This episode we'll cover the Jomon period down in Kyushu where we will look at the evolution of the culture and the disaster that befell this early bastion of Jomon society.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-4

Rough Transcript

(Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach)

Greetings, and welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 4, Jomon vs. the Volcano, Part 3 of our continuing series on the Jomon Period. In previous episodes, we covered the rise of the Jomon people from their Paleolithic ancestors. We covered the great innovations that were made, and the changes in their way of life. Last episode, we covered the rise and fall of the Katsuzaka culture of the Kanto and Chubu Highlands during the prosperous Middle Jomon Period. Today, we are going to look at the Jomon culture down in southwest Japan, particularly down in Kyushu, right up to the final millennia of the Jomon Period and the beginnings of the Yayoi. During the last two periods in the Jomon chronology, the late and final Jomon Periods, there were largely two dominant material cultures, one in the northeast with major concentrations in the Tohoku Hokkaido region, and then another in the southwest, with major centers in Kyushu. Central Honshu was largely split between these two cultural regions. Up in the northeast, the pottery style became more and more elaborate as time went on, while in the southwest of Japan, the pottery style tended to become even more simple, with fewer markings, and instead going for a smoother, more polished look by black burnishing the pottery and firing it in reducing conditions. This created a stark contrast in the material record between the two groups. In addition, we'll examine what is starting to happen on the mainland. By the end of the Jomon Period, the archipelago will be back in semi-regular contact with the Asian mainland for the first time in thousands of years. Pressures on the mainland will eventually cause some people to spill out into the islands, and with them will come a distinct change in the culture of the archipelago. This will be the start of the Yayoi culture. So by the end of the middle Jomon Period, the archipelago can largely be divided into two major cultural areas. There is western Japan, with the largest sites in Kyushu, and then northern Japan in Hokkaido, with large settlements in the Tohoku region spanning across the strait to the island of Hokkaido. Each of these have their own distinct material cultures and histories, and we'll try to touch on both. We'll start with Kyushu in the south, looking particularly at the culture around Kaminabe, and we'll move north and look at the development of the culture through the lens of the Sannai-Maruyama, and Kamegaoka sites. Before we get started on that, I do want to touch on a bit of historiography here. You see, unlike the Paleolithic period, the Jomon Period was known to Japanese historians at least as early as the Edo Period. Or at least the pottery was. Jomon era pots had been found over the years, and in the Edo Period two men, Sekitei Kiuchi and Teikan To, were some of the first scholars to really start collecting and discussing stone tools and pottery. They discussed just what these were and who might have made them, as they didn't seem like anything in the traditional categories of Japanese history. It would be 70 to 80 years after these early scholars had passed away when "scientific" study of the Jomon began with the excavation of a shell midden by Edward Sylvester Morse in 1877, with two of his Japanese students performing another excavation only two years later at Okadaira. Morse is the one who gave the Jomon Period its name, based on the cord-marked pottery found at the Omori Shell Mound. And there's the rub. Based on the name, you would think that the entire period was defined by nothing more than its pottery, and by a specific type of pottery at that. But a lot of excavations over the years have been in the northern and eastern sections of Japan. The early assumptions were that Jomon pottery were simply a part of the early Ainu culture. Under this theory, the Ainu were equated directly with the Emishi, the barbarians, outside of the Yamato polity. They were "driven back" into Tohoku and eventually Hokkaido, where they live to this day. Given that conception, is it any wonder that a lot of the early work was focused in the northeast? And in fact, some 80% of all Jomon sites are in the northeast, rather than the southwest. And yet, in many ways, the island of Kyushu appears to be the birthplace of Jomon culture in the archipelago. While granted, the oldest pottery we have is actually from the Tohoku region, far to the north, some of the first evidence of settlements and other tell-tale markers of the Jomon culture first show up in Kyushu. This is likely because, as it is in the south, the temperatures in Kyushu were much more hospitable to this new lifestyle than further north, allowing for various trees, plants, and animals that would enable the sedentary foraging culture that would be indicative of Jomon settlements for millennia to come. In the incipient and initial Jomon periods, many early artistic and practical developments were made in southern Kyushu, but I can't find evidence of those sites having been explored to the same extent as on Honshu. In addition, with the lower sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene era, it is possible that there are Jomon sites that may now lie out beyond the modern coastline, somewhere under the ocean waves. Recent excavations in Kyushu have shed some light on the culture down there, and we are gaining a better appreciation for it overall. So in southern Kyushu, during this early period, when the north was still much colder than it is today, there is evidence of a thriving Jomon society, not to the level of the middle Jomon period Kanto and Chubu regions, but still a sophisticated culture. Instead of just marking their pottery with cords, they sometimes used seashells, a tradition popular in the southernmost areas of the Japanese islands. And then, one day, about 5330 BCE, something happened. To the people of southern Kyushu, the day would have started as any other day. Whether pattering around the village, or out fishing in the ocean, or even up in the forest hunting for food, nothing would have seemed to miss. They may have looked up when they heard a rumble like distant thunder. The ground would have shook, alarming, but not uncommon in the ring of fire. Then on the horizon, a cloud would have been seen, rising into the air. It's possible they had seen smoke for several days now, in the same spot, but this would be different. It would be much larger than anything they had seen before, and it would be approaching. It may not seem that fast, but it would reach the southern tip of Kyushu, probably 30 minutes or so after it first appeared. Men and women along the shores may have noticed the cloud racing toward them over the water. They were travelling at speeds well over 1000 km/h. They may have tried to run, or shelter in place. In either case, the answer was the same. The pyroclastic flow would have quickly engulfed everything in its path, leaving an unimaginable path of destruction in its wake. This was the Aka Hoya eruption from the Kikai caldera, due south of Kagoshima, and it was one of the three most powerful eruptions in the past 10,000 years. It covered the entire archipelago in ash. In Osaka, there was ash up to 30 cm deep. This was an apocalyptic event, and it changed the landscape of Kyushu, western Honshu, and even parts of Shikoku. It created a decline in the evergreen broadleaf forests of western Japan for more than 800 years. And deforestation can be seen as far away as Shikoku in the Ki Peninsula south of Osaka. Along the southernmost tip of Kyushu, the land was barren, with a total absence of grass, bamboo, and trees for several hundred years. There is even a decline in the oceans with a noticeable decline in shellfish during this period. Southern Kyushu was annihilated, and the flourishing culture was all but erased. This was 100 times the size of Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in 79 CE, which would completely destroy Pompeii and its environs, and six times the size of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883, an eruption that was heard as far away as Alice Springs, Australia, and which was picked up in readings around the globe, even in Europe. We are talking a blast force equivalent to possibly 10 or 20 of the most powerful nuclear devices ever detonated, and it may have been even larger than that. For centuries, southern Kyushu was all but uninhabitable, and the eruption had an effect on the flora and fauna across the archipelago. The destruction was unimaginable. The previous material culture of southern Kyushu was completely destroyed. We don't see anything else for hundreds of years. Perhaps some people escaped the destruction and moved north to join other groups. Perhaps they were entirely wiped out. There is a volcanic ash layer known as the Aka Hoya layer, and beneath it lies the beauty of the previous Jomon culture. Above it, the pottery is distinctly changed. New groups eventually came in to settle the island after the eruption, bringing with them new pottery forms and forming new communities. Eventually, life would return, even to the most devastated parts of the island. By the middle Jomon period, the oceans had reached a peak, and they would have flooded inland valleys, and just like in the north, this is where we find some of the early settlements. Also, as in the north, these settlements were round or horseshoe shaped, with round pit dwellings encircling a central common area. It should be noted that we don't find as many settlements in southwestern Honshu during this or even later periods, at least not when compared to Kyushu, eastern Honshu, and the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions. This doesn't mean that there weren't people. In fact, they had their own pottery cultures, in particular the Nakatsu pottery culture, which existed in Kinki and Inner Sea regions in the middle period. This is the pottery style that spread into the Chubu Highlands with the decline of the Katsusaka culture, and it would later spread into Kyushu, bringing with it other signs of Honshu influence. Some examples of Jomon sites in this area might include the areas of Nara and Lake Biwa. At Lake Biwa, we have only a small piece of one settlement, but it shows some distinctive features, including some kind of wooden circle. This could have been for ritual use, though it may also have an as-yet unknown practical use. Since all we have to go on are the post holes and the surrounding features, our information is pretty limited. This site, at Shorakuji, showed evidence of pottery from all over Japan and was likely a common trade point. It may also be that it was pulled between the various cultures over the years. Over time, the climate would continue to change, with the temperatures dropping and we see a corresponding change in the way people lived and where they chose to settle. As the ocean levels receded, the old settlements lost easy access to coastal resources, forcing them to change or move. In the beginning of the late Jomon period, about 2000 BCE or so, we start to see settlements in Kyushu popping up at the foot of the mountains. Given the implements found, the people at this time appear to have relied much more on hunting than on foraging. We see a lot more hunting tools and fewer for processing plants. Then, about 1400 BCE, we see the settlements move again, this time to the river terraces, providing a much more reliable access to water. These settlements show a different pattern than the others, with several smaller sites often associated with a larger "core" or "mother" site. Based on what is found at the different locations, it seems the core sites were the actual permanent settlements, while the sub-sites were for temporary, possibly seasonal usage. This is not an uncommon practice, and even today people in places like Alaska might have a fish camp or similar seasonal location that they go to each year as part of their subsistence lifestyle to harvest the bounty of the land, preserve it for long storage, and bring it back home. Compared to the earlier settlements of the late Jomon, these sites are much more reliant on plant processing with chipped axes, much like we see in eastern Japan during the middle Jomon period, as well as chipped knives and sickles. Given the cooling climate over the centuries, it is possible that some of the conditions that had led to the boom of the Kanto and Chubu in the middle Jomon periods were moving south, and maybe tubers or other such vegetables were becoming more prevalent at that time. Or it could simply be that the technology made it to Kyushu and it was adopted into the other subsistence methods in use at the time. One thing is for certain though, we don't see the same kind of population boom that eastern Honshu had seen during the middle Jomon, which may just mean that there were other factors at play. Now there is some evidence we may be seeing the very early signs of agriculture during this period. A few scholars suspect that this may have been a type of dry field agriculture, as compared to the wet rice agriculture of later periods. Dry field agriculture is what most of us probably think about when we think of farming wheat and similar grains in a European construct, and since it doesn't require flooding the fields on a regular basis, it doesn't show the same kind of infrastructure and impact. One thing is certain, we see more evidence of rice and other grains in this period, so even if they weren't under full-scale cultivation, they were certainly known and regularly consumed. However, whether or not they had some form of agriculture, one thing is clear. We don't see the social changes that the full-scale agriculture would later bring. You see, farming, particularly wet rice farming, literally takes a village. It is very hard in pre-industrial times to just be your own independent farmer without the infrastructure the rest of the village provides, such as dams and irrigation, which are needed to flood and drain the fields at the appropriate times. You might have a small garden, but for regular fields you will likely need multiple people working together. Even today, farming is often depicted as a communal rather than a solitary activity, though with machines doing much of the labor, a single person can do a lot more today than in the past. So it may be that there were some cultivated fields of grains during this period, but they do not appear to have been the staple food of society, and it is quite likely that it was simply an augmentation to the people's day-to-day subsistence. They were still dependent on hunting, fishing, and foraging for their livelihood. They even continued the tradition, started early on in the Jomon period, of digging holes in boggy ground where they could store the nuts harvested from the local forests. This is a tradition that would survive well beyond them, but it is rather fascinating. You see, by digging a hole in boggy soil, you let the water seep in intentionally, and normally this would not be great. We usually associate wet and damp with mold and other issues that would seem to be contraindicative of storing food for long periods of time. And yet, the boggy marshy conditions that these storage pits provided actually did a remarkable job of keeping nuts viable as they prevented them from sprouting, inducing a kind of dormancy, while the specific conditions of the soil, water, etc. prevented mold and other forms of decomposition. In fact, in one experiment, archaeologists were able to remove an acorn from one of these pits that had been placed there at about this time period and plant it. Sure enough, once removed from its storage pit and planted, the seed began to grow, proving it was still viable. Pretty wild, wouldn't you say? Now in addition to all that, we also see tools similar to those that have been used in the central and eastern Honshu regions during the middle period, those axes that weren't actually axes. And there appears to be a direct connection with the tools traveling from Chubu through western Honshu and down to Kyushu. Though Kyushu would not see as drastic a population boom as in the east, they no doubt adapted the technology to add yet another item to their menu, which was quite extensive by this time. Of course, it wasn't just food harvesting and processing technology that flowed into Kyushu from central Honshu. Besides the layout of settlements in the eastern manor, circular settlements with houses surrounding a central courtyard, we also see evidence that rituals were communicated through the islands as well. It's this period when we see a large boom in the figurines in Kyushu, primarily at the Kaminabe site at the western foot of the mountains near Mount Asou in modern Kumamoto Prefecture. Now figurines were never as frequent in southwestern Japan as they were in the northeast. Then again, 80% of all the sites we've discovered are in the northeast, so it's no wonder that's where we find most of the figurines. Still, within southwest Japan, only two sites have so far been found to be real centers of figurine production, the Nara region and Kaminabe in modern Kumamoto Prefecture, though they do show up regularly enough at other sites. The fact is that this was still much more popular in the east and in the north than it was in the west, or at least in the use of clay figurines. There could be others made out of organic materials that simply don't survive. Nonetheless, we still see a healthy number of figurines at Kaminabe around 900 BCE. This appears to be about the same time that people are moving away from the foot of the mountains and towards the river terraces, moving from a more meat-based diet to one more diversified with plants, fruits, nuts, vegetables, etc. There is some thought that the figurines went hand in hand with these changes in subsistence. You see, in many cultures, women are closely associated with early agriculture. While nursing and infant care might preclude a woman from going on a hunt, she might instead forage local food, and even tend to a garden. These gardens could eventually become fields, putting women at the forefront of the agricultural development. We see this in several myths and legends in other parts of Asia, as well as in later myths of the Japanese. The land is often likened to a pregnant woman, and there are stories of goddesses who die only to have various vegetables and plants spring from the parts of her body. It is possible that these figurines were part of this tradition, part of rituals for requesting a good harvest, whether from fields, garden, or forest. Of course, that is only one theory, and with the different types of figurines found in different parts of Japan, it is highly possible that the rituals they were used in were different as well, though intentional breakage does still seem to play a pivotal role. Physically, the figures in Kyushu, particularly at the Kaminabe site, were relatively simple, not unlike their pottery from this time. They were definitely of a more simple design than what we see in eastern Honshu. As far as their size, they were maybe 10-20 cm tall. As before, they definitely show female characteristics. There are also some interesting features at this site. First off, as I mentioned, it was a horseshoe shape of pit dwellings, and at its center was a small stone arrangement, a pit, about 165-185 cm in diameter, filled with round stones, with five stones marking the outside boundary. It is believed that this would have been used for some sort of communal rituals. We also find evidence of possible burials at this settlement. Buried around the site were ceramic jars, about 50 cm in diameter. Some of them were missing their bottom or had it broken out, and they had another ceramic bowl turned upside down on the top as a lid. Given that there is no sign that any of these had ever been opened after they had been buried, it is likely that these were some type of a pot burial, but the remains inside had long since decomposed and only the ceramic sarcophagus remained. This may have been a central settlement for the area, which could account for the number of ritual figurines found at this site. Life was pretty good, and the settlements in central and southern Kyushu continued to grow, but there was one other factor that would enter the picture during this period, and that was linked to something that we have talked a little bit about, but not in depth. Overseas Trade. You see, while we don't have a lot of evidence of just how they did it, we know that the people were traveling back and forth between the islands of Japan and the mainland, not to mention the southern Ryuku or Okinawan islands as well. There had to be some contact for certain plants and trade goods to come across. There were also examples of fishhooks and harpoons that crossed the straits between Korea and Japan, so there were at least some people in Korea who traveled to Japan and vice versa. So there was some form of contact with the mainland, but probably mostly with the coastal regions. Then we see something new. We start to see some early rice paddies in northwestern Kyushu, and they are accompanied by pottery and tools that are pretty much straight from the mainland Korean peninsula. This is a new technological leap that will change Japan forever. This is the Yayoi culture. This is a new culture on the island, one heavily influenced by mainland East Asia, especially the Korean peninsula. Over the next few centuries, we'll see waves of immigrants start to come over, and even some Japanese head to Korea, but for now, it is just getting its foothold in northwest Kyushu, on the Fukuoka Plain. It's difficult to say just when this is. For a long time, it was thought that this Yayoi culture didn't get started until about 300 BCE, at which point there was a swift adoption of wet rice agriculture that swept up until it hit northeast Honshu. However, recent discoveries have overturned this theory, at least to a point. Through new carbon-14 dating techniques, including better calculation for possible anomalies in the record and in the physical material, a team from the National Museum of Japanese History has suggested pushing the start of the Yayoi all the way back to the 10th century. However, that dating seems inconsistent with what we know about the relationship between artifacts in Japan and on the mainland, and it would imply that some of the metal artifacts found in Japan are older than the mainland versions. A team from Kyushu University published their own dating results and found that it was later than the 10th century BCE, but still probably earlier than the 5th. For our purposes, we can say that the first evidence of this new Yayoi culture made its way to Kyushu sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries BCE, overlapping with the final Jomon period. It seems clear that though the Yayoi established themselves on the Fukuoka Plain, not everyone was ready to throw away their old way of life and join this new culture, which seems to have been heavily influenced by immigrants from the Korean peninsula. Early on, we see them still living separately, even in settlements where they are otherwise living together. And not everyone was into immigrants coming in, bringing their new ways of life. In fact, some of the Jomon settlements appear to have doubled down on their own culture. Rather than adopting the Yayoi way of life, people turned even more to their own unique rituals. This could explain the increase in figurines at Kaminabe and other sites during this time. Of course, time marches on, and eventually the Yayoi culture won out. Sorry, spoilers. We'll talk more about that in a later episode, but suffice to say the Jomon settlements in Kyushu were eventually overcome or absorbed into the new Yayoi culture complex. Some of the pottery styles continued on, contributing to the new styles that would help define this era, but other cultural items, such as the Dōgu figurines, disappeared completely. With possibly one exception. There have been found human-shaped bone containers that were used for secondary burial rites, particularly for infants. This is a practice where the body is buried, and after it had been in the ground for a while, the skeleton is exhumed, the bones cleaned off, and then they are reinterred. Whether or not these human-shaped containers are a direct link, or if it is only a coincidence, has not been determined. Oh, and I should point out one more thing before we close out the episode. We are starting to enter what I would call the "pseudo-historic period" for Japan. That is to say, we have written sources that purport to tell the history from this point on, but those sources wouldn't be written down until about a thousand years after everything happened. Still, the first emperor, Jimmu, is said to have started his empire in 660 BCE. We'll come back to that when we explore the history as told in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. For now, be aware that there is a purported history of this time, but it doesn't exactly line up with the archaeological record. It will be a while until we see evidence of a single Japanese state, and before that there is a lot more of the archaeological and historical record to get through. So that is a brief overview of Kyushu during the Jomon period. From its early start, Kyushu looked poised to be the leading cultural center of the very early Jomon period. They had a thriving and refined culture with their own distinct pottery and designs. This was all destroyed in the Kikai-Aka Hoya eruption, and the entire island was set back for hundreds, even thousands of years. Eventually, the island was repopulated, and then started to see an influx of Honshu cultural artifacts, along with changes in the way people lived. Finally, we see the coming of a new people, whom we know as the Yayoi culture, with continental influences that will eventually overtake and replace the Jomon culture on the island. Next episode, we'll turn our attention to the northeast, to the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions. We'll take a look at their middle, late, and final Jomon cultures, including the culture of San Nai Maruyama and the Kamegaoka culture. We'll look at what life was like in the very north, where they even held out against the encroaching Yayoi culture. 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 over at our main website SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast, where we'll also have some photos of various artifacts from what we've discussed, as well as references and other materials used this episode. Question or comment? Feel free to tweet at 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.