Korean Cultural Influences on Japan

sukoshi_mom

The other day I was browsing through a non-dog related blog and there was an entry about the Korean influence on Japanese culture. Intrigued, I did some googling and came up with this wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_influence_on_Japanese_culture

After reading this piece, I found myself wondering how much influence Korean dogs may have had on the development of the Nihon Ken.

Anyone on the forum have a good idea about this? (@ayk?)

jellyfish

i find this interesting. but i don't have any input so i'll be stalking if anyone chimes in.

MapleTwinkie

Chinese and Japanese cultures are much older than Korean cultures so I would say that there is less of an influence of Korean cultures on Japanese culture than the other way around. Looking at the dates in those articles, they are all very recent in the scope of their histories. Wiki is also not the greatest scholastic source in these fields anyway...lol

I don't think the Korean culture had anything to do with the way the Japanese developed their Nihon Ken. I think that's asking the wrong question altogether. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Japanese intended to bring the breed back to their original roots, i.e. how they existed in the wild, or at least during the early domestication periods. So I don't think there is a cultural influence persae, (by culture I mean tastes, styles etc) so much as it was a choice to preserve the original form.

thegela

Well, all civilization had to have started from the mainland, and so many people believe cultures to have moved from the mainland outwards. Korean cultures were heavily influenced by China, and Japanese cultures also have tons of Chinese influence. (The older Korean generation can read chinese characters, and Japan obviously still use it in their everyday language - kanji) (Also, Buddhism travelled from India towards the very east: Japan)
Not sure how that relates to dogs specifically, but Korea, Japan and China have had tons of wars over land and did a lot of trade since the Old Josen era (maybe not so much Japan... more Korea and China I believe. I have a feeling Japan was mostly at war with Korea and China than trading.) I think Korea's land in ancient times were even larger than what it is now, stretching to parts of China before they lost quite a bit of it in war. With all this back and forth and mixing of cultures, I'm sure the development of dogs have also been mixed. I'm sure they may have also presented exceptional hunting dogs as gifts to reigning emperors and noblemen of the time (China and Korea), also affecting the development and evolution of the breed. Now I'm just assuming this, but I don't know if they only stuck to silk, gold and other natural resources as gifts.

jeffnkazuko

I always thought that Korean culture was older than Japanese. People moved from Korea, China onto these Islands (Japan) and expanded northward.

timkim

I'm korean so I didn't want to get involved on these thread. but just wanted to make correction.
Japanese culture is shorter than Korean culture. Korean culture were influenced by China. China has 10000 years of history and Korean has 5000 years of history.
I don't think Japan has long enough history compare to these two.
Korean name changed from go gu ryu, back jae, shin ra, to jo seon and now korea.

rikumom

I'm part Japanese/Taiwanese and don't want to get involved either, but wanted to pass on a couple of references for those who are interested in further scholarly reading:

The 1997 book by Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies does a good job explaining the spread of civilization, including the people of the Pacific Rim.

Back in the 80s, there was a joint study in Taiwan/Japan tracing the tracing the origin of Japanese indigenous dog. The study is reference in the wiki entry of Formosan Mountain Dog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formosan_Mountain_Dog

ayk

With respect to dogs, blood polymorphism research by Tanabe was the one that introduced the idea that there were at least two waves of gene flow for dogs: the first was from Southeast Asia to all the Japanese islands; the second was from the Korean peninsula to the main Japanese islands. I believe they are associated with the Yayoi and Jomon people? (or is it Jomon and then Yayoi?) Here are some journal articles:

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Tanabe, Yuchi. The origin of Japanese Dogs and their Association with Japanese people. Zoological Science. 8: 639-651 (1991)

Tanabe, Y.; Ota, K.; Ito, S.; Hashimoto, Y.; Sung, Y.Y.; Ryu, J.K.; and M.O. Faruque. Biochemical-genetic relationships among Asian and European dogs and the ancestry of the Japanese native dog. J. Anim. Breed. Genet. 108: 455-478. (1991)

Fujise, Hiroshi; Higa, Kazunari; Nakayama, Takahiro; Wada, Kayoko; Ochiai, Hideharu and Yuichi Tanabe. Incidence of Dogs Possessing Red Blood Cells with High K in Japan and East Asia. The Journal of veterinary medical science. 59( 6): 495-497. (Jun 1997)

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Japanese documents in the 5th century recorded how a hawk was tamed for the first time in the Baekje Kingdom (one of several Korean kingdoms), and how three years later, some hawks and hunting dogs were taken from Baekje and introduced to the Japanese. Additional documents mention that horses, mules, and hunting dogs were shipped to Japan as a form of tribute up to 685 A.D.

I wouldn't presume to say that these Baekje Korean dogs were the basis of the Japanese dogs though as they're likely to be dwarfed out in the larger Japanese dogs' gene pool.

MapleTwinkie

@rikumom @jeffnkazuko @timkim @thegela - thank you for correcting me.

I'm chinese (hong kong)/japanese. I don't know WHY I though Japanese was older! :-SS

sukoshi_mom

Didn't mean to start a controversy. It simply occurred to me after reading about the Korean and Japanese "cultural exchanges" that Korean dogs might have migrated with the people to Japan and become intermixed with Japanese dogs. Certainly the modern day Jindo and Poongsan dogs bare a strong resemblance to some of the Nihon Ken.

rikumom

Thank you for acknowledging the topic may come across as a third rail

Saya

Not much to add to this, but I found info here interesting.

Also I found information on this dogster page interesting it talks about different shiba inu.. Mino, San-in, Kawakami-ken..

Here's link to it.
http://www.dogster.com/forums/shiba_inu/thread/663684

Check the info on the San-in shiba and blog.

sukoshi_mom

@saya- Interesting information-- especially about the San-in Shiba being closer to the Korean Jindo in terms of DNA.

yoshiko

Please read on if you are interested in Japanese culture. Otherwise, you can ignore my post because it's not dog related.... But it may be interesting for some people to take a peek of ancient time in Japan.

I'll skip discussing about Korean and Chinese cultures, but I would like to clarify history of my culture.

Based on archeological findings, we had "Jomon Culture(縄文文化）" 20,000 years ago.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jomo/hd_jomo.htm

National Science Museum in Tokyo had special exhibition called "Jomon vs Yayoi" in 2005, and you can see what female in "Jomon" period (if you click the link below, you'll see two girls, and Jomon girl is on the left side) looked like based on archeological findings. Her costume and her jewelries are quite modern, colorful, and beautiful. The "Jomon" period lasted for 18,000 years, and is said that very peaceful time since we are not able to find any fighting weapons and skeletons with war damage like other cultures. "Jomon" people originally came from near Lake Bikal (in Russia), then settled down in Japan based on genetic research. It is also known that these people moved to North America via Baling Sea during same period.

http://www.yamatopress.com/beautifuljapanstory/_src/sc580/20100222125536c0e.jpg

I add the following link, just in case, for people who can read Japanese.
http://www.yamatopress.com/beautifuljapanstory/3.html

At the last note, we should never trust Wiki especially for histories, since so-called "Information War" is going on right now.

Saya

I agree. My teacher in high school would get so annoyed when couple of his students used wiki for info on their home work. >.<

Wiki is nice and all, but sometimes not all correct.

still it's a start always good to look up multiple sources for info even if it's info on same subject as there might be more information or something new.

shishiinu

Thank you @yoshiko for posting the info!

otonajoshi

I always thought that Korean culture was older than Japanese. People moved from Korea, China onto these Islands (Japan) and expanded northward.

It's been heavily speculated that most Japanese are descended from Koreans, due to the Mongolian birthmark, so I think this is mostly true.

Also, Koreans as an overall group predate Japanese. However, Japanese culture, I would say, is much more developed, as they were isolated. Korea, however, was constantly ravaged by wars and Koreans were forced to adopt portions of Japanese and Chinese cultures at varying points in history.

mot

@sukoshi_mom

Comapared to Shiba inu, Korean Jindo dog is much "newer" breed.

It is said that JIndo is cross-breed of Mongolian dog and Korean primitive dog in 13 Century while the origin of Shiba inu dates back to Jomon-dog in Japan's Jomon era(14,000–300 BC) .

However, It seems Korean pirimitive dog and Jomon-dog has same origins(which might be Pariah-type dog in Central asia)

Here's a photo of a dummy of Jomon dog in Japanese National Science Museum.

ayk

The Mongolian origin explanation is not one that is endorsed by the Jindo Island institute. (I have one of their booklets).

mot

@ayk
Thank you for the info!
Is there any origin explanation on the booklet?

ayk

There are several pages about it, but I'll just type in their concluding paragraph:

"We have considered the origin of Jindo dog based on various related literatures that have been collected and the results of the researches that have been conducted so far. It is shown that there is little reliable ground for castaway and Mongolian dog theory. Therefore, it has been proved that Jindo dog is the native Korean dogs which the descendant of the dogs reared by people in the Stone Age evolved into while their pure blood and excellence remained the same in the peculiar geographical environment of Jindo."


The booklet I referenced was published in 2004.

yoshiko

@otonajoshi, any race can have Mongolian birth marks if your body has higher rate of pigment.(90% of Asian, 75% of Black, less than 20% of White has Mongolian spots), and you can read Wiki for this(in this case, wiki is handy indeed!).

I personally think we should keep this forum dog related or something more casual.

ayk

I'm in agreement with @yoshiko.