How Did the Yayoi Age End? The Power That Moved to a New Land

As the Yoshinogari age came to its end, however, a new power rose out of exchange with East Asia, and change came to Kyushu, the front line of the archipelago. In the age that built the culture later called the Kofun period, new technology arrived, such as iron weapons and horses fitted with iron tack carried over by boat, and the dynamics shifted so far that the structure of Jomon and Yayoi society could not cope. As a result, signs of development appeared not on the northern coast, which had become a fierce battlefield, but in regions different from those of the earlier ages. One of them is Yamaga.

Across this area moved a rising power in search of an ideal new land. On top of the Jomon and Yayoi way of life, farmland was remade for paddy rice and a kingdom centered on a king was built.

In the age that built the culture later called the Kofun period, new technology arrived, such as iron weapons and horses fitted with iron tack carried over by boat, and the dynamics shifted so far that the structure of Jomon and Yayoi society could not cope.

Going around these mounds, it is clear that the culture that spread from Tamana to Yamaga had features different from the earlier Jomon and Yayoi cultures. Its colors and expression differ greatly from the Jomon and Yayoi, funeral rites and worship of ancestors take varied forms, and the size of the change cannot be overlooked.

Decorated mounds, found across the country, are concentrated in this area. A decorated mound has its interior adorned with colors and designs of many kinds. Many have been found, chiefly in western Japan, and there are especially many around Yamaga. Collapse has advanced there because of the Kumamoto earthquake and other causes, and they are rarely opened to the public, so basically they cannot be seen.

A nearby museum, though, has made faithful models, and looking at them I was astonished to find that the sensibility is plainly continental and entirely unlike the Jomon or Yayoi.

In fact, several boats are painted in the decorated mounds, and it is clear that their culture was deeply tied to the world beyond the sea.

A yokoana tomb is a burial in which a hole is dug into a rock face in the mountains, out of sight, and the dead are laid in it. It is an old custom of southern origin and was widely practiced in the Kikuchi River basin too.

Hence these yokoana tombs also use many boat-shaped stone coffins, and the practice is called "funa-so," boat burial.

In that time, apart from Yamato and the regions subject to it, the region stood far from the flow of Yamato and long kept the old worship of tribes. The greatest trace of this is what are called yokoana tombs.

Countless burial mounds stand around Yamaga, and I visited more than ten today. The oldest in Yamaga stands near a mountaintop, while across the hills many round mounds were raised around a large keyhole mound, and these traces suggest a quite complex set of beliefs. Even though we say "mound people," I felt they divided into several lineages.

The area is now covered with abandoned fields because of depopulation, but ringed by mountains it has very good sight lines, and I think it was the best place to observe the movement of the sun and the like.

They are the Jono site. The Jono site lies on land that was a hill of the ancient bay, and there two stone coffins, buried at the top of the hill, were found side by side. Both were for children, and not ordinary children: they had been carefully buried with grave goods, and it has been suggested that they were children connected with succession to the kingship of the area.

Inside both coffins a layer of red pigment one to two centimeters thick had been applied, and analysis has shown it to be cinnabar, not iron oxide red. Red pigment was in use from the Jomon, but its sharp increase in burials during the transition from the Yayoi to the Kofun period suggests an influx of groups with a different system of belief.

Remains of infants unearthed side by side are rare anywhere in the country.

A little earlier, in the latter part of the late Yayoi period, the area's center lay a little to the south, and it has been confirmed that it moved north to this area in the final phase of the Yayoi. This may show that a fortress guarding the coast of Suo-nada, the entrance to the Seto Inland Sea, fell to someone and was destroyed, bringing the end of the Yayoi period.

After the fall of this place the Yayoi period of northern Kyushu ended, and the Kofun period began all at once. The old map of power was redrawn at a stroke, and the current quickly led on to Yamato in the Nara Basin.

In my own research so far, the sudden end of the Yayoi has shown itself in the simultaneous burial of ritual objects such as the bronze bells that were symbols of community.

Traces of a kind of force and violence never seen before redrawing the archipelago's map of power have come into view little by little as I have studied various places, but what were those dynamics?

Inland from Kokura lies an old stretch of foothills called "Yamato" (山門), and attention to it reveals an interesting history. "Yamato" has traditionally meant the southern Nara Basin, the birthplace of kingship and the court, but it is quite likely that the sound and name Yamato originated here in northern Kyushu. On the Kyushu side the word is written not 大和 but 山門, "mountain gate," which suggests the terrain of the time, with mountains standing like the gate of a bay that cut inland, the sea reaching that far.

The tribal group called Yamato, which guarded this gate, may later have migrated east and become the "Yamato" of the Nara Basin.