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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw3j__MaTUQ [snip] In this video I talk about the Ainu, the indigenous people from the northern region of Japan, their culture, genetic profile, and ancestry. They are well known as the ethnic group that appears in manga series "Golden Kamuy."Data Source: Wang, CC., Yeh, HY., Popov, A.N. et al. Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia. Nature 591, 413–419 (2021). [/snip]DNA Analyses and Genetic Origins of the Ainu | 9:05Decimali | 5.93K subscribers | 475,461 views | September 30, 2023

On this date in 1865, the Japanese samurai Okada Izo was dispatched by crucifixion. He was one of* the “Four Hitokiri“ — manslayers — whose legendary blades coruscated in the Bakumatsu era that marked Japan’s pivot from an isolationist feudal state, one where samurai were big men on prefectures, to a burgeoning modern power ruled by industry and mass conscription. The irony was that dinosaurs like the Hitokiri helped bring the asteroid down on their own heads. During the chaotic Bakumatsu period, triggered by Japan’s becoming involuntarily opened to the outside world, the emperor — long a figurehead marginalized by...

The current theory on human migrations into Japan is that the original inhabitants, the Jomon people, were met about 2,500 years ago by a separate group coming mainly from the Korean Peninsula, the Yayoi people. Archaeologists have identified fewer Jomon sites from the Late Jomon Period, the era immediately before the Yayoi arrival. Global temperatures and sea levels dropped during that period, which could have made life more difficult for the hunter-gatherer Jomon people. When the Yayoi people arrived, they brought wet rice farming to Japan, which would have led to a more stable food supply for the remaining Jomon...

U.S. Marine tilt-rotor aircraft swooped in during a joint training exercise at this military training range in southwestern Japan last week, dropping off Japanese ground troops and peeling away. The soldiers raced to nearby positions, cutting off an opposing force threatening Marines nearby. As military maneuvers go, it was fairly basic. But had it been a real-world mission, it might also have been illegal. Under the current interpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution, Japan’s armed forces are not permitted to fight on behalf of friends or allies unless the Japanese themselves come under direct attack. It is a policy that conservative...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan should be prepared to shoot down ballistic missiles bound for the United States although this would relax its self-imposed ban on collective self-defense, or aiding an ally under attack, government advisers said on Friday. North Korea, which launched a Taepodong ballistic missile in 1998 that overflew Japan, is believed to have missiles capable of reaching the United States, Japan's closest security ally. Washington has made clear it would welcome an end to the collective self-defense ban. "There was overall consensus that it is absurd to have a legal system where Japan can't do anything," said Shinichi...

Pacifism has never been so silly. In an East Asia that features both one of the world's most irrational states and a rising dictatorial power bent on changing the region's strategic balance, it is a crucial ally of the United States that labors under a constitution that could have been written by Quakers. As part of her tour of Asia this week, Secretary of State Condi Rice visited a Japan that is slowly emerging from its shell. It is one of the diplomatic triumphs of the Bush administration that it has helped accelerate this process. The ideal should be to...

<p>Just only a quick blurb in the top news segement today, but Mainichi News reports that two elderly Japanese men in their 80s have turned themselves into or otherwise presented themselves to Japanese authorities in the southern Philippines in Mindanao, apparantly "surrendering" or at least talking to them, after holding our for nearly 60 years in the Philippines following Japan's WWII defeat.</p>

KUWAIT-IRAQ BORDER, March 20 (Reuters) - A new group of Japanese troops crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on Saturday to join countrymen serving as part of U.S.-led forces in Iraq, days after Spain said it plans to withdraw soldiers from the country. Some 130 Japanese troops rolled into Iraq in a convoy of about 50 trucks and armoured personnel carriers mounted with heavy machineguns. They were heading towards the city of Samawa in southern Iraq, where some 250 Japanese troops are building a base and conducting humanitarian operations. The deployment comes several days after Spain's Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez...

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