Bibliographic Essay

The best general introduction to Japanese prehistory is Gina L. Barnes, Archaeology of East Asia: The Rise of Civilization in China, Korea and Japan (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015). General books on the Jomon period make no mention of the question of violence or warfare.

For the Yayoi period, a broader literature exists on warfare and the rise of chiefdoms. Good starting places are J. Edward Kidder's Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom ofYamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007) and Koji Mizoguchi, The Archaeology of Japan: From the Earliest Rice Farming Villages to the Rise of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). A useful summary of Japanese approaches to Yayoi warfare is provided by Makoto Sahara, ‘Rice cultivation and the Japanese', Acta Asiatica 63 (1992), 40-63. In Japanese, Takehiko Matsugi's Hito wa naze tatakau no ka: Kokogaku kara mita senso (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2001) remains an excellent overview.