Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T18:09:06.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Early agriculture in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Simon Kaner  and
Ken’ichi Yano
Edited by
Graeme Barker  and
Candice Goucher
Graeme Barker
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Candice Goucher
Affiliation:
Washington State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the development of agrarian societies in Japan and considers the way in which the relationship between rice farming and other foodways contributed to the broader social and cultural developments in the archipelago up to 500 CE. The study of the history of Japanese agriculture has focused on the cultivation of these potential staple plant foods. Domesticated animals played only a limited role in Japanese farming. The chapter discusses the origin and development of rice cultivation in Japan, while reviewing the evidence for the cultivation of other kinds of plant food. Yayoi culture, based on rice farming, is often regarded as replacing the hunter-gatherer, aboriginal, Jomon cultures that preceded it, cultures that are traditionally not regarded as directly ancestral to present-day Japanese. The defences at many later Yayoi settlements, and the move to upland locations, indicate raiding and fighting.

Keywords

agricultural communitiesarchaeological evidence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 353 - 386
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further reading

Aikens, C.M. and Higuchi, T.. The Prehistory of Japan. New York and London: Academic Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Akazawa, T. ‘Cultural change in prehistoric Japan: receptivity to rice agriculture in the Japanese archipelago.’ In Wendorf, F. and Close, A.E. (eds.), Advances in World Archaeology. New York: Academic Press, 1982. 151–211.Google Scholar
Barnes, G.L. ‘Landscape and subsistence in Japanese history.’ In Martini, I.P. and Chesworth, W. (eds.), Landscapes and Societies. New York: Springer, 2010. 321–40.Google Scholar
Crawford, G. ‘Advances in understanding early agriculture in Japan.’ Current Anthropology, Supplement 4, 52 (2011), S331–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, W. ‘Buried discourse: the Toro site and Japanese national identity in the early postwar period.’ Journal of Japanese Studies, 17 (1991), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habu, J. Ancient Jomon of Japan. Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Hanihara, K. ‘Dual structure model for the population history of the Japanese islands.’ Japan Review, 2 (1991), 1–33.Google Scholar
Hosoya, L.A. ‘Sacred commonness: an archaeobotanical approach to Yayoi social stratification: the “Central Building Model” and the Osaka Ikegami site.’ In Ikeya, K., Ogawa, H., and Mitchell, P. (eds.), Interactions Between Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers: From Prehistory to Present. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnography, 2009. 99–178.Google Scholar
Hudson, M. ‘Foragers as fetish in modern Japan.’ In Habu, J. et al. (eds.), Hunter-Gatherers of the North Pacific Rim. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2003. 263–74.Google Scholar
Hudson, M. ‘From Toro to Yoshinogari: changing perspectives on Yayoi period archaeology.’ In Barnes, G.L. (ed.), Hoabhinhian, Jomon, Yayoi and Early States: Bibliographic Reviews of Far Eastern Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow, 1990. 63–112.Google Scholar
Hudson, M. ‘Rice, bronze and chieftains: an archaeology of Yayoi ritual.’ Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 19 (1992), 139–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, M. The Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Hudson, M. and Barnes, G.. ‘Yoshinogari: a Yayoi settlement in northern Kyushu.’ Monumenta Nipponica, 46 (1991), 211–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imamura, K. ‘Jomon and Yayoi: the transition to agriculture in Japanese prehistory.’ In Harris, D.R. (ed.), The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. 442–65.Google Scholar
Kaner, S. ‘The western language Jomon.’ In Barnes, G.L. (ed.), Hoabhinhian, Jomon, Yayoi and Early States: Bibliographic Reviews of Far Eastern Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow, 1990. 31–62.Google Scholar
Kidder, J.E. Himiko and Japan’s Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History and Mythology. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Kobayashi, T. Jomon Reflections: Forager Life and Culture in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago. Oxford: Oxbow, 2005.Google Scholar
Matsui, A. and Kanehara, M.. ‘The question of prehistoric plant husbandry during the Jomon period in Japan.’ World Archaeology, 38 (2006), 259–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miyamoto, K. ‘The East Asian contexts for the origins of agriculture in Japan.’ In Kaner, S., Janik, L., and Yano, K. (eds.), Origins of Agriculture: Challenging Old Orthodoxies, Championing New Perspectives. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Mizoguchi, K. The Archaeology of Japan: From the Earliest Rice Farming Villages to the Rise of the State. Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nishida, M. ‘The emergence of food production in Neolithic Japan.’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2 (1983), 305–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities Through Time. Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Pearson, R. (ed.). Ancient Japan. Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery; Tokyo: Agency for Cultural Affairs, 1992.Google Scholar
Shoda, S. ‘Radiocarbon and archaeology in Japan and Korea: what has changed because of the Yayoi dating controversy?’, Radiocarbon, 55 (2010), 421–7.Google Scholar
Soumare, M. Japan in Five Ancient Chinese Chronicles. Fukuoka: Kurodahan Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Takahashi, R. ‘Symbiotic relations between paddy-field rice cultivators and hunter-gatherer-fishers in Japanese prehistory: archaeological considerations of the transition from the Jomon age to the Yayoi age.’ In Ikeya, K., Hidefumi, O., and Mitchell, P. (eds.), Interactions Between Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers: From Prehistory to Present. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2009. 71–98.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, K., Brown, R.D., Washitani, I., Tsunekawa, A., and Yokohari, M. (eds.). Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan. Berlin: Springer, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Totman, C. Japan: An Environmental History. London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsude, H. ‘Early state formation in Japan.’ In Piggott, J.R. (ed.), Capital and Countryside in Japan, 300–1180: Japanese Historians Interpreted in English. Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 2006. 13–53.Google Scholar
Wieczorek, A. and Steinhaus, W. (eds.). Zeit der Morgenröte: Japans Archäologie und Geschichte bis zu den ersten Kaisern. Mannheim: Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, 2004.Google Scholar
Yano, K. ‘The introduction of wet rice cultivation into western Japan and its Jomon precursors.’ In Kaner, S., Janik, L., and Yano, K. (eds.), Origins of Agriculture: Challenging Old Orthodoxies, Championing New Perspectives. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, forthcoming.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×