A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (4 page)

Until the end of the last glacial period, around 13,000 years ago, Japan was joined to the Asian mainland by a number of land bridges. These were through Sakhalin to the north, Tsushima to the west, and the Ry
ky
Islands to the south. In other words, migration into the area was not difficult. Immigrants arrived in waves, particularly from east and southeast Asia some 30,000 years ago, followed by people from northeast Asia about 14,000 years ago.
⁵

It is hard to paint a picture of Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) life with any certainty. One major difficulty is that much of the coastline of that time is now deep under water. There may have been far more coastal activity than the surviving inland sites suggest.

The picture emerging so far is basically one of small and seasonally mobile groups of hunter-gatherers. The hunters targeted not only boar and deer but also big game such as elephant and bison, though these were becoming scarcer in the last Palaeolithic phase owing to climatic warming and increased hunting by a growing population. Gatherers searched for a variety of berries and nuts such as hazel.

Palaeolithic groups were made up of a small number of extended families, and totalled between 20 and 150 individuals. Extended families were important for the rearing of children, since many parents were dead before their thirties, and there were many orphaned children needing the protection of the longer-lived among the adults.
⁶
Although the population was growing it probably never exceeded 20,000.

As nomadic hunter-gatherers most groups had only temporary seasonal bases. However, there was some – though limited – stable settlement towards the end of the period. There was also a degree of specialisation, which led to trading. As early as 20,000 years ago obsidian (volcanic glass valued for toolmaking) was traded over at least 150 km. This was almost certainly carried by water, indicating that watercraft were in use from very early times.

Stone Age people are popularly portrayed as cave dwellers. However, at least in the case of Japan, caves seem only rarely to have been used as sites of significant permanent occupation – though quite a large number of caves were used as temporary shelters. The preference for open space sites suggests the widespread use of artificial shelter, though the nature of this is unclear.

Important Palaeolithic sites include Babadan and Takamori in Miyagi Prefecture, Hoshino in Tochigi Prefecture, Fukui Cave in Nagasaki Prefecture, Nogawa near Ch
fu in T
ky
Prefecture, Iwajuku in Gunma Prefecture, and Minatogawa in Okinawa. Judging by a 155 cm male skeleton excavated at Minatogawa and estimated to be around 17,000 years old, Palaeolithic people in Japan appear to have been small by modern standards but similar to other Palaeolithic peoples elsewhere in east Asia.

Knowledge of Japan’s prehistoric past was hampered till after the Second World War by the tendency of Japanese archaeologists to interpret their finds in line with the pseudo-historical accounts in early chronicles such as the
Kojiki
and
Nihon Shoki
.
⁷
Knowledge of the period is now increasing but much still remains to be discovered. It is still not even clear whether the first inhabitants were
homo sapiens
or the earlier
homo erectus
.

1.3   Stone Age Hunters and Gatherers: The J
mon Period (ca 13,000
BC
–ca 400
BC
)

Around 13,000
BC
pottery vessels appeared in Japan. They are the oldest in the world.
⁸
They also mark the beginning of the J
mon period, named after the
j
mon
(cord-pattern) found impressed on much of that pottery.

Pottery vessels might suggest a settled life-style. Settlement did increase during the period, especially from around 5000
BC
. Groups also expanded into larger tribal communities. The largest J
mon village yet discovered, at Sannai-Maruyama in Aomori Prefecture, thrived for about 1,500 years between 3500
BC
and 2000
BC.
It covered almost 100 acres and may have had as many as 500 inhabitants at its peak. It is even seen by some as suggesting that Japan could have been a cradle of early civilisation.
⁹

Settlement is also associated with agriculture. Primitive slash-and-burn agriculture may have been practised in the west of the country as early as 5700
BC
.
¹⁰
The remains of what appears to be a prehistoric farming community were unearthed in 1997 at Bibi in Hokkaid
.
¹¹
Dating back to around 4000
BC
, this is the oldest evidence of real farming in Japan. Rice was introduced into the southwest of the country from the continent towards the end of the period, around 1000
BC
,
¹²
along with millet and barley, but was not widely grown. When it was, it was in dry-fields or marshes rather than paddies. Prior to these introduced plants the most important cultivated plants were probably the beefsteak herb and barnyard grass.