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This article is about the Yayoi period in Japanese history. For other uses, see Yayoi (disambiguation).
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Glossary |
The Yayoi period (弥生時代 Yayoi-jidai?) is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 BCE to 250 CE. It is named after the neighbourhood of Tokyo where archaeologists first uncovered artifacts and features from that era. Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of an intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. The Yayoi followed the Jōmon period (14,000 BCE to 300 BCE) and Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū.
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A Yayoi jar, 1st-3rd century, excavated in Kugahara, Ōta-ku, Tokyo, Tokyo National Museum.
The earliest archaeological evidence of the Yayoi is found on northern Kyūshū[citation needed]. Yayoi culture quickly spread to the main island of Honshū, where Yayoi farmers displaced the native Jōmon, although there was some mixing of the two distinct genetic stocks. Yayoi pottery was simply decorated, and produced on a potter\'s wheel[citation needed], as opposed to Jōmon pottery, which was produced by hand. Yayoi craft specialists made bronze ceremonial bells, mirrors, and weapons. By the 1st century CE, Yayoi farmers began using iron agricultural tools and weapons.
The Yayoi population increased, and their society became more complex. They wove cloth textiles, lived in permanent farming villages and constructed buildings of wood and stone. They also accumulated wealth through land ownership and the storage of grain. These factors in turn promoted the development of distinct social classes. Yayoi chiefs in some parts of Kyūshū appear to have sponsored, and politically manipulated, trade in bronze and other prestige objectsPearson, Richard J. Chiefly Exchange Between Kyushu and Okinawa, Japan, in the Yayoi Period. Antiquity 64(245)912-922, 1990.. This was possible due to the introduction of an irrigated, wet-rice culture from the Yangtze estuary in southern China. Wet-rice agriculture led to the development and growth of a sedentary, agrarian society in Japan. Local political and social developments in Japan were more important than the activities of the central authority within a stratified society.
A Yayoi period Dōtaku, 3rd century AD
The earliest written records about people in Japan are from Chinese sources from this period. Wa (倭), the Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan, was mentioned in 57 CE; the Na or Nú state of Wa (倭奴國, literally "Wa slave country") received a golden seal from the Emperor of the Later Han Dynasty. This was recorded in the Book of Later Han (Hou-Han Shu). The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century.Gold Seal (Kin-in). Fukuoka City Museum. Retrieved on 2007-11-10. Wa was also mentioned in 257 in the Wei zhi (The Records of Wei), a section of the San Guo Zhi, a Chinese historical record.
Early Chinese historians described Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, not the unified land with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the 8th-century work Nihongi, a part-mythical, part-historical account of Japan which dates the foundation of the country at 660 BCE. Third century Chinese sources reported that the Wa people lived on raw fish, vegetables, and rice served on bamboo and wooden trays, clapped their hands in worship (something still done in Shinto shrines today), and built earthen grave mounds. They also maintained vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, and observed mourning. Society was characterized by violent struggles[citation needed].
A woman, known as Himiko in Japanese, ruled an early political federation known as Yamatai, which flourished during the 3rd century. While Himiko reigned as spiritual leader, her younger brother carried out affairs of state, which included diplomatic relations with the court of the Chinese Kingdom of Wei (220–265).
When asked of their origins by the Wei embassy, the people of Wa claimed to be descendants of the Grand Count Tàibó of Wu, a historic figure of the Wu Kingdom (吳國) around the Yangtze Delta of China. (Original Chinese from the Records of Wei: 「倭人自謂太伯之後」.).
The origin of Yayoi culture has long been debated and there are several major theories as shown below.
Yayoi bronze spear tip, 1-2nd century BCE Kyūshū. About 80 centimeters long, they are reminiscent of the Liaoning bronze dagger culture.
A theory publicized in the early Meiji period argued that the Yayoi culture was brought to Japan by migrants from China. The emergence of the Yayoi culture was sudden. The Yayoi culture was very advanced compared to the Jōmon-period culture it replaced. It introduced skills to Japan such as the manufacturing of bronze and copper weapons, bronze mirrors, bells, as well as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. The most notable fact that lends evidence to this claim is that three major symbols of the Yayoi Culture - the bronze mirror, the sword, and the royal seal stone - are exactly the same symbols used by Qin Dynasty China.Yamato Wa. Korean History Project. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
In recent years, more archaeological and genetic evidence have been found in both eastern China and western Japan to lend credibility to this argument. Between 1996 and 1999 , a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan\'s National Science Museum, compared Yayoi remains found in Japan\'s Yamaguchi and Fukuoka prefectures with those from early Han Dynasty (202 BCE-8) in China\'s coastal Jiangsu province, and found many similarities between the skulls and limbs of Yayoi people and the Jiangsu remains. Two Jiangsu skulls showed spots where the front teeth had been pulled, a practice common in Japan in the Yayoi and preceding Jōmon period. The genetic samples from three of the 36 Jiangsu skeletons also matched part of the DNA base arrangements of samples from the Yayoi remains. This finding, according to the Japanese team of scientists, suggests that some of the first wet-rice farmers in Japan might have migrated from the lower basin of China\'s Yangtze River more than 2,000 years ago.Yayoi linked to Yangtze area. The Japan Times (1999-03-19). Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
Giant Yayoi funerary jar.
A theory publicized in the early Meiji period argued that the Yayoi culture was brought to Japan by migrants from Korea. Some scholars have concluded that archaeological findings from the Yayoi period "clearly derive from Korea".Walter Edwards (1983). "Event and Process in the Founding of Japan: The Horserider Theory in Archeological Perspective". Journal of Japanese Studies 9 (2): 265-295. doi:10.2307/132294. These include "bunded paddy fields, new types of polished stone tools, wooden farming implements, iron tools, weaving technology, ceramic storage jars, exterior bonding of clay coils in pottery fabrication, ditched settlements, domesticated pigs, jawbone rituals, and megalithic (keyhole) tombs."Mark J. Hudson (1999). Ruins of Identity Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. University Hawai\'i Press. 0-8248-2156-4. This theory also gains strength due to the fact that Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi pottery, burial mounds, food preservation was discovered to be very similar to the pottery of southern Korea. In addition, there was a significant Japanese population in southern Korea (Gaya) around 300 CE, with each nation today claiming the other was a vassal, "[m]any other elements of the new Yayoi culture were unmistakably Korean and previously foreign to Japan, including bronze objects, weaving, glass beads, and styles of tools and houses."[citation needed]
However, some argue that the increase of roughly four million people in Japan between the Jōmon and Yayoi periods cannot be explained by migration alone. They attribute the increase primarily to a shift from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural diet on the islands, with the introduction of rice. It is quite likely that rice cultivation and its subsequent deification (see Inari (mythology)) allowed for mass population increase.
Regardless, some archaeological evidence supports the idea that there was an influx of farmers from Korea to Japan that absorbed or overwhelmed the native hunter-gatherer population. Direct comparisons between Jōmon and Yayoi skeletons show that the two peoples are noticeably distinguishable. The Jōmon tended to be shorter, with relatively longer forearms and lower legs, more wide-set eyes, shorter and wider faces, and much more pronounced facial topography. They also have strikingly raised browridges, noses, and nose bridges. Yayoi people, on the other hand, averaged an inch or two taller, with close-set eyes, high and narrow faces, and flat browridges and noses. By the Kofun period, almost all skeletons excavated in Japan, except those of the Ainu and Okinawans, resemble those of modern day Japanese.Jared Diamond (June 1998). "Japanese Roots". DISCOVER 19 (6). Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
Genetic evidence also supports this theory. The modern Japanese are believed to be descendants of the incoming Yayoi colonists mixed with the indigenous Jōmon people, while the Ainu are believed to be relatively purer descendants of the Jōmon people, with some intermingling of genes from Nivkhs and from Yayoi colonists.
Some pieces of Yayoi pottery clearly show the influence of Jōmon ceramics. In addition, the Yayoi lived in the same kind of pit-type or circular dwellings as that of the Jōmon. Other examples of commonality are chipped stone tools for hunting, bone tools for fishing, bracelets made from shells, and lacquer skills for vessels and accessories. The National Science Museum of Japan once held an exhibition named "Long Journey to Prehistorical Japan" which theorized that the Yayoi came from southern China because bones resembling theirs were discovered there.Long Journey to Prehistorical Japan (Japanese). National Science Museum of Japan. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
Today the theory, the Yayoi people are that mix of the native Jōmon with immigrants from China and Korea, is believed widely and most textbooks of Japan have described that.
Raised floor building at Yoshinogari, a Yayoi settlement (reconstructed)
In this version of the theory, the practice of intensive wet-rice farming is thought to have been passed from southern China via Okinawa, and perhaps through southern Korea before it reached northern Kyūshū[citation needed]. The different physical types of people living in Japan today can be explained by changes in diet and way of life. The fact that the Japanese are a relatively homogeneous people (with the exception of the Ainu people and Ryukyuans) suggests to some that the bulk of Japanese did not originate from China.[citation needed] This theory has met with criticism.
The next archaeological period in Japan is called the Kofun period, which is the first part of the Yamato period. Yayoi society developed into a society with a dominant military aristocracy and patriarchally-led clans, characteristic of the Kofun era. This change was quite possibly facilitated by immigration from the Korean peninsula[citation needed].
A new study used the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry method to analyze carbonized remains on pottery and wooden stakes, and discovered that these were dated back to 900–800 BCE, nearly 500 years earlier than previously believed.Shōda Shinya (March 2007). "Bulletin of the Society for East Asian Archaeology" 1. Society for East Asian Archaeology. Retrieved on 2007-11-10. These artifacts came from the northern region of Kyūshū, and to further confirm this finding, artifacts from China and Jōmon earthenware from the Tohoku region of the same time period as the initial study were compared with the same results. Another researcher used other artifacts from similar Yayoi period sites and found that these were dated back to 500–400 BCE[citation needed].
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