This episode we'll continue with our exploration of the Jomon period, focusing specifically on the Middle Jomon in the area of Eastern Honshu.  This was truly a fascinating period, and saw the largest population boom anywhere of a non-agrarian subsistence culture.  We'll talk about why that is and look at some of the other cultural factors that we see in this area.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-3

Rough Transcript

(Auto transcription courtesy of listener, Zach)

Greetings and welcome to another episode of Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 3, Boom and Bust, Part 2 in our series about the Jomon Period. So in the last episode we covered more than 10,000 years, but this episode will really only cover about 2,000 years or so, and mostly in one region of Eastern Honshu. But it was an eventful 2,000 years. Whereas at the beginning of the Jomon Period, there were maybe 20,000 people in all of the islands, by the height of the middle Jomon Period, that number had grown to 260,000. Most of these individuals were residing in the Kanto and Chubu regions of Central and Eastern Japan. In those areas, we see huge settlements appear, and the people really seem to thrive. This was one of the most prosperous times and areas that the world had ever seen in an area that had not yet developed agriculture. And then, for some reason, it stopped. First in the Chubu Highlands, and later the Kanto region, with settlements shrinking until only the coastal settlements remained of any serious size, we see the unique material culture dwindle, overtaken by outside influences. So what happened? What is the cause of this stone age bubble economy? That's part of the mystery we'll be unraveling this episode. Now, before we go much further, I would like to make a quick mention of one of the foundational sources for all of this. Keiji Imamura's Prehistoric Japan. Available in English, some of its information is dated as new finds have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge regarding when things first happened, but it still remains a key source for understanding what is going on, as well as getting an overview of the period. The dating system that Imamura uses is the one that you'll find most others following for this period, and his hypotheses and conclusions are still largely the basis for much of the discussion on what happened during this time. While other sources might provide information about specific technologies and innovations, let alone particular areas of Japan, they still tend to reference Imamura's work. I'll make sure to have information about it on the podcast blog page over at SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast. Alright then, back to Eastern Japan in the Middle Jomon Period. By this time, people in the archipelago were living in long-term settlements, but we see no evidence of full-scale agriculture, suggesting that people were still foraging for food. These settlements are mostly circular in design, as are the pit dwellings that make up most of the structures. We also find some post holes outside of these pit dwellings, and their placement suggests other above-ground rectangular structures. Now it's impossible to know just what these were used for, but they may have been storehouses of some kind. I mean, when storing food and other goods, it's often beneficial to keep them up off the ground. For one thing, it can allow air to circulate and can be a deterrent to animals who might sneak in to raid the food stores. Using a removable ladder, access to the food stores can be further controlled. Of course, these could also be some sort of above-ground pavilions, or some kind of watch tower, from which one could look out over the area around the village, possibly watching for game or groups of other foragers, or if you're out on the coast, perhaps you're watching the horizon, watching folks in canoes who are out fishing. It's just hard to say for certain. And even if they were storehouses, we still find some storage pits, though not as many in the Kanto region, and we'll discuss that more in a bit. But we do find storage pits, so even if some things were stored above ground, others were kept in the ground. This may simply indicate that there was a diversity of foodstuffs and other goods such that different storage methods were appropriate. After all, we use our pantries, and we also use our refrigerators. They are used for different things, possibly the same thing is going on here. There was another feature at some settlements. In at least some of these villages, we have found burials at the center of the circular ring of dwellings, and some of these were actually located underneath a distinctive circle of stones or other decorative, possibly ritual, construction. In some of these stone circles, you'll find a single upright stone in the center, which is believed to be a masculine symbol. Smaller phallic-shaped stones and scepters are sometimes found inside the various homes, probably as some sort of charm for protection or prosperity. These settlements are connected through their material culture with others in the region. In particular, we see similar pottery styles in various geographic areas, and therefore can assume that there were some shared cultural aesthetics at least between these different sites. Over the course of the Jomon period, we see about ten different material cultures expressed through this pottery. Several of these cultures are found in the Kanto Plain and Chubu Highlands, from the area around modern Tokyo and Chiba prefectures all the way out to modern Nagoya and Lake Biwa. This will be the focus of our discussion today, since that is where we see the highest growth. See, when the population of the archipelago reached its zenith, the Kanto Plain in particular saw a density of about three people per square kilometer. I mean, that's incredibly dense. And since people weren't spread evenly across the region, the settlements at this time must have grown to accommodate them. And well, that's exactly what we see. From this period, we see dozens of settlements with 50 or more dwellings, and one, at modern Kowashimizu in Chiba prefecture, just northeast of Tokyo, had at least 260 dwellings. One can imagine them bustling about their daily lives, men and women preparing food, smoke drifting up from numerous cooking fires, dogs and children playing amongst the houses. There might have even been small gardens in and around the houses where select herbs and other seasonings were cultivated. Potters would be at work, building up their pots from clay coils as they had been taught, marking them in a variety of ways with their own distinct designs, and then firing them in an open pit. These people were at the height of their prosperity, and it is seen not only in the size of their population, but in their connection with other communities. We find obsidian that has traveled from at least 100 kilometers away, indicating that there were trade networks, and therefore regional specializations that necessitated the trade. I can't emphasize this enough, this is before horses or any other mode of transportation, other than simply walking. So these weren't isolated communities, but communities that were working together and with one another across large areas. They knew they were part of a larger world, and they participated in it actively. So they had local and imported goods. They had lacquer and pottery and fabric for clothing. Their pottery and lacquer were heavily decorated, and they likely did the same to the clothes and to themselves. We know that they would reshape or even remove teeth, and we also have evidence of other forms of decoration, to include what appear to be ceramic ear decorations or mimikazari, plug-style ear gauges meant to fit in the earlobe, not uncommon practice around the world. There were also lacquered hair combs as well, and decorative shell jewelry at least at the coastal sites. And speaking of the coast, that's another thing about this area. It's when we see some of the highest sea levels in Japan, and many of the "coastal" sites are actually found up much farther inland than might otherwise be suspected. So at a site like Kawashi Mizu, you would also notice the large shell midden surrounding the village, though occasionally people would simply take an old abandoned pit dwelling and throw the shells in there instead. After all, the pit's right there. This would have been a prominent part of any coastal settlement. Of course, you know what we don't see at these settlements? Farming. No fields, or even clear indication of farming equipment. Nothing. And this is pretty remarkable, because it would seem to indicate that their prosperity was based entirely on foraging off the land. And if the estimates are correct, at 3 people per square kilometer, these population densities in Central and Eastern Japan are the highest levels recorded for temperate foragers anywhere in the world. So how did they do it? I mean, what allowed these areas in Japan to support that many people? Well there are several theories. One of them is that they did in fact have agriculture. This is called the Jomon farming theory. And in this theory, the idea is we just don't see any clear evidence of it today. Personally, I'm not convinced. At least not for this middle period. I mean, first off, we would expect to see more evidence of the kinds of crops that make for good stable harvests, typically grains like rice and millet. Foxtail millet in China dates back to at least 5000 BCE, and rice comes in another 1000 years before that even. And it isn't that we don't find grains here and there, in Preston pottery or preserved in other ways. But we don't find enough of it. You see, Japan, at least in present day, isn't really suited to grasslands. And therefore there aren't a lot of places where these grains could have just grown wild in large fields and meadows. So you'd expect to see some level of cultivation in and around the settlements, much like we'll see in later periods. We don't find anything like that at all. I mean, imagine if thousands of years from now someone was digging around at sites in the US Midwest and they only rarely found evidence of corn, and had no evidence at all of corn fields, equipment, or anything else. That's roughly what we are talking about here. Now we do find evidence of grains in the middle Jomon period, as I mentioned, but they just aren't prominent, as you would expect of a staple food source. This is the evidence that some scholars cite, but it's just as likely that these grains are imports from the mainland. Remember, they did have extensive trade routes and boats that they were using to travel between the islands. It isn't that much of a stretch for an intrepid individual to brave the waves and make their way to the mainland, where they could pick up exotic food and other goods. So there really isn't enough evidence to support large amounts of agriculture, at least not here in the Chubu and Eastern Honshu region. Of course, there are the energy-rich nuts that we discussed in the last episode, and it is definitely the case that the proliferation of nut trees throughout the archipelago appears to be one of the reasons that people were able to create settlements without full-scale agriculture. Nuts, though process-intensive, provide a lot of energy. Combined with fish from the rivers and seas, meat from the forests, it's easy to see how this could have allowed these permanent settlements to exist, even with this foraging culture. The land certainly provided a wide array of food for the people. And it may even be the case that people encouraged certain trees and plants to increase the yield, perhaps pruning out some of the trees that would compete with oak, chestnuts, etc. and maybe they even deliberately planted trees that they preferred. Even so, why would the population boom occur only in one area of Japan? Why would only the Kanto and Chubu regions benefit from any innovations? Well, the answer may lie in the differences between these geographic areas, along with a quirk of the climate. You see, in the Kanto and Chubu regions, we see a few changes during this middle Jomon period. The first is that we see fewer and fewer storage pits, especially compared to other regions like Tohoku. Whatever was being stored in these storage pits, the Kanto and Chubu regions were not producing nearly as much of it. It isn't as though they had increased their hunting, though. In fact, there are fewer hunting implements found, and only a few pit traps that are found around any large settlements. So it doesn't look like they are falling back on hunting. They are pulling food out of the ocean, and a lot of that evidence is down in the Kanto area. Half of the more than 2,000 shell mounds that have been found are in that region. That wouldn't explain the population increase in the highland regions, however. Now we do see an increase in particular types of stone tools in this region. These are called chipstone axes, but axe simply refers to the shape and not necessarily the use. In fact, Imamura suggests that these are actually more like digging implements. Think like an adze or a hoe. We have a noticeable increase in these tools, but only in the prosperous areas. And while correlation is not causation, it certainly makes one think. Could it be that these people in Kowashimizu and elsewhere discovered an even better source of food? Possibly something in the ground, like tubers? Root vegetables certainly have a lot of food energy, and several types grow naturally in Japan. Could this be the new food source that was found? It certainly seems to fit. So now our prosperous society has moved from this nut-based foraging system to a tuber-based foraging system, which seems to have grown out of a combination of local conditions and climatic change. After all, this was one of the warmest periods that had been seen, which is one of the reasons that the sea levels were so high. In moving to tubers, they transitioned away from their previous nut processing. Life was pretty good. And then, well, something changed. That began to cool down at the end of the middle period millennium, and soon thereafter we see Kanto and Chubu regions start to struggle. It starts in the Chubu region, where we see a decline in the population, represented by smaller settlements. In addition, we start to see the introduction of Kanto-style pottery, possibly indicating a greater communication with their neighbors due to their own economic troubles. This trend continues eastward towards the coastal regions until the only major settlements are those along the coast of the Kanto plain. This would make sense as the coastal resources would provide a buffer against any initial decline from the loss of other significant food sources. Eventually, however, the influence of the Kanto style declines and gives way to styles from the Inner Sea region of Japan, the area west of the Chubu Highlands. Now while the end of this period saw an overall drop in the population, it was mostly in just these same areas. The other areas didn't see similar drops, but instead their population stayed steady. This is one of the reasons we don't think the precipitous drop was caused by war or disease. Had that been the case, we would expect to see much further-ranging effects. Instead, they appear to have continued on with their lives. One likely reason for this is that they never converted to the same lifestyle as the eastern regions, still utilizing the same subsistence methods that had seen the rise of the Jomon people in the first place. They continued to focus on the harvest of nuts of the local forest and this crop was not as affected by the changing climate as some other food plants. And the areas of Kanto and Chubu weren't nearly so bad off compared to their neighbors, but it took a while for their system to adapt. For almost a thousand years they had come to rely on a very particular way of life, one which could no longer support them. They would have to rediscover the old ways of living and to do that, they likely looked to their neighbors. The previously prosperous areas of eastern Honshu would never fully recover during the rest of the Jomon period. They never quite regained their former glory and the decline would continue through to the end of the Jomon period. One can imagine the stories handed down in the early days as children hear their grandparents talk about the prosperous times when the days were warmer and food was plentiful. During the decline, generations would find their lives more difficult than their parents, with more people than the land could reasonably sustain. Some of them must have looked with envy upon their neighbors, who would have seemed relatively prosperous in comparison, and it's easy to understand why some of them may have left and joined these neighboring cultures where there weren't as many mouths to feed. Reaching out to others, sharing resources, it would be no wonder that they would share more than just food. Over time, things would right themselves and they would find a balance with the land once more, a balance that wasn't what it once had been, but where life was predictable and supplies adequate to the people. At that point, a certain amount of normalcy no doubt returned, but by then the social landscape had irrevocably changed. This is the mysterious boom and bust of the middle Jomon. For a span of about a thousand years, they saw unprecedented growth and prosperity in eastern Honshu region. Then the bubble burst. In that time, however, there was remarkable innovation. You see, this boom period sees the height of Jomon artistic expression, and the Chubu and Kanto regions are considered part of what is known as the Katsusaka pottery zone, at least in the highland areas. The lowland and coastal areas are known as the Otamadae zone. By the middle period, the Katsusaka zone had split into three spheres, the Sori of Kofu basin and East Shizuoka, the arabesque or karakusamon design around Lake Suwa, and the Kasori I-type in East Kanagawa, Tokyo, and Saitama. Some of these pieces were quite large, and production of pieces over 50 cm tall was a particular feature of the time. As the late middle Jomon period came to a close, we see the Kasori I-type pottery from the rest of the Kanto come to dominate other spheres within the Katsusaka zone. Eventually though, as even the Kanto's influence waned, it was overtaken, as we mentioned before, by another pottery style from the west. Along with the pottery of the time, we see more figurines. These still appear to be mostly female, but we start to see them get more elaborate. These figures are also known as Dogu, and we'll talk a lot more about them in the late Jomon period. For now, be aware that they don't really have a single common expression. It varies over both time and region. There are definitely some common features. Most depict breasts and a prominent belly, which many have interpreted as a symbol of pregnancy. But most are abstract enough that it's difficult to tell anything about the people and what they wore just from these examples. It is unclear if the decoration indicates actual clothing, hairstyle, and other adornments, or if they were meant to evoke something unnatural and otherworldly. And of course, some are much more abstract than others. Now, most of the figurines from this period are also interesting because they are free-standing. Early figurines tended to be flat, some simply being etchings on a stone or a flat piece of clay. These were only really meant to be viewed from one direction. They may have been propped up, hung on a post or wall, or perhaps they were even meant to be buried face up. Free-standing figurines, on the other hand, are meant to be viewed from multiple angles. You know, I can't help but wonder if this was their idea of 3D technology in their art, and their own 4D revolution was soon to come. You see, most of the figurines we find are broken. And not just in the normal way of pottery that has been tossed out or thrown away. Instead, they appear to have been deliberately broken, often missing limbs. And in other cases, we see them deliberately buried. This has some scholars thinking that there could have been some sort of substitutionary ritual going on, where these figurines were taking on some of the aspects of a person and standing in for them in some way. This practice has a long history in the archipelago, with evidence of wood, metal or paper dolls, for instance hitogata or katashiro, used in Shinto rituals since early times. In modern Shinto, these katashiro will be associated with the person, usually by rubbing it on the person and having them breathe on it, and thus they will assume their impurities. They will be taken to a shrine for an oharai or cleansing ceremony, such as the Nagoshi no Oharai, and will be placed in a pure flowing stream of water to wash away said impurities. It may be that these early figurines played a similar role in some kind of ritual. Due to their three-dimensional nature, it is surmised that these were some sort of communal rituals, and if there was deliberate breakage as part of it, there was clearly an even more participatory element involved, the 4D revolution as it were. That still doesn't explain, though, why they appear to be female. After all, men and women would both have benefited, one would think, from these types of rituals, so there are still questions left to be answered. Now in addition to the figurines, there also appear to be rods of some kind, often phallic in shape. Some are found standing upright among stones or buried in a pit dwelling, possibly for protection or some kind of prosperity amulet or charm. It certainly seems that these early ritual practices were based largely around the ideas of the male and female, not an uncommon theme throughout human history. I mean, even today, we still spend a lot of time watching pictures of beautiful men and women on the TV and in the movies, so it isn't that far a conceptual leap. And when we start to look at the early mythological foundation tales of Japan, the dual nature of male and female will certainly play a major part in that story. Of course, one might be tempted to stop here and talk about the dual nature of yin and yang as well, but we should be careful, as that is very much a continental idea. Furthermore, much of what would define yin and yang as we know it today is still millennia from where we are in the story. It would be another 900 years before King Wen of Zhou was said to have ruled on the mainland and formulated the Yijing and 1400 years before masters Lao and Kong and their philosophies. For now, at least on the archipelago, we just have these symbols of male and female. The rituals of this time, particularly around the clay figurines, appear to have especially flourished in the Chubu region, just north of Mount Fuji. During the construction of the Shakado parking area along the Chubu expressway, a large Jomon settlement was discovered, and through the excavations between 1980 and 1981, they uncovered an apparent ritual center where 1016 clay figurines were discovered. This is the largest trove of such figurines in the region, and one of the largest troves in Japan. You can go check them out at the Shakado Museum, one of the only museums accessible from an expressway rest area. Now because of the extensive dig they did at Shakado, we have a very good idea of the size and scope of that particular area, and the complex appears to be made up of at least five sub-sites, all located in the Yamanashi area of the Kofu Basin. To provide a little context for those of you who may be more familiar with later history, this is the same area that would later become part of the Kai province under the control of the famous Sengoku daimyo, Takeda Shingen. Now at the largest of these sites, Sankojindaira, there is evidence of about 160 pit dwellings throughout the area's history, which was first settled back in the initial Jomon period, though it was the middle Jomon period that really saw the height of its prosperity. While there are a lot of different pit dwellings, it appears that there were only about ten or so in use at any given time, so although there was constant use of the site, it was never as large as some of the Kanto settlements. The number of figurines found is impressive, but evidence from other sites in the Kofu Basin indicates that this may have been standard for middle Jomon settlements in the area, it's just that most of the other settlements have not been as extensively unearthed. And that's something that we should keep in mind, that there are still a lot of areas that could be just as big and we simply haven't uncovered them yet. There's still a lot hiding in the earth, but what they have found shed some interesting light on the practices of this time. So all the figures appear to be human, with some depicting quite intricate clothing and hairdos. They all appear to have been free-standing, between ten to thirty centimeters high. And most scholars agree they were female, though some do make a claim they might be asexual human representations. It's quite interesting that there appear to be different types of figures, in different poses, etc. Could that indicate different ritual uses? Or is it for something far more mundane? Even more interesting is that they did not find a single one that was whole. In fact, of the more than a thousand figurines found, only thirty could be refitted in part. And even in those cases, the individual pieces were sometimes found in completely different sites, often in places that were not otherwise indicative of a trash pit or midden, which would seem to indicate they were deliberately broken and then relocated and buried elsewhere. Truth is, they were clearly made to break. During their construction, they were apparently made from different pieces of clay, and it is thought those were then attached with small wooden connectors. This would have made them weak at those joints, and thus easier to break. Unfortunately we will never fully know what rituals they were used for. The Khofu Basin was likely a well-visited location. It was, after all, one of the main routes between the Kanto and Western Honshu, and it still is today. It is likely that other people would have regularly traveled through the area, and possibly participated in the local rituals. This could help account for how those figurines eventually made their way south to Kyushu by the late Jômon period. That said, each separate pottery zone had its own type of figurines as well, which further strengthens the idea that these areas were connected socially as well as through their material culture. So there you have it. The rise and fall of the middle Jômon period of the Kanto and Chûbu Highlands. The Jômon culture would never see population numbers like that again. Even at the end of the final Jômon, it is estimated that there are only about 75,000 people or so in the entire island chain. All up from 20,000, but not nearly the 260,000 that we had seen during this period. Prosperity elsewhere in the archipelago will be more defined by quality than quantity. Next episode, we will start to take a look at the late and final Jômon periods, with much of the archipelago divided between the northern and southern cultures. We will examine the culture in the southwest first, particularly in Kyushu. After that, we can take a look at the culture in the northeast and how they seem to be getting along during this later period. From there, we will talk about what was going on over on the mainland and take a look at how that influenced what was to come. Honestly, this whole thing is going from 3 to probably 4 episodes in total. For now, thank you so much for listening. Feel free to rate us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, we have information about our Ko-Fi site at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast, where we will also have some photos of various artifacts that we have discussed, as well as references and other material used for this episode. Questions or comments? Feel free to tweet us at @SengokuPodcast or reach out to our SengokuDaimyo Facebook page. That's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.