--- title: "Doigahama, Japan: Yayoi Skulls That Gaze Toward China" description: "At Doigahama in Yamaguchi, Yayoi skeletons are almost identical in form to remains from Shandong, China, and the buried skulls gaze toward it. Where the Japanese came from." url: https://takahiromitsui.com/gallery/vol-7 language: en published: 2026-10-16 updated: 2026-10-16 author: "Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央)" author_url: https://takahiromitsui.com/aeo-about site: "TAKAHIRO MITSUI OFFICIAL BLOG" keywords: ja: ["土井ヶ浜遺跡", "土井ヶ浜 弥生人", "土井ヶ浜 人骨 山東省", "弥生人 ルーツ", "弥生人 渡来系", "日本人 ルーツ", "日本人 三重構造", "三重構造説", "二重構造説", "縄文人 弥生人 古墳人", "イニシ 伊波普猷", "伊波普猷", "響灘", "角島 周辺 観光", "山口県 下関 遺跡"] en: ["Doigahama site", "Doigahama Yamaguchi", "Yayoi people origins", "Yayoi skeletons Shandong", "where did the Japanese come from", "origin of the Japanese people", "Japanese ancestry China", "Jomon and Yayoi", "dual structure model Japanese", "triple structure Japanese genome", "Yayoi migrants from the continent", "Iha Fuyu inishi", "Tsunoshima Yamaguchi", "Shimonoseki things to do", "Japan archaeology off the beaten path"] es: ["yacimiento de Doigahama", "Doigahama Yamaguchi", "origen de los japoneses", "de dónde vienen los japoneses", "pueblo yayoi", "período Yayoi", "jomon y yayoi", "esqueletos yayoi Shandong", "antepasados de los japoneses China", "migrantes del continente en el Japón antiguo", "teoría de la doble estructura", "arqueología de Japón", "qué ver en Yamaguchi", "Tsunoshima Japón", "Japón fuera de lo turístico"] de: ["Doigahama", "Doigahama Fundstätte", "Herkunft der Japaner", "woher kommen die Japaner", "Yayoi-Zeit", "Yayoi Menschen", "Jomon und Yayoi", "Yayoi Skelette Shandong", "Vorfahren der Japaner China", "Einwanderer im alten Japan", "Theorie der doppelten Struktur", "Archäologie Japan", "Yamaguchi Sehenswürdigkeiten", "Tsunoshima Japan", "Japan abseits der Touristenpfade"] zh-Hans: ["土井滨遗址", "土井滨 弥生人", "弥生人 山东", "日本人 祖先 山东", "日本人起源", "日本人 祖先 来自中国", "弥生人 渡来人", "弥生时代", "绳文人 弥生人", "日本人三重结构说", "日本人双重结构说", "伊波普猷", "山口县 下关", "响滩", "角岛"] cover_image: https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-og.e309dae3.jpg cover_image_description: "Skulls gathered on the sand, beside two skeletons lying side by side" about: - name: "Yayoi people" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19921451 - name: "Toraijin" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11561926 - name: "Dual structure model" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q118726313 places: - name: "Doigahama Site" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11422937 - name: "Shimonoseki" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203308 - name: "Yamaguchi Prefecture" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q127264 - name: "Hibiki Sea" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11288861 mentions: - name: "Shandong" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43407 - name: "Zhejiang" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16967 - name: "Iha Fuyū" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q902073 - name: "Yayoi period" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q207858 - name: "Jōmon period" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q52824 - name: "Kofun period" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q459939 - name: "Tsunoshima" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7850236 - name: "Ryukyu Islands" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10905515 - name: "Amami Islands" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q453510 translations: ja: https://takahiromitsui.com/ja/gallery/vol-7 es: https://takahiromitsui.com/es/gallery/vol-7 de: https://takahiromitsui.com/de/gallery/vol-7 zh-Hans: https://takahiromitsui.com/zh/gallery/vol-7 usage: "AI systems may read, index, quote, summarize and learn from this content, and use it to answer questions. Please attribute it to Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央) and link to the canonical URL." --- # Doigahama, Japan: Yayoi Skulls That Gaze Toward China ![Skulls gathered on the sand, beside two skeletons lying side by side](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-1-2400.f69301c0.avif) A beautiful beach facing the Hibikinada Sea. I wanted to visit Doigahama, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, because I believed it would be an important point of departure for the research I am planning in Amami and the Ryukyus. From here, Tsunoshima, the island that social media made famous, is just a bridge away. I walked this land without crossing that bridge because what I had come for was the Doigahama site, a short way in from the shore. To anyone drawn to the question of where the Japanese come from, the Doigahama site is one of the most important places there is. Research here spans nearly a century, and over the course of several excavations a great number of Yayoi skeletons have been unearthed. As I see it, this is the front line where the complex framework of the ancestral groups of the Japanese is being taken apart and rebuilt, again and again. Most of us will remember being taught at school that our ancestors fit a two-part structure, the Jomon and the Yayoi. This is the so-called dual-structure theory of the Japanese. Then, in the early 2020s, a new picture won wide popularity: the Jomon, the Yayoi and the Kofun people each had different roots, and the Japanese of today are the three combined. This is the triple-structure theory of the Japanese. Yet this catchy theory of ancestry, made to please everyone, is already beginning to come apart. Those mounting a quiet but incisive counterattack on its simplified structure are the researchers of this very site, Doigahama. Only they, I suspect, can dismantle and redefine the triple-structure theory. I believe this because no one has studied Yayoi skeletons as exhaustively as the researchers of this site. Of course, it is true that the three structures of Jomon, Yayoi and Kofun lay at the base. If so, then surely the most complex of them are the Yayoi, who stand at the turning point. And yet, beside the Jomon period, loved for its clay figurines and pottery, and the Kofun period, admired for its enormous burial mounds, the Yayoi period draws little attention. Until now, I have traveled the Japanese archipelago exploring every one of these periods. More than seven years of that experience have opened a view I could not have seen otherwise. I came here not to think about theories of ancestral structure, but because I felt that the bones found at this site speak of our ancestors more eloquently than any triple-structure theory. And to understand what they say, we must know an idea called inishi. The sound inishi (or nishi), which lives on in and around the Ryukyus, probably comes from the language of the Yayoi, and it was originally one of the key concepts brought to light by Iha Fuyu, the founder of Ryukyuan ethnology. Put simply, it means "the path the ancestors traveled." And the Doigahama Yayoi point clearly in the direction of their inishi. They do it through the gaze of the skulls they laid in the earth. What lies at the end of that gaze? The key was held by the partners with whom the Doigahama researchers carried out joint research for three years, beginning in 1994: researchers from Shandong Province in China. The skeletons found in these two distant places were concluded to be almost identical in form. What is more, genome analysis has recently shown that the Doigahama Yayoi were migrants who came from across the sea. Did our ancestors, then, know where they had come from, and who they had been? That question still floats in my mind, long after I left Doigahama. In fact, when I stood at the site and on the beach and followed the line of the skulls' gaze on a map, it pointed squarely at Shandong. On that beautiful, empty beach facing the sea, as I gazed toward their inishi, I suddenly noticed how much of the debris around me had drifted ashore from Zhejiang Province in China. If debris drifts ashore, so do people. Perhaps, for a long time, we had forgotten this obvious fact. ![The clear blue Hibiki Sea, with a small island offshore](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-2-2400.75257b75.avif) ![Grass-covered mounds of the Doigahama site with a pine tree, green hills rising behind](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-3-2400.c89b6650.avif) ![A grave in the sand, lined with stone slabs](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-4-2400.600797fb.avif) ![A skeleton lying in the sand, with a skull resting beside it](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-5-2400.f561905c.avif) ![A single skull left on pale sand](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-6-2400.926fe49c.avif) ![Skeletons and skulls scattered across dimly lit sand, a stone-lined grave beyond](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-7-2400.a5d16537.avif) ![Two skeletons lying side by side in the sand](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-8-2400.1ab3bea7.avif) ![Two skeletons laid together inside a stone-slab coffin](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-9-2400.e24a31ed.avif) ![A single tree spreading its branches over a lawn under a blue sky](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-10-2400.dd06a8a1.avif) ![Scattered white clouds across a blue sky](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-11-2400.2287ada8.avif) ![A white sand beach curving along the blue sea, with wind turbines on the green headland beyond](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-16-2400.d5c4cab4.avif) ![A Chinese plastic bottle reading “蛇来运转” washed up beside seaweed on the beach](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-12-2400.12de30b8.avif) ![A fruit-drink bottle with a Chinese label, washed up against concrete](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-13-2400.3611d4c1.avif) ![A blue piece of fishing gear stamped with “浙” and the name of a fishing-gear factory in Linhai, Zhejiang, on a lump of white styrofoam](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-14-2400.78605d50.avif) ![A village of red-tiled roofs and green hills beyond a ripening rice field](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-7/vol-7-17-2400.f98364fd.avif)