The faces of Japanese

If you're currently staying in Japan, take close looks at faces of Japanese. Typically it is possible to categorize them into two:

The hairy face in the left is called "Jomon" face while the flat one "Yayoi" face. The terms you're going to remember are just two this time.

We tend to think that Japan is a unified country composed by a single race. However, Japanese people have been formed after thousands years of racial mixture between two, Jomon and Yayoi.


How about him below? He is a typical kind of Jomon people. He was a popular leader of Kagoshima prefecture, southern part of southern island (Kyushu).



Then how about the woman below? Please notice her characteristics such as thin eyes or big front teeth. Yes, that's a Yayoi face.


It is found from recent studies that the Jomon was a conquered race after the Yayoi gradually spreaded to the entire Japan (about B.C. 300 to A. D. 300). However, you can easily find the native Japanese, the Jomon, if you'd have a chance to visit Okinawa or Hokkaido. Of course there are a lot of people with "jomonized" features in the main island, too. But the pure Jomon are already almost extinct in the places where the traffic has been great. (The figure below indicates that the Jomon came from the south. However, there's another perspective that they came from North through Sakhalin. Either way, the history of the Jomon must have been quite old.)

Recently, Japanese have been suffering from a huge identity crisis: although they are identified by their Yayoi faces, the wintry-looking, mongol-oriented face tends to be repelled. Especially, plastic surgery for eyes, cutting "Mongolian fold", is getting popular. The mongolian fold functioned to protect their tear duct with the thick eyelid, but the physiological need has disappeard. High cheekbone is another hated property the Yayoi have.


Look at the picture above. Can you believe that's the same person? The main magic is cutting the "folds", the eyelids, that cover a large portion of your eyes. This process exposes his lacrimal glands. The inclination to the plastic surgery we see these days was said as yearning for European. Regardless of which type they are craving for, European or Jomon, it's sure they have many complaints about what they inherited from their ancestors.


Another annoying part they hate is their teeth. Many Japanese have uneven teeth. Funnily, Korean or Chinese sometimes distinguish themselves from Japanese by the teeth. They have better evenness! The uneven teeth is a result of the race mixture as you might suspect. The size of the jaw from one race doesn't match the size of the teeth from the other race. My case by the way is OK. I have a combination of a big jaw and big teeth.



The above picture visually shows the difference of jaws and teeth between the Jomon (left) and Yayoi(right). If someone inherited a small jaw and big teeth as a result of blood mixture, they end up having very uneven teeth.