Diversity & Inclusion Climate Although Japan is a highly ethnically homogenous country – 98.5% of the population is Japanese – it is considered a tolerant country, welcoming of visitors.
The largest ethnic minority in Japan is a group of around 700,000 Koreans. Large communities of Brazilians, Filipinos, and Americans also live in Japan. Other significant ethnic minorities are the Chinese and a tiny group of aborigines called the Ainu. The Ainu are the one remaining distinct ethnic group in Japan.
Currently, the most well-regarded theory is that present-day Japanese are descendants of both the indigenous Jōmon people and the immigrant Yayoi people.
In general, genetic differences between Japanese and Han Chinese are larger than that between Korean and Han Chinese. In general, genetic differences between Japanese and Han Chinese are larger than that between Korean and Han Chinese.
After surviving millennia it finally had a standard written form, and is now one of the most spoken languages in the world! So Chinese predates both Japanese and Korean, and, interestingly, it had a big influence on both.
The Yamato people are the dominant native ethnic group of Japan and because of their numbers, the term Yamato is often used interchangeably with the term Japanese.
124,687,293 (July 2021 est.) Japanese 97.9%, Chinese 0.6%, Korean 0.4%, other 1.1% (includes Vietnamese, Filipino, and Brazilian) (2017 est.) The World Factbook, the indispensable source for basic information. Shintoism 69%, Buddhism 66.7%, Christianity 1.5%, other 6.2% (2018 est.)
On average, the Okinawans were found to share 80.8% (±11.2 SD) admixture with Japanese and 19.2% (±11.2 SD) admixture with Chinese suggesting that the Okinawans and the Japanese share substantial common ancestry.
Shinto and Buddhism are Japan's two major religions. Shinto is as old as the Japanese culture, while Buddhism was imported from the mainland in the 6th century. Since then, the two religions have been co-existing relatively harmoniously and have even complemented each other to a certain degree.
China, the much older state and the more developed, passed on to Japan (sometimes indirectly via Korea) a long list of ideas including rice cultivation, writing, Buddhism, centralised government models, civil service examinations, temple architecture, clothing, art, literature, music, and eating habits.
Japan's indigenous people, the Ainu, were the earliest settlers of Hokkaido, Japan's northern island.
Hāfu (ハーフ, "half") is a Japanese language term used to refer to a person ethnically half Japanese and half non-Japanese. A loanword from English, the term literally means "half," a reference to the individual's non-Japanese heritage. The word can also be used to describe anyone with mixed-racial ancestry in general.
Racial and Ethnic Identity
Japan is a relatively homogeneous society with an absolute majority of the population being of Japanese ethnicity.
But still, Japan was home to about 10,000 Russian citizens as of 2022, the majority of whom are permanent residents, according to the Immigration Services Agency.
China was the world's most populous country from at least 1950 until being surpassed by India in 2023. As of December 2022, China's population stood at 1.4118 billion. According to the 2020 census, 91.11% of the population was Han Chinese, and 8.89% were minorities.
The official language is Japanese, and is the only language spoken by the vast majority of the population. If you're looking for someone who speaks English, you're likely to have more luck the younger the person is, although it's not guaranteed.
The people of Kyōto. Kyōto is one of the largest cities in Japan. Its population—which includes a sizable foreign community comprising mainly Koreans (many brought there forcibly during World War II), Chinese, and Americans—has remained relatively stable for a number of years.
Nihon-jin (日本人) (Japanese people)
Japanese life expectancy
This low mortality is mainly attributable to a low rate of obesity, low consumption of red meat, and high consumption of fish and plant foods such as soybeans and tea. In Japan, the obesity rate is low (4.8% for men and 3.7% for women).
Lower literacy rates are found mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The world's largest ethnic group is Han Chinese, constituting over 19% of the global population in 2011. In terms of the largest number of native speakers, Mandarin is the world's most spoken language.
Further, the Koreans are more closely related to the Japanese and quite distant from the Chinese. The above evidence of the origin of Koreans fits well with the ethnohistoric account of the origin of Koreans and the Korean language. The minority Koreans in China also maintained their genetic identity.
Before 1949. China and Japan are geographically separated only by a relatively narrow stretch of ocean. China has strongly influenced Japan with its writing system, architecture, culture, religion, philosophy, and law.
Although the spoken language and the written language have obviously influenced one another, they each have their own unrelated histories. Japanese writing is clearly taken from Chinese, but the language itself (i.e. speech) is a mystery.