Emishi

This article is about the tribes. For the statesman at the Yamato imperial court, see Soga no Emishi.
Emishi
Origin
Word/nameJapanese
Region of originJapan

The Emishi (蝦夷), also called Ebisu and Ezo, were a people who lived in parts of northern Honshū in present-day Japan, especially in the Tōhoku region.

The first mention of the Emishi in literature that can be corroborated with outside sources dates to the 5th century CE,[citation needed] in which they are referred to as máorén (毛人—"hairy people") in Chinese records.[a] Some Emishi tribes resisted the rule of various Japanese emperors during the Asuka, Nara, and early Heian periods (7th–10th centuries CE).

The origin of the Emishi is disputed. They are generally thought to have descended from tribes of the Jōmon people, particularly the Zoku-Jōmon. The majority of scholars believe that they were related to the Ainu people, not necessarily identical but a distinct ethnicity.[1][2] The Emishi that inhabited Northern Honshu consisted likely of several tribes, which included pre-Ainu people, non-Yamato Japanese, and admixed people, who united and resisted the expansion of the Yamato Empire. It is suggested that the Emishi spoke an early variant of the Ainu languages or an Ainu-like language, while some may have spoken a divergent Japonic language, similar to the historical Izumo dialect.[2]


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  1. ^ Aston, W. G., trans. Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to AD 697. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1972 (reprint of two-volume 1924 edition), VII 18. Takahashi, Tomio. "Hitakami". In Egami, Namio ed. Ainu to Kodai Nippon. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1982.
  2. ^ a b Boer, Elisabeth de; Yang, Melinda A.; Kawagoe, Aileen; Barnes, Gina L. (2020). "Japan considered from the hypothesis of farmer/language spread". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.7. ISSN 2513-843X. PMC 10427481. This development has been taken to mean that the Epi-Jōmon population among the emishi who, from the evidence of place-names, must have spoken an Ainu-related language, moved away from northern Honshū into Hokkaidō in that period.