Re-thinking the origin of agriculture through the‘beginnings’ in the Japanese archipelago
MIZOGUCHI Koji1
ABSTRACTThe way in which we investigate the origin of something is largely determined by the way we intend
to understand it. In the case of the origin of agriculture, the situation is further complicated by thetone of the investigation, which is not only determined by how we deﬁne and understand the set ofhuman activities characterised and described as agriculture but also inﬂuenced by the way in which
we deﬁne and understand those other beginnings we believe were causally linked to the developmentof agriculture, that are, the development of complexity, the beginning and spread of language andethnic groups, and so on. The investigation of the beginning of agriculture in Japan offers us somegood cases which show that the uncritical coupling of agriculture with those beginnings not only
are erroneous but also hinder the development of nuanced approaches to human-plant/animal
interactions and their impact on human society. This paper illustrates those problems by studying
Jomon food procurement activities and proposes a way to overcome the problems by introducing
the concept of the spatio-temporal organisation of social life and by linking hunting, gathering andfarming practices to the spatio-temporal organisations of Jomon and Yayoi social life.
KEYWORDS: origins of agriculture, spatio-temporal organisation of social life, Jomon period, Yayoi
period, Japanese archipelago

I.

Introduction

An important objective in archaeology is the investigation of many ‘origins’: the origin ofmodern humans, the origin of complexity, the origin of warfare, the origin of the state, andso on. Amongst them is the investigation of the origin of agriculture, which has particularly
signiﬁcant and wide-ranging implications connected to a number of other ‘beginnings.’ For
instance, the origin of agriculture is related, often causally, to the development—but notnecessarily the origin—of complexity in human social organisation,1 and it is also often
related to the beginning of ethnic groupings, marked by various sociocultural and biologicaltraits, including genetic traits and languages.
The way in which we investigate the origin of something is largely determined by the way
we intend to understand it. In the case of the origin of agriculture, the situation is further
1 c/o Faculty of Social & Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, 744 Moto’oka, Nishi Ward, Fukuoka 819–

0395, Japan(mizog@scs.kyushu-u.ac.jp)
Category: Original Article (solicited)

Accepted: 7 January 2018

JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 6 (2019): 95–107

MIZOGUCHI Koji

complicated by the tone of the investigation, which is not only determined by how we deﬁne
and understand the set of human activities characterised and described as agriculture but
also inﬂuenced by the way in which we deﬁne and understand those other beginnings we
believe were causally linked to the development of agriculture, that are, the developmentof complexity, the beginning and spread of language and ethnic groups, and so on. In fact,many of those things perceived to have begun with agriculture are also traits of modern
societies. As with many other archaeological pursuits, we unconsciously pursue our roots inever-deeper pasts (e.g. Mizoguchi 2006).
The investigation of the beginning of agriculture in Japan offers us many good cases whichshow that the uncritical coupling of agriculture (including low-level food production: see
Smith 2001) with those beginnings not only are erroneous but also hinder the development of
nuanced approaches to human-plant/animal interactions and their impact on human society.
In particular, the Japanese case challenges the validity of treating food production activities
as something fundamentally different from other food procurement activities in an a priori
manner. In terms of the allocation of time and space in the spatio-temporal organisationof social life (see Mizoguchi 2002, 20–24 for more about this concept), some types of foodprocurement, such as the gathering, storing, and use of nuts and root plants that require
sophisticated de-poisoning for their consumption, occupy as much time-space slots as foodproduction in the organisation of social life, although the labour organisation required may
be different (e.g. Watanabe 1984). Accordingly, some food procurement activities can leadto the development of complexity more so than (low-level) food production activities (seeSmith 2001 for the concept of ‘low-level food production’).
This also leads us to question why some types of food production resulted in complexity
and stratiﬁcation whereas others did not. Rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture, introduced from thesouthern coastal regions of the Korean peninsula,2 led to the rapid development of social
complexity and hierarchy in the archipelago. However, the cultivation of rice as a cultigen
might have already been conducted in areas of northern Kyushu in the Late Jomon.3 Even
if this were not the case, or if this were conducted in primitive form (i.e. as low-level foodproduction), such as slash-and-burn or that which did not involve tillage, those communities
where non-paddy-ﬁeld rice cultivation is claimed to have been conducted would have almost
certainly employed the intensive and sophisticated utilisation of nuts (including Quercus
glauca アラカシ and Quercus gilva イチイガシ) or tubers and root plants (including
Pteridium Aquilinum わらび, Arisaema Serratum テンナンショウ). They would haverequired the involvement of well-organised work-parties for certain periods of the year, and,in terms of the structuring principle of labour, those tasks would not have been so different
from rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture. The former, however, did not lead to the degree of social
complexity and hierarchy that the latter eventually achieved. It can be said that either lowlevel food production with a large labour input or intensive and sophisticated food-gathering© Japanese Archaeological Association

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activities rarely resulted in the development of social complexity and hierarchy that resulted
in complex chiefdoms or ancient states, further reinforcing the notion that the simplistic
coupling of food production with the beginnings of ‘traits of modern societies’ needs
deconstructing.
Those initial observations go along with the current trend of rethinking the validity ofour tacit, teleological belief that food production marked an irreversible, universal, andrevolutionary achievement for human beings (Childe 1936). Rather, food production, when it
emerged in a community, was one of the functionally and/or culture-symbolically equivalent
choices available to cope with the (changing) complexity of the social and natural environment.
Drawing upon those tentative thoughts, the following will tackle issues concerning thedeﬁnition and conceptualisation of ‘agriculture’ and what separates types of food productionthat resulted in complexity and hierarchy, culminating in the emergence of chiefdoms or
ancient states by referring to investigations of the emergence of agriculture in Japan.

II.

What is agriculture, how can it be recognised?

The concept of agriculture is ambiguous and, thus, generates two types of problems: one has
to do with its deﬁnition and the other with its recognition.
Let us begin with the deﬁnition. Agriculture is a type of subsistence, a food procurement
activity. Amongst an extremely diverse range of subsistence activities, those recognised as‘agricultural’ are perceived (1) to involve various degrees of control over the way plants andanimals grow and live, and (2) to deal with the plants and animals that are created throughthose activities.
Both control and creation are value-laden and belief-system-dependent concepts, as are
the perceptions regarding those concepts. Let us consider the ﬁrst perception, which seems
almost a truism. How can we deﬁne ‘control’? The way plants and animals grow and live canbe ‘controlled’ by intervening the way they grow and live. Such intervention, however, cantake many forms and does not necessarily involve direct intervention to their lifecycle. A
good example is the use of root plants by the Owen valley group of the American Southwest(e.g. Smith 2001, pp. 30–33), in which substantial irrigation canals were dug to help themgrow, but no intervening, such as replanting, artiﬁcial seeding, and so on, took place.
Such cases make us hesitant to use the word ‘control’ in describing the condition in whichplants grow. In the Owen valley case, this control meant creating its tangible traces, which
can certainly be recognized as archaeological remains and, hence, without ethnographic
information, it might be presumed that fully developed agriculture was conducted, but thatit did not involve intervening or altering the plant’s lifecycle.
The controlled burning of forests with thick undergrowth in order to help the growth ofsuch plants as Pteridium Aquilinum (わらび), Arisaema Serratum (テンナンショウ), and© Japanese Archaeological Association

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so on is another example of controlling conditions in which certain plants grow without
intervening in their lifecycle. The practice is thought to have begun sometime in the Early
Jomon or even earlier4 (e.g. Hashiguchi 1993, pp. 67–71), because equipment suitable totheir use had developed at the time. Their starch had to be de-poisoned before consumption;
lithic querns and pounding stones to extract the substance, S-proﬁled pots used to de-poison
them via boiling, hand shovel-shaped lithics used for their digging, and so on developed
simultaneously with large settlements in the vicinity of their natural habitats, such as fanson the foot of mountain slopes (e.g. Watanabe 1984).
This is a typical circular argument-based inference, and the current development of starch
analyses (e.g. Shibutani 2017) brings us hope for future conﬁrmation and clariﬁcation.
If the practice was indeed conducted, it would be another case in which the condition
was controlled without much intervention to the lifecycle of plants, but which left behindtangible archaeological traces.
Let us now consider ‘creation.’ One fundamental problem exists on the theoretical level:if agriculture were deﬁned as the activities dealing with the plant and animal species
created, how would we characterise interventions to the lifecycle of the plants and animals
previously untouched by human beings? And what about interventions that do not alter them
genetically, morphologically, or the way they grow?
Those very simple thought-experiments lead us to re-consider agriculture as a complex
cause-effect relationship between intentional and unintentional human acts and consequent
reactions by plants and animals. Such relations include human thoughts (including
planning), acts, and their material consequences and plants’ and animals’ reaction in theform of their behavioural, genotypic, and phenotypic modiﬁcations. The ways in whichthese variables are interconnected are extremely complicated and historical-environmental
context-dependent, and recognizing causal connections among them requires contextspeciﬁc approaches. In other words, it is not only almost impossible but also possibly
meaningless to attempt to formulate a universal deﬁnition of agriculture based upon theway these variables are causally correlated. Various concepts and terms, such as cultivation,
gardening, horticulture, husbandry, and so on, have been put forward, and different
characterisations and deﬁnitions have been given to them. But because of the nature of the
problems illustrated above, they are destined to fail (e.g. Smith 2001, pp. 6–14).
To remedy the situation, many have invented or adopted inclusive terms and conceptual
frameworks. One of the most successful is that proposed by Bruce Smith (2001).
His framework is sequential in its outlook, but he carefully differentiates it from an
evolutionary one; moreover, he states that each unit comprising the sequence—that is, foodgathering, low-level food production without domesticates, low-level food production withdomesticates, and agriculture—is the result of a distinct process of human-plant/animal
interaction in each region of the world, and not a transitional phase (ibid.).
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The framework decouples the above-mentioned variables with one another by deconstructing
universal assumptions about the cause-effect relationships between the variables. As long as
the framework goes, we do not have to be concerned with how to conceptually differentiate
cultivation, horticulture, husbandry, and so on. We can also accommodate the abovementioned intriguing case of the Owen valley group that involved the construction ofextensive irrigation systems but without directly interfering with the lifecycle of plants (ibid.,
pp. 30–33). The problem is how to differentiate and characterise various forms of low-level
food production activities. Smith, probably somewhat heuristically, distinguishes low-level
food production with and without domesticates. However, the division between domesticatesand non-domesticates in terms of genotypic and phenotypic modiﬁcations remains blurredand elusive.5 Besides, unintentional interventions to the lifecycle of plants and animals, suchas the disturbance of their habitats, can result in their genetic changes, so an archaeologicalsubdividing of the spectrum of low-level food production activities, ironically, needs torely on factors other than biological, botanical, or zoological. Still, this does not discredit
the importance of general morphogenetic investigations of identifying domesticates andcultigens. On the contrary, we should like to know the mechanism through which genotypicand phenotypic modiﬁcation takes place. However, in order for such investigations to provide
indicators for human intervention, such an endeavour must incorporate collaborations witharchaeologists. In other words, meaningful studies of low-level food production activities
need to be interdisciplinary and need to investigate the types of human-plant/animal
interactions that resulted in material and/or morphological traces.
The mere presence of cultigens implies exactly same type of problem. Perilla frutescens,var. fruetscens (エゴマ) and Lagenaria siceraria, var. gourdo (ヒョウタン) are likely tohave existed as far back as in the Early Jomon. However, it is impossible to determine towhat extent they were tended while growing; they are known to easily grow in the wild, andthere is no genotypic nor phenotypic differentiation between the tended and grown ones. It
is a conceptual challenge: how do we describe cultigens that grow in the wild?
Considering that mobility would have been fairly high in the Early Jomon, andcharacterised as a form of circular mobility in which different spots with seasonally speciﬁc
resources are visited, it is unlikely that those cultigens were tended throughout their growth
process, let alone planted on tilled plots. It is easy to categorise such cases as a low-level
food production activity. However, this activity is likely to have caused no change to thespatio-temporal social life of people. To what extent they were perceived as distinct fromother wild plants or something special is also uncertain, though one might speculate thatplants that added a unique taste to daily food were speciﬁcally chosen and tended for sociosymbolic purposes (e.g. Miyamoto 2009, p. 205). And, as Christine Hastorf’s work clearly
exempliﬁes, this can be a fruitful line of enquiry (e.g. Hastorf 1999). However, unless a traceof their selective use was recognised in archaeological evidence, the idea would remain an© Japanese Archaeological Association

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interesting speculation. In any case, the investigation of the signiﬁcance of such plants mustbe situated in wider social contexts and investigated with their material remains.
Based on these ﬁndings, that forms of low-level food production would have been practised
during the Jomon by referring to the presence of cultigens is arguable (cf. D’Andrea et al.
1995), leading us in a new direction for future study:1) we ﬁrst have to grasp the overall pattern of human acts (and thoughts)
2) to see how it was affected by the way people interacted with plants and animals, and,ﬁnally,3) investigate whether the interaction involved their gathering, low-level production, andagricultural utilisation.
In other words, food production should be understood as a polythetic grouping/assemblage in the multidimensional matrix of causally correlated factors, including humanintentional and unintentional acts, their material remains, and reactions and non-reactions
by plants and animals in terms of genotypic or phenotypic modiﬁcations.

III. Spatio-temporal oragnisation of social life and food procurement/
production activities of the Jomon period
Let me go back to the fundamental fact: society and sociality are constituted by the way weorganise our lives spatio-temporally (cf. Mizoguchi 2002, Chapter 2). Food procurement andproduction activities occupy a signiﬁcant portion in the spatio-temporal organisation of social
life (ibid.) and signiﬁcantly inﬂuences the way it is structured. In short, the way we interact
with plants and animals is established by the spatio-temporal organisation of social life.
As mentioned above, we begin to see cultigens as far back as in the Early Jomon. Thisroughly coincides with the emergence of the material assemblage that sggests the beginningof the utilisation of root plants, tubers, and nuts, involving the technology of de-poisoning
and, with the emergence of fairly stable settlements, suggesting the practice of a circularmobility in which people visit ﬁxed locations in different seasons to use seasonally available
resources in their vicinity (cf. Uchiyama 2007). The beginning of the circular mobility
pattern may have been both a cause and a consequence of the emergence of such cultigens
as Perilla frutescens, var. fruetscens (エゴマ) and Lagenaria siceraria, var. gourdo (ヒョウタン) that grow well in the wild; the stabilisation of the location of settlements, even if
occupied during a particular season, would have created stable habitats around the seasonalsettlements for them to grow well. However, the establishment of the circular mobility
pattern itself would have been made possible by the beginning of the systematic use ofcertain resources of high nutrition and balk and relatively stable availability, such as salmon,
trout, and nuts across eastern Japan (e.g. Nishida 1989) and carp and nuts across westernJapan (e.g. Uchiyama 2007). It is thought that the technology of de-poisoning certain types© Japanese Archaeological Association

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of nuts, such as Quercus acutissima Carr (クヌギ) and Cuercus serrata Thunb (コナラ)and starchy root plants, had been invented by this time. The de-poisoning technology andthe circular mobility pattern would have mutually enabled one another by stimulating andaccelerating each other’s development; and by the Middle Jomon, this positive feedback
loop culminated in the establishment of the radiating mobility pattern in which forays weredispatched from the year-round home base to different locations in the landscape to procure
seasonally different resources in parts of eastern Japan.
This led to the development of territorial defence activities and the communal
ownership of certain resources in ﬁxed spots in the landscape. And it is widely acceptedthat the scheduling of resource procurement activities and the organisation of suitablelabour organisations developed hand in hand. The effect of intentional and unintentional
interventions to the ecosystems around the home bases would have become increasingly
intensiﬁed. Because of past experiences, it is widely assumed, experiments were conducted
to better conditions in which plants and animals grow and thrive such as (1) controlled ﬁringof forests to help root plants grow more vigorously, (2) replanting of tubers, and (3) seedingof nuts.6
Meanwhile, the number of cultigens excavated from archaeological contexts increased
little during this process. Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) is a substantial addition to thelist of conﬁrmed cultigens, but again it grows well in the wild. Considering the type ofcultigens present, the amount of time-space investment for their growth would have beenminimal, that is, not involving tillage and other time-consuming tending activities.
The spatio-temporal organisation of social life and the structure of communication
constituted by it can be inferred as follows.
The sophisticated utilisation of various nuts, including the types that require de-poisoning
for eating, would have supported the establishment of the radiating type mobility with
year-round home bases, with the collection of nuts occurring in autumn. Naturally, theirprocessing would have been carried out during the winter, during the hunting season.
Excavated faunal remains and the hunting tool assemblage suggest that hunting activities
did not involve expeditionary visits of deep mountain ranges but were instead conductedin the nearby mountain-foot of home bases. Hunting would have constituted male labour,
whereas the collecting and processing of nuts would have been conducted by women andchildren.
Root plants such as Lycoris radiata (ヒガンバナ) and Kudzu (Pueraria lobataクズ) would
have been available from the autumn through the spring. Technology for the extraction of
their starch and necessary equipment would have been similar to that for nuts’ de-poisoning
and would have formed a socio-techno-complex in which female labour and the sharing andinheritance of knowledge amongst women would have been signiﬁcant.
Hiroyuki Sato, referring to ethnographies, argues that the scale of hunting parties involved© Japanese Archaeological Association

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in the hunting activities mentioned above would have been quite small, often accompaniedby trained dogs (Sato 2007, pp. 8–10). In that sense, hunting, that was male winter labour,
was smaller in scale and less collaborative in its organisation than the collection andprocessing of nuts and root plants, that was female autumn labour.
The summer months would have been spent ﬁshing; this is also the period whencommunities relied on stored foods prepared during the autumn and the winter. Various
construction works, including wooden structures for the wooden de-poisoning of nuts andthe extraction of plant ﬁbre may well have been undertaken during the period, althoughwoodworking is most effective in the winter when the growth of trees is halted. If sea
ﬁshing activities were conducted mainly by males, in the summer months the degree ofcollaboration among males was higher than that in the autumn and winter. It would not havebeen the case, naturally, for inland communities.
The above speculative reconstruction allows us the following model-building: if a new
food procurement or production activity were part of this spatio-temporal organisation, it
would need to be undertaken during the summer or when it was light enough not to disrupt
the sophisticated gender- and age-based labour organisation of the autumn and winter.

IV. Spatio-temporal oragnisation of social life and the adoption ofcultigens including rice
Since the beginning of the systematic application of SEM analysis of the modelling of
imprints on potsherds, it has been argued that the cultivation of rice, barley (Hordeum
vulgare), foxtail millet (Steria italica), and Japanese barnyard millet (Echinochloa esculenta)
involving tillage had already been conducted in the Late Jomon (cf. Yamasaki 2005). But
because the accuracy of some cases’ identiﬁcation is disputed, it is necessary to exercise
caution in the development of this ﬁeld of research.
Amongst the cultigens, rice and millet are grown during the summer and harvested inearly autumn. Thus, it can be ﬁt into the above-mentioned spatio-temporal organisation ofsocial life with minimal disturbance. It can also compensate the possible food shortage likely
to occur before de-poisoned nuts and starch plants become available. In inland communities
not involved in inland water ﬁshing activities, the redundant male labour force can also
be allocated to their cultivation. Wheat and barley, however, are sowed in the autumn andharvested in the spring and, hence, cannot be ﬁt into the spatio-temporal organisation,
particularly if it required organised tending such as tillage.
Kazuo Miyamoto’s work shows that the Late and Final Jomon periods were an ‘availability
phase’ (cf. Zvelebil 1986) in that the mixed cultivation of the above- mentioned species
was well underway in the southern part of the Korean peninsula (e.g. Miyamoto 2009, pp.
212–226). The interaction between the ﬁshing communities of southern Korea and northern© Japanese Archaeological Association

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Kyushu coastlines, he implies, would have mediated the plants themselves as well as theinformation of arable cultivation. But this availability phase appears to have continued forsome time before the ‘beginning’ of systematic rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture.
Drawing from the arguments presented thus far, I propose that amongst the set ofdomesticates cultivated in the dry-ﬁelds of southern Korea, wheat and barley would havebeen difﬁcult to adopt because their growing season coincided with the time-space slot
in the pre-existing, spatio-temporal organisation of social life—that is, the collecting andusing of nuts and root plants and hunting—in which a well-established structuring principle
reproduced certain modes of communication. The rice-growing season, however, coincidedwith the time-space slot which was not so heavily occupied with food procurement andproduction with the possible redundant male labour force. If numerous lithic digging tools
excavated from some large settlements on the plateaus of central Kyushu were, as Sumio
Yamasaki argues (2005), indeed used as tilling tools, they are likely to have been used for
dry-ﬁeld rice cultivation.
Even if the hypothetical support for the rice dry-ﬁeld farming thesis were veriﬁed,
the contents of the assemblage included items that are known to have been used for theprocessing and consumption of nuts and starchy plants. Therefore, rice dry-ﬁeld cultivation
did not change the availability of foodstuff, in general, and yet the communities sustained
themselves very well.

V. Concluding thought: The adoption of rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculturein the Japanese archipelago as a historically contingent event
Why, then, was systematic rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture adopted?
Its adoption as a mode of food production itself was not as important to those who
had already been practising the complex, low-level food production activities organicallysituated in the already established spatio-temporal organisation of social life. The population
had experience of planning ahead, allocating work to different gender- and age-groups and,
when necessary, putting together collaborative labour and building substantial structures.
Therefore, the mode could be ﬁt into a loosely structured spatio-temporal slot with theavailable labour force for the creation of the necessary conditions for the growth of certain
plants and would have been undertaken without serious problems.
The reluctance to adopt the sociocultural traits of the techno-complex directly andmaterial traces of the attempt to translate their meaning into what could be accommodated
in the pre-existing structuring principle of communication both suggest that the complex
was embraced in a controlled manner (Mizoguchi 2013, pp. 53–103).
There is no space in this paper to delve into the cause of this embracement. What I would
like to emphasise today is that it was one in a range of available choices. However, as the© Japanese Archaeological Association

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subsequent trajectory of the history of the archipelago shows (e.g. Mizoguchi 2013), its
unintended consequences were certainly fateful; rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture became thedominant mode of food production and the dominant source and generator of contingencies,
and, consequently, the social problems and contradictions that were dealt with altered thestructuring principle from a corporate-network-based society to one that was hierarchy-based.

Notes
1. It should be noted, however, that it has become increasingly decoupled with ‘agriculture’in its narrow sense; a number of communities, including the Jomon of Japan (see e.g.
Habu 2004), conducted only low-level food production (or even only sophisticated foodgathering) but developed a degree of complexity.
2. The package of rice paddy-ﬁeld agriculture-related techniques, tools, and various
knowledge is thought to have been introduced by a fairly small number of migrants fromthe southern coastal regions of the Korean peninsula to spots in the coastal plains ofnorthern Kyushu around 800∼600 cal BC (Mizoguchi 2013, pp. 53–103).
3. The SEM analysis of the modelling of imprints on potsherds show the presence of ricegrains dating from the second half of the Late Jomon (cf. Yamasaki 2007a; Yamasaki
2007b). However, the accuracy of identiﬁcation is questioned in some cases (Nakazawa
2007), and the sustainability of arable cultivation involving tillage without thedevelopment of soil fertilising technique is also questioned (e.g. Ando 2007).
4. The Jomon period is commonly divided into six periods: the Incipient (c. 12,000–9,500 bp),
Earliest (c. 9,500–6,000 bp), Early (c. 6,000–5,000 bp), Middle (c. 5,000–4,000 bp), Late(c. 4,000–3,000 bp), and Final (c. 3,000–2,500 bp). (see Habu 2004, Chapter 2).
5. A good example of this is in the form of a debate over the presence of the ‘Yayoi pig’
(Nishimoto 1991).
6. Their conﬁrmation, however, is quite difﬁcult: the trace of (1) is being sought as a layerof burnt soil with charcoal fragments; the sudden increase in lithic assemblage of digging
tools reﬂects the intensiﬁcation of the use of tubers and root plants, including replanted
ones (2), but obviously the evidence is highly circumstantial; and the observation thata much narrower range of DNA sequence types is observed amongst the excavatedchestnuts from the famous San’nai-Maruyama site than their wild equivalents is cited as
evidence of domestication, but still debated.
7. One of the supposed major sources of starch, Arisaema Serratum (テンナンショウ), is
procured during the summer.

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