Editorial
2016 is going to be a major year for Japanese archaeological engagement with the restof the world. In the late summer, the 8th World Archaeological Congress (WAC) will
be held in Kyoto, providing an unprecedented opportunity to place issues of concern
to Japanese archaeology in a truly global context. WAC-8 is supported by the JapaneseArchaeological Association, the organisation behind the publication of the Japanese
Journal of Archaeology, and represents some 7000 professional archaeologists active inJapan. The World Archaeological Congress is a fascinating phenomenon in its own right:
born of concerns around academic freedom and the crisis in the discipline that arosefrom the ban on scholars from South Africa attending an archaeological congress in1986 (see Peter Ucko, Academic Freedom and Apartheit, Duckworth: 1987). WAC is now
the ﬂagship for inclusive diversity in all areas of archaeological activity, and provides
a forum par excellence for discussing the nature and signiﬁcance of archaeologicalenquiry. This major event falls hard on the heels of the INQUA Congress in Nagoya
in August 2015, where many sessions addressed what are more usually regarded as thescientiﬁc advances in understanding earlier (Quaternary) prehistory. Such congresses
provide opportunities for many people, who might not otherwise think of visiting Japan,
to experience the vibrancy of Japanese academic discourse ﬁrst hand, and offers chances
to foster new networks from which fresh collaborations and new knowledge may spring.
Archaeology is one of the few disciplines that cross-cut the traditional divide between
humanities and sciences. Many readers may be aware of the controversy that blew
up in late 2015 around comments from the Japanese Ministry of Education that led
many commentators to believe that the Japanese government would no longer support
arts and humanities at Japanese national universities. While the original comments
were subsequently redacted, the global context for the humanities remains perilous.
Archaeology in Japan is traditionally taught in Faculties of Humanities (or Letters as the‘Bungakubu’ in Japanese is often translated), and so usually sits aside such disciplines
as history and languages, and it is a challenge for those charged with equipping new
generations of archaeologists with the skills they need to critically assess the plethoraof new techniques being employed to analyse archaeological material – from AMS
dating to DNA research – which derive from developments in the natural sciences. The
Humanities at their best foster a critical appreciation of all that it means to be human,and of the methods needed to study that, and archaeology is well-placed to be at theheart of such an endeavour. This debate is not new, and the divisions within academia,JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 3 (2016): 87–88

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while they are open to exploitation for deleterious ends, can also provide fertile groundfor energising discussion about the signiﬁcance of what we do (see Jerome Kagan’sreappraisal of C.P. Snow’s inﬂuential formulation of this debate, in The Three Cultures:
natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities in the 21st century, Cambridge
University Press: 2009).
The original article in this issue arises from a long-term project designed to bringsome of the very signiﬁcant ﬁndings of Medieval archaeology in Japan to a broader
audience. Richard Pearson has over a long career published extensively on Japanesearchaeology in academic journals, and brought the ﬁrst major exhibition of Japanesearchaeology to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in 1992, accompaniedby a ﬁne catalogue, Ancient Japan. His co-edited volume on Windows on the Japanese
Past (University of Michigan: 1986) introduced many of the key debates in Japanesearchaeology through the translated voices of a multitude of Japanese specialists, andcontinues to be a very important text. Medieval studies in Japan have for long (too long?)
been the preserve of historians, although a new generation of studies are incorporatingmuch more archaeological evidence, and there is also now available an English-languagetranslation of AMINO Yoshihiko’s seminal work which makes much of the Medievalarchaeological record as providing an alternative view to written accounts of the period,
Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu, published as Rethinking Japanese History (translated byAlan Christy, University of Michigan: 2012). We are delighted to bring this paper toour readers, acknowledging the contribution that our distinguished senior colleagues inthe ﬁeld continue to make, while also offering a taster of the scholarship in an area ofJapanese archaeology that has not much featured in western-language materials, more ofwhich is shortly to be available in forthcoming publications.
Simon Kaner
Norwich, UK, March 2016

© Japanese Archaeological Association

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