What Up, Nerds?
It's goddamn history time. This here post is a prequel to the last one. Wanna find out where pre-imperial Japan came from? Wanna know more about what it looked like? Keep reading.
From some of the earliest days, Japan was inhabited by some folks closely related to today's Ainu people, who used to live all over north Japan, although today they're only really in Hokkaido. They were also pretty closely related to some folks in eastern Siberia, And coincidentally are also the same group of people that migrated across the Bering Strait and became the majority of American Indians.
These proto-Ainu folks were hunter gatherers. They'd eat a lot of nuts and they'd fish and hunt deer. They were not really nomads--they didn't keep herds and they didn't need to. Their lives were just too nice to bother with that hard work. They were so nice that they had the free time to do some things like invent pottery styles that would spread across the entire old world. This awesome and free and easy state of affairs was dominant until about 300 BC. Yep, 300 BC. That, my friends, is all of the recent. An entire cycle of world civilization had risen, lived it's life, and fallen by 1000 BC. 300 BC is historically not too far off from just last week.
When 300 BC rolled around there wasn't some big event that changed things. It is just about the time when a new culture became more-or-less dominant. This culture is much closer to what you might think of as Japanese. Lots of historians have described it as a migration into the westernmost Japanese islands by a Korean culture that displaced the Ainu. But that isn't accurate. This new more "Japanese" culture arose in both Korea and in southwest Japan.
If you go back more then ten thousand years you'll see significantly lower sea levels, and consequentially the Japanese and Korean shores were much much closer to each other. The Japanese and Korean peoples archaeologically emerged at the same time and they were the exact same people. This shows in the record of the appearance of certain types of pottery. And it shows up in the fact that despite past confusion about the subject, the language that is most related to Japanese is Korean. These Japano-Korean people can be traced genetically, and shown to arise on the shores of the sea between Japan and Korea and subsequently to move east from there.
Well for a long time these people kept in good contact in both the Japanese and Korean halves of their territory. When rice agriculture started to seep into Korea from further west in mainland Asia, rice agriculture also started to appear in Japan too. Metalwork also came to these Japano-Koreans in a similar manner.
And at about 300 BC these more "Japanese" people became the dominant group in Japan. Their productivity exploded as they finally finished transitioning from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture. They started to produce complex goods and their society grew a divide between rich and poor.
At about 50 AD Chinese Imperial records start to attest to the emergence of a state in Japan. Based on Kyushu Island, the state of Wa is the earliest known country to emerge in the archipelago. It was described as being largely fractured into many small and scattered tribes. What's more, it wasn't organized into a system of taxation and relied on the occasional extraction of tribute. And then the whole country wasn't even independent, it paid tribute to a much greater Chinese state.
Another important state that emerged a few hundred years later in Japan was called Yamataikoku. The Chinese first described it as a kingdom in Wa, which is somewhat confusing until you realize the Chinese had come to call all the whole archipelago "Wa" after that first state they had dealt with. Yamataikoku had relations with China and was attested to have been ruled by a Queen named Himiko. This country probably existed on a different part of Kyushu, although the later Imperial Yamato rulers and tradition would assert that it was actually in the Yamato valley in central Japan.
Over time the rulers of the state in Yamato started to expand their power. In a series of diplomatic, religious, and military conflicts they forced other countries to pay them occasional tribute. And they fought with an eye to establishing superiority over all of Kyushu and west Honshu. By the 300's AD they were in contact with China, and by the 500's they had established a lip-service superiority over all the other south Japanese states. Of course, they were constantly having to fight wars to retain their nominal superiority.
Another way that Yamato created a kind of superiority was by assembling the Shinto religion. As they warred with and gradually got the upper hand on each rivaling county they would merge the pantheons of the two countries. Although they were always willing to add another god into the pantheon, the Yamato rulers established their traditional god as the chief god. As the Yamato chieftains started to claim descendancy from their god, their chief position on earth became legitimated by their god's chief status in heaven.
The chiefs of Yamato not only controlled the other tribes, they may have controlled some of their very old relatives in Korea, in the Gaya Confederacy. It is more likely that Yamato and Gaya just still had very close tribal relations, but there were definitely common ties between the two. And of course the overarching common tie across the region was subservience to the Chinese Emperor, and paying him tribute.
In the 500's AD the chiefs of Yamato supported the introduction of Buddhism in their and in all the other subservient Japanese countries. After this, they started implementing reforms that gradually moved towards consolidating all the separate countries into one. This consolidation was never really effective until the reign of the first Emperor, Tenmu. But Tenmu would manage to break the power of the clans and to unify all of south Japan into the Japanese Empire.
Of course since you already read the previous post you already know all about that.
It's goddamn history time. This here post is a prequel to the last one. Wanna find out where pre-imperial Japan came from? Wanna know more about what it looked like? Keep reading.
From some of the earliest days, Japan was inhabited by some folks closely related to today's Ainu people, who used to live all over north Japan, although today they're only really in Hokkaido. They were also pretty closely related to some folks in eastern Siberia, And coincidentally are also the same group of people that migrated across the Bering Strait and became the majority of American Indians.
These proto-Ainu folks were hunter gatherers. They'd eat a lot of nuts and they'd fish and hunt deer. They were not really nomads--they didn't keep herds and they didn't need to. Their lives were just too nice to bother with that hard work. They were so nice that they had the free time to do some things like invent pottery styles that would spread across the entire old world. This awesome and free and easy state of affairs was dominant until about 300 BC. Yep, 300 BC. That, my friends, is all of the recent. An entire cycle of world civilization had risen, lived it's life, and fallen by 1000 BC. 300 BC is historically not too far off from just last week.
When 300 BC rolled around there wasn't some big event that changed things. It is just about the time when a new culture became more-or-less dominant. This culture is much closer to what you might think of as Japanese. Lots of historians have described it as a migration into the westernmost Japanese islands by a Korean culture that displaced the Ainu. But that isn't accurate. This new more "Japanese" culture arose in both Korea and in southwest Japan.
If you go back more then ten thousand years you'll see significantly lower sea levels, and consequentially the Japanese and Korean shores were much much closer to each other. The Japanese and Korean peoples archaeologically emerged at the same time and they were the exact same people. This shows in the record of the appearance of certain types of pottery. And it shows up in the fact that despite past confusion about the subject, the language that is most related to Japanese is Korean. These Japano-Korean people can be traced genetically, and shown to arise on the shores of the sea between Japan and Korea and subsequently to move east from there.
 |
| See? They were pretty dang close together indeed. (Pic from Wiki) |
Well for a long time these people kept in good contact in both the Japanese and Korean halves of their territory. When rice agriculture started to seep into Korea from further west in mainland Asia, rice agriculture also started to appear in Japan too. Metalwork also came to these Japano-Koreans in a similar manner.
And at about 300 BC these more "Japanese" people became the dominant group in Japan. Their productivity exploded as they finally finished transitioning from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture. They started to produce complex goods and their society grew a divide between rich and poor.
At about 50 AD Chinese Imperial records start to attest to the emergence of a state in Japan. Based on Kyushu Island, the state of Wa is the earliest known country to emerge in the archipelago. It was described as being largely fractured into many small and scattered tribes. What's more, it wasn't organized into a system of taxation and relied on the occasional extraction of tribute. And then the whole country wasn't even independent, it paid tribute to a much greater Chinese state.
Another important state that emerged a few hundred years later in Japan was called Yamataikoku. The Chinese first described it as a kingdom in Wa, which is somewhat confusing until you realize the Chinese had come to call all the whole archipelago "Wa" after that first state they had dealt with. Yamataikoku had relations with China and was attested to have been ruled by a Queen named Himiko. This country probably existed on a different part of Kyushu, although the later Imperial Yamato rulers and tradition would assert that it was actually in the Yamato valley in central Japan.
Over time the rulers of the state in Yamato started to expand their power. In a series of diplomatic, religious, and military conflicts they forced other countries to pay them occasional tribute. And they fought with an eye to establishing superiority over all of Kyushu and west Honshu. By the 300's AD they were in contact with China, and by the 500's they had established a lip-service superiority over all the other south Japanese states. Of course, they were constantly having to fight wars to retain their nominal superiority.
Another way that Yamato created a kind of superiority was by assembling the Shinto religion. As they warred with and gradually got the upper hand on each rivaling county they would merge the pantheons of the two countries. Although they were always willing to add another god into the pantheon, the Yamato rulers established their traditional god as the chief god. As the Yamato chieftains started to claim descendancy from their god, their chief position on earth became legitimated by their god's chief status in heaven.
 |
| Like a motherf*ckin' boss! (Pic from Wiki) |
The chiefs of Yamato not only controlled the other tribes, they may have controlled some of their very old relatives in Korea, in the Gaya Confederacy. It is more likely that Yamato and Gaya just still had very close tribal relations, but there were definitely common ties between the two. And of course the overarching common tie across the region was subservience to the Chinese Emperor, and paying him tribute.
In the 500's AD the chiefs of Yamato supported the introduction of Buddhism in their and in all the other subservient Japanese countries. After this, they started implementing reforms that gradually moved towards consolidating all the separate countries into one. This consolidation was never really effective until the reign of the first Emperor, Tenmu. But Tenmu would manage to break the power of the clans and to unify all of south Japan into the Japanese Empire.
Of course since you already read the previous post you already know all about that.
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