Chapter One
Japanese Beginnings Mark J. Hudson
Japan has one of the oldest and most active traditions of archaeological research in the world. This chapter uses evidence from archaeology and related fields to provide a thematic overview of the history of the Japanese islands from the first human settlement through to the Nara period of the eighth century AD. It must be stressed that given the frantic pace of archaeological excavation in Japan today, many of the conclusions presented here may soon be changed by new discoveries. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to summarize the main themes and areas of debate in ancient Japan rather than to attempt an exhaustive discussion of specific aspects of the archaeological record.
Periodization
The Paleolithic period starts with the first human occupation of Japan, which was perhaps as late as 35,000 years ago. The Paleolithic was followed by the Jomon period, which most archaeologists begin with the first appearance of pottery around 16,500 years ago. The Jomon is usually divided into six subphases termed Incipient, Initial, Early, Middle, Late, and Final; a seventh phase, the Epi-Jomon, is found only in Hokkaido. Considering the very long duration of the Jomon period and the ecological diversity of the Japanese archipelago, it is not surprising that there is great cultural variation within the Jomon tradition. Rather than a single "Jomon culture" it is more appropriate to speak of plural Jomon cultures, but specialists continue to debate how we should classify the Jomon phenomenon. Jomon populations from Kyushu expanded south into the Ryukyus from about 7,000 years ago, developing there into a quite different culture that is termed "Early Shellmound" by Okinawan archaeologists. Jomon sites are found as far north as Rebun Island, but Sakhalin appears to have been outside the area of regular Jomon settlement.
The arrival of full-scale agriculture in Japan around 400 BC marks the beginning of the Yayoi period. The following Kofun period then commences with the construction of large, keyhole-shaped burial mounds around AD 300 - or perhaps half a century earlier if one assumes that the "great mound ... more than a hundred paces in diameter" in which, according to the Wei zhi, Queen Himiko was buried shortly after 247 was a keyhole-shaped tomb. Although large tomb mounds were no longer built by the late seventh century, archaeologically the Kofun period is usually continued through to the beginning of the Nara period (710-94), thus overlapping with the Asuka era (552-710). The Yayoi and Kofun cultures did not spread to the Ryukyus or Hokkaido. In the central and northern Ryukyus, a poorly understood Late Shellmound phase began about 300 BC and continued until the beginning of the Gusuku period in the twelfth century. In Hokkaido, the Epi-Jomon (c.100 BC-AD 650) was followed by the Satsumon (c.650-1200) and Ainu periods (c.1200-1868). The coastlines of northern and eastern Hokkaido also saw an incursion by the people of the Okhotsk culture (c.550-1200).
History of Research
Archaeology and anthropology were introduced into Japan from Europe and North America in the late nineteenth century, but both of these fields built upon native traditions of historical inquiry. In the Tokugawa period, both "national learning" (kokugaku) and Neo-Confucian scholars developed a strong interest in the earliest history of Japan. Despite differences in philosophical outlook - which mainly revolved around the influence of China on ancient Japan - both schools relied primarily on the semi-mythological texts of the eighth century, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. It was not until after American biologist Edward Morse (1838-1925) dug at Omori in Tokyo in 1877 that a concept of an archaeological record outside written texts gradually began to develop in Japan.
Japanese archaeology developed in the European tradition of "archaeology as history" rather than in the American tradition of "archaeology as anthropology." Archaeology in Japan can also be classified as "national archaeology," which is defined by Bruce Trigger as a "culture-historical approach, with [an] emphasis on the prehistory of specific peoples." In the postwar era, Japan has developed one of the most active traditions of archaeological research anywhere in the world. After the defeat of fascism in 1945, archaeology came to be seen as a way of reconstructing the history of ordinary Japanese people rather than that of the emperor and aristocracy. Economic growth associated with the so-called "Construction State" also led to a phenomenal increase in salvage archaeology from the 1960s. The amount of archaeological information that has been recovered from Japan over the past forty years is unparalleled - but so also is the ensuing destruction of archaeological resources.
Humans and the Environment
Changes in the physical, chemical, and biological environment form the background to the human settlement and history of Japan. Japan is a rugged, mountainous land with significant climatic and biotic diversity from north to south. Although for much of its earlier geological history the Japanese landmass was not an island chain, Japan is now a series of islands that form the eastern edge of north Eurasia. Land bridges with Korea developed at least twice during the Middle Pleistocene but there was no such land bridge in the Late Pleistocene, even at the coldest stage of the last glacial maximum (LGM) about 18,000 years ago. The main islands of Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku were connected in the Late Pleistocene, with the Inland Sea forming a large plain. Hokkaido was separated from Honshu by the Tsugaru Strait, though connected in the north to Sakhalin and the Asian mainland. The current form of the Japanese archipelago began to take shape after 15,000 years ago.
During the LGM, mean annual temperatures were 7-8?C colder than present and the vegetation of Japan was very different to that of today. Tundra and shrub tundra was found across much of Hokkaido and a boreal coniferous forest extended through northern Honshu into the highlands of western Japan. Temperate conifers and mixed broadleaf trees were distributed in coastal areas of the Kanto and in western Japan. Warm broadleaf evergreen forest was found only in a refugium at the southernmost tip of Kyushu.
Climatic warming after the LGM was followed by a sudden return to very cold conditions during the Younger Dryas, a global climatic stage that is dated to about 13,000 to 11,600 years ago on Greenland ice core data. The precise effects of the Younger Dryas in East Asia remain poorly understood, but it has been argued that the rapid changes in stone tools and other cultural traits in the Incipient Jomon are due to this stage of climatic instability. Following the Younger Dryas, the climate gradually became warmer, reaching a peak in the "Holocene Optimum" around 7,000-6,000 years ago when sea levels were some two to six meters higher than present.
In addition to climatic change, the prehistory of Japan cannot be considered without reference to the frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that affected the archipelago. The two largest volcanic eruptions in Japanese prehistory were those of the Aira and Kikai calderas, both in southern Kyushu and dated to about 22,000 and 7,300 years ago, respectively. The Kikai eruption and associated earthquakes and tsunami was probably so devastating that Kyushu was abandoned by Jomon populations for several centuries.
Population History
The earliest human fossils from Japan belong to a juvenile from Yamashita-cho Cave, Okinawa dating to about 32,000 years ago and the question of who was the first human to settle the archipelago remains controversial. The first Paleolithic site in Japan was dug in 1949 at Iwajuku, Gunma prefecture. Later research has identified some 5,000 Paleolithic sites in Japan but all secure dates are later than 35,000 years ago. A series of proposed Early Paleolithic sites dug in the 1960s and 1970s remains controversial. Other work centered on Miyagi prefecture in the late 1970s to late 1990s reported a number of Early Paleolithic localities dating back as early as 600,000 years ago, but all of these sites were later found to have been faked by amateur archaeologist Fujimura Shin''ichi.
Southeast Asia and southern China were settled by Homo erectus from soon after two million years ago. In north China, the famous "Peking Man" site of Zhoukoudian near Beijing dates to after 460,000 years ago, but Homo erectus tools dated earlier than 730,000 years have been found in the Nihewan Basin in Hebei. Homo erectus adapted to many different environments in Asia and it is not clear why Japan was apparently not settled prior to the appearance of modern humans. However, the sudden expansion of sites in Japan after 35,0000 years ago is consistent with the worldwide trend toward the occupation of new, previously uninhabited environments after the appearance of Homo sapiens.
At the end of the Pleistocene, it is likely that new groups reached Japan bringing microblades and other technologies. With so few human skeletal remains dating to the Paleolithic and the first half of the Jomon, however, it is unclear to what extent the peoples of the Jomon tradition derived from Paleolithic ancestors in Japan or else represented a new population influx at the Paleolithic-Jomon transition. Much clearer evidence for immigration comes in the Yayoi period when continental migrants brought farming into the Japanese islands. A range of biological data has been used to argue that the modern Japanese derive primarily from these Yayoi era immigrants and their descendants, though some admixture with native Jomon populations certainly occurred in many areas. This Yayoi immigration model does not necessarily require a huge number of initial migrants: if population growth was high amongst the Yayoi farmers then their numbers would have rapidly increased at the expense of Jomon hunter-gatherers. Archaeological evidence suggests the source of these agricultural immigrants was the Korean peninsula, but the scarcity of skeletal remains from this period in Korea has precluded extensive comparisons of human biological remains.
It seems most likely that the agricultural immigrants of the Yayoi period also brought the Japanese language from the Korean peninsula. In the past, Japanese was often seen as forming part of an Altaic language family, but recently many linguists have come to see the structural similarities between the "Altaic" languages as due to areal diffusion. Certainly, the archaeological record offers no support for the speculative models of Altaic expansions proposed by some linguists. Most linguists and archaeologists also continue to be highly skeptical about proposed links between Japanese and the Austronesian and Austroasiatic families of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Japonic - the Japanese language family that contains Japanese, Ryukyuan, and their various historical dialects - appears to be related most closely to Old Koguryo and thus its roots can be initially placed on the Korean peninsula; attempts to determine the earlier roots of Japonic at present remain controversial.
As noted, Jomon populations from Kyushu expanded south into the Ryukyus as far as Okinawa Island. However, the southern Ryukyus (Miyako to Yonaguni) were not settled from Japan at this stage. The prehistory of these Sakishima Islands is characterized by an early ceramic Shimotabaru phase that probably began in the second millennium BC. This was followed, after an apparent hiatus, by an aceramic culture with shell adzes that perhaps began in the late first millennium BC. The precise origin of both of these cultures is unknown but is possibly to be found in the Philippines or neighboring areas of island Southeast Asia. After 1300, the Sakishima Islands were gradually incorporated into the Chuzan kingdom of Okinawa Island.
From the early days of Japanese anthropology it had been assumed that the Ainu of Hokkaido and the Okinawans of the Ryukyu Islands derive primarily from Jomon ancestors rather than the mainland Yayoi Japanese. Work over the last decade or so, however, has shown that the modern Okinawans are biologically much closer to the Japanese than to the Ainu or prehistoric Jomon people. These recent results suggest significant gene flow into the Ryukyus from Japan by at least the Gusuku period, although there is little archaeological evidence for such immigration and the historical context of this population movement remains unclear. The Ryukyuan languages are closely related to Japanese and must have replaced earlier languages in the Okinawan Islands. Although proto-Ryukyuan must have split from the Nara dialects before the eighth century, recent research suggests its spread into Okinawa may have been rather later, perhaps around AD 900. A deeper understanding of the population history of the Ryukyu Islands will be an important focus of research over the next decade or so.
In the north, research continues to affirm close biological similarities between the historic Ainu and Jomon populations. Here, however, the situation is complicated by linguistic and archaeological evidence that suggests the Ainu may be derived from Jomon populations of the Tohoku region rather than Hokkaido. Based on ancient borrowings from Japanese and the low dialect diversity of Ainu, linguist Juha Janhunen has proposed that the Ainu language spread from northern Honshu into Hokkaido in the Satsumon period (c.650-1200). Archaeologically, the large differences between the cultures of the Epi-Jomon and Satsumon periods could support population influx from the Tohoku into Hokkaido in the seventh century AD. This is also an area on which further research is warranted. Although the Ainu nation today may oppose any suggestion that their ancestors arrived in Hokkaido as recently as the seventh century, this Tohoku origin model does not contradict the long, indigenous history of the Ainu in Japan.
Technology
As elsewhere, stone tools are the main archaeological evidence for the Paleolithic period in Japan. The reduction of risk in obtaining food and other resources appears to be one of the main determinants of stone tool variability. The early stages of the Late Paleolithic in Japan are marked by "knife-shaped tools" made on parallel-sided blades. Knife-shaped tools appear to have been used for a variety of purposes and are characterized by relatively few task-specialized shapes. A more specialist tool type of the Late Paleolithic is an edge-ground axe that may have been used for woodworking. The last stage of the Paleolithic in Japan is characterized by microblabes - small stone tools that were hafted to organic armatures to make composite spears and other weapons. In Japan, microblades appear first at the Kashiwadai 1 site in Hokkaido at about 20,000 years ago; sites in the rest of the archipelago follow several thousand years later. Analysis of the technology of Japanese microblades has suggested that Late Pleistocene hunters in northern Japan operated under more environmental constraints and risks than those in the south of the country.
Recent calibrated radiocarbon dates place the earliest pottery in Japan, at the Odai Yamamoto I site in Aomori prefecture, at about 16,500 years ago. This pottery is the oldest from anywhere in the world but similar final Pleistocene dates have been reported for pottery from China and the Amur Basin and it is not yet clear if Jomon ceramics developed in isolation or as part of a wider East Asian ceramic technology. Ceramic vessels provided a convenient method of cooking large quantities of ecologically low-ranked foods such as plants and shellfish, as well as a means of food storage in a seasonal, temperate environment.
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Excerpted from A Companion to Japanese Historyby William M. Tsutsui Copyright © 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission.
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