Egami Namio

Egami Namio ( Japanese 江 上 波夫 ; born November 6, 1906 , Yamaguchi Prefecture ; † November 11, 2002 ), was a Japanese archaeologist and historian of East Asian history. His younger brother was the biochemist Egami Fujio (1910–1982). Egami is especially known for the so-called "equestrian people theory" ( 騎馬 民族 征服 王朝 説 ), Kiba minzoku seifuku ōchōsetsu , "theory of the equestrian people acquisition and dynasty", which he wrote in 1948 on the occasion of the symposium "Origins of the culture of the Japanese people and the formation of the Japanese state ”( 日本 民族 ＝ 文化 の 源流 と 日本 国家 の 形成 ).

Life

Egami attended Urawa High School ( 旧 制 浦 和 高等学校 ), studied literature at Tokyo University , where he graduated in 1930 with a thesis on East Asian history. From 1935 to 1941 he took part in excavations in Olun Sum , Inner Mongolia, where remains of Nestorianism , Catholic churches and Buddhist documents were found.

From 1948 on he taught at the Research Institute for Far Eastern Culture at Toyko University, which he also headed from 1962 on. One year after his retirement in 1967 he received the Mainichi Culture Prize , then in 1969 the Order of Merit on the violet ribbon . From 1975 he headed the "Ancient Orient Museum" in Toshima . In 1983 Egami was honored as a person with special cultural merits , in 1991 he was also awarded the Japanese Order of Culture . Egami donated around 2500 documents on ethnology, archeology, history and art and around 25,000 specialist books to the city ​​of Yokohama , which formed the basis for the “Museum for Eurasian Culture Yokohama” ( 横 浜 ユ ー ラ シ ア 文化館 ), which opened in 2003 .

Reitervolk hypothesis (overview)

The equestrian people hypothesis states that in the middle of the Kofun period , from about the second half of the 4th to the 5th century AD, an equestrian people on the mainland advanced from the north to Korea, translated to Japan and because of their superior cavalry, the Japanese people forced the Wa under their rule. In the post-war period, Japanese archeology found a large number of horse burials and, as grave goods, harness and accessories, especially in eastern Japan. These finds, which were dated to the 5th century AD, occurred more or less suddenly and without continuity to the early Kofun period. They clearly had the same characteristics as similar finds in Korea. The occurrence of these finds and the associated development of production technologies could not be explained without contradiction and embedded in the historical context. In the overall context of the question of the ethnogenesis of the Japanese people, Egami tried to close this explanatory gap with the equestrian people theory .

The establishment of a unified state in Japan, the Yamato Empire , between the 4th and 5th centuries, went hand in hand with the conquest of the southern part of the Korean peninsula and with the establishment of a rule by a from the river basin of the Sònghuājiāng (Japanese 松花江 , Shōkakō ), Manchuria , native equestrian people from Buyeo . This equestrian people penetrated from the north into the rural south to Goguryeo , called themselves Buyeo and established the Jin Empire (Japanese 辰 国 , shinkoku ) in the south , with only Baekje and the Japanese base Mimana on the Korean peninsula ; this equestrian people crossed the Sea of ​​Japan via the islands of Tsushima and Ikinoshima, landed in Kyūshū and subjugated it, so that with Mimana a “United Kingdom of Japan and Korea” ( 倭 韓 連 合 王国 ) was created. This spread at the beginning of the 5th century to the Kinai region and as far as Ōsaka , where it built huge barrows and the Yamato imperial court in collaboration with noble families of the Yamato empire .

Many other excavations in Korea and Japan, as well as the ongoing typology and research of the finds, allowed a more detailed picture of the overall historical and political situation in the present, in which the equestrian people theory, however, increasingly lost explanatory power and plausibility. It is therefore now largely refuted, but still occasionally causes scientific disputes.

Works (selection)

• Egami Namio: 騎馬 民族 国家 (roughly: The Equestrian People's State ), Chūōkōronsha, 1967
• Egami Namio: 幻 人 詩 抄 , Genjin Shishō , Seikai Bunkasha, 1975, poetry anthology
• Egami Namio: 江 上 波夫 著作 集 (for example: Egami Namio Collected Works ), 12 volumes, Heibonsha, 1984–86
• Egami Namio: オ ロ ン ・ ス ム 遺跡 調査 日記 (for example: Diary of the excavations in Olon Sum ), Yamagawa Suppansha, 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ FAQs. Yokohama Museum of EurAsian Cultures, 2014, accessed January 28, 2014 (Japanese). 
2. ^ William G. Beasley: The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan . University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles 2000, ISBN 0-520-22560-0 , pp. 10 ff . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 11, 2014]).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Egami surname, Namio the first name.