Early Japanese History

Lecture outline

Land

• Size
• Geographic Features: river, lakes, coastline, inner sea
• Resources: sulfur, copper, forest, land, water (precipitation 1500 mm)
• 20,000 Japanese islands separated from mainland Asia: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, Ryukyu Islands

Japanese People

• Legends: Izanagi and Izanami and Amaterasu
• first people in Japan around 30,000 BC (stone tools as evidence)
• Minatogawa people (Jomon people or southern Asians) and Yayoi people (Northern Asians)
• Linguistics: the Ural-Altaic family language (Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus); Tibet, Burma?
• Ainu
• Burakumin

Paleolithic Culture (30,000 to 10,000 years ago)

• 5000 Paleolithic sites found throughout Japan; Obsidian (or kokuyouseki) in various places
• Paleolithic tools found including both core tools and flake tools, but no bone or horn artifacts found in Japan
• Jomon culture (“cord marks”7500 BC to c. 250 BC)
  • Pottery predates the Chinese (12,000 years ago); types
  • Tools: bow and arrow, fishing hook (8500 years ago), boats, stone tools
  • games and other food
  • Cooking: skim off the scum that rises to the surface of the cooking water
  • Dwellings: the pit-type dwelling and the housing made by laying a circular or oval floor of clay or stones on the surface of the ground
  • Community: households led by a headman or shaman; resident gatherings (4-6 households)
  • Gender division of labor: male hunting, female gathering and pottery making
  • Economy: hunting, fishing and gathering edible nuts and roots; incipient agriculture: some form of cultivation: starchy yams and taro; weaving unknown but body ornamentation used
  • Religion: tooth extraction (rite marking the attainment of adulthood); bend-body burial; female figures
  • Life expectancy: 35-40
  • The proto-Japanese or Jomon people (an admixture of certain strains from the Asian continent and from the South Pacific)
    　

The Yayoi period (c. 250 BC–c. AD 250)

• Residues of Jomon culture in Hokkaido and Okinawa (shellmound culture)
• Yayoi people
• Yayoi pottery (for practical use, thin wall, bright color), though not fundamentally different from Jomon pottery
• Metals: iron objects (for practical use): axes, knives, sickles and hoes, arrowheads, and swords; bronze objects (for rituals): halberds, swords, spears, taku (bell shaped ritual object)
• Irrigated cultivation of rice; routes of rice introduction to Japan
• Cloth woven on primitive looms using vegetable fibers
• Two types of dwelling—the pit type and the type built on the surface
• Larger communities; moated resident area, rich residents
• Burial practices--the dead were buried in either large clay urns or heavy stone coffins; Occasionally a dolmen was employed to mark the graves; indication of class distinctions.
• Common use ritual objects: wood birds, bell-shaped object,
• Weapons and warfare
• the Chinese (Lo-lang) and Korean influences

Early Proto-states (late Yayoi era)

• the Chinese chronicles
  • Wo
  • the “state of Nu in Wo” mentioned in Han record in AD 57
  • The Wei chih (220–264)
• Queen Himiko in Yamatai
• Where is Yamatai? (in northern Kyushu or in the Kinai district (central Honshu)

The Yamato Unification of Japan (3rd to 6th centuries)

• Kofun period or tumulus culture (c. 250–552 AD)
  • Kofun - keyhole-shaped tombs in the early 5th century (Ojin's was 1,380 feet [420 metres] in length, Nintoku burial mound, 486 meters circumference)
  • Kofun as ceremonial ground; Haniwa (religious figurines at kofun sites)
  • But who were the diseased?
  • moated residents disappeared
• the legend of Yamato Takeru who defeated Emishi (Ainu) people
• the Yamato hegemony tenno (“emperor of heaven”) as recorded in Kojiki (712) and Nihon shoki (720)
• “seven-pronged sword”4th century
• Shinto religion, Kami and three kinds of gods in Japanese religious thinking
• social structure
  • uji (clan) and be (occupational groups)
  • bi-lateral family system as opposed to patrilineal system of China
  • big family (Ooyake - public ) as territorial community structure
  • Soga Uji; Monobe Uji
• contact with China in the 5th century (Weavers, smiths, and irrigation experts migrated to Japan, and the Chinese ideographic script also was introduced at this time, together with Confucian works written in this script)
  • History writing (620 AD)
  • Official dress
• relations with Korea (Silla, Paekche, Koguryo and Mimana)

The Age of Reform (6th to 8th centuries)

• Soga Uji and the importation of Buddhism to Japan (mid-6th century)
• the empress Suiko (ruled 592–628)
• Shotoku Taishi (574-622 AD) and the establishment of a system of 12 court ranks in 603 and the Seventeen-Article Constitution in 604
• Three missions to Sui dynasty China
• Shotoku as the ruler of the nation “where the sun rises” (Japan)
• the Horyu Temple, founded between 601 and 607
• the Taika reform (646 AD) and institutions of Taiho
  • International backgroud: power rivalry in Korea peninsula
  • Prince Nakano Oe and Nakatomi Kamatari (later Fujiwara)
  • reforms: land, taxation, roads built, government structure, capital, social reforms
  • Social stratification: aristocracy, ryomin and semmin, women
  • Emperor Temmu (r.673-686)
  • Ritsu-ryo: penal law (ritsu), civil order (ryo), Grand Council of State (Daijokan)