Chapter 6

ORIGIN OF THE NATION: GEOGRAPHICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RELICS

JAPAN'S CONNEXION WITH THE ASIATIC CONTINENT

THE group of islands forming Japan may be said to have routes of communication with the continent of Asia at six places: two in the north; two in the southwest, and two in the south. The principal connexion in the north is across the narrow strait of Soya from the northwest point of Yezo to Saghalien and thence to the Amur region of Manchuria. The secondary connexion is from the north-east point of Yezo via the long chain of the Kuriles to Kamchatka. The first of the southwestern routes is from the northwest of Kyushu via the islands of Iki and Tsushima to the southeast of Korea; and the second is from the south of the Izumo promontory in Japan, by the aid of the current which sets up the two southern routes. One of these is from the southwest of Kyushu via the Goto Islands to southeastern China; the other is from the south of Kyushu via the Ryukyu Islands, Formosa, and the Philippines to Malaysia and Polynesia. It has also been proved geologically* that the islands now forming Japan must at one time have been a part of the Asiatic continent. Evidently these various avenues may have given access to immigrants from Siberia, from China, from Malaysia, and from Polynesia.

*There have been found in the gravel Tertiary mammals including elephas primigenius, elephas Namadicus, stegodon Clifti, and unnamed varieties of bear, deer, bison, ox, horse, rhinoceros, and whale. (Outlines of the Geology of Japan; Imperial Geological Survey).

CULTURE

Archaeological research indicates the existence of two distinct cultures in Japan together with traces of a third. One of these cultures has left its relics chiefly in shell-heaps or embedded in the soil, while the remains of another are found mainly in sepulchral chambers or in caves. The relics themselves are palpably distinct except when they show transitional approach to each other.

The older culture is attested by more than four thousand residential sites and shell-heaps. Its most distinctive features are the absence of all metallic objects and the presence of pottery not turned on the wheel. Polished, finely chipped, and roughly hewn implements and weapons of stone are found, as are implements of bone and horn.

It was, in short, a neolithic culture. The vestiges of the other culture do not include weapons of stone. There are imitations of sheath-knives, swords, and arrow-heads, and there are some models of stone articles. But the alien features are iron weapons and hard pottery always moulded on the wheel. Copper is present mainly in connexion with the work of the goldsmith and the silversmith, and arrow-heads, jingle-bells, mirrors, etc., are also present. The former culture is identified as that of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Yemishi; the latter belongs to the Yamato race, or Japanese proper. Finally, "there are indications that a bronze culture intervened in the south between the stone and the iron phases."*

*Munro's Prehistoric Japan.

PRIMITIVE CULTURE

The neolithic sites occur much more frequently in the northern than in the southern half of Japan. They are, indeed, six times as numerous on the north as on the south of a line drawn across the main island from the coast of Ise through Orai. The neighbourhood of the sea, at heights of from thirty to three hundred feet, and the alluvial plains are their favourite positions. So far as the technical skill shown by the relics--especially the pottery--is concerned, it grows higher with the latitude. The inference is that the settlements of the aborigines in the south were made at an earlier period than those in the north; which may be interpreted to mean that whereas the stone-using inhabitants were driven back in the south at an early date, they held their ground in the north to a comparatively modern era.

That is precisely what Japanese history indicates. Jimmu's conquests, which took place several centuries before the Christian era, carried him as far as the Ise-Omi line, but Yamato-dake's expedition against the Yemishi north of that line was not planned until the second century after Christ. Apart from the rough evidence furnished by the quality of the relics, calculations have been made of the age of an important shell-heap by assuming that it originally stood at the seaside, and by estimating the number of years required to separate it by the present interval from the coast at a fixed annual rate of silting. The result is from five thousand to ten thousand years. A book (the Hitachi Fudoki), published in A.D. 715, speaks of these kaizuka (shell-heaps) as existing already at that remote period, and attributes their formation to a giant living on a hill who stretched out his hand to pick up shell-fish. This myth remained current until the eighteenth century, and stone axes exhumed from the heaps were called thunder-axes (rai-fu) just as similar relics in Europe were called elf-bolts or thunder-stones.

There is great diversity of size among the shell-heaps, some being of insignificant dimensions and others extending to five hundred square yards. They are most numerous in the eight provinces forming the Kwanto. In fact, in these ancient times, the Yamato race and the aborigines had their headquarters in the same localities, respectively, as the Imperial and Feudal governments had in mediaeval and modern times. But there are no distinct traces of palaeolithic culture; the neolithic alone can be said to be represented. Its relics are numerous--axes, knives, arrow-heads, arrow-necks, bow-tips, spear-heads, batons, swords, maces, sling-stones, needles, drill-bows, drill and spindle weights, mortars and pestles, paddles, boats, sinkers, fishing-hooks, gaffs, harpoons, mallets, chisels, scrapers, hoes, sickles, whetstones, hammers, and drills.

It must be premised that though so many kinds of implements are here enumerated, the nomenclature cannot be accepted as universally accurate. The so-called "hoe," for example, is an object of disputed identity, especially as agriculture has not been proved to have been practised among the primitive people of Japan, nor have any traces of grain been found in the neolithic sites. On the other hand, the modern Ainu, who are believed to represent the ancient population, include in their religious observances the worship of the first cakes made from the season's millet, and unless that rite be supposed to have been borrowed from the Yamato, it goes to indicate agricultural pursuits.

There is, indeed, one great obstacle to any confident differentiation of the customs and creeds prevalent in Japan. That obstacle consists in the great length of the period covered by the annals. It may reasonably be assumed that the neolithic aborigines were in more or less intimate contact with the invading Yamato for something like twenty-five centuries, an interval quite sufficient to have produced many interactions and to have given birth to many new traditions. An illustration is furnished by the mental attitude of the uneducated classes in Japan towards the neolithic implements. So completely has all memory of the human uses of these implements faded, that they are regarded as relics of supernatural beings and called by such names as raifu (thunder-axe), raitsui (thunder-club), kitsune no kuwa (fox-hoe), raiko (thunder-pestle), and tengu no meshigai (rice-spoon of the goblins). Many of the neolithic relics show that the people who used them had reached a tolerably high level of civilization.

This is specially seen in the matter of ceramics. It is true that the wheel was not employed, and that the firing was imperfect, but the variety of vessels was considerable,* and the shapes and decorations were often very praiseworthy. Thus, among the braziers are found shapes obviously the originals of the Japanese choji-buro (clove-censer) and the graceful rice-bowl, while community of conception with Chinese potters would seem to be suggested by some of the forms of these ancient vases. Particularly interesting are earthenware images obtained from these neolithic sites. Many of them have been conventionalized into mere anthropomorphs and are rudely moulded. But they afford valuable indications of the clothing and personal adornments of the aborigines.

*Cooking-pots and pans, jars and vases, bowls and dishes, cups, bottles, nipple pots, lamps, braziers, ewers, strainers, spindles or drill weights, stamps, ornaments, images, and plaques (Munro's Prehistoric Japan).

What end these effigies were intended to serve remains an unsettled question. Some suggest that they were used as substitutes for human sacrifices, and that they point to a time when wives and slaves were required to follow their husbands and masters to the grave. They may also have been suggested by the example of the Yamato, who, at a very remote time, began to substitute clay images for human followers of the dead; or they may have been designed to serve as mere mementoes. This last theory derives some force from the fact that the images are found, not in graves or tombs, but at residential sites. No data have been obtained, however, for identifying burying-places: sepulture may have been carried out in the house of the deceased. Whichever explanation be correct, the fact confronts us that these clay effigies have no place in the cult of the modern Ainu. History teaches, however, that degeneration may become so complete as to deprive a nation of all traces of its original civilization. Such seems to have been the case with the Ainu.

INTERMEDIATE CULTURE

Traces of a culture occupying a place intermediate between the primitive culture and that of the Yamato are not conclusive. They are seen in pottery which, like the ware of the neolithic sites, is not turned on the wheel, and, like the Yamato ware, is decorated in a very subdued and sober fashion. It is found from end to end of the main island and even in Yezo, and in pits, shell-heaps, and independent sites as well as in tombs, burial caves, and cairns of the Yamato. Thus, there does not seem to be sufficient warrant for associating it with a special race. It was possibly supplied to order of the Yamato by the aboriginal craftsmen, who naturally sought to copy the salient features of the conquering immigrants' ware.

BRONZE VESTIGES

There are also some bronze vestiges to which considerable interest attaches, for evidently people using bronze weapons could not have stood against men carrying iron arms, and therefore the people to whom the bronze implements belonged must have obtained a footing in Japan prior to the Yamato, unless they came at the latter's invitation or as their allies. Moreover, these bronze relics--with the exception of arrow-heads--though found in the soil of western and southern Japan, do not occur in the Yamato sepulchres, which feature constitutes another means of differentiation. Daggers, swords, halberds, and possibly spear-heads constitute the hand-weapons. The daggers have a certain resemblance to the Malay kris, and the swords and halberds are generally leaf-shaped. But some features, as overshort tangs and unpierced loops, suggest that they were manufactured, not for service in battle but for ceremonial purposes, being thus mere survivals from an era when their originals were in actual use, and possibly those originals may have been of iron. Some straight-edged specimens have been classed as spear-heads, but they closely resemble certain ancient bronze swords of China. As for bronze arrow-heads, they occur alike in Yamato sepulchres and in the soil, so that no special inference is warranted in their case. The bronze hand-weapons have been found in twelve provinces of southern and western Japan: namely, five provinces of northwest Kyushu; three on the Inland Sea; one facing Korea and China, and the rest on the islands of Iki and Tsushima.

These localities and the fact that similar swords have been met with in Shantung, suggest that the bronze culture came from central and eastern Asia, which hypothesis receives confirmation from the complete absence of bronze vestiges in the southern provinces of Kyushu, namely, Osumi and Satsuma. Bronze bells, of which there are many, belong to a separate page of archaeology. Though they have been found in no less than twenty-four provinces, there is no instance of their presence in the same sites with hand-weapons of bronze. In Kyushu, Higo is the only province where they have been seen, whereas in the main island they extend as far east as Totomi, and are conspicuously numerous in that province and its neighbour, Mikawa, while in Omi they are most abundant of all. They vary in height from about one foot four inches to four and a half feet, and are of highly specialized shape, the only cognate type being bells used in China during the Chou dynasty (1122-225 B.C.) for the purpose of giving military signals. A Chinese origin is still more clearly indicated by the decorative designs, which show a combination of the circle, the triangle, and the spiral, obviously identical with the decorative motive* on Chinese drums of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220). The circle and the triangle occur also in the sepulchral pottery of the Yamato sites, and considering the fact together with the abundance of the bells in districts where the Yamato were most strongly established, there seems to be warrant for attributing these curious relics to the Yamato culture.

*This resemblance has been pointed out by a Japanese archaeologist, Mr. Teraishi. Dr. Munro states that the same elements are combined in an Egyptian decorative design.

To this inference it has been objected that no bells have been found in the tombs of the Yamato. The same is true, however, of several other objects known to have belonged to that people. If, then, the bells be classed as adjuncts of the Yamato culture, shall we be justified in assigning the bronze weapon to a different race? On the whole, the most reasonable conclusion seems to be that all the bronze relics, weapons, and bells alike, are "vestiges of the Yamato procession at a time anterior to the formation of the great dolmens and other tombs" [Munro]. A corollary would be that the Yamato migrated from China in the days of the Chou dynasty (1122-225 B.C.), and that, having landed in the province of Higo, they conquered the greater part of Tsukushi (Kyushu), and subsequently passed up the Inland Sea to Yamato; which hypothesis would invest with some accuracy the date assigned by the Chronicles to Jimmu's expedition and would constitute a general confirmation of the Japanese account of his line of advance.

YAMATO CULTURE

The ancient Yamato are known chiefly through the medium of relics found in their sepulchres. Residential sites exist in comparatively small numbers, so far as research ha hitherto shown, and such sites yield nothing except more or less scattered potsherds and low walls enclosing spaces of considerable area. Occasionally Yamato pottery and other relics are discovered in pits, and these evidences, combined with historical references, go to show that the Yamato themselves sometimes used pit-dwellings.

The tombs yield much more suggestive relics of metal, stone, and pottery. Some four thousand of such sepulchres have been officially catalogued, but it is believed that fully ten times that number exist. The most characteristic is a tomb of larger dimensions enclosing a dolmen which contains a coffin hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, or a sarcophagus of stone,* the latter being much more commonly found, as might be expected from its greater durability. Burial-jars were occasionally used, as were also sarcophagi of clay or terracotta,** the latter chiefly in the provinces of Bizen and Mimasaka, probably because suitable materials existed there in special abundance. Moreover, not a few tombs belonged to the category of cists; that is to say, excavations in rock, with a single-slabbed or many-slabbed cover; or receptacles formed with stone clubs, cobbles, or boulders.

*The stone sarcophagus was of considerable size and various shapes, forming an oblong box with a lid of a boatlike form.

**The terracotta sarcophagi were generally parallel, oblong or elongated oval in shape, with an arched or angular covering and several feet. One has been found with doors moving on hinges.

There is great difficulty in arriving at any confident estimate of age amid such variety. Dolmens of a most primitive kind "exist side by side with stone chambers of highly finished masonry in circumstances which suggest contemporaneous construction" so that "the type evidently furnishes little or no criterion of age," and, moreover, local facilities must have largely influenced the method of building. The dolmen is regarded by archaeologists as the most characteristic feature of the Yamato tombs. It was a chamber formed by setting up large slabs of stone, inclined slightly towards each other, which served as supports for another slab forming the roof. Seen in plan, the dolmens presented many shapes: a simple chamber or gallery; a chamber with a gallery, or a series of chambers with a gallery. Above the dolmen a mound was built, sometimes of huge dimensions (as, for example, the misasagi* of the Emperor Tenchi--d. A.D. 671--which with its embankments, measured 5040 feet square), and within the dolmen were deposited many articles dedicated to the service of the deceased. Further, around the covering-mound there are generally found, embedded in the earth, terracotta cylinders (haniwa), sometimes surmounted with figures or heads of persons or animals.

*By this name all the Imperial tombs were called.

According to the Chronicles, incidents so shocking occurred in connexion with the sacrifice of the personal attendants* of Prince Yamato at his burial (A.D. 2) that the custom of making such sacrifices was thenceforth abandoned, clay images being substituted for human beings. The Records speak of a "hedge of men set up round a tumulus," and it would therefore seem that these terracotta figures usually found encircling the principal misasagi, represented that hedge and served originally as pedestals for images. Within the dolmen, also, clay effigies are often found, which appear to have been substitutes for retainers of high rank. Had the ancient custom been effectually abolished in the year A.D. 3, when the Emperor Suinin is recorded to have issued orders in that sense, a simple and conclusive means would be at hand for fixing the approximate date of a dolmen, since all tombs containing clay effigies or encircled by terracotta haniwa would necessarily be subsequent to that date, and all tombs containing skeletons other than the occupants of the sarcophagi would be referable to an earlier era. But although compulsory sacrifices appear to have ceased from about the first century of the Christian era, it is certain that voluntary sacrifices continued through many subsequent ages. This clue is therefore illusory. Neither does the custom itself serve to connect the Yamato with any special race, for it is a wide-spread rite of animistic religion, and it was practised from time immemorial by the Chinese, the Manchu Tatars, and many other nations of northeastern Asia.

*They are said to have been buried upright in the precincts of the misasagi. "For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them." (Chronicles. Aston's translation.)

The substitution of images for living beings, however, appears to have been a direct outcome of contact with China, for the device was known there as early as the seventh century before Christ. It would seem, too, from the researches of a learned Japanese archaeologist (Professor Miyake), that the resemblance between Japanese and Chinese burial customs was not limited to this substitution. The dolmen also existed in China in very early times, but had been replaced by a chamber of finished masonry not later than the ninth century B.C. In the Korean peninsula the dolmen with a megalithic roof is not uncommon, and the sepulchral pottery bears a close resemblance to that of the Yamato tombs. It was at one time supposed that the highly specialized form of dolmen found in Japan had no counterpart anywhere on the continent of Asia, but that supposition has proved erroneous.

The contents of the sepulchres, however, are more distinctive. They consist of "noble weapons and armour, splendid horse-trappings, vessels for food and drink, and various objects de luxe," though articles of wood and textile fabrics have naturally perished. Iron swords are the commonest relics. They are found in all tombs of all ages, and they bear emphatic testimony to the warlike habits of the Yamato, as well as to their belief that in the existence beyond the grave weapons were not less essential than in life. Arrow-heads are also frequently found and spear-heads sometimes.* The swords are all of iron. There is no positive evidence showing that bronze swords were in use, though grounds exist for supposing, as has been already noted, that they were employed at a period not much anterior to the commencement of dolmen building, which seems to have been about the sixth or seventh century before Christ. The iron swords themselves appear to attest this, for although the great majority are single-edged and of a shape essentially suited to iron, about ten per cent, are double-edged with a central ridge distinctly reminiscent of casting in fact, a hammered-iron survival of a bronze leaf-shaped weapon.** Occasionally these swords have, at the end of the tang, a disc with a perforated design of two dragons holding a ball, a decorative motive which already betrays Chinese origin. Other swords have pommels surmounted by a bulb set at an angle to the tang,*** and have been suspected to be Turanian origin.

*The most comprehensive list of these objects is that given in Munro's Prehistoric Japan: "Objects of iron--(1), Swords and daggers; (2), Hilt-guards and pommels; (3), Arrow-heads; (4), Spear-heads and halberd-heads; (5) Armour and helmets; (6), Stirrups and bridle-bits; (7), Ornamental trappings for horses; (8), Axes, hoes, or chisels; (9), Hoes or spades; (10), Chains; (11), Rings; (12), Buckles; (13), Smith's tongs or pincers; (14), Nails; (15), Caskets, handles, hinges, and other fittings. Objects of copper and bronze--(1), Arrow-heads; (2), Spear-heads; (3), Hilt-guards and pommels; (4), Scabbard-covers and pieces of sheet-copper for ornamental uses; (5), Helmets; (6), Arm-and-leg guards; (7), Shoes; (8), Horse-trappings; (9), Belts; (10), Mirrors; (11), Bracelets and rings; (12), Various fittings. Silver and gold were employed chiefly in plating, but fine chains and pendants as well as rings of pure gold and silver have been met with.

"The stone objects may be divided into two classes, viz:

"A. Articles of use or ornaments--(1), Head-rest; (2), Mortar and pestle; (3), Caskets and vessels; (4), Cups and other vessels; (5), Bracelets; (6), Magatama; (7), Other ornaments; (8), Plumb-line pendant; (9), Spindle-weight; (10), Objects of unascertained function.

"B. Sepulchral substitutes--(1), Swords and daggers; (2), Sheath-knife; (3), Arrow-head; (4), Spear-head; (5), Shield; (6); Armour; (7), Wooden dogs; (8), Mirror; (9), Comb; (10), Magatama; (11), Cooking-knife; (12), Sickle or scythe-blade; (13), Hoe or chisel; (14), Head of chisel or spear; (15), Bowl; (16), Table; (17), Sword-pommel; (18), Nondescript objects." The above list does not include pottery.

**The leaf-shaped bronze sword is found over all Europe from the Mediterranean to Lapland, but generally without a central ridge.

***Mr. Takahashi, a Japanese archaeologist, suggests that these weapons were the so called "mallet-headed swords" said to have been used by Keiko's soldiers (A.D. 82) against the Tsuchi-gumo. The name, kabutsuchi, supports this theory, kabu being the term for "turnip," which is also found in kabuya, a humming arrow having a turnip-shaped head perforated with holes.

Yet another form--found mostly in the Kwanto provinces and to the north of them, from which fact its comparatively recent use may be inferred--was known in western Asia and especially in Persia, whence it is supposed to have been exported to the Orient in connexion with the flourishing trade carried on between China and Persia from the seventh to the tenth century. That a similar type is not known to exist in China proves nothing conclusive, for China's attitude towards foreign innovations was always more conservative than Japan's. Scabbards, having been mostly of wood, have not survived, but occasionally one is found having a sheeting of copper thickly plated with gold. Arrow-heads are very numerous. Those of bronze have, for the most part, the leaf shape of the bronze sword, but those of iron show many forms, the most remarkable being the chisel-headed, a type used in Persia.

Spear-heads are not specially suggestive as to provenance, with the exception of a kind having a cross-arm like the halberd commonly used in China from the seventh century before Christ. Yamato armour affords little assistance to the archaeologist: it bears no particularly close resemblance to any type familiar elsewhere. There was a corset made of sheet iron, well rivetted. It fastened in front and was much higher behind than before, additioned protection for the back being provided by a lattice-guard which depended from the helmet and was made by fastening strips of sheet iron to leather or cloth. The helmet was usually of rivetted iron, but occasionally of bronze, with or without a peak in front. There were also guards of copper or iron for the legs, and there were shoulder-curtains constructed in the same manner as the back-curtain pendant from the helmet. Shoes of copper complete the panoply.

The workmanship of these weapons and armour is excellent: it shows an advanced stage of manufacturing skill. This characteristic is even more remarkable in the case of horse-trappings. The saddle and stirrups, the bridle and bit, are practically the same as those that were used in modern times, even a protective toe-piece for the stirrup being present. A close resemblance is observable between the ring stirrups of old Japan and those of mediaeval Europe, and a much closer affinity is shown by the bits, which had cheek-pieces and were usually jointed in the centre precisely like a variety common in Europe; metal pendants, garnished with silver and gold and carrying globular jingle-bells in their embossed edges, served for horse decoration. These facts are learned, not from independent relics alone, but also from terracotta steeds found in the tumuli and moulded so as to show all their trappings.

Other kinds of expert iron-work have also survived; as chains, rings and, buckles, which differ little from corresponding objects in Europe at the present day; and the same is true of nails, handles, hinges, and other fittings. Tools used in working metal are rarely found, a fact easily accounted for when we remember that such objects would naturally be excluded from sepulchres.

There is another important relic which shows that the Yamato were "indebted to China for the best specimens of their decorative art." This is a round bronze mirror, of which much is heard in early Japanese annals from the time of Izanagi downwards. In China the art of working in bronze was known and practised during twenty centuries prior to the Christian era; but although Japan seems to have possessed the knowledge at the outset of the dolmen epoch, (circ. 600 B.C.), she had no copper mine of her own until thirteen centuries later, and was obliged to rely on Korea for occasional supplies. This must have injuriously affected her progress in the art of bronze casting.

Nevertheless, in almost all the dolmens and later tombs mirrors of bronze were placed. This custom came into vogue in China at an early date, the mirror being regarded as an amulet against decay or a symbol of virtue. That Japan borrowed the idea from her neighbour can scarcely be doubted. She certainly procured many Chinese mirrors, which are easily distinguished by finely executed and beautiful decorative designs in low relief on their backs; whereas her own mirrors--occasionally of iron--did not show equal skill of technique or ornamentation. Comparative roughness distinguished them, and they had often a garniture of jingle-bells (suzu) cast around the rim, a feature not found in Chinese mirrors. They were, in fact, an inferior copy of a Chinese prototype, the kinship of the two being further attested by the common use of the dragon as a decorative motive. Bronze vases and bowls, simple or covered, are occasionally found in the Yamato sepulchres. Sometimes they are gilt, and in no case do their shapes differentiate them from Chinese or modern Japanese models.

It might be supposed that in the field of personal ornament some special features peculiar to the Yamato civilization should present themselves. There is none. Bronze or copper bracelets,* closed or open and generally gilt, recall the Chinese bangle precisely, except when they are cast with a garniture of suzu. In fact, the suzu (jingle-bell) seems to be one of the few objects purely of Yamato origin. It was usually globular, having its surface divided into eight parts, and it served not only as part of a bangle and as a pendant for horse-trappings but also as a post-bell (ekirei), which, when carried by nobles and officials, indicated their right to requisition horses for travelling purposes.

*Jasper also was employed for making bracelets, and there is some evidence that shells were similarly used.

To another object interest attaches because of its wide use in western Asia and among the Celtic peoples of Europe. This is the penannular (or open) ring. In Europe, it was usually of solid gold or silver, but in Japan, where these metals were very scarce in early days, copper, plated with beaten gold or silver, was the material generally employed. Sometimes these rings were hollow and sometimes, but very rarely, flattened. The smaller ones seem to have served as earrings, worn either plain or with pendants.

Prominent among personal ornaments were magatama (curved jewels) and kudatama (cylindrical jewels). It is generally supposed that the magatama represented a tiger's claw, which is known to have been regarded by the Koreans as an amulet. But the ornament may also have taken its comma-like shape from the Yo and the Yin, the positive and the negative principles which by Chinese cosmographists were accounted the great primordial factors, and which occupy a prominent place in Japanese decorative art as the tomoye.* The cylindrical jewels evidently owed their shape to facility for stringing into necklaces or chaplets. The Chronicles and the Records alike show that these jewels, especially the magatama, acted an important part in some remarkable scenes in the mythological age.** Moreover, a sword, a mirror, and a magatama, may be called the regalia of Japan. But these jewels afford little aid in identifying the Yamato. Some of them--those of jade, chrysoprase, and nephrite***--must have been imported, these minerals never having been found in Japan. But the latter fact, though it may be held to confirm the continental origin of the Yamato, gives no indication as to the part of Asia whence they emigrated.

*Professor Takashima has found magatama among the relics of the primitive culture, but that is probably the result of imitation.

**The goddess of the Sun, when awaiting the encounter with Susanoo, twisted a complete string, eight feet long, with five hundred magatama. Lesser Kami were created by manipulating the jewels. When Amaterasu retired into a cave, magatama were hung from the branches of a sakaki tree to assist in enticing her out. Several other reverential allusions are made to the jewels in later times.

***The jewels were of jasper, agate, chalcedony, serpentine, nephrite, steatite, quartz, crystal, glass, jade (white and green), and chrysoprase. Mention is also made of rakan, but the meaning of the term is obscure. Probably it was a variety of jade.

YAMATO POTTERY

The pottery found in the Yamato tombs is somewhat more instructive than the personal ornaments. It seems to have been specially manufactured, or at any rate selected, for purposes of sepulture, and it evidently retained its shape and character from very remote if not from prehistoric times. Known in Japan as iwaibe (sacred utensils), it resembles the pottery of Korea so closely that identity has been affirmed by some archaeologists and imitation by others. It has comparatively fine paste--taking the primitive pottery as standard--is hard, uniformly baked, has a metallic ring, varies in colour from dark brown to light gray, is always turned on the wheel, has only accidental glaze, and is decorated in a simple, restrained manner with conventionalized designs. The shapes of the various vessels present no marked deviation from Chinese or Korean models, except that, the tazzas and occasionally other utensils are sometimes pierced in triangular, quadrilateral, and circular patterns, to which various meanings more or less fanciful have been assigned.

There is, however, one curious form of iwaibe which does not appear to have any counterpart in China or Korea. It is a large jar, or tazza, having several small jars moulded around its shoulder,* these small jars being sometimes interspersed with, and sometimes wholly replaced by, figures of animals.** It is necessary to go to the Etruscan "black ware" to find a parallel to this most inartistic kind of ornamentation.

*This style of ornamentation was called komochi (child-bearing), the small jars being regarded as children of the large.

**Mr. Wakabayashi, a Japanese archaeologist, has enumerated seven varieties of figures thus formed on vases: horses, deer, wild boars, dogs, birds, tortoises; and human beings.

With regard to the general decorative methods of the iwaibe potters, it is noticeable, first, that apparent impressions of textiles are found (they are seldom actual imprints, being usually imitations of such), and, secondly, that simple line decoration replaces the rude pictorial representations of a primitive culture and suggests propagation from a centre of more ancient and stable civilization than that of the Yamato hordes: from China, perhaps from Korea--who knows? As for the terracotta figures of human beings and sometimes of animals found in connexion with Yamato sepulchres, they convey little information about the racial problem.* The idea of substituting such figures for the human beings originally obliged to follow the dead to the grave seems to have come from China, and thus constitutes another evidence of intercourse, at least, between the two countries from very ancient times.

*Chinese archaic wine-pots of bronze sometimes have on the lid figures of human beings and animals, but these served a useful purpose.

It has been remarked that "the faces seen on these images by no means present a typical Mongolian type; on the contrary, they might easily pass for European faces, and they prompt the query whether the Yamato were not allied to the Caucasian race." Further, "the national vestiges of the Yamato convey an impression of kinship to the civilization which we are accustomed to regard as our own, for their intimate familiarity with the uses of swords, armour, horse-gear, and so forth brings us into sympathetic relation to their civilization." [Munro.]

SUMMARY

It will be seen from the above that archaeology, while it discloses to us the manners and customs of the ancient inhabitants of Japan, does not afford material for clearly differentiating more than three cultures: namely, the neolithic culture of the Yemishi; the iron culture of the Yamato, and the intermediate bronze culture of a race not yet identified. There are no archaeological traces of the existence of the Kumaso or the Tsuchi-gumo, and however probable it may seem, in view of the accessibility of Japan from the mainland, not only while she formed part of the latter but even after the two had become separate, that several races co-existed with the Yemishi and that a very mixed population carried on the neolithic culture, there is no tangible evidence that such was the case. Further, the indications furnished by mythology that the Yamato were intellectually in touch with central, if not with western Asia, are re-enforced by archaeological suggestions of a civilization and even of physical traits cognate with the Caucasian.

ENGRAVING: DRUM AND MASK

ENGRAVING: "NO" MASKS