The history of imperial Japan is dominated by the Yamato Clan, which has continued as rulers longer than any other ruling dynasty. It is enhanced by an added prehistoric mythology that supports their authority and position. It provides, however, an unqualified paradigm of fictional history, fabricated power. His Imperial Majesty Naruhito, who assumed his position in April 2019, is the 126th emperor of Japan in a dynasty alleged to date to at least the seventh century BCE. According to a largely invented history, the status of Japanese emperors as divine, which has continued until the present, has origins before the invention of writing. Thus the royal family is alleged to have originated in a time so remote that no reliable records of any kind could possibly exist. It is this absence of historical records that allowed the Yamato Clan to assert its antiquity and thus lay claim to be the oldest genealogical kingship still in existence.

With this prehistoric fiction added to the historical record, the myth of imperial divinity lasted until the end of World War II when the crushing defeat of Japan brought an end to decades of empire building and atrocities throughout the region. Hirohito, emperor since 1926, had been a driving force behind conquests through East and Southeast Asia, but he was stripped of all power in the aftermath of the war and forced to admit he was not divine. But the symbolism was not so easily eliminated. A cult of imperial worship of more than a hundred earlier emperors continues in Shinto temples across the countryside. Thus, despite the loss of divine status and government power more than seven decades ago, Hirohito's grandson Naruhito remains a symbol of an imperial cult that has outlasted all other earthly versions. And Naruhito still considers himself divine and seems to be viewed this way because an elaborate narrative embedded so deeply in Japanese culture supersedes history that is soon forgotten. But an examination of its foundations reveals a more limited monarchic history. Its centuries of invented emperors have effectively enhanced the Yamato Clan, which rose to power much later than it claims.

The genesis of the Japanese people entails a complex mixture of strands from prehistoric migrations over many millennia. Human remains in caves in Japan indicate a Homo sapiens presence by 32,000 to 27,000 BCE, and thus an indigenous foundational population of foragers and hunters.