Introduction
The Yayoi period (300 BC-250 AD) was an era that marked the onset of rice-based agriculture in Japan. The Yayoi culture was established consequent to the integration of the Jomon hunter-gatherer culture, an antecedent of Yayoi culture, in the region.
The agrarian culture is reported to have been imported from China-Korea. Additionally, investigations in anthropological morphology have revealed differences in human bones from the Yayoi period and the Jomon period (14,000 BC-300 BC). Therefore, it is believed that Chinese and Korean genetic influences on the Yayoi people were significant.Thus, the presence of Chinese-Korean immigrants (Trai-zin in Japanese) was evidently of importance during the establishment of the Yayoi culture when agriculture became the social and economic foundation of society. However, several factors pertaining to these immigrants remain unclear within Japanese anthropology and archaeology. Specifically, these relate to the immigrants’ place of origin, the initial immigrant population size, the sex ratio of the immigrants, and whether native Jomon people or immigrants played a formative role in the establishment of agrarian culture during the Yayoi period.
Anthropological and archaeological research indicates that the Korean Peninsula was the immigrants’ place of origin. However, there are two competing hypotheses
F. Sakahira (s) · T. Terano
Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering,
Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatsuda-cho, Midori-ku,
Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
e-mail: f-sakahira@hotmail.co.jp
T. Terano
e-mail: terano@dis.titech.ac.jp
F. Sakahira
Kozo Keikaku Engineering Inc., 4-5-3 Chuo, Nakano-ku, Tokyo, Japan
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 281
J.A. Barcelo and F. Del Castillo (eds.), Simulating Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds, Computational Social Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31481-5_10 proposing that the immigrant population was either large or small in size.
The difference between human bones of the Yayoi and Jomon periods provides the rationale for the hypothesis positing a larger immigrant population size. Hanihara (1987) has estimated that the total size of the immigrant population over a period of 1,000 years ranged from about 310 million people based on a back calculation of the estimated population during the subsequent period. In contrast, the hypothesis of a smaller immigrant population size at the beginning of the Yayoi period is based on the characteristics of pottery and stone tools which retained the characteristic style of the Jomon period. Consequently, the size of the immigrant population was not considered sufficiently large to change the characteristics of the pottery and stone tools at the beginning of the Yayoi period. Moreover, pottery and tools in the immigrant style predominated during the subsequent middle Yayoi period (200 BC-0 AD).Regarding the sex ratio of the immigrants, a leading hypothesis postulates that the immigrants were primarily male (Kaneseki 1976). One reason for this hypothesis is that, as mentioned, the characteristics of pottery and stone tools retained the Jomon style at the onset of the Yayoi period. Tsude (1982) has stated that pottery was made by females during the Yayoi period. This contention was based on the emergence of an extensive body of ethnographic literature reiterating that pottery was made by females (Murdok and Provost 1973). Therefore, Japanese archeologists have generally accepted that pottery was made by females during ancient times. Based on these studies, they have argued that the female ratio of the immigrants was not sufficiently high to change the characteristics of pottery from the Jomon to the Yayoi style. Further, this hypothesis postulates that even if the population was large, given that immigrants were primarily male, the characteristics of pottery and stone tools did not evidence rapid change at the onset of the Yayoi period.
The most pertinent question of whether native Jomon people or Chinese-Korean immigrants played a formative role in the establishment of agrarian culture during the Yayoi period has long been a source of controversy.
This is an important research problem within Japanese anthropology and archaeology (Fujio 1999). Some archaeologists have suggested that the native Jomon people assimilated the new agrarian culture, thus assuming a key role in Yayoi agrarian culture. However, as previously discussed, this assertion is based on the characteristics of pottery and stone tools which retained the Jomon style at the inception of the Yayoi period. Consequently, it has been assumed that the immigrant population was small in size and that native Jomon people, comprising the majority of the population, played a major role in establishing the Yayoi agrarian culture. Conversely, some anthropologists have insisted that during ancient times, Chinese-Korean immigrants to Japan brought with them a systematic agrarian culture. As the population grew, their descendants became the key players in establishing the Yayoi agrarian culture (Kataoka and Iizuka 2006). This insistence can once again be attributed to differences found in human bones of the Yayoi and Jomon periods, revealed through investigations in anthropological morphology. Based on this finding, the immigrant population size was assumed to be sufficiently large to have had a significant genetic impact. Thus, according to this view, immigrants played a predominant role in the evolution of Yayoi agrarian culture. However, this dualistic conception has recently been revised. It is now thought that the evolution of the agrarian society was a collaborative process that was initiated by both Jomon people and immigrants (Fujio 1999).To resolve these problems, an examination of population trends and of the food production systems of the Jomon people and of the descendants of the immigrants since the inception of agriculture is required. However, in the Northern Kyushu region where the agrarian culture took root, human bone material from the late Jomon period (1000 BC-300 BC) up to the early Yayoi period (300 BC-200 AD) is missing, despite the onset of the agrarian culture during this time.
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