The steppe origins of the continental component of the Japanese people and culture: The uniquely shared Mongolian and Japanese land-creation myth

In the last comments section, I detailed many ways in which Japan looks like a horse-riding culture from the eastern Eurasian steppe. I will compile and condense those ways in a later post, and add a few crucial new ones in standalone posts, beginning with this one. But in order to provide some big-picture historical structure to this view, I should contrast it with a highly popular and sometimes controversial theory of Japanese origins, within the Japanese scholarly community and Japanese pop culture itself.

That is the so-called "horse-rider theory" of the origins of the Yamato state and its culture, proposed by Namio Egami in 1948 and elaborated / refined / altered throughout the following decades. Here is the Japanese Wikipedia entry, which you can put into Google Translate's "websites" section, to get the fuller details.

Although it sounds similar to the story I was developing in the previous comments section, it's actually quite different. Egami argued for the arrival of eastern steppe horse-riders in the 4th to 5th centuries AD, as part of the broader migrations and conquests of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists from the eastern steppe during the Eurasian Dark Ages (Huns, Bulgars, Turks, Uyghurs, Mongols, etc.). In his view, this invasion of horse-riders radically changed the previous culture of the Yayoi period -- 1st millennium BC to 300 AD -- which reflected the arrival of rice farmers into the lands of mostly hunter / gatherer / fishermen (and adzuki bean harvesters) of the earlier Jomon period (back to 10,000 or so BC).

I'm arguing that the people who arrived during the Yayoi period, who brought rice agriculture and other things along with them, were an eastern steppe people. So I'm saying the steppe origins of the Japanese people and their culture goes much deeper than Egami's theory proposes.

But wait -- isn't the steppe famous for its nomadic pastoralists who ride horses? The continental Asians who arrived in the Japanese archipelago during the Yayoi period did not practice this subsistence mode -- they brought sedentary agriculture with them, mainly rice.

Well, cultures can change their subsistence mode over time, they aren't entirely defined by it. And that includes the very region of interest, the eastern steppe. The most famous example of a people from there who spoke a language in the Altaic family (in the Tungusic sub-family), who were not nomadic pastoralists but agriculturalists -- including rice -- were the Manchus, who founded and led the Qing Empire of China in the 17th C. Their ancestors, the Jurchens, led the Jin dynasty of China, which included northern China in addition to Manchuria, mainly during the 12th C. They were also agriculturalists, not nomadic pastoralists. And their ancestors, the Mohe, were also mainly agricultralists, not nomadic pastoralists. None of these groups were small hunter-gatherer communities from northeastern Siberia.

Once upon a time, there was no rice agriculture in Manchuria -- it was "invented" in the Yellow River region, by the people who became the Han majority ethnic group in China, who spoke a Sinitic language. Because the Mohe, Jurchens, and Manchus were not small-scale hunter-gatherers, presumably they *were* nomadic pastoralists at some point before they settled down and adopted agriculture -- what other subsistence mode is there in Manchuria? So, their subsistence mode changed, from pastoralism to sedentary agriculture, under the influence of China.

The Jurchens also based their writing system on the Chinese system, despite their language being from a totally unrelated family. In fact, they maintained their Tungusic linguistic identity through much of the Qing era, albeit becoming bilingual in Chinese as well as they integrated further into the society they led. By now, most of their young people are monolingual Chinese speakers who live in China. When the Qing Empire collapsed in the 1910s, the Manchus didn't leave back to Manchuria, and they didn't ditch the Chinese language. They are heavily Sinicized by now.

The same goes for their shamanistic religion, which was maintained at least among themselves during the Qing era (they did not try to impose it on the Han majority). As with other domains of their culture, they have largely left it behind and Sinicized by now.

I can't believe that the Mohe / Jurchens / Manchus were the only cultural lineage like this in that region. Although the steppe grasslands favor nomadic pastoralism and horse-riding, that niche can get crowded -- when everybody is doing it, it pays to do something different. Maybe you have to leave for greener pastures, as it were.

And during the 1st millennium BC, that niche was already starting to feel a little full, represented by the vast confederation of tribes united by the Xiongnu, who plagued the sedentary agriculturalists of China, serving as the meta-ethnic nemesis for the incipient Han ethnogenesis. As the Han united into an empire under the threat of the Xiongnu, they eventually turned the tables and broke up the nomadic confederation.

But that was only temporary, as the Xianbei confederation would emerge to fill the steppe empire vacuum left by the broken-up Xiongnu confederation, roughly 300 BC to 300 AD, as rivals to the agricultural and Chinese-speaking Han to their south.

My hunch is that the continental Asians who migrated into the Korean peninsula and from there the Japanese archipelago, during the 1st millennium BC and early centuries AD, were an earlier example of the Mohe / Jurchen / Manchu strategy. Maybe they felt the nomadic pastoralist niche was too saturated, with too much competition, so they decided to try their hand at rice farming instead. Or maybe their tribe was kicked out of one of those many steppe confederations, and sent into exile -- so they couldn't just stay in the region, they moved all the way over into the Korean peninsula and then the Japanese islands.

Whatever the reason was, it had to have been big, since they are the only large-scale migration from Asia into the Japanese islands. Northeastern Siberia, Manchuria, Mongolia, northern China, southern China, the Ural and Altai mountains, the steppe as a whole -- various peoples have come and gone, many times over, throughout human existence. But other than the small-scale migration of primitive hunter-gatherers into the Japanese islands during prehistoric times, the arrival of the Yayoi people are the only large-scale migration into Japan ever.

Even just migrating into the Korean peninsula was a huge move -- that peninsula has not seen wave after wave of migrations either. There were some Jomon-like people in the southern region, then the Yayoi-like people arrived, and after them, the Koreans. There's a small handful of Tungusic toponyms and loanwords in Korea, and some Nivkh as well -- but really the only large-scale migrations into Korea were the Yayoi and then the Koreans who assimilated them.

Especially for nomadic pastoralists from the steppe, accustomed to wide-ranging spaces and grass as far as the eye could see, moving into the cramped and rocky terrain of Korea and Japan would have been quite the downgrade. But if they decided to give up nomadic pastoralism and adapt to their newfound environments, maybe it wouldn't be so inhospitable and uncomfortable after all. They seem to have already decided to adopt rice agriculture before they entered Korea -- as long as they could find a patch of fertile soil for growing rice, that would be enough. It would not be as romantic as the wide-open grasslands where they originally came from, but that was apparently no longer a viable option -- they had some kind of powerful motive to leave the Asian mainland behind, since they were the only group to do so.

* * *

When they met the Jomon-like people, first in southern Korea and then like crazy in the Japanese islands, the Yayoi-like people were a steppe culture, but who practiced agriculture instead of horse-based pastoralism. They spoke a language from the Altaic group -- not a Japonic language, which did not exist yet, but something from Turkic, Mongolic, or Tungusic.

As they absorbed large numbers of L2 learners from the Jomon-like people, who spoke languages related to present-day Ainu, that acted as a filter that fundamentally altered the original Altaic language, since the Ainu-like language speakers could not pronounce its sounds, and the Altaic speakers could not pronounce some of the Ainu-like sounds, their word-forming processes were different, and so on.

The resulting compromise language for the newly fused cultures was Japonic -- that is why there are no Japonic toponyms in mainland Asia aside from the southern half of the Korean peninsula. It originated in southern Korea, and it was not dropped there by a linguistic stork, nor does it go back to time immemorial -- it attended the arrival of Yayoi-like people during the 1st millennium BC. But the reason it is not a straightforward example of an Altaic language is that Ainu-like languages are sufficiently different from Altaic languages, that the pidgin / creole / synthesis / lingua franca compromise was only half-recognizable as Altaic, and half-not-Altaic.

Likewise, when the Koreans later arrived and assimilated the earlier Yayoi people, and/or the remaining Jomon people, in the Korean peninsula, they inherited the same problem. They arrived in Korea speaking an Altaic language, but they had to absorb large numbers of speakers who spoke an Ainu-like language (unassimilated Jomon), or speakers of a new language that was itself heavily filtered by the traits of Ainu-like languages -- i.e., Japonic (Yayoi and assimilated Jomon).

That is why Japonic and Koreanic are partly included in the Altaic family and partly excluded. The core languages are Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic. The only others that anyone entertains including are Japonic and Koreanic, but they are only somewhat entertained because they're sufficiently different -- due to the changes incurred by absorbing large numbers of Ainu-like speakers, who were present in southern Korea and Japan, but who were not present elsewhere on mainland Asia.

The same process must have affected the other domains of their culture. The Yayoi brought a largely steppe culture with them, but it was filtered through Ainu-like culture, and the resulting hybrid / synthesis / compromise / joint-collaboration for something new, was not a carbon-copy of Turkic, Mongolic, or Tungusic culture. Nor was it a carbon-copy of Ainu-like culture. There are elements from both sides, as well as entirely new elements created after the initial fusion of Yayoi and Jomon peoples.

* * *

And yet, there are telltale signs of the Yayoi's steppe origins, aside from their language. I detailed many in the previous comments section, and will list those briefly in a later post. For now, though, I'll return to the domain of mythology to uncover specifically Altaic-related cultural origins for the very earliest and most foundational forms of Japanese myths.

First, the Japanese creation myth -- hard to find a more important myth than that! Many creation myths around the world tell of the sky being separate from the watery chaos of the oceans. Both sky and water are so uniform, or rather formless, that they are more primordial than land -- land has particular shapes, arranged in particular configurations, with particular landscape features running over them, with particular plant and animal species thriving on them, and later on, particular peoples and cultures or even civilizations thriving on them.

Creating the vast expanse of sky? Bla bla bla. Creating the vast expanse of ocean? Yadda yadda yadda. Get to the good part -- how were the landmasses formed? That's where the story gets good.

Turns out, Japan has a very distinct creation myth. It is unlike the "earth diver" family of myths from Eurasia and the New World, where the creator god orders an animal (like a bird) to dive into the depths of the ocean, scoop up some earth from the very bottom, and return to the surface where it will be placed on top of the water, or on top of a large animal that floats on the water.

It is unlike the family of "giant body parts" myths, where a primordial giant's body is broken into pieces, and these form into landmasses.

Rather, the creator god, Izanagi (along with his sister-wife Izanami) dips a metal-headed spear into the primordial ocean, stirs and churns the water with it, and when he removes it from the ocean, the salty brine-y froth that drips off of the tip and lands back onto the ocean surface, becomes landmasses (specifically, those of the Japanese islands).

Although highly unique among the world's creation myths, it is not *totally* unique -- it is shared with a Mongolian creation myth, recorded by the Russian scholar / adventurer Potanin during his trek through Siberia in the 1870s, and published in his Essays on Northwest Mongolia in the early 1880s. His work was referenced in English in the 1927 mega-compendium, The Mythology of All Races, in the chapter on Finno-Ugric and Siberian myths by Holmberg, which I'm quoting from (p. 328).

In the beginning, when there was yet no earth, but water covered everything, a Lama came down from Heaven, and began to stir the water with an iron rod. By the influence of the wind and fire thus brought about, the water on the surface in the middle of the ocean thickened and coagulated into land.

The Lama element is obviously a later addition from their adoption of Tibetan Buddhism, but otherwise it is largely the same as the Japanese example. The creator god uses a tool (as opposed to his own body, an animal messenger, etc.) to stir the ocean, and the brine-y froth that results on the surface coagulates into solid land. No earth, mud, or other solid is retrieved from the depths of the ocean, no existing solid is re-cycled for solid land (like a giant's body parts). Stirring the ocean creates a brine-y froth, which hardens into landmasses.

A related myth from the times of creation, although not creating the landmasses themselves (p. 419, and still referencing Potanin).

The Altaic peoples speak of a time when there was no sun and no moon. They say that people, who then flew in the air, gave out light and warmed their surroundings themselves, so that they did not even miss the heat of the sun. But when one of them fell ill God sent a spirit to help these people. This spirit commenced by stirring the primeval ocean with a pole 10,000 fathoms long, when suddenly two goddesses flew into the sky. He also found two metal mirrors (toli), which he placed in the sky. Since then there has been light on the earth.

This is about the creation of the sun and moon in the sky, rather than landmasses on top of the ocean, and the agent is a spirit commanded by the creator god rather than the creator himself. And because the bodies formed are not lying on top of the ocean, there's no mention of the brine-y froth that results from stirring the ocean. And yet, the creation of the sun and moon somehow results from the stirring of the primordial ocean with a mythologically big pole.

This motif appears nowhere else in the mythologies of the world. It is found only in Mongolia -- and Glorious Nippon.

I haven't read the original Potanin work, so I'm not sure if the people he collected these stories from are Mongolic, Turkic, or Tungusic. Or, if they used to be Tungusic but then had switched their language to Mongolic by the time he met them. However, they're spoken about as Altaic, and in Mongolia, so they're from one of the core eastern steppe cultures that (at least by the 19th C) spoke an Altaic language. That's all that matters here -- that Japan's creation myth is very clearly genetically related to one from Mongolia.

Could one of the two sides "loaned" their creation myth to the other? No, that's ridiculous. You don't just toss out your traditional creation myth and "borrow" a new one, it's such a core part of your mythology. Only if one culture was such a huge influence on another.

But northwest Mongolia and Japan have not had any cultural contact throughout their histories. The Mongols tried to invade Japan, but their fleet was sunk by a divine wind (kamikaze). And the Japanese invaded Korea at various times, but never crossed over the mountains into Manchuria, Mongolia, and the rest of the steppe.

Plus, the Japanese myth is present in the earliest written works in Japanese -- the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, from the early 8th C. AD. There was no prolonged contact between them and various Altaic groups before then -- except for the Yayoi people's origins, before they entered Korea and Japan, which therefore must have been from the eastern steppe, and specifically from an Altaic-speaking culture. They descend from a common ancestor.

The Japanese love to emphasize their uniqueness, and this was no different for the 8th-century authors of the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. If they wanted to imitate China so badly, they could have borrowed the Chinese creation myth. But they didn't. They may even have asked around -- "Psst psst, does anyone near us tell the same story of the creation of land? Anyone? Not the Mohe? Not the Nivkh? Not the Emishi? Not the Turks? Great, we get to emphasize our special uniqueness!"

Little did they know, there was a sub-region of Mongolia where they *did* tell the same unique creation myth, heheh. And thankfully, somebody uncovered this detail before a lot of that region began assimilating toward Chinese and Russian cultures.

As a final aside for this section, I note the difficulty with which these crucial facts reach present-day residents of the American Empire. Learning about Japan is easy, since we've been fascinated by them, and they have been fascinated by us, since the 19th C, and then occupied them outright after WWII. But much of the fieldwork on Siberian, steppe and far NE Asian / Arctic cultures was and still is done by Russians, who became America's geopolitical enemies during the Cold War and sadly through the present.

There was little taboo surrounding Russian scholarship or culture in 1927 (other than remnants of the first Red Scare), when that mega-compendium was published in English in America. But by the Cold War, reading Russian scholarship or being aware of their culture at all became taboo. There was only one further semi-cited reference to the Mongolian creation myth -- the 1979 popular book Primal Myths by Sproul. I haven't read it, so I'm not sure if she even cites Potanin, or just read it via the Holmberg chapter in the 1927 mega-compendium and included it in her survey of creation myths from around the world. In any case, that's the last published reference to it that still circulates on Wikipedia, Reddit, and so on, all of which are ignorant of the source material being Potanin from the 1880s.

The Holmberg chapter notes the striking similarity to the Japanese creation myth in the following sentence. Not like it's a hard comparison to make -- they're practically identical -- but it does require the knowledge of both cultures' creation myths. And these days, only the Japanese one is easy to come by -- the Mongolian one has faded into obscurity, since it was originally recorded by a Russian. In 1927, it was easy for an English-speaking scholar to come by the Russian source, since they were not taboo -- they were not Western, but there was no broad shadowban on their culture, including science and scholarship, at that point.

It was also not controversial to refer to Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic as "Altaic" back in 1927, or to liken Japanese and Korean to them (to a lesser degree). Much of that work was done by Russians, since they're the empire expanding into Siberia and the eastern steppe. Once Russia became rivals of America during the Cold War, suddenly the entire concept of "Altaic" cultures or languages was slandered in the American imperial sphere of influence.

Maybe Holmberg didn't think it was worth saying explicitly -- like, "Yeah, of course the Japanese creation myth is identical to the Mongolian one, where else do you think the Continental Asian part of the Japanese comes from -- Beringia? China? Malaysia? Their languages are not even remotely like Japanese. No, it comes from a fellow Altaic culture, where the Yayoi must have originated from." At any rate, it is worth saying so explicitly now, as cOnTrOvErSiAl as it may be in 21st-century America.

Rather than add further examples in the comments section as usual, I'm going to try going back to writing a series of standalone posts. The comments section this time will be for less important stuff, open thread, etc. I'd like these to be easier to find by search engines, and they can't see into the comments section.