Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on, and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 501 in the beginning.

When does Japanese history begin? It's a seemingly simple question without any real or easy answer. The written record seems like a natural place to start, and for many historians, including myself, that's

very much our comfort zone. But in Japan proper, said record only goes back about 1,500 years.

Older references from earlier Chinese histories add a few centuries

onto that, but given that the earliest traces of human habitation in Japan, likely by migrating

tribes following herds of animals across the then-still extant land bridge from Asia,

go back somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 years ago during the Pleistocene era,

that still leaves a lot of time uncovered.

Of course, compounded onto this is the thorny issue of who appears in the written record,

given that widespread literacy is a fairly recent arrival historically,

and even who counts as a part

of Japanese history in the first place.

Certainly many people holding Japanese citizenship today, from the peoples of the Ryukyu

islands to the Ainu, come from populations that did not always consider themselves Japanese.

But that's a whole other discussion and one we

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