Japan’s Murky Past
There was a cool show this past August at the National Science Museum in Tokyo, too bad it’s over:
The Jomon period refers to the time in Japanese history from about 10,000 BC to 300 BC when a paleolithic culture of hunter-gatherers existed in Japan, and the period is named for the striking pottery designs of the time.
The later Yayoi period, which lasted from 300 BC to AD 250, marks the supposed turning point in Japanese culture, when colonists from the Asian mainland swept into southern Japan, bringing wet-rice cultivation, more advanced pottery and a highly structured society with them - the beginnings of the Japan we know and love today.
There is, however, a considerable amount of controversy regarding Japan’s archaeological history. For one thing, Japan didn’t really start “serious” archaeological studies until after WWII. As well, Japan’s acidic, volcanic soil also tends to obscure and even dissolve most human remains. And finally, a reportedly schizophrenic amateur archaelogist nicknamed “God’s Hands” singlehandedly discredited Japanese paleolithic (Jomon) archaeological accomplishments from 1975 to 2000.
The Harvard Asia Quarterly tells the story of Fujimura Shinichi, a renowned Japanese archaeologist who was caught planting planting stone tools, some of which he had fabricated himself, others he had taken from other sites, at an archaeological dig in northern Honshu.
Fujimura, a salaried employee at an electronics factory in Miyagi Prefecture, confirmed that his forgery had begun as early as 1980 and involved 42 sites. It is possible that over 180 were affected by his forgery.
After being caught on film planting stone tools in 2000,
The 50-year-old Fujimura took asylum in a mental hospital, where he remains today. His diagnosis has not been made public, and his communication with the outside world is mediated by his doctor and lawyer. Even the Japanese Archaeological Association’s official investigation committee has been prevented from speaking with him except in the presence of the doctor and lawyer. As a result, his motivation and the extent of his deceit are still unclear.
For another interesting article, follow this link.
I’ve heard Japanese people with more western or caucasian-like physical features descended from the Jomon people…or is it Ainu?
That girl under Jomon in the picture made me wonder.
September 20th, 2005 at 3:14 pmThe Ainu live in Hokkaido, and they may or may not be distantly related to the Jomon people. The Ainu are supposedly caucasoids, too, for whatever it’s worth.
The Jomon culture no longer exists in Japan, and hasn’t existed for 2000 years or so.
September 20th, 2005 at 3:19 pmThere’s plenty of quacks in archaeology, and people who sift through facts selectively and add their little spin on things to push some nationalistic point or just their pet theories in general, and I would’ve been surprised if Japan didn’t have any. And if you look at China it’s even better because it’s a state-sanctioned practice.
BTW, as a side note, to this day we don’t know how much and which stuff Schliemann planted at Troy and Mycenae - it’s generally suspected, but nobody’s been able to prove it yet.
September 20th, 2005 at 3:26 pmThe Ainu live in Hokkaido today, but it is very likely that as late as Heian times they still occupied a very large section of north-eastern Honshu.
It seems likely, but it is unproven, that the Jomon people and the Ainu are related, but there is also reason to suspect (but more through inference based on some linguistic and cultural similarities than hard evidence) that in Japan’s pre-history there was an Austronesian population of some sort, which would mean that modern Japanese are a mixture of various degrees of Ainu, Austronesion, and Mongoloid (more specifically, early inhabitants of the Korean penninsula.)
September 23rd, 2005 at 1:33 pmNo offense, but if there’s been very little research and very few result from that rsearch, how the hell does anybody know where the different inhabitants of Japan came from?
And I’m going to have to insist that the Ainu were Hokkaido’s inhabitants. The “indigenous” people that inhabited northern Honshu during the Heian Era were called the Emishi, and had a very different culture than did the Ainu.
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:25 pmJomon appear to be way cuter than yayoi
September 24th, 2005 at 2:50 pmYeah, but the Yayoi were ruled by matriarchs, and celebrated life by having a lot of sex. Whoo!
September 24th, 2005 at 2:53 pmThere’s plenty of research arguing that the Emishi and Ainu were the same people - the best evidence being linguistic analysis of placenames in NE Honshu that seem to be originally derived from the Ainu language rather than Japanese. This may sound like tenuous evidence, but it’s actually a pretty common technique for tracing the migrations of pre-literate peoples.
September 26th, 2005 at 10:12 pmHi, Mutantfrog. Your site is pretty neat, by the way.
Anyway, I suppose what I wanted to say in the above post (but didn’t for fear of offending the blogosphere) is that archaeology is basically a crock of shit, and is a leftover of the racialist days of the first half of the 20th century. While I’m no proponent of intelligent design, I sometimes wonder how the hell you can populate entire prehistoric worlds based on shards of bone and pottery found by accident in some old stream bed.
There, I’ve said it.
September 26th, 2005 at 11:20 pm[...] ad an imperialistic background. And in the cultural imperalism category, KokRyu noted both some successes and some problems in Japanese archaeology. Without question the most controversial [...]
October 11th, 2005 at 9:53 pm