Yayoi Period

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Yayoi Period

The Yayoi period (c. 300 BCE to 300 CE) saw the introduction of a full-scale agricultural economy into the islands of Japan. This economy was initially associated with immigration from the Korean Peninsula. Population growth among early Yayoi farmers then led to the rapid expansion of Yayoi culture as far as northern Honshu. By the end of the Yayoi period, chiefdom-type societies had developed in Japan, laying the foundation for Japan's first early states.

The Jomon period (c. 14,500 BCE–300 BCE) that preceded the Yayoi had seen some small-scale plant cultivation but such practices seem to have had little influence on the organization of Jomon society. In contrast, the full-scale farming of the Yayoi period marked a very different intensive and expansionary economic system. A variety of studies within biological anthropology have shown that the people of the Yayoi period were physically quite different from the Jomon peoples but very similar to the inhabitants of mainland Japan in historical times. Currently the most widely accepted interpretation of this evidence is that continental rice farmers spread to Japan from the Korean Peninsula at the beginning of the Yayoi period. It has been argued that the Japanese language also spread to the archipelago at this time.

As well as rice farming, a variety of other items and technologies were introduced from Korea in the Yayoi.

These include the use of bronze and iron, domesticated pigs, wooden and stone agricultural tools, megalithic burials, and certain types of pottery. The actual context of many of these finds, however, suggests close interaction between the native Jomon and immigrant Yayoi peoples, at least in the early stages of the Yayoi period.

Yayoi Cultural Expansion

During the Early Yayoi phase (c. 300–175 BCE), Yayoi culture spread rapidly through western Japan, with outlying sites in eastern Honshu as far north as Sunazawa in Aomori Prefecture. Some Yayoi pottery is known in Okinawa, but agriculture did not develop in the Ryukyu Islands until at least the eighth century CE. Hokkaido also lay outside the area of Yayoi culture, although the Epi-Jomon people of that island engaged in trade for iron and shell bracelets with their Yayoi neighbors.

The expansion of Yayoi culture is known from the excavation of over a hundred rice-paddy field sites dating to that period. Without doubt rice was an important crop during the Yayoi, but barley, millet, and other cultivated plants were also consumed in large quantities. Domesticated pigs and, more rarely, chickens are known from Yayoi contexts, but it is not clear how important these animals were as food sources. The hunting of deer and wild boar, practiced during the Jomon period, certainly continued through the Yayoi, as did river and marine fishing.

Bronze and iron appear to have been introduced simultaneously into Yayoi Japan. Iron was mainly used for agricultural and other tools, whereas ritual and ceremonial artifacts were mainly made of bronze. Some casting of bronze and iron began in Japan by about 100 BCE, but the raw materials for both metals were introduced from Korea and China. Han-dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) bronze mirrors were the most important prestige items imported from China. Bronze mirrors were also cast in Japan, as were a variety of other ritual objects unknown on the continent. Bronze weapons and bells both evolved from practical tools to ornate, ceremonial artifacts. In northern Kyushu, bronze weapons are found as grave goods in elite burials at sites such as Yoshinogari, but elsewhere weapons and bells are usually discovered as isolated hoards buried away from settlements. At Kojindani in Shimane Prefecture, 6 bells, 16 spearheads and 358 swords were found on an isolated hillside. Such hoards are often interpreted as resulting from community-based agricultural rituals.

Although written records are unknown in Japan itself until the seventh century CE, Chinese dynastic histories make some mention of the Wa people, who are thought to be the Yayoi Japanese. The Chinese History of the Wei Dynasty (Wei shu or Wei zhi) was compiled in 280 CE and contains a short description of the economy and society of the Wa people and of the diplomatic relations between the Wei dynasty and the Wa polity of Yamatai and its queen, Pimiko. This text has long been a subject of great controversy. The location of Yamatai is unclear from the text itself; northern Kyushu and the Kinai region have been suggested as the two main possible locations but the Wei shu suggests Yamatai controlled most of western Japan in the third century CE. The archaeological record does not support such a degree of political unification until the late Kofun period (c. 300–710 CE).

Yayoi Polities

Archaeologists have proposed the existence of several chiefdom-type polities in western Japan in the Yayoi period. These were regional polities based on a large, central settlement with populations of perhaps several thousand people. Such polities may correspond to the "countries" (Chinese guo) described in the Wei shu but their political control did not extend beyond their particular basin or river valley. The site of Yoshinogari in Saga Prefecture was probably the center of one of these chiefdoms. Defensive ditches with watchtowers enclose an area of 25 hectares. The rulers of this settlement appear to have lived in a central residential precinct and to have been buried in a 40-by-26-meter burial mound.

Many of the Yayoi chiefdoms of western Japan were engaged in conflicts with neighboring groups to gain access to water and other resources and to extend their power. Such conflicts are mentioned in the Wei shu and are evidenced archaeologically by defended settlements, the widespread presence of weapons, and discoveries of human skeletons with war-related injuries. Over 150 Yayoi-period skeletons have been found with embedded arrowheads, cut marks, or decapitated skulls. Through warfare, trade, and alliance building, the chiefdoms of the Kinai region had considerably extended their power by the end of the Yayoi period. By the second half of the third century CE, the mound burials of the Yayoi period had developed into the huge, standardized, keyhole-shaped tombs of the Kofun period. Yoshiro Kondo has argued that the standardization of these tombs signifies not political unification but rather the creation of ties of fictitious kinship among powerful Yayoi chiefs. The Yayoi period is distinguished from the Kofun on the basis of these standardized tombs, but the underlying political processes straddle both periods.