Summary

The Jōmon period or Jōmon era (縄文時代, Jōmon jidai?) is one of the fourteen traditional subdivisions of Japanese history. It covers the period from, approximately, 13,000 to, approximately, 400 BC). Japan was then populated by hunter-gatherers. Their culture, of mesolithic type, is one of the first in the world to know and practice pottery, in the form of this Jomon pottery.

This period is preceded by the Paleolithic of Japan and followed by the Yayoi period.

Early archaeological discoveries uncovered pottery "decorated (文, mon?) by string (縄, jō?) printing." This type of corded decoration was used to identify the entire era as Jōmon (縄文?), throughout the territory of present-day Japan. Less unitary than this name seems to indicate, due to subsequent archaeological discoveries, this very long period must be fragmented into six eras during which regional peculiarities can be distinguished.

Arriving in Japan in 1877, Edward Sylvester Morse is the pioneer of the study of this period. His publication in 1879 of Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, and the constitution of his pottery collection of more than five thousand pieces, marks the beginning of the scientific study of this civilization. It continues into the 21st century (more than 1,600 archaeologists in the field in 2004). On its side, China of the People's Republic multiplies the studies on its prehistory (see below).

The Jōmon sites are rather located in the north, and especially in eastern Japan, an east-west "border" running through the center of Honshū, the main island. But it is clear, and what is more over such a long period, that many regional groups can be distinguished, each with a particular style, and the social forms have changed greatly.

This period begins with the end of the pre-ceramic Paleolithic period, approximately 14,000 BCE, before the end of the last ice ages, and with pottery, which appeared at least around 14,000 BCE. The Jōmon period ends when the Yayoi period begins, around 300 BCE, when agriculture (rice and millet) and livestock (pigs) are undeniably attested. The Jōmon period is thus not a Neolithic culture but a singular Mesolithic culture, which employed ceramics very early on in a living environment that became, in the Middle Jōmon, sedentary or quasi-sedentary, with large-scale architecture. Masayuki Harada refers to this culture as a "non-agrarian Neolithic."

Environment

The sharp rise in temperature that began at the end of the Recent Dryas, around 11,700 BC, marked the beginning of the Holocene interglacial and continued until around 4,000 BC. At this date it seems that the temperature, during the summer, was two degrees higher than today. After this "Holocene Climatic Optimum" temperatures have continued to cool, with rapid but limited episodes of climate change. Northern European researchers have identified several periods:

But in Japan, between 2,100 and 950 A.C.E., it was a warm but unstable period, followed until the beginning of the 4th century A.C.E. by a cold climate, which marked the end of the Final Jōmon period and the Initial Yayoi period north of Honshū, i.e., the establishment of rice cultivation in flooded paddies and a certain type of ceramics, which was imported from Korea in the Mumun pottery period.

Chronology of the Jōmon period

The Jōmon period begins with the earliest pottery, the oldest discovered in Japan, in the initial phase of the Jōmon or proto-Jōmon period. In Fukui Cave, located in Nagasaki Prefecture (south of Kyūshū Island), where excavation began in 1960, this is pottery with applied band decoration. This pottery is dated to c. 13,850-12,250 BCE. Since these now ancient finds, new discoveries regularly clarify the approximate initial date of the Jōmon period, which in 2018 is "around 13,500" BCE. In 2011, this was about 15,000 BCE, with the discovery of the Odai Yamamoto site dated after calibration to 16,520 BCE. Pottery fragments and arrowheads not found in the earlier period are found at the Odai Yamamoto site. The final date announces the Yayoi period, i.e. about 400

The chronology of the Jōmon period was the subject of a synthesis in French in 2012.

The period is divided according to the characteristics of the pottery and this induces some variations. The subdivisions of this period (which can be used in Japan according to the Holocene calendar) are divided as follows in 2009 and 2004:

At the beginning of the Jōmon period, the population was estimated by archaeologists to be between twenty and twenty-two thousand. It would have reached between one hundred and twenty-five thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand people at the end of the period, its density being higher on the eastern coast of the archipelago.

The marked differences between the cultures of each region of the archipelago over time are due not only to local specializations, but probably also to successive waves of migrations spanning many millennia and bringing different cultural traditions, from the north, through Hokkaidō, the west, through the Korean Strait, or from the south, from the relay of Taiwan through the islands of the Ryūkyū Archipelago.

Nevertheless, several lines of archaeological evidence support cultural continuity from the Upper Paleolithic to the Jomon period, providing a hypothesis that the Jomon are direct descendants of Upper Paleolithic peoples who probably remained isolated in the archipelago until the end of the last glacial maximum.

A genetic study (2019) analyzed the genome of two Jōmon period inhabitants located on Rebun Island in northern Hokkaidō. The two individuals are from the Funadomari archaeological site located north of Rebun Island, and are dated to between 3,800 and 3,500 years ago. Both individuals are of mitochondrial haplogroup N9b1, the male belongs to Y-chromosome haplogroup D1b2b and C1a (C1a1

A 2020 genetic study analyzes the whole genome sequence of a 2500-year-old individual (IK002) from the main island of Japan that is characterized by a typical Jomon culture. The results support archaeological evidence based on lithic industry that the Jomon are direct descendants of the Upper Paleolithic people who began living in the Japanese archipelago 38,000 years ago. IK002 also shows strong genetic affinity with Taiwanese aborigines, suggesting a coastal migration route of Jomon ancestry. Notably, there is genetic affinity between IK002 and the DNA of an 8000-year-old Hoabinhian hunter-gatherer. These results indicate that IK002 is genetically distinct from populations living today in Eastern Eurasia or even Japan, with the exception of the Hokkaido Ainu. They are consistent with the hypothesis that Ainu and Jomon share a common ancestry. The study suggests that the Hokkaido Ainu "are probably direct descendants of the Jomon people.

Among the elements concerning the sociology and beliefs of this culture:

At the Sannai Maruyama site - located at the tip of Aomori Bay, Aomori Prefecture, on the island of Honshū, on the outskirts of Aomori City - it was determined that the six large post holes (diameter: 1.80 m) corresponded to six walnut trunks 75-95 cm in diameter, arranged in a rectangular plan and 3 m apart, as if to support a monumental platform. There is a reconstruction of this platform on the site but this form remains hypothetical. Juneau Habu, in 2004, suggests that it was a "house" with a raised floor, like the houses on the site, but supporting a very heavy superstructure.

This site was discovered during the foundation of a baseball stadium by the municipality in 1992. Carbon-14 dating places it between 3,900 and 2,400 AEC; it is the most important site uncovered of the Jōmon culture. This discovery led to the construction of a large cultural area developed with reconstructions of the supposed habitat as is often the case in Japan. Seven hundred semi-buried dwellings and 1,500 figurines, both complete and fragmentary, were discovered. A thorough study shows a very high variability of dwellings throughout the Early and Middle Jōmon (ca. 5050-3900 AEC

There is little evidence of proto-Jōmon habitation; these populations, still partly nomadic, used rock shelters and caves.

In the Early Jōmon and especially in the Early Jōmon, the population settled down, forming permanent villages. During the transition to the Final Jōmon phase, the organization of the settlement changed, and many of them were structured in a circle, as well as between "central" and "peripheral" (small and short-stay).

The typical settlement includes five to ten dwellings, semi-buried houses - inside which families of five to six people live - and larger community buildings. Among the remains are kaizuka (貝塚?, 貝 = "shell," 塚 = "mound," "heap"), shell piles where garbage, fragments of cloth, and the waste of meals are deposited. The shells, in large quantities, preserve the bones in the otherwise highly acidic environment of Japanese soil. These dumps can reach several meters in height, which confirms the sedentary nature of the communities of this period.

This is also clearly demonstrated by the locations of the posts: tateana (竪穴?, 竪 = "vertical", 穴 = "hole": "vertical holes"). These post holes, ten centimeters to one meter deep, allow us to reconstruct the plan of the houses: circular, especially in the North, or rectangular, especially in the South. The roof of these houses (probably made partly of branches, thatch or vegetated earth, depending on the place) rested on these posts planted in the ground, with earth and wood walls. The houses were frequently "semi-buried" and, in this case, were built over a pit about 50 cm deep.

The Late Jōmon survey of Kazahari, Aomori Prefecture, shows a large number of locations (with overlaps in time) of semi-buried dwellings, silo pits, and a few rectangular pole structures. The dead were buried, clustered together, near the center of the village. As for the Nishida site (Iwate prefecture), it clearly shows a concentric layout: a few dead in the center, surrounded by the other dead, then a first circle of rectangular pole structures, then the circle of buried silos and finally the large circle of semi-buried dwellings. Several of these circle dwellings show a form of segmentation, on the space of the circle, of differentiated groups which would indicate, according to Mizoguchi, "clans", three or four distributed on each circle, but also "lineages", from one circle to another. Similarly, "regional units" seem to appear in Middle Jōmon, based on differences in lithic material and in the exploitation of particular resources that this material reveals. Life there is thus almost permanent, although transiently part of the group may live at another site to harvest resources related to that location or

By this process, commonly used during protohistory and history, the dwellings would have been better insulated from the cold. Each dwelling had a fireplace as well as silo-pits for the storage of food. The latter have a profile in the shape of a truncated cone, narrowed towards the opening. They are sometimes voluntarily implanted in wet grounds, in order to ensure a better conservation.

The dwellings were close together. Well-organized villages are found, such as at Sannai-Maruyama near Aomori in northern Honshū, in a concentric structure around a square serving as a cemetery. Around the central space was thus a first circle of tateana houses, finally a second circle of semi-buried dwellings and storage pits, on the edge of the village. There is no indication of the reason for this distribution. The majority of the houses have a modest surface (5 to 8 m long or in diameter), probably for nuclear hunter-gatherer families, but there are also large houses (however, social differentiation by the size of the dwelling is not excluded.

This system of organization was the most widespread but not the only one. It would therefore be wrong to believe that all villages of this period had this structure. These constructions would become more and more complex to be sometimes built with a floor towards the end of the Jōmon and the beginning of the Yayoi. There is little change afterwards in the popular habitat in the Yamato period.

For the most part, these are populations of hunter-gatherers more or less sedentary in a favorable environment, and who practiced ceramics, from the beginning, for cooking food but also, later, for their conservation. These populations knew how to intervene in the natural environment for its exploitation, in another form, by introducing wild animals in islands where they did not exist, by consuming large quantities of shells (the current shell piles). They exploited in an intensive way the trees which provided them chestnuts and acorns, by supporting their growth by a form of forestry. They also practiced a small horticulture of supplement.

The earliest proto-Jōmon pottery has been found associated with lithic material characterized by polished axes. Axes of this type, reported by Alain Testart, are found in an Australian culture of 35,000 years ago. This author points out that polished stone, like ceramics, appear in hunter-gatherer cultures, whereas it was long believed that these techniques were markers of Neolithic societies. Their lithic tools included axes, bifacial dollies, pestles

The manufacture of pottery implies that the Jōmons were a semi-sedentary people. These fragile productions do not fit, in fact, the essentially mobile life of nomads, always on the move. As it is attested that these populations consumed large quantities of shells, as well as chestnuts and acorns, it seems that it was necessary to use ceramic vessels to cook them and make these foods edible (acorns must indeed be cooked in order to eliminate their tannic acid). Grindstones and millstones are also found for the preparation of wild plants (fragments of cakes have been found in a wet environment.

The Jōmons did without agriculture, or at least practiced it marginally (see below). This is a "non-agrarian Neolithic". Their subsistence model is mainly based on fishing, hunting and gathering. The abundance of resources is such that agriculture as such does not need to be developed. The populations of this period have a great diversity of natural resources in all the biotopes of their archipelago: in spring and early summer, deep-sea fish species (tuna and bonito) and marine mammals are fished as they approach the coast to reproduce. In autumn, fruits and seeds are ready to be picked, and the harvest of chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts and acorns is stored in numerous underground silos. In late autumn and throughout the winter, fallow deer and wild boar are hunted and trapped, as well as bear, deer and hare. In addition, it seems that the resources could have been preserved in the large ceramic vessels, treated with smoke or salt, without leaving any traces. A detailed study of two Late Jōmon sites on the lower Kitakami River shows that resources-tools and food-were taken from a radius of 10 km (plain and nearby hills) up to 50 km (from nearby coasts to lower mountains). While prestigious products, such as some shells used as armbands, could come from more than 100 km away, from a nearby geographical area - within a radius of 100 km - to a nearby climatic area, beyond 200 km.

For transportation, basketry is attested as early as the Archaic Jōmon (6000 AEC). The plant materials used were not easy to find and some resource management must have existed for their exploitation around the settlements.

Food preservation is essential for collectors. As early as the Early Jōmon, there were silos dug into the ground in which at least acorns were kept. In this region to the west, not only acorns, but also hazelnuts were preserved in water, which are preserved over very long periods of time in this environment, in silos dug from the Archaic Jōmon to the Kofun period. In the west and northwest in the Tohoku region, in the Middle Jōmon, buried silos preserved mostly chestnuts, but also walnuts, horse chestnuts, and acorns (even in other conditions, between layers of leaves for acorns, for example) and this was in anticipation of times of famine.

The question of the Jōmon people's mastery of agriculture is debated. In any case they clearly did not simply rely on a passive collecting economy, and had knowledge of the method of plant reproduction. At the very least they had the role of "environmental engineers" and "niche builders" and were able to carry out some form of control over plant and tree reproduction. This is especially evident for the Japanese chestnut (Castanea crenata), which is noted to have been introduced to southern Hokkaido during the recent Jōmon, evidently because it was brought there by humans. Generally speaking the ubiquity of nuts at sites of this period is related to some form of organization of their reproduction. Although Neolithic agricultural techniques are not clearly attested, it has been proposed that there was some form of control over the production of other plants: in addition to walnuts and chestnuts, a lacquer tree, Japanese varnish or Toxicodendron vernicifluum, as well as gourds, Lagenaria siceraria, an aromatic plant, Perilla frutescens, and hemp, Cannabis sativa, with multiple uses); to this should be added the cultivation of some types of herbaceous plants.

Studies have proposed for plants cultivated during the Jômon period: Perilla frutescens var. (shiso (紫蘇?)), Lagenaria siceraria (gourd), Soybean (Glycine max) and cereals on a small scale by slash-and-burn agriculture. However, no link could be established between grains (rice, barley, bird millet, Japanese millet), charred in shards, and their possible cultivation. Moreover, recent discoveries have shown that there were traces of techniques related to rice cultivation around 1000, however these practices were in the minority and limited to certain regions in northern Kyushu. Agriculture did not begin to become dominant until the first millennium BC, when the cultivation of edible plants, especially rice, became the main agricultural resource throughout the Far East and Southeast Asia. This period, in this region of northern Kyushu only, is now referred to as the "Initial Yayoi" period.

On the animal side, with the exception of the dog, no animals were domesticated. The domestication of the pig, in limited numbers, only began in the Yayoi period.

Pottery

Some pottery from the Jōmon period is thought to date back to about 16,500 years before the present. Discoveries of shards in China, have provided evidence that brittle pottery was made in southern and northern China, significantly a millennium earlier than in Japan . The Chinese sites of Yuchanyan (Hunan), Zengpiyan (Guangxi), and Xianrendong (Jiangxi), are in the present state of our knowledge (substantially on a par with - or even a few millennia older than - a corresponding site, in Japan, and dated to the Jōmon period: Odai Yamamoto.

In the absence of a wheel, pottery for everyday use was made using the "colombin" technique, from a spiral-wound clay cord, or from several superimposed ringed cords. The pottery was then simply dried and fired in the ashes of a fireplace (the kiln did not yet exist).

Initially reserved for cooking food, they were later used for food storage and also for burials. The largest ones were 1 m high and nearly 70 cm in diameter.

The first decorations are limited to small nipples or smooth cords from 10 000.

As early as the Early Jōmon, in addition to simple pottery without any decoration, artisans also made other pottery, perhaps for ritual use, with fairly sophisticated decorations made with braided ropes or wound on sticks, and applied to the raw clay. These two groups of pottery seem to have been used for everyday domestic life. These ornaments are the first example of art applied to utilitarian objects in the Japanese islands. The technique of pottery making traced back to Honshū, reaching Hokkaidō around 6,500 BC. The height of the "Jōmon culture" was between the Middle Jōmon (3,000-2,000) and the Final Jōmon (1,000-300), when "corded pattern" ceramics were produced by a multitude of small communities scattered throughout Japan: Jōmon should not be viewed as a unitary, homogeneous phenomenon. Moreover, these "corded designs," characteristic of the Jômon civilization, have been found in sites more than 1,500 km south of Japan, which seems to testify to exchanges at this high period.

As the Jōmon culture evolved, the decorative motifs became more diverse and complex, including impressions of shells, bamboo, reliefs, and especially the addition of so-called "flaming" motifs, in high relief, on the handles and rims of the vessels. So much so, that in the Middle Jōmon (so it is likely that they had, from then on, a "symbolic" use.

The potters here have shown amazing creativity. These are the most famous and most frequently reproduced Jōmon objects, with forms unique in human history, yet they remain quite enigmatic.

From the Late Jōmon (2000-1000) onward, pottery reflects the penetration of influences from the mainland, especially in the northeast of the archipelago; some forms seem to imitate contemporary Chinese bronze vessels. In any case, while incised and printed decorations remain predominant in the center and north, a new style appears in the island of Kyūshū, in the south, with black and glossy pottery. The black pottery being obtained by a reduction firing process that was practiced in the Longshan culture of Shandong, between 2,600 and 1,900. At the same time, in the southeast, on the island of Kyūshū, the first evidence of agriculture, including wet rice cultivation, was found, following a probable progression from China, through Korea and then through the Tsushima Strait.

The figurines: dogū

These small clay figurines, or dogū (土偶?) are widespread from southern Hokkaido and Tohoku, in the north, to the Osaka - Kyoto region, the Kinki, in the center, but not beyond . The first ones appeared in the 7th millennium, they have a human shape, with more or less feminine features, and constitute the first testimonies of Japanese sculpture. Their functions were probably linked to various ceremonies: funeral ceremonies (they are offerings to the deceased, among others), "fertility rites", healing rites. Half of them were found broken, often at the level of the arms and legs. But they could have been broken involuntarily. The highest concentration is in the north, on the island of Hokkaidō and the northern island of Honshū, although the production concerns the entire territory and period.

There is a great variety of shapes and stylization allows for a multitude of solutions, all of which are coherent from a plastic point of view. There are plate-shaped, cross-shaped, triangle-shaped (e.g., in Sannai Maruyama): the details are then of low relief, protruding or recessed. In the case of the Ebisuda dogū with bulging eyes or "snow goggles," the smooth eyes, in the middle of the body covered with ornaments, find an "echo" in the arms and legs left bare. The hips can be figured wide, but not in the case of Kazahari's seated dogū. As for the dogu from Chobonaino, Hokkaido, it hardly bears any female attributes. These figures are mounted with a colombin, and thus hollow pieces, except in the case of the figures in the form of plates.

The "masks

The earliest masks, the domen, are made from oyster or pecten valves pierced with holes to represent the mouth and eyes, but by the Late Jōmon (1,500-1,000) they are much more numerous and terracotta masks appear. The latter, until the Final Jōmon, are of relatively elaborate workmanship depending on the region, and often less stylized than the dogū. There are 8 groups of them: more "realistic" in southern Hokkaido, with more stylized characters, even with deformed noses, in northern Honshu, with "tattoos", in the Center, or even painted, a little further south. There are none in the South of Japan. The eyes and the mouth are sometimes underlined by what could be scarifications. They have perforations, especially around the eyes, probably to be worn. Only a few small sizes, without holes for attachment, could not be worn.

Phallic stones

Standing stones (max. H. approx. 1 m) with a more or less phallic appearance were placed in the Middle Jomon behind the dwelling or near the hearth, in the second stone enclosure around the hearth. The hearth had a strong feminine connotation, according to Mizoguchi, due to the woman's work and femininity. In north-central and northeastern Honshu, in the Final Jomon, the two sexes were also depicted together in the form of a kind of stone "crown" (H. approx. 8 cm.), with the male sex standing on the female sex. There is another version, finer, in the form of a "sword", sometimes with two similar ends, 30-60 cm long. These phallic stones and "sabers" are also found in ceremonial structures and in some tombs.

Funeral rites

The very high acidity of the volcanic soils, which is not very favorable to the preservation of bones and wood, has considerably limited the study of burial practices. However, the numerous installations on shell mounds, whose calcium allows the preservation of the bone, have made it possible to make observations, at least on these sites.

The bodies found are mostly placed, alone, in the fetal position during the early Jōmon era, but are placed in the recumbent position thereafter. Cremation is rare, but can be found, and a single funerary urn may have contained the ashes of fifteen bodies is possible, even more so in later times in the form of a communal grave in a circle (a hundred bodies), more rarely in a rectangle, sometimes in jars, for a single body.

Funeral deposits

Between 20 and 30% of the bodies, at the beginning of the period, are accompanied by funerary furniture composed of everyday objects. The "precious" objects, the pots, appear in the Middle Jomon, between 1 and 14%. Funerary deposits are much more abundant, subject to rapid variation, during the later phases: ornaments, lacquered wood objects and ceremonial objects (phallic stones, figurines, terracotta or stone plaques). The potteries of several types also. They attest to sexual differences through ornaments, but also seem to attest to social differentiations in the Late and Final Jōmon. Thus, we have between 10 and 30 percent funerary deposits in the graves, but only a maximum of 10 percent precious objects.

The village and the dead

During the Middle Jōmon the site at Nishida, Iwate Prefecture, offers a typical example of what is encountered elsewhere. It is a "habitat" structure

Cemeteries and ceremonial structures

Large villages are sometimes in a declining phase in all Jōmon eras. When they are in near abandonment they may become "cemetery villages" with ceremonial spaces. In the Early Jōmon period stone structures appear. By the end of the second half of the Early Jōmon, at least in the Chubu region they may indicate a major cultural break. Their number increases over time. They take the form of stone circles (up to 50 m in diameter), sometimes radial sundial structures, have many standing stones, sometimes phallic stones. The tombs may reuse old abandoned buried silos. The number of such devices is high in Hokkaido and the northern Tohoku region in the Late Jōmon (Oyu site, for example). These ceremonial structures coincide with tombs. They represent considerable earthworks, e.g., 2,400 heavy stones at the Komakino site, moved 70-80 m downhill, and 315 m3 of earth, moved to level the ground. At Monzen, Iwate, from the Recent Jōmon, 15,000 stones were laid out, tightly packed together, in the shape of a gigantic arch (with its string). Hokkaido has other sites in concentric earthen mounds, kanjo dori, from 30 to 75 m in diameter, with tombs placed in the central circles surrounded by a "bench" of earth, from 50 cm to 5.4 m high. Finally one also encounters mounds, other types of large-scale earthworks, in the Recent and Final Jōmon, as at the site of Terano-Higashi, Tochigi Prefecture: a ring 165 in diameter and a mound 15-30 m wide. Numerous ceremonial objects were found there: figurines, phallic stones, earrings, polished stone beads on the mound and on the "square". This was again during a phase of decline of the village (late Recent Jōmon- Final Jōmon). There are also wooden post structures, preserved by water, as at the site of Chikamori, Ishikawa Prefecture. The total number of poles there is 350, but they are not all similar. Eight perfectly circular structures are made with 8-10 half poles (60-80 cm diameter) and two, crescent-shaped, which evoke an entrance. They could be the remains of disappeared constructions.

Since time immemorial, the Japanese have worshipped the Kami - the spirits that inhabit or represent a particular place, or embody natural forces such as wind, rivers and mountains. Whenever a new village was founded, a shrine was erected to the spirits of that place to honor them and ensure their protection. It was believed that the Kami could be found everywhere, that no place in Japan was outside their power. Shintoism therefore encompasses doctrines, institutions, rituals and community life based on the worship of the Kami. That said, there is no evidence that Kami worship existed during the Jōmon period. The earliest terracotta figurines appear, from the early Jōmon, to be very schematic and also very fragmentary; some clearly showing "breasts." But the scanty evidence available must prohibit any reconstruction of the use made of them at that time. At most, they manifest the interdependence between an image and a meaning.

The density of large facilities, the frequency of their use, as well as the complexity of livelihood strategies are characteristic of collector societies. These grew steadily until the Middle Jomon and then declined in eastern Japan: the Kantō and Chūbu regions, and to some extent in the Tōhoku region. In the west, in the Kinki, Chūgoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu regions, collector-hunter societies continued to develop until the Recent Jōmon. Kyushu Island received the contribution of processes of Korean origin at the end of the Mumun Ceramic period: new typology of pottery, without decoration, rice farming, composite harpoons, bronze objects, and early dolmens. We thus pass, in this region of the island, to the period of the Initial Yayoi (900 or 500 - 400

Then, in northeastern Japan, the Epi-Jōmon, or Zoku-Jōmon (ca. 100 AEC - 700 EC) develops in the Ainu culture. It seems attested that the Jōmon culture thus finds an extension in the Ainu culture, put in contact during this period with agriculture and bronze and iron technologies of Korean origin (Mumun ceramic period). This territory also seems to have been, at least from the Jomon period, that of the Ainu populations. The Jōmon culture lasted in Hokkaido until the 8th century, during the Nara period, but with the Satsumon culture, identified as that of the Emishi, the process of neolithization was initiated.

In the rest of the islands it is the Yayoi period which will follow: around 900 or around 400

Thus the center of "prosperity" shifts, in Middle Jomon, from central Japan to the Tōhoku region. This "prosperity" is evaluated on the basis of the complexity of manufactured objects and by the multiplication of ritual objects, and not on the basis of the number of villages or the quantity of archaeological material discovered.

All forms specific to the period - pottery, figurines, masks, phallic stones - disappear in the Yayoi period, with the emergence of agriculture. With the exception of the terracotta figurines that would have "evolved" into bone-containing vessels for secondary burial, all these ritual objects disappear. Since there was no replacement of one population by another during the transition from Jōmon to Yayoi, it must be inferred that it was the transformation of subsistence and living patterns that produced or accompanied ideological transformations by causing the disappearance of these rituals.

At the end of the Southwestern period, the corded ceramic tradition loses its appearance in favor of simple incised lines. The surface aspect takes on a black patina, obtained by fine polishing and reduction firing. This appearance, very similar to that of Yayoi ceramics, is in complete opposition to contemporary Northeast ceramics with intricate patterns. However, this should not be taken as a radical break, as such simplification of motifs was already observed in this region during the first half of the Late Jomon period.

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9. яп. 埋甕炉, まいようろ, майё-ро.
10. ^ Matsuo Tsukuda, Vegetation in prehistoric Japan: the last 20.000 years, in windows of Japanese past: studies in archeology and prehistory, University of Michigan, 1986, p. 12, DOI:10.3998/mpub.18628, ISBN 978-0-939512-24-9. ad esempio
11. ^ «I primi esemplari di vasellame, il tipo "linear applique" venne identificato mediante il metodo del carbonio 14, applicato a campioni di materiale carbonizzato circa 12500 ± 350 anni prima dell'epoca presente» (Prehistoric Japan: New Perspective on Insular East Asia, Keiji Imamura)
12. ^ A titolo di curiosità si può ricordare che a causa dell'aspetto da «astronauta» di molte statuette, non sono mancate ipotesi fantasiose e ovviamente prive di qualsiasi fondamento, che vedono nei dogū la prova del contatto con antichi extraterrestri.
13. ^ Radiocarbon measures of carbonized material from pottery artifacts (uncalibrated): Fukui Cave 12 500 ± 350 BP and 12 500 ± 500 BP Kamaki & Serizawa (1967), Kamikuroiwa rockshelter 12 165 ± 350 BP in Shikoku.