ABSTRACT
Both archaeologists and linguists still continue to argue regarding the time of migration of the Japanese people to the Japanese islands. Among the three major prehistoric archaeological cultures in Japan in the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD - Jomon l (until 3rd century BC), Yayoi (third century BC to third century AD), and Kofun (third century AD to fifth century AD) - the Japanese are most often associated with the Yayoi culture. The majority of archaeologists, historians and linguists support this point of view (Egami 1967; Ledyard 1975). However, some scholars, especially linguists, have expressed other opinions. R.A. Miller (1980, 1986a, 1986b) is probably the only scholar who believes that the Japanese language may go as far back as the Jomon culture, while the more common opinion is that Jomon culture should be associated with Ainu, the aboriginals of the Japanese archipelago. Another point of view suggests that the Japanese were the representatives of the Kofun culture (Unger 1990). The goal of this chapter is to support this
last point of view, to demonstrate that linguistically the Yayoi population cannot be defined as Japanese-speaking. This implies a question about the linguistic identity of the Yayoi people: if Jomon is associated with the Ainu and Kofun with the Japanese, who then were Yayoi from a linguistic standpoint? I shall try to provide an answer to this question.
