Japan is a country that likes to think of itself as coming from more or less the same genetic stock, called Yamato Japanese, which is kind of silly since you only need to meet a few dozen people here to see that there are many obvious differences in skin shade, the shape of the face and eyes, body type and so on among the “uniform” Japanese people. The original inhabitants of the Japanese islands were a group called the Ainu, which were once spread throughout the islands but were pushed northward as Japan’s mainstream culture expanded out from the Nara-Kyoto area. The Ainu were quite different from the Japanese, growing long, thick beards and tattooing their bodies extensively, with women traditionally tattooing moustaches onto their faces to ward off demons. Their belief system is very close to the Japanese Shinto religion which sees kami (gods or spirits) in natural objects, and this probably formed the basis of Shintoism, although I’m not sure if Japanese like to admit that openly. The Ainu possess their own language and culture, although it’s been very difficult maintaining their individuality given all the changes that have visited Japanese society over the past century, including the Soviet seizure of Sakhalin Island at the end of World War II, which forced many of the the remaining Ainu to flee to Hokkaido. Recently the Japanese Diet passed a resolution calling for the government to officially recognize the Ainu as a separate ethnic group, an important historical milestone.
