I can’t speak to the veracity of the article, but when my family lived in Japan, we heard of the “hairy Ainu” from the Japanese. Apparently they were the original occupants of the Japanese Islands. Just curious what would come of that in light of the recent UN resolution. Hmm.
Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu.
Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of Japan are actually descendants of the Ainu, not of the Yayoi from whom most modern Japanese are descended. In fact, Brace threw more fuel on the fire with:
"Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi." The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace," I hope you are wrong."
The Ainu and their origin have always been rather mysterious, with some people claiming that the Ainu are really Caucasian or proto-Caucasian - in other words, "white." At present, Brace's study denies this interpretation.
The original Japanese inhabitants are called "Jomon" ~ they are also mostly the same race as the Ainu, but their cultural relationship is quite distant. A third group that shares in the same ancestry as the Jomon and the Ainu are the more modern occupants of Japan identified as the Emeshi.
Japan, contrary to claims of the ruling elite is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation made up of the original inhabitants ~ the Jomon, their presumed descendants - the Emeshi, the Ya-yoi ~ immigrants from Central and Southern China who introduced rice culture to Japan about 500 BC give or take a few years, a Korean substrate that includes Korean technicians and artisans brought to the islands by the ruling elite from about 800 AD right through the 1800s, and a later Korean group consisting of Koreans brought to the home islands during the occupation of Korea from the early 1900s to 1945, and finally THE RULING ELITE, and they go by the name ROYAL FAMILY and DAIMYO.
The RULING ELITE are ethnically distinct from all the other Japanese since their origins are undoubtedly among the Sakha/Yakuts. These people conquered Korea and Japan in the mid 500s, and imposed their language (which is an Eastern Turcic dialect) and religion (Buddhism) on all the others! They are also pretty much identical to the Chinese, and for thousands of years were technologically their equal ~ they just lived further North in Siberia running vast herds of every known domesticated animal, AND further South in India. They controlled Trade Routes to the West of the Chinese core.
Technically speaking the RULING ELITE were overthrown in the late 1800s in the Meiji Restoration. In reality they're still there.
BTW, the Samurai were formed up from Emeshi and Daimyo families and end up as a mixed-race military class.
OK, so how do you tell these groups apart?
Actually, all you need are some dental X-Rays. The Jomon, Emeshi, and Ainu are going to have a high incidence of having molars with 5 roots. 40% of the modern Japanese population has such teeth. Their cousins in China also have the same teeth, so if it wasn't the beards, foreheads, eyebrows or modest differences in standard skeletal lengths, you could figure them out by checking their teeth.
This "other race" is one of two off-shoots from the original Cro-Magnon branch that went East from their homeland in South Central Asia about 35,000 years ago. In effect, the Eastern branch split into the Chinese and the Jomon/Emeshi.
The Western branch went to Europe and became the Europeans!
Up until the big split between the Chinese and Jomon/Emeshi everybody had beards!
The RULING ELITE in Japan also have a high incidence of Jomon tooth forms because, as always, the RULING ELITE gets all the good lookin' chicks. It gets harder and harder every year to differentiate between the different groups. People do stuff ~ as usual.
The Sakha/Yakuts also have a high incidence of the Sa'ami specific X-factor DNA sequence ~ plus they herd reindeer.
Of interest, the RULING ELITE also seem to have the same set of Chromosome 6 variations found among the Sa'ami. They still look doggoned Japanese though (their faces form the very basis of traditional human representation in Japanese art). Their ladies have all the larger breast sizes in Japan and import bras from the West ! The connection there seems to have been the sojourns in India.
What that means is simple ~ if you seek out a Caucasion connection to the Japanese, you're digging a dry hole if you depend on just the Ainu. What you need to do is check out the Royal family.
Get Akahito to give you a DNA sample and go to it.