Yamato people

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The Yamato people (Japanese: 大和民族) are the dominant native ethnic group of Japan. It is a term that came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the residents of the mainland Japan from other minority ethnic groups who have resided in the peripheral areas of Japan such as Ainu, Okinawans, Nivkhs, Uilta, as well as Koreans, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese aborigines who were incorporated into the Empire of Japan in the early 20th century.

There is a controversy on whether to include the Okinawans in the Yamato, or identify them as an independent ethnic group, or as a sub-group that constitutes Japanese ethnicity together with the Yamato because of close similarities suggested by genetics and linguistics. Nobuo Origuchi (折口信夫) argues that Okinawans are the "proto-Japanese" (原日本人), whereas Kunio Yanagita suggests that they were a part of the ancestors of the Japanese who came from the south and parted at the Ryukyu Islands from the rest who eventually reached the Japanese archipelago and became the Yamato.

The name "Yamato" comes from the Yamato Court that existed in Japan in the 4th century.

The use of the term "Yamato people" is becoming less common in Japan.

Yamato people

See also