J. Marshall Unger argues in this book that Korean and Japanese are cognate languages, in the technical sense used by linguists: both descend from a single linguistic parent, proto-Japanese-Korean. The book will be of interest to linguists, archaeologists, and historians concerned with the late prehistory of Northeast Asia.
While the claim of cognacy remains controversial, one aspect of Unger's position represents an emerging consensus among linguists and anthropologists: the Japanese language originated on or in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, and it came to the Japanese archipelago as part of the Yayoi expansion, beginning (at the earliest) around three millennia ago. This view is shared with two scholars whose views Unger criticizes: Christopher Beckwith and Alexander Vovin (see Beckwith, Koguryŏ: The Language of Japan's Continental Relatives [Leiden: Brill, 2004]; and Vovin, Koreo-Japonica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008]). While neither of these...
