The Emishi

The Emishi or Ebisu (蝦夷^?) constituted a group of people who lived in northeastern Honshū in the Tōhoku region which was referred to as michi no oku (道の奥^?) in contemporary sources.

Some Emishi tribes resisted the rule of the Japanese Emperors during the late Nara and early Heian periods (7th–10th centuries CE).

More recently, scholars believe that they were natives of northern Honshū and were descendants of those who developed the Jōmon culture.

They are thought to have been related to the Ainu.

The separate ethnic status of the Emishi is not in doubt; this understanding is based upon a language that is separate from Japanese, which scholars have been unable to reconstruct.

Popular culture

• The term Emishi is used for the village tribe of the main character Ashitaka in the Hayao Miyazaki animated film Princess Mononoke. The village was a last pocket of Emishi surviving into the Muromachi period (16th century).
• The Emishi's creation myth was used as the basis of the core mythology in Final Fantasy's Fabula Nova Crystallis series.