Editorial
It has been six years and four months since the ﬁrst issue of the Japanese Journal ofArchaeology (JJA) was published in December 2013. JJA, the oﬃcial English journal ofthe Japanese Archaeological Association, was launched with the following objectives:
1) showcasing the operation and the outcomes of ‘Japanese archaeology’; and 2) theinternationalisation of Japanese archaeology.
From the beginning, JJA recognised ‘Japanese archaeology’ as an arena, rather than anentity, where various practices concerning what have been taking place in the area of theworld that is now the sovereign territory of the state of Japan are conducted and where various
practices conducted by Japanese archaeologists concerning human pasts across the world
are represented. JJA, deriving from that recognition, was launched as a completely openaccess, web-based journal open to everyone regardless whether a member of the JapaneseArchaeological Association or not, and has published contributions by scholars from Japanand abroad that cover various types of archaeological practices and their outcomes. This
recognition, or re-deﬁnition, of ‘Japanese archaeology’ derived from the growing awarenessof globalisation in archaeology. In a world where the acceleration of the speed of the ﬂow
of people, commodities and information generates both good and undesirable consequences
to the survival and well-being of humanity, we cannot conﬁne ourselves to a space deﬁned
by a national boundary, language, or culture. In such a world we have to open ourselves up
for international dialogue that no doubt leads to mutual self-reﬂection and transformation.
Because of such hope for the opening up of Japanese archaeology and for the realisationof this mutual self-reﬂection and transformation, JJA also launched programs such asa) featuring the translation of original articles written in Japanese, representing someconstitutive characteristics of current Japanese archaeological practices, b) organisingan all-English session at the Annual General Meeting of the Japanese Archaeological
Association tackling issues of signiﬁcance in world archaeologies, and c) organising
workshops on how to conduct one’s research and publish its outcomes in international
journals.
These six years have been long enough to establish JJA an active, sustainable program.
Now the JJA session at the Annual General Meeting of the Japanese Archaeological
Association and the JJA workshop are important events in the calendar of the JapaneseArchaeological Association. I hope you begin to feel that something new is happening,partially but signiﬁcantly thanks to the JJA as a program. At the same time, JJA, as aninternational journal, still has some way to go in establishing itself as an arena for therepresentation of ‘Japanese archaeology’ deﬁned above; admittedly, we still need more
contributions from across the world to establish JJA as the place where novel contributions
to world archaeologies from perspectives of ‘Japanese archaeology’ deﬁned above areJAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 7 (2020): 123–124

Koji Mizoguchi

published.
This is the last issue published under my Chief-Editorship of JJA. Let me take thisopportunity to thank everyone who supported JJA during its ﬁrst phase of existence. I
should like to thank my Co-Editor, Professor Simon Kaner, for sharing aspirations, ideals
and ideas and for selﬂess dedication. Finally. thank you all for your continued support tomake its missions truly realised.
Koji Mizoguchi
Chief-Editor, Japanese Journal of Archaeology
Fukuoka, March 2020© Japanese Archaeological Association124