Research Trends

As in other parts of the world, questions relating to violence and warfare received little attention in Japanese archaeology until quite recently. Stone arrowheads and bronze weapons were not infrequently discovered in premo­dem times, but such objects were given a range of sometimes fanciful interpretations.⁷ Scientific archaeology began in Japan in 1877 with excavations by the American zoologist Edward Morse at the Omori shell midden in Tokyo.

Culture in the Prehistoric Japanese Archipelago (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), pp. 133-4.

6 R. Brian Ferguson and N. L. Whitehead (eds.), War in the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare (Santa Fe, CA: School of American Research Press, 1992).

7 Peter Bleed, ‘Almost Archaeology: Early Archaeological Interest in Japan', in R. J. Pearson (ed.), Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1986), pp. 57-67.

8 Eiji Oguma, A Genealogy of Japanese' Self-images (Melbourne: TransPacific Press, 2002), pp.

in Japan, yet this text uses ethnographic examples from Africa and the Americas to naturalise the role of warfare in human history and studiously avoids any mention of violence in the Japanese past.^[317] From the 1930s, censorship became more overt and profoundly influenced the practice of archaeology, anthropol­ogy and history in Japan until 1945.^{[318] [319]}

Japan's defeat in World War II made it possible for archaeologists to contribute to a new ‘democratic' history of Japan that explained and critiqued the role of the emperor. If the imperial system was responsible for the rise of despotic power in Japan, then it followed that earlier periods in Japanese prehistory had been characterised by more peaceful, egalitarian communities. In the late 1940s, excavations at the Yayoi period Toro site in Shizuoka seemed to provide the perfect example of such a community.11 One exception to the post-war emphasis on the peaceful roots of ancient Japan was Egami's ‘Horse rider' invasion theory, but this was widely criticised in both Japanese and English.^{[320] [321] [322] [323]} By the 1960s, however, Japan was confronted with the growing consequences of industrial pollution and with the international tensions of the cold war, socio-political trends which became coupled to a new interest in conflict in Japanese history.1³ In particular, an expanding archaeological record made it clear that the Yayoi was characterised by extensive evidence for violence, especially in western Japan. This changing interpretation was crystal­lised by excavations at the Yoshinogari site in Saga, a large settlement enclosed by multiple ditches and palisades with watchtowers (Figure 7.1).1⁴ The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II further stimulated research and by the turn of the twenty-first century a new consensus had been established on the evolution of violence and warfare in prehistoric Japan.1⁵ Although the

Figure 7.1 Reconstructed defensive structures at the Yoshinogari site.

possibility of some small-scale raiding in the Jomon period was not denied, it was widely concluded that organised warfare began with agriculture in the Yayoi. Japanese research has thus concentrated on developments related to violence after the beginning of agriculture and has continued to downplay conflict among preceding hunter-gatherers.