Report on the 80th Annual Meeting of the JapaneseArchaeological Association
Tanaka kazuhiko1ABSTRACTThis short essay reports the proceedings and some highlights of the 80th Annual Meeting of theJapanese Archaeological Association, held on May 17 and 18, 2014, at the College of Humanitiesand Sciences, Nihon University.
KEYWORDS: 80th Annual Meeting, Japanese Archaeological Association

The 80th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Archaeological Association was held on May
17 and 18, 2014, at the College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University. The
Organising Committee Chair, Professor Shinsuke Hamada, on behalf of the alumni andcurrent students of the university, welcomed the delegates. This was the third time after
an eleven-year gap that the university hosted the Association’s Annual Meeting. A totalof 972 members participated over the two days, and after the proceeding of the ﬁrst day,a party was held in the main hall of the Centenary Anniversary Building. It was attended
by a number of people, including Professor Hamada, and the delegates had an enjoyable
time together. A total of 1440 people attended the two-day meeting, including 468 nonmembers.
The Annual General Meeting, which took place in the morning on the ﬁrst day, wasopened by President Yoshiyuki Tanaka, who looked back on his two-year term. He
pointed out that while three years had passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake,
support for recovery was still on-going, and there was no resolution to the problem of
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. He also reported on several issues. (1) The
specialist committee on the Association’s library had decided to make a large donationof books, and the institution that would receive these books would be announced at themeeting. (2) In order to make the Article of the Association easier to understand by nonmembers, revisions were planned, which would then be discussed at the meeting. (3) On
the issue of internationalisation, the ofﬁcial English-language journal of the Association
was established in 2013. After the President’s report, the chair conﬁrmed that the meeting
satisﬁed the quorum. After electing the chairpersons and secretaries, the agenda items(report and discussion items) were discussed. Below is the summary of those discussions.
1 Committee Member (General Affairs), The Japanese Archaeological Association, 4th Floor, 5–15–5
Hirai, Edogawa Ward, Tokyo 132–0035, Japan (jjarch@archaeology.jp)
Category: Report(solicited) Received: 21 October 2014

JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 2 (2014): 60–64

Report on the 80 th Annual Meeting

The ﬁrst report was the announcement of the recipients of the Fourth JapaneseArchaeological Association Prizes. The grand prize went to Dr Yoshinori Tajiri, andthe two runners-up were Dr kazutomo Mizunoe and Mr Hirohiko Saino. Each winnerreceived a certiﬁcate and memento. Mr Hirohiko Saino is the ﬁrst member to win a
prize for a research paper. We would like to encourage members to enter their researchpapers in the competition in the future. After a report on the Association’s activities for2013, a report on membership applications was delivered, which conﬁrmed that out of
61 applicants, 58 satisﬁed the membership criteria. Their membership applications werethus approved. On behalf of the new members, Mr Yoshiaki Ootsuka (Hokkaido) spokeof his resolution and aspiration. The number of members who passed away was 23, and62 members left the Association in 2013. As of the end of March 2014, the total numberof members was 4142.
As 2014 was the year to re-elect the board, Professor Taketsugu Iijima, Chair of theElection Committee, reported that an election was conducted to nominate 23 membersof the 24-member board excluding one permanent member. There were 23 candidates
after the election announcement was made, and they were duly elected. Professor
Masahiko Matsuo, Chair of the Special sub-Committee on the Association’s Library,gave a report on the selected recipient of the Association’s library donation. He said there
were two applications and that Nara University’s library was selected for the following
three reasons: (1) it has good organisational capacity for maintaining the necessaryadministrative work after receiving the donated books; (2) it was prepared to receive thebooks and had more capacity to store, maintain, and use them; and (3) because it offeredoff-site lending and photocopying services, the Association’s members and researchers
could better utilise the interlibrary loan system. As for the revised Article about theAssociation and Regulations, Professor Hiroaki Takakura, the Vice President, led thework with input from the members. Drafts of the revised Article and Regulations of theJapanese Archaeological Association were presented and reported at the meeting.
The discussion items were then addressed and the plan for activities in 2014 waspresented and accepted. Professor Matsuo presented a report on the recipient of theAssociation’s library donation, as discussed above. Afterwards, Professor Takakura
proposed postponing a discussion on the minor revision to the Association’s Article
until 12:10 on May 18, the following day, to ensure that the quorum would be achieved
including proxy votes, which was accepted. Mr Sakae Taniguchi, a board member on theCommittee on Social Studies and Textbooks presented a statement on the revisions tothe Ministry of Education’s guidelines for primary school teaching, and it was adopted
as proposed. As an AOB, a report on the issue of looted cultural properties—which wasraised by a members at the 2013 Annual Meeting—was discussed. Mr kazuhiko Tanaka,
a board member, reported that other board members had started to investigate the issue© Japanese Archaeological Association

61

TANAKA Kazuhikoand were now engaged with information gathering. Immediately after concluding thereport and discussion for May 17, a meeting of the newly elected board members wasconvened, and the new President was elected. Professor Takakura, a board member, waselected as President, while Professors Hideshi Ishikawa and Hiroyuki Shiraishi, bothboard members, were elected Vice Presidents. Portfolios were distributed to the newboard members, thus completing the formation of the new board.
The Annual Meeting reconvened at 12:10 on May 18. On revising the Articles andRegulations of the Association, the President of the Association, Professor Takakura,reported that the number of members attending the meeting was two-thirds of the total
number of members (the quorum), and the draft was adopted as presented. Subsequently,
the new President addressed the meeting to present his vision for the Association. The
Annual Meeting, which lasted for two days, was then formally concluded.
On May 17, following the Annual General Meeting, a public lecture was held.
Professor Tanaka, the President, opened the function, and Dr Takafumi Yamamoto
introduced the speaker, Professor Hamada of Nihon University. Professor Hamada thendelivered a lecture entitled ‘Archaeological Investigation in Japan from the Outbreak to
the End of the Paciﬁc War: Activities of the Archaeological Society of Nihon University.’In the lecture, Professor Hamada divided the history of archaeological study at Nihon
University into three periods and focussed on the ﬁrst period (1929–1947). Professor
Hamada examined archaeological material from that period that had been stored by
Nihon University and not yet open to the public. He mounted a detailed search for
related material and re-evaluated archaeological work undertaken by Nihon University.
The lecture reﬂected Professor Hamada’s long-standing efforts to make unpublishedmaterial available to the public at the museum. An added bonus was that the materials
discussed in Professor Hamada’s lecture were on display at the exhibition by theCollege of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University, entitled ‘Nihon University: TheDevelopment of its Archaeological Research.’
Following the public lecture, a session entitled ‘Prospects for Modern Archaeology’,organised by Nihon University, was held. The session consisted of three parts:
investigation, research, and utilisation. After introducing the session’s aim and outlining
the history of archaeological research, two presentations on investigation, two onresearch, and three on utilisation were given. The session ended with a concluding
discussion. One of the three presentations on utilisation was about Gifu Castle in GifuCity. It was reported that public archaeological excavations were conducted as one ofthe objectives of the project, under the concept of ‘making archaeological excavations atourist attraction.’ A number of ideas pursued in the case study, including excavations on
public holidays, would serve as the model for other archaeological sites in their efforts
to make the most of their resources. In the presentation on Hirado, it was pointed out© Japanese Archaeological Association62

Report on the 80 th Annual Meetingthat the emphasis on trade with Holland distorted Hiradoas characteristic as a port citywith strong relationships with Britain, Portugal, China, and korea. The presentation alsoemphasised the danger in overplaying ‘the historical highlights’ to obscure what wasactually there. Both points were well taken.
On May 18, 36 presentations were made across four venues, and four sessions were
held in two venues. There were ﬁve presentations in Session 2 devoted to ‘Jomon
people of the coastal area of the Sea of Japan: Focusing on Otake Shell Mound, Toyama
Prefecture.’ These presentations focused on the ﬁndings from excavations at the Otake
Shell Mound in Toyama Prefecture, which was discovered during the construction of theHokuriku Shinkansen in 2009 and 2010; the skeletons of 91 individuals dating from thebeginning to the end of the Early Jomon Period and other artefacts were found at thissite. The presentations shed light on gender differences in accessories and burial goods,
the existence of a male with a height of more than 165 cm, differences among individuals
relating to diet, and the utilisation of birds (Anseres and Podicipedidaes) and otters that
lived in the nearby estuary and freshwater areas.
In Session 3, entitled ‘The formation of the state in the periphery in the keyhole-shaped
tumuli regime: The case of Zenkojidaira’, the audience heard results from excavations at
the Oomuro Burial Mound Group in Zenkojidaira, Nagano Prefecture, which consistedof about 500 mounds. Excavations have been conducted by the Archaeology Departmentof Meiji University since 1984. They reported that the burial mound group could bedivided into the ‘old-style mound group’ (latter half of the ﬁfth century and ﬁrst half ofthe sixth century), consisting of cairns and chambers with raftered roofs, and the ‘newstyle mound group’ (latter half of the sixth century to the end of the seventh century),
consisting of mounds made from rocks, soil and horizontal stone chambers. Mirrors,
iron weapons, and harnesses were found in the small round mounds. This reﬂects thelikelihood that since the mid-Middle kofun Period, powerful clans of Zenkojidaira
did not consider the shapes and sizes of the keyhole-shaped burial mounds as symbolsof social status. Based on ﬁndings from excavations of the burial mound group anddiscovery of items from korea and China in Zenkojidaira since the Late Yayoi Period,
it is likely that Zenkojidaira clans buried in the Oomuro Burial Mound Group were in
direct contact with clans from the southern korean Peninsula, without mediation by theYamato polity.
In Session 4, called ‘The progress of recovery investigation after the Great East Japan
Earthquake and future challenges,’ the audience heard reports from the special committee(which also introduced the aim of the session) and from three prefectures: Iwate, Miyagi,
and Fukushima. The special committee reported that in 2013, it focused on publishingﬁndings from investigations that accompanied recovery projects, and that it held public
reporting sessions in Morioka and Sendai. Future challenges that were identiﬁed include© Japanese Archaeological Association63

TANAKA Kazuhiko

the culmination of the recovery project grant at the end of 2015, issues in recording theﬁndings from the investigation and developing a transfer mechanism, maintaining theinvestigation by sending out additional personnel, and the problems in handling culturalproperties in areas where access was restricted due to the nuclear accident. The reportfrom Iwate described that locally held public sessions always attracted more than 100participants, including those living in temporary accommodation. It concluded that ‘thehigh degree of interest in local archaeological sites can be partly attributed to the factthat the sense of familial ties and local identity has been heightened because a large
number of personal belongings and local community properties were lost in the tsunami.’
This is an important point.
Session 5 on ‘The role of studies of history and archaeology in primary and juniorhigh schools: How to deal with the Paleolithic Period on the Japanese Archipelago’
discussed the fact that the Paleolithic in Japan is not properly covered during compulsory
education. Professor Hatsushige Otsuka delivered a keynote speech titled ‘The historyof the Japanese Archaeological Association and history education’ and Mr Akira Oshita
delivered a keynote presentation, ‘The current situation of social studies (history)
textbooks in compulsory education and future challenges.’ This was followed by adiscussion with ﬁve panellists.
In addition, there were 23 entries for the poster session, in which participants andexhibitors engaged in enthusiastic discussions.
The 80th Annual Meeting was thus concluded successfully, with many participants.
This was because of the hard work by Nihon University and the organising committee
led by Professor Hamada, as well as generous help provided by 80 alumni and current
archaeology students. On behalf of the members, I would like to thank them from thebottom of my heart.

© Japanese Archaeological Association64