A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (5 page)

However, despite the pottery and the occasional evidence of farming, the life of the J
mon people was for the most part one of hunting and gathering, particularly on the coast. Settlements were typically of a semi-permanent nature, in the form of a base camp in a given area, and had around a dozen dwellings. These dwellings were usually pit-houses with thatched roofs reaching down to the ground.

Inland J
mon people, using the bow and arrow that appeared around the same time as pottery, mostly hunted boar and deer. At times they also ate a variety of creatures from frogs to badgers to wolves to the Siberian lion – in fact, seemingly the entire range of Japan’s rich fauna. The dog was the only domesticated animal during the period.

Many if not most J
mon people dwelled on the coast, and became particularly adept at using marine resources, from shellfish to oceanic fish. So well did they adapt to this life that J
mon skeletons, particularly of the latter half of the period, show development of bony protection for the ear mechanisms, strongly suggesting regular and frequent diving.
¹³
The reason for this coastal preference was that the warming of the climate around 13,000 years ago, which cut off the land bridges, also meant a warming of the seas and an increase in marine resources. Shellfish in particular became a major food source for thousands of years, as evidenced by huge shell mounds such as at Natsushima near T
ky
Bay.

The climate started to cool again around 5,000 years ago, and sea-levels receded. Greater use was then made of inland resources. However, many J
mon people returned to the coast within a thousand years or so, despite the still cooling climate. This suggests that their preference for the life of coastal foragers and fishers was persistent.

The introduction of rice around 3,000 years ago was probably from China through Korea, where rice cultivation slightly predates that in Japan, though opinion is divided as to the route.
¹⁴
Many present-day Japanese make much of the nation’s association with rice and assume it has been grown there from time immemorial, but in fact Japan was the last of the Asian nations to adopt rice cultivation.

It can be misleading to think of the J
mon period as a single fixed entity, for it contained significant variety, both in terms of region and time.
¹⁵
Regional variety clearly reflected local conditions, producing for example subcultures such as that centred on deep-sea fishing on the northeast coast. Variety over time reflected not only the warming and cooling of the climate, but the development of new technology. For example, hempcloth was produced from around 5000
BC
, and lacquerware from around 4000
BC
.

The population also seems to have varied over time, often for reasons that are not clear. Though estimates vary and are really only ‘best guesses’, it was probably around 20,000 at the start of the period, rose to around 100,000 by about 5000
BC
, leapt up to more than twice that by around 3000
BC
(despite the cooling of the climate), then fell back again to about 100,000 by the end of the period. Moreover, again for reasons that are unclear, by this stage the population was gathered largely in the north and northeast.
¹⁶

Other broad changes over time include a progressive increase in awareness of the supernatural. This brought increased shamanism and ritualism, new burial practices, mysterious stone circles in northern Japan, and figurines that seem to have a supernatural significance. Representations of snakes in some locations suggest snake worship.
¹⁷

The increased importance of religious ritual brought about a need for specialised knowledge of procedure. This in turn would have helped lead to differentiation in levels of status within society. Tribal chiefs too, along with the more capable hunters and producers, obviously enjoyed a higher status than most. However, it remains a contested issue as to whether J
mon society was mainly hierarchical or egalitarian.
¹⁸

It is highly likely that over such a long span of time as the J
mon period, sundry groups would have migrated into Japan from various points, adding a certain degree of ethnic diversity.
¹⁹
The disappearance of the land bridges would not have meant a total severing of links with the mainland. Somebody, for example, introduced rice. The number of these immigrants is open to question, but they were perhaps not very numerous, or at least not very different physically, for there seems to have been a recognisable ‘J
mon type’.