ABSTRACT
In 1949 the Japanese historian Egami Namio published what has. come to be known as the "horserider thesis," which takes the unorthodox position that the formation of the Japanese state in the late fourth or early fifth century resulted from an invasion and conquest of the indigenous population by a north Asian, horseriding people. 1 Despite Egami's tireless support of his ideas in subsequent years, the reaction of the Japanese academic community has been predominantly negative, with both historians and archeologists rejecting the thesis for what they perceived to be chronological inconsistencies or questionable handling of textual materials. In recent years, however, support for Egami's ideas has come from Western historians of Japan, who for a long time had been content to ignore the controversy. In a detailed and compelling article, Gari Ledyard has advanced a revised version of the horserider thesis, one which avoids many of the problematic aspects of the origina1.2 Basing his argument on a new interpretation of Japanese and Korean historic
JournalofJapaneseStudies
texts,Ledyardattemptstoputthesematerialsinamoreconsistent relationshipwiththehistoricalbackdropofnorthernAsiainthe fourthcentury.
