when China and Japan intersected, and some people even rumored that the boys and girls that Xu Fu took away were the ancestors of the Japanese. So, is this really the case?
Xu Fudong crossed Yingzhou from beginning to end
Everything has to start with Xu Fu Dongdu. Regarding this incident, it has long been recorded in the "Historical Records". It is said that at that time, Qin Shi Huang had just unified the six countries and became the first emperor, and because he was worried that his life would not be enough to carry out his grand ambitions, he began to pursue immortality under the influence of the legend of Mu Tianzi's medicine.
To this end, he also recruited scholars and alchemists from all over the world into the palace and began to seek the method of immortality, and Xu Fu was one of them.
According to folk rumors, Xu Fu inherited all his mantles from Guiguzi and inherited all his mantles, not only erudite and talented, but also proficient in medicine, astronomy, and navigation, and was quite prestigious among the people, and people were also sought after.
In 219 BC, Xu Fu wrote to Qin Shi Huang, saying that there were three sacred mountains in the east, where there were secluded immortals, and he was willing to go there for Qin Shi Huang to ask for the elixir of life. When Qin Shi Huang learned of this news, he sent Xu Fu to lead 3,000 boys and girls into the sea to meet the immortals and seek the method of immortality.
However, Xu Fu has been at sea for many years, but he has never found the elixir. Later, because he was worried that he would be held accountable by Qin Shi Huang after returning to the dynasty, he never returned, and settled in Yingzhou with those boys and girls.
However, although there is no record of Xu Fu in the mainland, there is one in Yingzhou, the place where he disappeared. At that time, the so-called Yingzhou was actually today's Japan, according to the records of the ancient Japanese book "Fuji Document", after Xu Fu arrived in Japan for the second time, he not only taught the locals a lot of life skills, but also introduced a lot of advanced technology.
For example, Xu Fu's introduction of China's rice planting experience promoted Japan's agricultural civilization, making Japan gradually change from a life based on hunting and fishing to an agrarian society, which greatly promoted the process of civilization. At the same time, he also introduced the textile, smelting, medicine, shipbuilding, navigation and other technologies of the Qin Dynasty to Japan, which led to the development of Japan's society.
In the "Orthodox Records of the Divine Emperor", it is also recorded that after Xu Fu Dongdu came to settle in Japan, in order to avoid being hunted down by Qin Shi Huang, he changed the surnames of those boys and girls to "Tenant", "Qin", "Haneda", "Futai", "Fushan", "Futian" and other surnames, and since then he has lived in seclusion here and enjoyed his old age in peace.
In this way, Xu Fu and the thousands of boys and girls did stay in Japan after leaving China, but does this mean that they were the ancestors of the Japanese?
Origins of Japan
In fact, the reason for this rumor is mainly because there are still Japanese people with the surname "Qin" in Shingu City, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, and many people speculate that it was those boys and girls who changed their names and surnames at that time who grew up and multiplied, and the Japanese are today.
However, speculation is only speculation after all, and history is all about evidence, and if you dig deep into the historical origins of Japan, you will find that this speculation is not valid.
According to Kojiki, Japan's earliest mythological and historical document, when chaos first opened and heaven and earth began to divide, the male god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami were united under the arrangement of the Mandate of Heaven to give birth to the Japanese archipelago, and in order to make it more abundant and livable, they gave birth to the gods that nature needs.
Unfortunately, Izanami was burned to death when he gave birth to his youngest son, the god of fire, and Izanagi couldn't bear to be separated and followed his soul to the Yellow Springs Kingdom, but he didn't expect that when he saw his lover again, he was so frightened that he fled in a hurry, because the original beautiful goddess was no longer there, and all that was left was the ugly and terrifying appearance.
After escaping from the Yellow Springs Kingdom, Izanagi bathed in the rivers of Kitakyushu and gave birth to one of Japan's three great gods, Amaterasu, whose descendants were ordained by God.
According to the book, Japan's "founding ancestor" was Emperor Jimmu, as a descendant of Amaterasu, he obeyed the mandate of heaven, was made the crown prince at the age of 15, and succeeded to the throne at the age of 45.
Although this statement has a certain mythological color, it at least shows that by the time Xu Fu discovered the Japanese archipelago, there were already traces of human life in this place.
This can be confirmed by later archaeological findings, which show that around the end of the Alluvial to the beginning of the Shock Epoch, the region where Japan was located was formed by the evolution of the earth's crust to form the Japanese archipelago, and after the formation of the islands, humans migrated to Japan and settled there, as evidenced by the earliest 100,000-year-old human fossils in Japan.
Since Xu Fu is not, who is the real ancestor of the Japanese?
The true ancestors of the Japanese
According to archaeological finds, the earliest inhabitants of Japan date back to the Jomon period, a period of the Japanese Stone Age, which began around 300 BC and ended around 300 AD. It is likely that these earliest inhabitants migrated from the Asian continent and brought with them a unique culture and way of life when they came to the Japanese archipelago.
In addition to archaeological evidence, some experts also conducted genetic analysis of Japanese people from the perspective of genetics, and found that the genes of the Jomon people were present in the DNA of the Japanese people, and that the modern Honshu Wazu people inherited about 10% of the DNA of the inhabitants of the Jomon culture.
The so-called Jomon people were the inhabitants of the Jomon period in the late Paleolithic period, who migrated to Japan mainly from the Asian continent and were composed of different races.
Specifically, the ancestors of the Japanese people are not a single ethnic group, but come from many different origins. Their genetic makeup mainly consists of three parts: the Northeast Asian gene, the Han gene, and the Jomon gene. Among them, the Han gene accounts for 43%, the Jomon gene accounts for 25%, and the Northeast Asian gene accounts for 32%.
This result suggests that the ancestors of the Japanese were not merely descendants of the Chinese navigator Xu Fu, as traditionally believed, but were a mixture of multiple ethnic groups.
In addition, DNA analysis has shown that the Denisovans and Neanderthals carried by the Japanese are from Han China, rather than the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, as previously thought.
At the same time, Okinawa has a higher genetic affinity with Jomon, and the western or western regions are genetically closer to the Chinese than the rest of the main island, and some genes are highly overlapping with those of people on the Loess Plateau and Tibet in China.
Not only that, but they also have some genes from Europe in their genomes, which are largely due to historical migrations.
In general, the ancestors of the Japanese people are indeed the Jomon people, but the Jomon people do not have only one race, and the Japanese people are bred by the combination of different races.