The earliest archaeological sites are Itazuke site or Nabata site in the northern part of Kyūshū. The origin of Yayoi culture has long been debated. Chinese influence was obvious in the bronze and copper weapons,dōkyō, dōtaku, as well as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. Three major symbols of the Yayoi culture are the bronze mirror, the bronze sword, and the royal seal stone.

In recent years, more archaeological and genetic evidence has been found in both eastern China and western Japan to lend credibility to this argument. Between 1996 and 1999, a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan's National Science Museum, compared Yayoi remains found in Japan's Yamaguchi and Fukuoka prefectures with those from China's coastal Jiangsu province, and found many similarities between the Yayoi and the Jiangsu remains.^[10] DNA tests conducted in 1999 support the theory that the origin of the Yayoi people was an area south of the Yangtze.^[11]

Some scholars^[who?] have also concluded that Korean influence existed. Hudson has cited archaeological evidence that included but were not limited to "bounded paddy fields, new types of polished stone tools, wooden farming implements, iron tools, weaving technology, ceramic storage jars, exterior bonding of clay coils in pottery fabrication, ditched settlements, domesticated pigs, and jawbone rituals.".^[12] The migrant transfusion via the Korean peninsula also gains strength due to the fact that Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi pottery, burial mounds, and food preservation were discovered to be very similar to the pottery of southern Korea.^[13]

However, some scholars argue that the rapid increase of roughly four million people in Japan between the Jōmon and Yayoi periods cannot be explained by migration alone. They attribute the increase primarily to a shift from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural diet on the islands, with the introduction of rice. It is quite likely that rice cultivation and its subsequent deification allowed for mass population increase.^{[citation needed]} Regardless, there is archaeological evidence that supports the idea that there was an influx of farmers from the continent to Japan that absorbed or overwhelmed the native hunter-gatherer population.^[13]

위키피디아에서 검색해보면 어떤 사이트들은 한국인 이민자들에 의해 만들어진 것이라고 하고있고, 정작 야요이 시대로 검색해보면 어떤 학자는 중국인에 의해, 어떤 학자는 한국인들에 의해, 어떤 학자는 원래 일본 열도 본토에서 자발적으로 만들어졌다로 애매모호하게 주장이 갈린 것처럼 설명이 되어있는데 확실하게 야요이 문화가 일본열도가 아닌 타지의 이민자들에 의해 건립되었다는 것을 증명해줄만한 객관적인 영문자료가 있다면 사이트를 제시해주셨으면 감사하겠습니다.