Revisiting "Jomon"

In recent years, interest in Jomon culture has been rising again, with various exhibitions and events being held. Mr. Kobayashi, what first sparked your interest in the Jomon period?

I used to work at an animation production company, and a director I worked with at the time really loved the Jomon period. I also use computer graphics, and since my job involves creating forms, I got into it purely from the perspective of thinking, "Wow, this pottery looks cool." So, it wasn't an academic motivation.

One interesting point is that when reading books by Professor Tatsuo Kobayashi and others, there's talk about how Jomon culture continued for over 10,000 years in symbiosis with nature, and during that time, almost no traces of warfare have been found.

That's true. Unlike other countries where foreign ethnic groups brought new cultures and wiped out the indigenous people who were there before, the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods saw very little of that.

In other words, during the long era before the Nara period, a pattern may have been established where foreign elements were incorporated into an already mature society and transformed into something unique to Japan.

From the Yayoi period all the way to the present, we've had a pyramid-shaped economic and social system. In the midst of the strong sense of stagnation in Japan today, when we think about where to seek our identity, the Jomon period lasted for 12,000 to 13,000 years—about four to five times longer than the eras that followed. Thinking there might be things we can learn from such an era, I established an NPO called JOMONISM and am currently active with it.

Since people don't really take to overly difficult topics, I conduct activities in connection with things like music festivals and art.

That's very unique. Ms. Adachi, you are an expert in archaeology, but do you actually go out and do excavations?

Yes, I used to go out every day and excavate ruins in Kyoto Prefecture from morning until evening.

Ever since I was a child, my family would take me to archaeological sites on trips, and I loved going to museums. That's where my interest started, and right around the time I was in elementary and middle school, the excavation, preservation, and public exhibition activities at the Sannai-Maruyama Site in Aomori Prefecture were gaining a lot of momentum.

When I actually visited Sannai-Maruyama, there was a Jomon-period woven basket (pochette) on display with nuts still inside. I was captivated, wondering how they had woven it. Apparently, I stood in front of that exhibit for so long that my parents started to worry (laughs).

Because I liked looking at things and seeing things people had made, I decided to study archaeology to unravel the lives of people in the past through objects. I entered Keio because I really wanted to study under Professor Kimio Suzuki, a leading figure in Japanese archaeology.

This year, there is also the special exhibition "Jomon: 10,000 Years of Prehistoric Art" at the Tokyo National Museum.

That's right. It's the first special Jomon exhibition in a long time, since the 2001 exhibition "The Art of Pottery: Jomon Dynamism and Yayoi Stillness."

The popularity of Jomon died down a bit after around 2001, but it might be becoming a bit of a boom again.

It's wonderful to be able to see such a great selection of items, so I think Jomon is "having a moment" right now.

Also, a person named Akihide Mochizuki publishes a free paper called "Jomon ZINE," which is distributed in various places nationwide. Mr. Mochizuki introduces Jomon in a very pop-culture way, so I feel like it's gradually permeating the mainstream.

Many foreigners coming to Japan today are interested in Japanese anime. I think there is a very strong connection between this anime and the "animism" of the Jomon period. I suspect the source of anime lies in the way Jomon people saw spirit-like entities in all things in the world.

The philosopher Takeshi Umehara used the clever phrase "Jokon Saisai" (Jomon Soul, Yayoi Talent). It's a play on "Wakon Kansai" (Japanese Soul, Chinese Talent), but the things that came in after the Yayoi period—like writing, weaving, and metal tools—are, in a word, things that prioritize efficiency. Umehara's idea is that the fundamental nature of Japan is "the soul is Jomon, and the talent is Yayoi."

When you talk about archaeology to children or foreigners using Japanese anime as an entry point, their eyes really light up. I think there's something there that can be shared with the world.

Certainly, I think Japanese anime and subculture are heavily influenced by animism.

The roots of things like the partiality for characters and the fetishism for form might lie in clay figurines (dogu) and pottery. I think the sense of a human acting as a medium to put energy and soul into an object has been passed down from the Jomon period to the present.

That's very true. Not only can children learn about archaeology through anime, but I think the power of the real objects, like the clay figurines, is incredible. Even without an explanation, children are drawn in and stare at them. I hope to utilize the power of these "objects" so that people can learn history with a fresh perspective.

I previously gave a lecture with Professor Tatsuo Kobayashi, and there's a question that always comes up: "What do the patterns on Jomon pottery mean?"

I imagine so.

Professor Kobayashi's answer was, "As a researcher, I can't say anything because there is no physical evidence." But even if there's no evidence, I believe the Jomon people must have put some meaning into them.

I think academic theories also start with something like the researcher's inspiration. So, I think it would be interesting if more varied theories came out from individuals like that. Since I'm an artist, I want to engage with the Jomon period through my own fantasy.

Since there is more we don't know about the Jomon period than what we do, each viewer can develop their own fantasy as much as they like. There can be an academic Jomon, a literary Jomon, or an artistic Jomon.

Pottery became much simpler after the Yayoi period, but I think the patterns on Jomon pottery had a narrative quality. I can't help but feel there was some kind of message.

The patterns and decorations reached an extreme peak during the Middle Jomon period. The Katsusaka style is a representative example; they are large and don't look like pots and pans used in an individual home. They were special items used for some kind of ritual at the community level, which is why they might have been preserved so carefully even after being buried.

On the surface, there are things that look like frogs, snakes, or humans. But there's also a sense that they are none of those. I feel that the pottery patterns that flourished in the Middle Jomon are something transcendent that can't just be called "patterns."

They are on a different dimension, aren't they?

The Jomon period can be divided into the Incipient, Initial, Early, Middle, Late, and Final periods, starting from the oldest. The middle era of those 10,000-plus years is called the Middle Jomon. The pottery from that period is larger in size compared to other periods.

Research shows that the population was also highest during the Middle Jomon. Therefore, there's a theory that even for cooking, many large-sized pieces of pottery were needed. Also, from the perspective of portability, the climate during the Middle Jomon was warm and the environment was relatively stable, so it seems many people were able to build settlements and live in one area for a long time. Since they didn't have to move, large pottery was likely fine.

The title of your book, Ms. Adachi, is "The Phylogeny of Jomon (縄紋) Pottery." Is there a specific meaning behind using the character "紋" (mon) instead of "文" (mon)?

Yes, it has a special meaning. For patterns made by rolling rope, we use the character "紋" with the thread radical (糸へん). On the other hand, for other patterns like hand-drawn ones, we use "文" (mon-yo) without the thread radical. This distinction was first made by Sugao Yamanouchi, a researcher who was active from the 1920s to the 1960s and originally specialized in biology and anthropology.

Professor Yamanouchi wrote somewhere about a story from around 1931, where he tried rolling a stick wrapped with twisted cord like a coil on a desk.

Yes, and that's how he apparently realized that the patterns were made with rope.

Until then, people didn't understand that the patterns were made by rotating something. There are many patterns other than rope, right?

There are also very thin bamboo tubes, shells, and so on. On the other hand, there are many types of rope made by twisting plant fibers, depending on how they are twisted. Furthermore, there are variations in how the rope is rolled, so "Jomon" (縄紋) is quite diverse. Professor Yamanouchi grasped this. Not only that, he discovered that the rope patterns applied to many Jomon-period pots had characteristics specific to regions and periods, and he made "Jomon" (縄紋) one of the important criteria for classifying pottery. He distinguished it from other patterns (文様).

Another thing I don't quite understand is that there is no pictorial expression in the Jomon period. In an era where the belief in spirits was so thick, the fact that there isn't a single thing resembling a painting feels strange. This is just my own imagination, but perhaps painting existed as a taboo.

In other words, I think there were plenty of artists like Mr. Kobayashi back then, and they could have painted as much as they wanted. However, perhaps there was a taboo against expressing spirit-like things in a representational form.

The Jomon people, who chose not to go in the direction of painting or music, left patterns on pottery. How should we understand this?

Of course, I think it's different from what we call writing today. However, I also think that when people of that time saw it, it might have been a series of panoramas that they could understand as a story, much like an anime.

Middle Jomon pottery is truly magical. It's shamanic in form. As it moves into the Late Jomon and then the Yayoi period, it goes purely in the direction of function, which has continued into modern society.

Certainly, patterns are wasteful or even a hindrance when it comes to actual cooking. But the act itself of crafting such patterns into pottery is also a sense of gratitude toward eating.

Moreover, boiling and stewing in Jomon pottery meant using the cutting-edge technology of the time. Things that were too hard to eat before became edible by putting them over a fire.

They were taking a life received from nature and, by adding cooking, essentially giving it a new birth in a different form. Adding decoration to that might have been a rational thing for the Jomon people.

I see.

Also, this is another thing Professor Tatsuo Kobayashi said, but despite the fact that such a massive amount of pottery remains across all eras—too many to count—when experts look at it, there are almost no "failures" by our modern standards.

If someone like me tried pottery, I'd make something messy and weird, right? (laughs). You'd think things like that would remain, but perhaps there was an unwritten rule that you simply must not fire pottery like that.

True, only the good pieces seem to remain.

There are some items that look like they might have been for practice, or small-sized pottery with faltering patterns that were likely made by a child learning from an adult.

There are even pieces where handprints and fingerprints remain. Those less visually impressive items are often not displayed in museums.

I see.

However, it's thought that there were quite strict rules for making them. In archaeology, the unit of classification based on regional and temporal characteristics is called a "type" (keishiki), and even in pottery that seems to be for practice, patterns are drawn that capture the characteristics of that type.

In other words, even if they were making them for practice, they strictly followed the rules observed by the group in that region and time. There were specific ways of drawing and a specific order in which patterns had to be drawn. That is likely why purely pictorial expressions or pottery with deviant patterns were not produced.

This is just my intuition, but looking at various pottery, it seems there is often one incredible piece that could truly be called a masterpiece, and many others that look like imitations of it.

A huge amount of pottery has been found in Yamanashi, and in the Middle Jomon period, there are so many different styles that it's almost as if every village had its own.

But even among those, there are super-masterpieces, like the large water-vapor pattern pottery (suikenmon) from the Shakado site in Yamanashi, and it seems everyone else was making copies of it (laughs).

That's true. You can certainly still see trends where the items from a particular site or settlement are the most superior.

Also, in Niigata, flame-style (kaen-gata) or crown-style (okan-gata) pottery is common, but among them, you occasionally find pieces mixed with the style of the Idojiri site in Nagano Prefecture.

I suspect artists from other settlements came over and showed off their work (laughs). Others saw it and thought, "Maybe I'll try making something like that too."

Regarding how pottery was used, one thing I'm curious about is alcohol. Did a unique type of alcohol exist in the Jomon period or not?

At sites like Sannai-Maruyama, in addition to elderberries, pupae of fruit flies that eat ripe fruit have been detected, leading to the belief that they fermented elderberries to make alcohol. There is much we can learn about what surrounded Jomon people by collaborating with researchers in fields like botany and entomology. Also, many spouted vessels with elaborate decorations appear in the Late and Final Jomon periods, so it's interesting to wonder what kind of liquids they poured from them.

There is a wine company in Yamanashi Prefecture called Lumiere. They fire their own Jomon pottery and brew wine inside it.

There is also a theory that they used crimson glory vines (wild grapes) back then. When they actually tried making it, it contained alcohol and was drinkable, but it wasn't very tasty (laughs). They said it lacked enough sugar. I imagine even back then, people who loved alcohol were making it.

Also, something gaining attention in relation to environmental issues is that in pit dwellings, they wouldn't have been able to live without constant cleaning. There's the issue of toilets as well.

Regarding pottery, to borrow from Professor Kobayashi, there are cases where large quantities are discarded in specific locations when a certain period ends, even though they aren't clearly damaged. On the other hand, they also cherished fragments, reattaching them to the rim or repairing holes. There are these two completely contradictory behaviors—discarding versus reusing—and I wonder how we should interpret this.

I don't think shell middens were merely garbage dumps either. In modern terms, there's a high possibility that some kind of ritual was performed there.

It seems there was a concept of recycling where broken pottery was reused; for example, fragments were used as weights (earthen sinkers) for sea fishing. They would grind the edges of the fragment into a circle and make notches on both ends. Quite a lot of these have been found from the Middle and Late periods in the Kanto region.

I've picked one of those up myself on a river terrace in Chiba. If you look at the back, there's black soot remaining, which I assume is from boiling things.

In other words, it's almost certain they were repurposed. First it was a pot, and after it broke for some reason, they tied it in a cross with a net and used it as a weight for fishing. Seeing things like that brings tears to my eyes.

They must have cherished them. Unlike us, who are surrounded by industrial products, these pots were made with care by someone close to them, so naturally, they wanted to take care of them.

This is something lacking in today's society, where we throw things away as soon as we're done with them. Of course, we can't go back to the Jomon period, but I believe it's possible to learn from it and further spread what we've learned through modern technology.

I believe it is possible to expand on this through modern technology.

There are stories that Jomon people consciously avoided hunting female deer, for example. They made sure not to overhunt and deplete the population. Indeed, the most important perspective we are missing is the idea that "a little is enough."

Today is a society of wealth and inequality, where the more you accumulate, the better. I think Jomon was the exact opposite. We tend to worry that we don't have enough and keep hoarding, but in Jomon, perhaps the whole society agreed that this much food or whatever was sufficient.

They say if you fight over things, there's never enough, but if you share, there's a surplus. That spirit was the foundation, and Jomon had a culture of gifting. In other words, they exchanged goods rather than money.

Since my job involves working with words, my greatest interest in that sense is the issue of the language of that time.

The "earthen sinkers" (dosui) mentioned earlier—the people of that time wouldn't have called them that. For that matter, Jomon people wouldn't have used the word "pottery" (doki) either; they must have expressed it in some other way.

Of course, there might have been simple exchanges of goods, but I think creators must have communicated with each other using words. Therefore, there must have been names for things.

They were communicating in some form, weren't they? For example, obsidian from Hoshikuso Pass in Nagano has been found in Aomori, and jade from Itoigawa has been found at Sannai-Maruyama, so they were likely communicating on a larger scale than we imagine.

If that's the case, I think it presupposes the existence of something like a common Japanese language, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to interact.

Even if artists don't necessarily need many words to interact, I still think language was a prerequisite.

Of course, just like with dialects, there were regional differences, and perhaps interpreters were needed. For example, people from Aomori and Aizu might not have understood each other back then. In fact, that was the case until quite recently.

Since the necessary vocabulary was likely small, I wonder if they could communicate using just gestures and the words they knew.

There is the giant tree worship in the Chubu region. Festivals like the Onbashira Festival are said to be direct descendants of Jomon festivals, but how did they perform the task of bringing those trees down from the mountains? At Sannai-Maruyama, there are also traces of giant wooden pillars.

In an era without chainsaws, being able to handle such giant trees, no matter how many people gathered, requires quite advanced technology. Quite a few scholars suggest there might have been a unit called the "Jomon Shaku" (Jomon foot). How are these things viewed today? Since only the pillar holes remain, Adachi, we have to have architects and specialists look at the thickness of the pillars to investigate how much height and weight they could withstand, and then reconstruct what kind of structure stood on top.

Archaeologists cannot do this alone. Reconstructing life involves everything related to living, so ultimately, I don't think we can reconstruct the lives of Jomon people without collaborating with experts from all academic disciplines.

Toyama Prefecture has created a map called the "Map of the Sea of Japan Rim and East Asian Countries." It's commonly known as the "Upside-Down Map," which looks at the Japanese archipelago upside down.

Regarding the Mediterranean civilization in Europe, various surrounding regions are studied. It includes Africa and is not Europe-centric. Civilization moved back and forth across the entire Mediterranean, a sea rich in resources, and the idea is that we must conceive of an East Asian version of that. I completely agree.

When we look at the Japanese archipelago upside down and think of the Sea of Japan as an inland sea in East Asia, I think ancient history becomes much clearer.

In the Jomon period, of course, there was no concept of a nation in the modern sense. And in the past, everything was maritime transport, right? You can move quickly if you catch the ocean currents. In that regard, places like Toyama and Wakasa Bay might have played a major role even in the Jomon period. There is a possibility they were places where people and cultures from various regions, centered on East Asia, intersected.

I also believe the Jomon period was the most international era in Japanese history.

There were people of Southern origin, Russian origin, and naturally, people crossing over from the Korean Peninsula. I think it was a very diverse society through interaction with such people.

Precisely because those people recognized each other's diversity, peace continued for 10,000 years. I want to cherish concepts like that diversity and the tolerance toward it even today.

The Jomon period lasted for a long time, over 10,000 years, and within that period, there were settlements that adapted to their local environment, found a good balance, and survived for a long time, continuing to be inhabited.

By comparing them with settlements that couldn't find a balance with the environment and didn't last long, I believe we can find hints for thinking about environmental issues, which are a common challenge for humanity.