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.1

Although the rise of bushi (samurai) warriors has been widely studied in comparative perspective, early trends in violence and warfare in Japan have received less attention outside specialist circles.^{[312] [313]} For several reasons, however, the Japanese archipelago is a good place to think about the links between violence and historical change.

One such reason is that it possesses a long sequence of hunter-gatherer settlement that can contribute to ongoing debates over violence and agriculture.^[314] Full-scale farming societies did not reach western Japan until the first millennium bce and in Hokkaido in the north, hunting-gathering continued until the early twentieth century.^[315] Secondly, hunter-gatherers in the Japanese islands display great diversity due to both ecological and historical factors. Ecologically, there was a wide range of foraging habitats from sub-tropical islands in the south to sub-arctic tundra in the north. Social organisation ranged from the relatively simple to some of the most complex hunter-gatherers known from the archaeological record.^[316] The fact that many hunter-gatherers in prehistoric Japan were engaged in some sort of plant cultivation leads us to a third factor: if (as widely assumed) 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.⁶ In what follows, after a brief discussion of historiographic trends, we summar­ise the archaeological and related evidence for violence in the Jomon and Yayoi before presenting a concluding discussion on the links between agriculture and violence in early Japan.

More on the topic 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.1:

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