日本人の均質性を問う（1）：稲作中心の見方Challenging the Rice-Centered View of the Japanese (1)

The idea that the Japanese form a single, homogeneous people has become deeply rooted today, yet unraveling how this view was established involves navigating the narrow vantage of modern scholarship and intertwined political contexts. Personally, I am not an academic, but rather someone who continually explores history, culture, customs, and religious beliefs integratively. Therefore, I find it difficult to agree with the academically supported view of a homogeneous people, and instead find myself aligning more closely with the often marginal view that sees life in the Japanese archipelago as layers laid over one another. For convenience, I call this the “layered view.”

Yet, at the same time, it is essential to consider that there might have been a certain historical period in which the varied origins of the people of Japan were systematically gathered into a single story, thereby giving rise to the view of a homogeneous people. Thus, debating whether one viewpoint is simply right or wrong becomes meaningless; instead, it is more critical to approach the subject carefully, using deep insight informed by integrative domains unique to Japanese thought.

Within Japan’s ancient layers, numerous instances of complex intermingling of peoples remain unexplained. Recently, genetic analysis technologies have become prevalent even in archaeology, leading to various new hypotheses receiving attention. However, these genetic findings tend to be simplistically equated with “the reality of Japanese identity,” a tendency that I argue obstructs accurate understanding of Japan. While genetics may serve as a reference, it cannot fully elucidate the complexities of cultural mixing. Additionally, genetic data strongly depends on specific tested individuals, making it particularly unreliable in representing entire populations from the Jomon, Yayoi, or Kofun periods.

Putting aside contemporary political circumstances, a calm reflection based on Japan’s geographical and historical positioning—as an island nation located at the eastern edge of Eurasia—clearly reveals that many people must have historically migrated to Japan via various Asian regions. Most of them likely passed through neighboring China and Korea, yet there is ample evidence to suggest additional migrations from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and even as far as Persia. Such intricate lineages gradually blended over thousands of years and led to today’s Japanese population. Then, why did the view of a homogeneous people, which leaves this complexity out, come to dominate?

Multiple academic lineages from modern times contributed to this background, but here I will specifically discuss the “rice-centered view,” a major foundation of the view of a homogeneous people.

The “rice-centered view” asserts that the formation of a single Japanese culture is fundamentally linked to “rice cultivation (specifically wet-rice agriculture),” interpreting history comprehensively from the perspective that “Japanese = wet-rice agriculture.” This school of thought finds its origin in the work of the folklorist Kunio Yanagita (柳田國男, 1875-1962).

Yanagita, who achieved remarkable success as Japan’s first folklorist, persistently maintained throughout his life the belief that “the Japanese are a rice-growing people,” never abandoning this premise while systematically classifying folk customs nationwide. Yanagita’s “rice-centered view” posited that the Japanese shared a unified culture as agriculturalists engaged primarily in rice cultivation. Within his folklore studies, he introduced the concept of “jomin” (常民, ordinary people), identifying them specifically as settled agriculturalists engaged in wet-rice farming.

Yanagita notably pointed out that even in mountainous villages, people harbored a special reverence for rice, famously stating: “Though they might subsist daily on millet or barnyard grass, rice is absolutely indispensable when worshipping kami (神).” This illustrates clearly Yanagita’s conviction. Thus, he emphasized that even in remote villages, inhabitants made efforts to grow rice specifically for religious offerings. This indicates a custom in which, despite regularly eating coarse grains, rice alone was always used for special ceremonial occasions known as “hare” (ハレ, festive or ceremonial events). Yanagita considered this to be the fundamental cultural practice unifying communities across Japan, ultimately providing the foundation for his theory that the Japanese shared a single culture.

While Yanagita certainly provided valuable insights, one must remain cautious of his persistent tendency to view Japanese origins through the lens of rice cultivation, thereby strengthening his own theory. His ideas culminated in his later work, “The Sea Road” (海上の道), published in 1961. In this book, he claimed that ancestors of the Japanese were people who traveled northward from southern islands carrying rice and its associated religious beliefs, eventually reaching the Japanese archipelago. Yanagita’s portrayal of the Japanese as “rice-cultivators from the South” epitomizes his perspective of rice agriculture as the root of Japanese culture. Influenced by Yanagita, the folkloristic school—later termed “Yanagita Folklore Studies” (柳田民俗学)—consistently emphasized similarities in annual village events and agricultural rituals (such as rice planting and harvest festivals) throughout Japan, adopting an extreme stance that ignored non-rice-based religious practices.

For the few people, including myself, who view the Japanese not as one homogeneous group but as layers laid over one another, what Yanagita’s school of folklore systematically disregarded are precisely the elements that could indicate origins even older than rice cultivation, making it impossible to agree with his dismissive approach. However, the commonalities emphasized by Yanagita came to be positioned as evidence of a spiritual unity among Japanese people, and notably were long linked with national unity under the emperor-centered state system. Yanagita’s rice-centered view not only influenced folklore studies but had a tremendous impact broadly on discussions of Japanese identity, both prewar and postwar, becoming a crucial pillar supporting the idea of a homogeneous, rice-growing Japanese people. The ways of life in the regions excluded from Yanagita’s research continued to be ignored thereafter, leading to a perspective that those who neither practiced rice cultivation nor worshipped rice were simply “not Japanese.” The strongest propaganda arising from this perspective is the widespread claim that “the staple food of the Japanese is rice.”

One of the earliest scholars to express doubts about Yanagita’s assumptions was Shinobu Orikuchi (折口信夫, 1887–1953), a folklorist who has been mentioned several times on Shitsurae. Orikuchi never aligned with Yanagita’s image of a homogeneous people; instead, he independently and patiently investigated the deeper ancient layers that Yanagita overlooked, continually publishing research papers, and thus, in my assessment, laid the true foundation for Japanese folklore studies. Yet, because Yanagita was widely revered as the father of Japanese folklore studies and aligned favorably with the military establishment (particularly the Army) that relied on the image of a homogeneous Japanese people during prewar and wartime periods, Orikuchi’s contributions were considered heterodox and were therefore marginalized and not sufficiently valued.

Understanding this dynamic becomes clearer if we recognize the split between “Yanagita-style folklore studies,” premised upon a homogeneous Japanese people, and “Orikuchi-style folklore studies,” premised upon deep layers of origin. Personally, I believe that any deep understanding of Japan and the Japanese people must engage seriously with Orikuchi’s work. Conversely, the countless theories on Japanese identity that fail to account for Orikuchi should be approached cautiously, as they often reveal the strong subjectivity of their proponents. Following Orikuchi’s lineage, and decisively refuting Yanagita’s rice-centered view, was another folklorist, Hirofumi Tsuboi (坪井洋文, 1929–1988).

However, Tsuboi’s name has now been completely forgotten, and he continues to be overlooked. Personally, I believe that the “Orikuchi–Tsuboi” line of folklore research holds the keys and true insights for revealing the genuine nature of Japan. Yet, their theories present significant inconveniences for those who persistently adhere to the image of a homogeneous people. The main reason for Tsuboi’s marginalization lies in his seminal work, “Imo to Nihonjin” (イモと日本人, “Tubers and the Japanese,” 1979). In this book, Tsuboi challenged Yanagita’s arbitrary rice-centered historical and folkloric perspectives, meticulously presenting evidence gathered from years of research to counter Yanagita’s assumptions about the Japanese identity.

In brief, Tsuboi highlighted that throughout Japan, there persist significant cultural systems centered around crops other than rice. Generally, in modern Japan, it is considered traditional culture to eat “mochi” (rice cakes) during the New Year, but this too is actually a misconception originating from Yanagita’s rice-centered view. In reality, numerous regions throughout Japan traditionally did not eat mochi during the New Year. Instead, Tsuboi demonstrated that these regions traditionally worshipped and consumed satoimo (里芋, taro) rather than rice cakes during the New Year season. Furthermore, he clarified the existence of traditional food cultures centered not only on taro but also on yamaimo (山芋, yams), millet, and barnyard grass, revealing the presence of communities whose culture did not include rice.

Readers may realize at this point that millet and tubers are crops associated with “dry-field agriculture” (畑作). Simply put, these crops directly counter Yanagita’s insistence on “wet-rice agriculture,” but dry-field agriculture actually had overwhelmingly wider distribution across Japan. Among these dry-field agricultural methods, Tsuboi especially emphasized “slash-and-burn farming” (焼畑), which nowadays has become virtually nonexistent, effectively extinct (Though a few regions continue this practice in a limited manner even today, it is a culture that has largely vanished). The reason for this disappearance is that dry-field agricultural cultures were gradually displaced by the wet-rice cultivation culture promoted by Yanagita’s school. Indeed, rice culture has permeated modern Japanese society to such an extent that most contemporary Japanese now regard rice as their staple food, rice is ritually offered in festivals nationwide, and most regions have adopted eating mochi during the New Year celebrations.

Thus, Yanagita’s erroneous, subjective image of the Japanese identity gradually influenced contemporary archaeological studies as well, eventually driving the ideological shift toward a wartime regime that equated the worship of wet-rice agriculture with reverence for the emperor.