Yayoi
Yayoi (弥生時代) is an era in Japan from 300 BC to A.D. 250. It is named after the section of Tokyo where archaeological investigations uncovered its trace.
Following the Jomon period, the Yayoi flourished between about 300 BC. and A.D. 250 from southern Kyushu to northern Honshu. Because of the abrupt and dramatic cultural change, it is generally assumed that the Yayoi culture did not develop directly from the Jomon, but that the Yayoi were a people who migrated from the Asian mainland. The original home of these people is the subject of controversy: while Korea is the most accessible location, this theory is confounded by the fact that there is no obvious similarity between the Korean and Japanese languages. Historians such as Jared Diamond have theorized that the Yayoi may have been related to the Goguryeo or the Baekje, tribes that were eventually incorporated into the medieval Korean state. Information on the Goguryeo language is limited, but analysis by Christopher Beckwith and others appears to support a connection to Japanese.
The earliest Yayoi people, themselves using chipped stone tools, appear to have migrated to northern Kyushu and intermixed with the Jomon. Although the pottery of the Yayoi was more technologically advanced--produced on a potter's wheel--it was more simply decorated than Jomon ware. The Yayoi made bronze ceremonial nonfunctional bells, mirrors, and weapons and, by the 1st century A.D., iron agricultural tools and weapons. As the population increased and society became more complex, they wove cloth, lived in permanent farming villages, constructed buildings of wood and stone, accumulated wealth through landownership and the storage of grain, and developed distinct social classes. Their irrigated, wet-rice culture was similar to that of central and south China, requiring heavy inputs of human labor, which led to the development and eventual growth of a highly sedentary, agrarian society. Unlike China, which had to undertake massive public works and water-control projects, leading to a highly centralized government, Japan had abundant water. In Japan, then, local political and social developments were relatively more important than the activities of the central authority and a stratified society.
The earliest written records about Japan are from Chinese sources from this period. Wa 倭 (the Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan) was first mentioned in A.D. 257. Early Chinese historians described Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, not the unified land with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the Nihongi, which puts the foundation of Japan at 660 BC. 3rd century Chinese sources reported that the Wa people lived on raw vegetables, rice, and fish served on bamboo and wooden trays, had vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, clapped their hands in worship (something still done in Shinto shrines), had violent succession struggles, built earthen grave mounds, and observed mourning. Himiko, a female ruler of an early political federation known as Yamatai, flourished during the 3rd century. While Himiko reigned as spiritual leader, her younger brother carried out affairs of state, which included diplomatic relations with the court of the Chinese Kingdom of Wei (A.D. 220-265).
A recent study
While still not the definitive conclusion, a new study that used AMS method to analyze carbonized remain on potteries and wooden stakes discovered that these were dated back to 900-800BC, nearly 500 years earlier than previously believed. These artifacts came from the northern region of Kyushu and to further confirm this finding, artifacts of the same time period from Korea and Tohoku's Jomon earthware were compared with the same result.
See also
