The details around the Japanese language, or Nijongo, are murky, to put things lightly and has a rich and complex history that stretches back over a millennium.  There is debate as to whether Japanese is an Isolate, is a part of the Japonic language family, or somewhere in between.  One school of thought suggests that Japanese developed as an isolated language in the Japanese archipelago, influenced by interactions with neighboring cultures such as China and Korea. The earliest forms of the language can be traced to Old Japanese, which was spoken from the 8th to 12th centuries and is seen in early texts like the Man'yōshū (a poetry anthology) and the Nihon Shoki (a historical chronicle). During this period, Chinese characters (kanji) were introduced, fundamentally shaping the structure of written Japanese and leading to the development of two phonetic scripts: hiragana and katakana.

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The Japanese language continued to evolve over the centuries, particularly through its interaction with foreign languages. From the 16th century onward, European languages began influencing Japanese, particularly in the realms of trade and religion. The Edo period (1603-1868) saw the growth of a more standardized form of Japanese, especially in urban centers like Edo (modern-day Tokyo), which solidified modern pronunciation and grammar. After Japan's opening to the West in the 19th century, the language underwent further modernization to accommodate new concepts and technologies. Today, Japanese remains a unique and dynamic language, blending ancient traditions with global influences, and is written using a combination of kanji, hiragana, and katakana, alongside borrowed words from other languages. What we do know is that Japanese is spoken by more than 127 million people world-wide and that the language has been around (spoken and written) for quite some time, with the first known Japanese writing dating to around the 8th century CE. ​