Humanity and Naturein the Japanese Archipelago

Niles|Abe|Editors

CONTENTS
Introduction

3

The Dynamism of Nature

4

Humanity in the Holocene

13

The Jomon: Early Peoples of the Archipelago

16

Agriculturalism: Yayoi Society

22

Biocultural Diversity in East Asian Forests

26

Linking Human and Environmental History

32

Materials: Clay

38

Methods: Stable Isotope Analysis

40

Learning from Traditional Landscapes

44

Imagining Future Landscapes

48

About this Volume

52

Source Materials

54

Acknowledgements

57

The Japanese Archipelago is a region of long-term climatic stability yet dramatic

short-term environmental variability. Perched at the edge of the Eurasian continents, its human andenvironmental history is dominated by two planetary-scale natural forces: volcanism resulting froman immense confrontation of the Pacific and Eurasian Plates, and the rivers of water vapor carriedby the annual Asian monsoon. From earth and atmosphere, these two phenomena infuse great
energy, both creative and destructive, into the archipelago.
Typhoons, ﬂoods, landslides, heavy snow, earthquakes, tsunami, and volcanic eruptions regularly
rework Japan’s land- and sea-scapes. Yet ecological productivity—linked to plentiful water, nutrient
rich soils and coastal zones, and strong seasonal change—has remained extremely high. Humans
have made use of this natural productivity for over thirty thousand years, changing it and augmenting
it in ways that reﬂected their preferences and sensibilities. In such dynamic environments, individualsettlements and the human population in general experienced periods of both success and failure,but over time inhabitants maintained sophisticated patterns of subsistence centered on intensive
use of forest and ocean fringes and eventually the cultivation of rice.
In the last hundred years Japan has been transformed from an almost entirely rural country toan overwhelmingly urbanized one. The cultural-ecological complexes established over millennia
are certainly less significant to the everyday lives of modern Japanese people today, yet many
traditional forms and practices still exist and still describe some essential qualities of Japan—and
perhaps offer some clues to its future.

3

The Jomon
Early Peoples of the Archipelago
For over ten thousand years (12,000–300 BP), the Jomon peoples depended on intensive gathering of a wide
range of plant foods and materials, management of forest fringes, selective gardening, seasonal collection ofshellfish and fish, and hunting on both land and sea. Their principal subsistence strategies, and the wider cultural
practices to which they were linked, established a cultural-ecological complex of rare continuity in human history.

Why did it take so long for agrarian society to be established in East Asia? One prominent theory
in Japan describes Jomon peoples as prosperous, settled ‘aﬄuent foragers’ subsisting on thearchipelago’s native ecological productivity. In this view, Japan’s relatively warm and stableclimate, plentiful water, and rich forests provided many opportunities to secure food without
the need for regular agriculture. Forests provided an abundance of nuts, acorns, and other fruit
and were home to many animals such as wild boar, deer, and birds, while a great variety ofshellfish, and salmon, trout and other fish were available along the coastlines and many rivers.
Large shell middens have been found along the coasts, some measuring five meters thick andas many as fifty meters in diameter, demonstrating that shellfish were an important food source,
especially in spring and early summer, when few other foods are so readily available. Wooden
dugout canoes suitable for open ocean travel have been found preserved in wetlands. These
vessels were suitable for hunting larger sea mammals, especially as found in the northeast,or larger species of fish, such as tuna (Thunnus orientalis), the consumption of which
has been documented through analysis of isotopes in human bones andteeth (see pages 40–43). Jomon peoples developed a number ofother associated technologies, such as earthenware pottery (alsodiscussed below) used for cooking, processing plant foods,
and seasonal storage of foodstuff.

Tochinoki | Horse Chestnut
Aesculus turbinata

17About this Volume
Humanity and Nature in the Japanese Archipelago is based on research conducted between
2000–2011 at the Research Institute of Humanity and Nature (RIHN). Located in Kyoto,
Japan, RIHN is a national research institute, one of six that comprise the National Institutes
for the Humanities.
RIHN was established to conduct multidimensional research on key areas of interaction
between humanity and nature, and in doing so, to bring humanistic traditions of study into
dialogue with those of the natural and social sciences. In this latter goal in particular, theinstitute is unique in Japan. Its research structure is also uncommon, as it is based aroundfixed-term research projects, of which twenty-six have been concluded as of 2015.
In 2010, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, RIHN published The Encyclopedia of Global
Environmental Studies (in Japanese). Composed of 250 entries on a wide variety of subjects
addressed by RIHN research projects to that date, the volume was designed to provide a thoroughintroduction to a general Japanese readership of the biophysical, social, institutional, cultural, andconceptual issues that arise in the study of the contemporary environmental change.

52

In 2014 The National Institutes for the Humanities provided funds to translate a number of theoriginal entries into English, and those considered to be of greatest interest to an international
readership were loosely arranged into a single narrative. Unsurprisingly, most of those entries
dealt directly or indirectly with Japan, including a core of material on the Jomon period, afascinating segment of human history about which there is precious little written in English fora non-specialist audience.
The final text of this volume is therefore fundamentally based on the original Japanese entries
listed on pages 54–55. In order to bring these entries into a coherent narrative, however,much of the original (translated) prose has been repeatedly revised, rewritten, and ultimately
composed anew by the editors. This substantial work would have been impossible without theassistance and encouragement of several of the original authors as well as many others whoseinterest in and attention to this project is acknowledged on page 57. It has been a pleasure tospeak and work with them, each of whose efforts have certainly enriched the final work.
At an early stage of the project it became clear that readers unfamiliar with Japan’s particularenvironmental and cultural history would much more easily understand our story if it wereaccompanied by quality illustrations. The enthusiasm and careful attention of several artists
and scientific illustrators made all the difference. The result of their efforts is evident.

53