Lecture 2: Origins

The Question of Origins

The Jômon Period

Overview

Search for Origins

Migration to the Japanese Archipelago

The Jômon Era

What is a Hunting and Gathering Society?

Sannai Maruyama

Ancient History and Modern Identity Politics

The 19th and 20th Century Search for NATIONAL Origins

"Nationalist" Ancient History

"Japan is alone among the world's advanced countries in not having had the composition of its people changed since remote antiquity by the coming of any outside ethnic group. A small island nation, from tens of thousands of years ago when its population was few, [its inhabitants] cleared the mountain forests for farming, cooperatively brought in water for the wet rice fields, cooperatively built houses and experienced joy and grief together. They were all blood relatives. It is not like the case of foreign emperors in which there was a sense of the people versus the throne, since there was a unified attitude in the blood." (FUJITA Satoru, quoted in Smits, 64)

Implications for the present-day?

Prehistoric Periodizations

General

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) two million years ago

Rudimentary stone tools produced by chipping, hunters and gatherers

[Mesolithic]

Neolithic (New Stone Age) 10000-5000 years ago

Polished stone tools, domestication of plants and animals, villages, pottery and weaving, monuments

Japanese Archipelago

Pre-Ceramic

Jômon Period

(10,000 - 300 B.C.E.) (Meso-Neo)

Yayoi Period

(300 B.C.E. - 250 C.E.) (Neo)

Tomb Period

(250 - 500)

Asuka Period

(500 - 710)

Access to the Prehistoric Past

Archaeological Artifacts

Pottery

Structural remains

Misc. Implements

Inscribed Objects

Myth & Early Accounts by the Chinese

Historical Linguistics

Genetic Research

Methodological Challenges

How do we "read" archeological evidence?

Methods for dating artifacts, access and costs

How far can one extrapolate?

How do we interpret myth?

Literalism v. skepticism

Reading against the grain

How do we combine forms of evidence?

Relative strengths and weaknesses?

Do you privilege one over the other?

Migration to the Archipelago

Former land bridges from Korean peninsula via Tsushima (island) and north Asia via Soya and Tsugaru (straits)

Sea Routes: North, South and West

Multiple Routes,
Waves and Groups

Tungusic or northern Mongoloid (Asian racial type) groups via Hokkaidô and/or Korea (Jômon)

Southern Mongoloid groups from South China or Southeast Asia via Taiwan and the Ryûkyûs (Jômon)

Subsequent northern Mongoloid groups from Korea (Yayoi)

Ainu Origins?

Theories: Caucasoid, Oceania Race, Old Asian Race, Solitary Race, Mongoloid

Mongoloid theory winning out

S. Mongoloid strain represented by Ainu and Ryûkyûans probably the "first" peoples in Japan

Political Stakes: status as racially/ethnically distinct indigenous inhabitants

Recent Research

Genetic studies have determined intermingling of northern and southern Mongoloid strains in general Japanese population

First wave of migration, represented by the Jômon peoples, probably took place about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago

Whether primarily of northern or southern type difficult to determine

Historical linguistics also shows mingling of northern (Altaic) and southern Asian family groups

Long-held Views on Jômon

North Asian in origin (conflation with the stereotypes of Ainu)

Hunters and fishers, not farmers

In decline before Yayoi period, supplanted by later waves of immigration

No major settlements

Classic imaginative reconstructions

Wearing skins rather than cloth

Subsistence economy

Small social units

Lack of firm political structure and social distinctions (family as basic unit)

Smits Account

Hunting and gathering, limited agriculture

Substantial trade between communities

Small communities

No sign of large-scale political organization

Dwellings: pits, central pillar, thatched roof, central fire pit

Rope-pattern pottery

Snake and fertility cult, female shamans

Rethinking Jômon: Sannai Maruyama

Baseball stadium proposed in 1991 in Aomori Prefecture

Preliminary investigation of site kept expanding

Stadium construction cancelled in 1994, area put under government protection

Finds at Sannai-Maruyama

Weaving

Lacquer ware

Ritual implements

Massive amounts of pottery shards

Implications?

Additional Discoveries

Remains of fish bones, small animals, gourds, nuts and beans with regular DNA structure, seeds

Traces of what are thought to be storehouses

Traces of large structures with mammoth pillars spaced evenly 4.2 meters apart

Graveyard: careful arrangement, aligned north-south, separation between adults (buried far away) and children (nearby)

Sannai Maruyama: A Jômon City

Depth of excavation indicates continual habitation of the site for over 1000 years (from the early to mid-Jômon period)

Layout indicates urban planning

Mounds (trash heaps, ceremonial sites, or ?) indicate a certain density of population

Pillars

Hitherto unsuspected existence of large-scale Jômon structures

Indicates organized labor

Indicates possession of means to make accurate measurements

Jômon Peoples: Primitive Nomads
or Wealthy Gatherers?

Tools and pottery impractical for frequent moves of nomadic life

Collective burial sites

Highly varied diet

Evidence of trade

Evidence of large structures and site maintenance

Reimagining Sannai Maruyama

Amino Account

Makes use of these recent findings to challenge the assumption that the Jômon peoples were primitive and isolated

Continued contact with the Asian continent

Extensive trade networks

Sophisticated and large-scale production techniques

In a broader sense, Amino challenges

Those who insist that purity and isolation were an important aspect of Japanese history

Those who link national character to ethnic origins

Questions Unanswered, Unanswerable?

Gender relations

Hierarchy, equality, or ?

Specific form of political

organization

Patriarchy, matriarchy, or ?

Means of conducting trade

Barter? Markets?

Forms of currency? Calculations of value?

Degree of impact of changes in the climate and environment?

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Lecture 2: Origins