It has already been suggested that its earliest age may have to be revised downward from 600,000 to 30,000 years. Which was exactly where Fujimura found it at the beginning of his career. More detail can be found in the news links below. A later breaking story concerns a revelation by Jinichi Nagasaki, co-excavator with Shinichi Fujimura of the Shimobimannishi site in Hokkaido, that the stratigraphic layers of the site yielding artifacts were not properly dated. From this accurate if implicit beginning, the rest of the piece focused solely on Fujimura's individual doings.
Cultural healing is a rapid process.
But we think it well, for the future methodological conscience of the field, to preserve here the more spontaneous, and more accurate, term. The point of the incident is not pride of craftsmanship. The point of the incident is an intent to deceive, and the cultural context in which that intent arose and took shape. Our thanks to Mark Hall, of the Niigata Prefectural Museum, for contributing five of the above links to these events, along with firsthand reports of the Japanese response to it. Our sympathies to him and to the other reputable members of the field, whose honest contributions have been in some degree compromised by these revelations.