JNI is the second or maybe third FFI for Java. JRI existed before it and that was worse, including performance. The debugging and instrumentation interfaces have been rewritten more times.

https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/24/docs/specs/jni/int... mentions JRI.

But it seems like JNI has been replaced by third party solutions multiple times as well.

https://developer.okta.com/blog/2022/04/08/state-of-ffi-java...