The truth is out there
I first became acquainted with the name of Christopher Beckwith when I borrowed this book on the origins of old Japanese from my college library. It's a groundbreaking book on a very interesting topic that nonetheless has received little scientific scrutiny. Most Japanese themselves don't know much, nor seem to care about where their language, and hence their people come from. The book was interesting in part, but also full of wild speculations and non-sequiturs that left on me the impression that Mr. Beckwith is quite the nutter. It's one thing that Japanese has relatives in old Manchurian Kingdoms. It's a different one altogether to posit that Burmese and Japanese share common ancestry because they both have a pronoun which starts in /wa/ and have a lot of monosyllabic words.
To be honest I never cared much about the topic, or the man. Until last week Razib at GNXP declared himself a fan of a recent book of his on Central Asia. I recall the guy was an expert on Tibet, so he must know more about Central Asia than Japan. And Central Asia is also a poorly understood region, so there must be lots of low-hanging fruit for the committed scholar to gather. On the same post, Razib li...