Yes, that’s right.

Japan said the Emperor was Korean, when it was convenient to annex Korea. And it was a perfect excuse. And, probably never mentioned again.”

Well, wjk, to some degree I agree with that. Never mentioned again is maybe a too strong word because the relationship between ancient Korea and ancient Japan is basically textbook knowledge here in Japan, and the most popular post war theory of the origin of the Japanese emperorship in Japan was the theory of “Conquest of Japan by the mounted horse riders (騎馬民族征服説) who originated from Manchuria and came via Korea”, propagated by the Japanese archaeologist and ethnologist Egami Namio in which he argued that basically the Japanese royal family and other superior cast of these conquerors had their origin in Koguryo .
. Koguryo tombs and other material stuff was used to justify this theory, and post war “progressive” or “leftist” archaeologist tried hard to discharge his theory. The funny thing is although this theory was actually regarded as wrong in academic circles quite early in the 1970ies, it remained popular among amateur historian and among the mass media (until the mid 1990ies, you could find every year a new book who handled this theory)..

If you want to understand the relation of ancient Japan and Korea, you have to drop the modern consciousness of nation and nationalism. I don’t believe that there was any “Japanese” or “Korean” in the modern sense 1500 years ago.

Anyways, I’m all for anything that can quite down the ultra-nationalists in Japan. A friend of mine came back from teaching English in Japan and he says those black vans w/the loud speakers are getting more numerous.

Further evidence the “right wing” has even les s backing than ever.

If they had any support, they wouldn’t have to resort to driving around in trucks with loudspeakers to get their message heard. Yes it’s sad that Japan is a democratic free nation where these minorities are allowed to think whatever they want, but it could be worse. In my home country for example, the right wing has their own TV station, owns a majority of the printed news media, and even has their puppet in the White House.

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it again; loudspeaker trucks is great because it means they have no support. Once they disappear I get suspicious. Think of the homeless Vietnam vet that hangs out on your corner talking about Aliens, that’s what these black trucks are. I can’t wait until we hear from Onishi writing in the NY Times about the reassuring looney toones in America because he went and watched said crazies give a speech with no one listening. That’s about how justified these claims of the evil right wing in Japan are.

In fact, it’s only natural that there is some strategic or forced mixing of blood.

Korea has no respect for the Emperor, but when it’s convenient for its objectives, Korea says the Emperor is Korean. No plans to honor the Emperor whatsoever, though.

Japan says the Emperor is Korean when it needed an excuse to annex Korea. In other instances, it denies such an idea.

You don’t see the British crown claiming Spain, Austria, Russia, and Germany.

Do you preview your comments before you post?! What the hell does this have to do with Japan’s royal tombs?

Korea says the Emperor is Korean when it fits their objectives. They have no interests in buying the emperor anything, not even lunch.

Japan said the Emperor was Korean, when it was convenient to annex Korea. And it was a perfect excuse. And, probably never mentioned again.

Yes, what Tomojiro says is most likely the truth.

Yes, it was in a theoretical sense a “reunification” and I have heard from a Korean source of intellectual work that indeed that was one of the pretexts the Imperial Japanese used to justify putting Chosun under the Japanese crown.

I have never heard of a Chinese source of royalty claiming the Japanese crown.

But, it is a strong possibility because southern Chinese pronunciation of Chinese characters are so similar to the Korean and the Japanese. The Oh-eum.

What I always wondered about was what connection the Japanese share with Indonesia. I think there is a genetic match, but I am not certain. I just read it in some odd book.

However, we are talking about 1/2 to the n th power of continental blood, possibly Korean, being in the Japanese Imperial blood line.

what relevance is that, really?

Take a look at the European crowns, and you see that Queen Victoria spread Hemophilia to Britain, Spain, Russia, etc, etc.

and ultimately, the Japanese came to Korea to take, take, take. What if any good was done by claiming blood relations?

that was what was really wrong about that “reunification”.

Please note that to my knowledge, the current British monarchy has 1/2 to n=

As I understand the debate, summarized in the Jarrod Diamond article, no one disputes that there was an interchange of culture, or a flow of knowledge, particularly rice culture, from Korea to Japan around 1500 to 2000 years ago.

The debate concerns whether:

A)The Japanese hunter gatherers maintained control of their land, sending scholars to study in Korea and China, or inviting a few Korean craftsmen to acquire new technology, in which case the Japanese today could trace their lineage all the way back to the Sun Goddess and Japan’s original inhabitants
This is the version nationalists in Japan would prefer.

or,
B)The technologically advanced Koreans, possessing rice culture, colonized Kyushu. With their more productive farming techniques, the population their population exploded and they displaced the native Japanese, pushing them all the way up to Hokkaido, where they exist today as the Ainu. In this case, the ‘modern Japanese’ are really descendents of Korean colonizers, with no lineage connecting them to the country’s original inhabitants.
This is the version Koreans would prefer, and is also what Diamond considers to be more plausible, since historically, societies with more advanced technology have shown a tendency to crush primitive hunter gatherer groups.

Tomojiro and Shakuhachi, you both ignore the crucial element of power and politics in the flow of technology from Korea to Japan, and describe a kind of harmonious mixing of peoples to make up the present Japanese people. MOst likely, it was not harmonious, but involved domination - one group taking the other group’s women, property and valuable possessions, etc.

There also exists an interesting parallel here with the Saxon invasion of England, around 600 AD? or so (not sure of the date). There too, people on the island suddenly adopted entirely new customs, burial patterns,etc. And there is a debate as to whether they simply mimicked a new powerful group, or whether it was Saxon settlers displacing the original inhabitants. In the case of Japan/Korea, though, rice culture would have given the Koreans a great power advantage over the Japanese hunter gatherers.

Anyways, I’m all for anything that can quite down the ultra-nationalists in Japan. A friend of mine came back from teaching English in Japan and he says those black vans w/the loud speakers are getting more numerous.

# 28, I think that East Asia (or anyone else for that matter) has a flawed sense of nationality of it thinks that genetics and nationalism should be tied together.