There is a significant amount of research relating to tonogenesis -- the
mechanisms by which a toneless parent language develops tone. But what about
the genesis of pitch accent?

For instance, the falling tone in Middle Chinese is regularly derived from a
reconstructed final *-s in Old Chinese (which is thought to have been
toneless).

In historical Japanese linguistics, is pitch accent thought to have been part
of the language from its earliest attested stages? Or is pitch accent thought
to have arisen later?

Also, I appreciate that the realisation of pitch accent in Japanese varies by
dialect. Is the pitch accent part of the "underlying form" -- that is, can the
manifestations in the daughter dialects be derived regularly from rules
applied to an underlying assignment of pitch accent?
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linguistics pitch-accent
The genesis of pitch accent in Japanese
Some language families (such as Chinese and Athabaskan) have visible origins
for their tones - you can't reconstruct tone back to the shared proto-
language, but you can reconstruct other features that later turned into tone.

Other language families (such as Bantu and Oto-Manguean) have no visible
origins for their tones - you can reconstruct tone back to the proto-language,
and it seems to have been there as long as anyone can tell.

As far as we know, Japonic is in the latter category. Most (if not all, I
don't have as much knowledge as I'd like) Japonic languages/dialects contrast
tone, and unlike with Chinese final consonants or Athabaskan glottalisation,
there's no clear earlier source for tone in Japonic. Indeed, according to the
most prevalent interpretation, Japonic has been losing tone contrasts over
time - earlier sources (such as the Ruiju Myougishou dictionary) give more
tone contrasts than any modern dialect shows (though it's not clear how much
of this is actual phonemic tone contrast and how much of it is premodern
linguists noting any and all tone differences - Hangeul in its original form
marked all tones regardless of contrastiveness, and this could be an example
of something similar). You can fairly regularly predict tone correspondences
in various dialects, as well.

So tone seems to have been a part of Japonic as long as anyone can tell.
Before about 200-400 AD (the earliest we can reconstruct back to), it's
anyone's guess, but that's true of any feature in any language family beyond
the earliest reconstructions.
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