The Yayoi period of Japan is extremely important in the historical development of the culture, social structure, language, religion, metalworking, and irrigated rice agriculture of Japan. Much of the Yayoi culture evolved from the earlier Jomon period, with additional innovations coming at later intervals through China and Korea. The period is now dated as beginning around 400 B.C.E., although the Yayoi people migrated from Asia from about 2300 B.C.E. As the Yayoi people became increasingly agrarian, they also grew increasingly complex in stratified class categories and in tribal patriarchal clan affiliations, leading to the feudal chiefdoms seen in the Kofun period that was to follow.
Language and Genetic Makeup of the Yayoi People
The language of the Yayoi people is the mother tongue of the modern Japanese. It is a Siberian-Mongol language, from the area north of China, and related to the language of Korea, with similarities found in the ancient Korean and Japanese languages..The group of Mongolic languages is spoken from Japan in the east to Turkish in Central Asia, to the Magyar of Hungary in the west.
The genetic makeup of the Jomon and Yayoi people has been found to be very different, shedding light on their ancient origins. The previous Jomon people were physically akin to the ancient people of South China and Southeast Asia. The Yayoi people, on the other hand, are clearly the ancestors of the modern Japanese people sharing characteristics with the current populations from Northeast Asia, Northern China and Korea. This shows that while much of the Jomon culture was retained by the Yayoi, the population had little genetic intermingling between the Jomon and Yayoi periods.
A much smaller Jomon population may have existed at the time of the influx of the Yayoi. Comparisons of the physical remains of the Japanese Yayoi and the Jiangsu Chinese coastal peoples of the early Han Dynasty show many striking similarities, strengthening the argument for a Chinese origin of the Yayoi. Interestingly, the imperial Shinto symbols of ancient Japan--the mirror, the sword, and the jewel--are the same symbols as found from the Qin Dynasty of China.
Yayoi Innovations
The first iron tools employed by the Yayoi arrived by way of Korea, and were utilitarian-- simple knives and axes. Then bronze ritual objects appeared such as mirrors, large heavy swords and spears, and dotaku bells. At the end of the Yayoi period, iron and bronze were used for weaponry and not just for ceremonial objects. Money was not used by the Yayoi people.
Rice farming, though also seen as far back as 1000 B.C.E. in the Jomon culture of the south of Japan, suddenly successfully spread throughout Japan as irrigated rice farming during the Yayoi period. The rice cultivation appears to have come from East Central China along with some tools, words, rituals, and some housing styles such as those built on stilts. During the Yayoi period weaving technology appeared, and advancement in pottery technology was seen.
The pit dwellings of the Jomon people were continued to be used by the Yayoi. The Yayoi also added eastern Chinese-type raised-floor buildings, probably to store rice. The architecture of these storage houses became the basis of the style of later Shinto buildings. Villages consisted of several of these dwellings and sometimes a ditch was dug around the village as a defense. Stone and wooden buildings appeared later on among the Yayoi people.
Early Shinto Religion and Cultural Markers
The Yayoi religion developed into what would eventually be known as Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan which is still practiced today. The religion and mythology was directly related to rice agriculture and encompassed the entirety of the Yayoi people's daily lives. The Yayoi lived in clans headed by a patriarchal chief who also served as a priest for his people. Each clan had a kami or god who represented a force of nature, and as other clans were conquered; their kami was adopted into the beliefs of the ruling clan, enlarging the pantheon of kamis into a polytheistic, animistic belief system.
The Yayoi were often polygynous and patriarchal, but there is also a possibility that women had been chiefs of clans and shamans and held a higher role in society than in later times. This is shown in Chinese documents from the 3rd century C.E. which discuss the female Queen Himiko. She was a high shaman or priestess and queen of many tribes, selected by the Yayoi by popular vote to rule. She reunited warring tribes, but hid herself carefully from the people after being selected. With her brother serving as the political leader by her side, Himiko successfully ruled Yamataikoku (which location has still been undetermined) and transacted with the Chinese as is recorded in their histories.
Much of modern Japanese culture is seen in the Chinese classical literary descriptions of the Wa or Wo (“the small people”), which was the Chinese word for the Japanese of the Yayoi period. The Yayoi are described by the Chinese as living in many scattered tribes at the time, and as eating raw fish and rice served on wooden trays. "They clapped their hands in worship," the Chinese said, as is still done at Shinto shrines today.
Sources:
Crawford, Gary "Jomon Tradition" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology Oxford University Press (1996)
Habu, Junko. Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge University Press (2004)
Hall, John Whitney Japan; From Prehistory to Modern Times. C.E. Tuttle Co. (1971)
Imamura, Keiji Prehistoric Japan University of Hawai Press (1996)
"Yayoi Culture" New World Encyclopedia
Paula I. Nielson - Paula I. Nielson, Ph.D., holds credentials and interests in anthropology, archaeology, religion, the Middle East and Asia.
