Yayoi period

The Yayoi period (弥生時代, Yayoi jidai) started in the late Neolithic period in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age,
and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age.[1]

Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon period should be
reclassified as Early Yayoi.[2] The date of the beginning of this transition is controversial, with estimates ranging from the
10th to the 3rd centuries BC.[1][3]

The period is named after the neighbourhood of Tokyo where archaeologists first uncovered artifacts and features from that
era in the late 19th century. Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new Yayoi pottery
styles, improved carpentry and architecture, and the start of an intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields.[4] A hierarchical
social class structure dates from this period and has its origin in China. Techniques in metallurgy based on the use of bronze
and iron were also introduced from China via Korea to Japan in this period.[5]

The Yayoi followed the Jōmon period and Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern
Honshū. Archaeological evidence supports the idea that during this time, an influx of farmers (Yayoi people) from the
Korean Peninsula to Japan overwhelmed and mixed with the native predominantly hunter-gatherer population (Jōmon).

Features
The Yayoi period is, generally, accepted to date from circa 300 BC to 300
AD.[6][7][8][9][10] However, although highly controversial, radiocarbon evidence, from
organic samples attached to pottery shards, may suggest a date up to 500 years earlier,
between ca. 1000 BC and 800 BC.[1] During this period, Japan largely transitioned to a
more settled, agricultural society, adopting methods of farming and crop production that
were introduced to the country (initially in the Kyūshū region) from Korea.[11][12][13]

The earliest archaeological evidence of the Yayoi Period is found on northern Kyūshū,[14]
though that is still debated. Yayoi culture quickly spread to the main island of Honshū,
mixing with native Jōmon culture.[15] The name Yayoi is borrowed from a location in
Tokyo, where pottery of the Yayoi period was first found.[13] Yayoi pottery was simply
decorated and produced, using the same coiling technique previously used in Jōmon
pottery.[16] Yayoi craft specialists made bronze ceremonial bells (dōtaku), mirrors, and
weapons. By the 1st century AD, Yayoi people began using iron agricultural tools and
weapons.

As the Yayoi population increased, the society became more stratified and complex. They Yoshinogari site reconstruction
wove textiles, lived in permanent farming villages, and constructed buildings with wood
and stone. They also accumulated wealth through land ownership and the storage of
grain. Such factors promoted the development of distinct social classes. Contemporary
Chinese sources described the people as having tattoos and other bodily markings which
indicated differences in social status.[17] Yayoi chiefs, in some parts of Kyūshū, appear to
have sponsored, and politically manipulated, trade in bronze and other prestige
objects.[18] That was made possible by the introduction of an irrigated, wet-rice
agriculture from the Yangtze estuary in southern China via the Ryukyu Islands or Korean
Peninsula.[10][19] Wet-rice agriculture led to the development and growth of a sedentary,
Reconstructed Yayoi-style dwellings
agrarian society in Japan. Local political and social developments in Japan were more
at Yoshinogari
important than the activities of the central authority within a stratified society.

Direct comparisons between Jōmon and Yayoi skeletons show that the two peoples are noticeably distinguishable.[20] The
Jōmon tended to be shorter, with relatively longer forearms and lower legs, more deep-set eyes, shorter and wider faces, and
much more pronounced facial topography. They also have strikingly raised brow ridges, noses, and nose bridges. Yayoi
people, on the other hand, averaged 2.5–5 cm (0.98–1.97 in) taller, with shallow-set eyes, high and narrow faces, and flat
brow ridges and noses. By the Kofun period, almost all skeletons excavated in Japan except those of the Ainu are of the
Yayoi type with some having small Jōmon admixture,[21] resembling those of modern-day Japanese.[22]

History

Origin of the Yayoi people

The origin of Yayoi culture and the Yayoi people has long been debated. The earliest
archaeological sites are Itazuke or Nabata in the northern part of Kyūshū. Contacts
between fishing communities on this coast and the southern coast of Korea date from the
Jōmon period, as witnessed by the exchange of trade items such as fishhooks and
obsidian.[23] During the Yayoi period, cultural features from Korea and China arrived in
this area at various times over several centuries, and later spread to the south and
east.[24] This was a period of mixture between immigrants and the indigenous
population, and between new cultural influences and existing practices.[25]
Northern Kyushu is the part of
Japan closest to the Asian Chinese influence was obvious in the bronze and copper weapons, dōkyō, dōtaku, as well
mainland.
as irrigated paddy rice cultivation. Three major symbols of Yayoi culture are the bronze
mirror, the bronze sword, and the royal seal stone.

Between 1996 and 1999, a team led by Satoshi Yamaguchi, a researcher at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science,
compared Yayoi remains found in Japan's Yamaguchi and Fukuoka prefectures with those from China's coastal Jiangsu
province and found many similarities between the Yayoi and the Jiangsu remains.[26][27]

Further links to the Korean Peninsula have been discovered, and several researchers
have reported discoveries/evidence that strongly link the Yayoi culture to the southern
part of the Korean Peninsula. Mark J. Hudson has cited archaeological evidence that
included "bounded 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, and jawbone
rituals".[28] The migrant transfusion from the Korean peninsula gains strength because
Yayoi culture began on the north coast of Kyūshū, where Japan is closest to Korea. Yayoi
pottery, burial mounds, and food preservation were discovered to be very similar to the
pottery of southern Korea.[29]

However, some scholars argue that the rapid increase

of roughly four million people in Japan between the
Jōmon and Yayoi periods cannot be explained by
migration alone. They attribute the increase
A Yayoi period dōtaku bell, 3rd
primarily to a shift from a hunter-gatherer to an
century AD
agricultural diet on the islands, with the introduction
of rice. It is quite likely that rice cultivation and its
subsequent deification allowed for a slow and gradual population increase.[30]
Regardless, there is archaeological evidence that supports the idea that there was an
influx of farmers from the continent to Japan that absorbed or overwhelmed the native
hunter-gatherer population.[29]
Shinju-kyo bronze mirror excavated
Some pieces of Yayoi pottery clearly show the influence of Jōmon ceramics. In addition, in Tsubai-otsukayama kofun,
the Yayoi lived in the same type of pit or circular dwelling as that of the Jōmon. Other Yamashiro, Kyoto

examples of commonality are chipped stone tools for hunting, bone tools for fishing,
shells in bracelet construction, and lacquer decoration for vessels and accessories.

According to several linguists, Japonic or proto-Japonic was present on large parts of the southern Korean peninsula.[31][32]
These Peninsular Japonic languages, now extinct, were eventually replaced by Koreanic languages.[33] Similarly Whitman
suggests that the Yayoi are not related to the proto-Koreans but that they (the Yayoi) were present on the Korean peninsula
during the Mumun pottery period. According to him and several other researchers, Japonic/proto-Japonic arrived in the
Korean peninsula around 1500 BC[34][35] and was brought to the Japanese archipelago by Yayoi wet-rice farmers at some
time between 700 and 300 BC.[36][37] Whitman and Miyamoto associate Japonic as the language family of both Mumun and
Yayoi cultures.[38][35] Several linguists believe that speakers of Koreanic/proto-Koreanic arrived in the Korean Peninsula at
some time after the Japonic/proto-Japonic speakers and coexisted with these peoples (i.e. the descendants of both the
Mumun and Yayoi cultures) and possibly assimilated them. Both Koreanic and Japonic had prolonged influence on each
other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.[39][40][41]

Languages
Most linguists and archaeologists agree that the Japonic language family was introduced to and spread through the
archipelago during the Yayoi period.

Emergence of Wo in Chinese history texts

The earliest written records about people in Japan are from Chinese sources from this
period. Wo, the pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan, was mentioned in 57
AD; the Na state of Wo received a golden seal from the Emperor Guangwu of the Later
Han dynasty. This event was recorded in the Book of the Later Han compiled by Fan Ye
in the 5th century. The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th
century.[42] Wo was also mentioned in 257 in the Wei zhi, a section of the Records of the
The golden seal said to have been
Three Kingdoms compiled by the 3rd-century scholar Chen Shou.[43]
granted to the "King of Na in Wo" by
Emperor Guangwu of Han in 57 AD.
Early Chinese historians described Wo as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal
It is inscribed King of Na of Wo in
communities rather than the unified land with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the Han Dynasty (漢委奴國王)
8th-century work Nihon Shoki, a partly mythical, partly historical account of Japan
which dates the foundation of the country at 660 BC. Archaeological evidence also
suggests that frequent conflicts between settlements or statelets broke out in the period. Many excavated settlements were
moated or built at the tops of hills. Headless human skeletons[44] discovered in Yoshinogari site are regarded as typical
examples of finds from the period. In the coastal area of the Inland Sea, stone arrowheads are often found among funerary
objects.

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),[45] and built earthen-grave
mounds. They also maintained vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, and observed
mourning. Society was characterised by violent struggles.

Yamataikoku
The Wei Zhi (Chinese: 魏志), which is part of the Records of the three Kingdoms, first
mentions Yamataikoku and Queen Himiko in the 3rd century. According to the record,
Himiko assumed the throne of Wa, as a spiritual leader, after a major civil war. Her
younger brother was in charge of the affairs of state, including diplomatic relations with
the Chinese court of the Kingdom of Wei.[46] When asked about their origins by the Wei
embassy, the people of Wa claimed to be descendants of the Taibo of Wu, a historic
figure of the Wu Kingdom around the Yangtze Delta of China.
Hashihaka kofun, Sakurai, Nara
For many years, the location of Yamataikoku and the identity of Queen Himiko have
been subject of research. Two possible sites, Yoshinogari in Saga Prefecture and
Makimuku in Nara Prefecture have been suggested.[47] Recent archaeological research in Makimuku suggests that
Yamataikoku was located in the area.[48][49] Some scholars assume that the Hashihaka kofun in Makimuku was the tomb of
Himiko.[50] Its relation to the origin of the Yamato polity in the following Kofun period is also under debate.

See also
Ancient Japan
portal

Japanese era name

Ainu people
Emishi people
Yayoi people
Wa (Japan)
Zenpokoenfun

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Books cited
Beckwith, Christopher I. (2004), Koguryo, the Language of Japan's Continental Relatives, Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-13949-
7.
Habu, Junko (2004), Ancient Jomon of Japan (https://books.google.com/books?id=vGnAbTyTynsC), Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge Press, ISBN 978-0-521-77670-7.
Miyamoto, Kazuo (2016), "Archaeological Explanation for the Diffusion Theory of the Japonic and Koreanic Language"
(https://catalog.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/1812319/JJA4-1.pdf) (PDF), Japanese Journal of Archeology, 4
(1): 53–75.
Serafim, Leon A. (2008), "The uses of Ryukyuan in understanding Japanese language history", in Frellesvig, Bjarke;
Whitman, John (eds.), Proto-Japanese: Issues and Prospects, John Benjamins, pp. 79–99, ISBN 978-90-272-4809-1.
Unger, J. Marshall (2009), The role of contact in the origins of the Japanese and Korean languages, Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-3279-7.
Vovin, Alexander (2013), "From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean", Korean
Linguistics, 15 (2): 222–240, doi:10.1075/kl.15.2.03vov (https://doi.org/10.1075%2Fkl.15.2.03vov).
Vovin, Alexander (2017), "Origins of the Japanese Language", Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford
University Press, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.277 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Facrefore%2F97801993846
55.013.277), ISBN 978-0-19-938465-5.

Further reading
Schirokauer, Conrad (2013). A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage
Learning.
 Silberman, Neil Asher (2012). The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press.

External links
Yayoi Culture (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/yayo/hd_yayo.htm), Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Yayoi period (http://www.yamasa.org/history/english/yayoi_jidai.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2016030320
3818/http://www.yamasa.org/history/english/yayoi_jidai.html) 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine at Japanese History
Online (under construction) (http://www.yamasa.org/history/english/index.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
200923071955/https://www.yamasa.org/history/english/index.html) 2020-09-23 at the Wayback Machine
An article (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ANCJAPAN/YAYOI.HTM) by Richard Hooker on the Yayoi and the Jōmon.
Comprehensive Database of Archaeological Site Reports in Japan (http://sitereports.nabunken.go.jp/en), Nara National
Research Institute for Cultural Properties
Article "Japanese Roots Surprisingly Shallow" from Japan Times (http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news146.htm)

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