• Japanese (spoken in the main islands of Japan) and the Ryukyuan languages (spoken in the archiopelago in Japan’s south)
  • Japanese dialects are further divided:
    • Eastern Japanese—east of Nagoya, including Tokyo dialect
    • Western Japanese—west of Nagoya, including Kyoto dialect
    • Kyushu dialects
  • some proposed genetic relationship with Koreanic, but not conclusively demonstrated