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2 results

  • 7 - The Origins of Violence and Warfare in the Japanese Islands

  • from Part I - The Origins of Conflict
  • Edited by Garrett G. Fagan, Pennsylvania State University, Linda Fibiger, University of Edinburgh, Mark Hudson, Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschichte, Germany, Matthew Trundle, University of Auckland
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History of Violence
    Published online:
    13 March 2020
    Print publication:
    26 March 2020, pp 160-178

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the origins and early history of violence in the Japanese Islands, focusing on the Jomon (c. 14,500–900 BCE) and Yayoi (c. 900 BCE– 250 CE) periods. For several reasons the Japanese archipelago is a good place to think about links between violence and historical change. It possesses a long sequence of hunter-gatherer settlement that can contribute to ongoing debates over violence and agriculture. Hunter-gatherers in the Japanese Islands display great diversity due to both ecological and historical factors. The fact that many in prehistoric Japan were engaged in plant cultivation, leads us to a third factor: if agriculture was an important stimulus behind organised warfare, then at what point along the continuum between forager cultivation and full-scale farming did violence take on that new mantle? Finally, the position of Japan at the periphery of the East Asian world system offers the opportunity to investigate the role of ‘tribal zone’ and similar colonial processes in contexts very different from those theorised in the existing literature.

  • The centre of their life-world: the archaeology of experience at the Middle Yayoi cemetery of Tateiwa-Hotta, Japan

  • Koji Mizoguchi
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 88 / Issue 341 / September 2014
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    26 August 2014, pp. 836-850
    Print publication:
    September 2014

  • Social analysis of cemeteries has traditionally viewed them as static images of social organisation. In this study of the Middle Yayoi jar-burial cemetery of Tateiwa-Hotta, however, the dynamic interrelationship between competing groups and successive generations can be discerned. Two initial burials proved to be foundational acts, followed by over 40 further burials spread over a series of generations. Differences in grave orientation and grave goods signalled the separate identities of the adjacent hamlets that came to bury their lineage leaders in this prominent location. Competition between lineages is indicated by externally acquired grave goods, including prestigious bronze mirrors from the Han commandery of Lelang in Korea, and by the varying styles of burial jar that illustrate and symbolise connections or alliances with other communities.