A Journey Through History: Yayoi – Part Two (Social Stratification)

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The present article has been conceived as a two-part piece. In this second part we will further delve into the societal aspects of Yayoi culture that can be inferred from the village management, burial practices and the importance of bronze objects. If you would like to know more about Yayoi and its expansion through the Japanese archipelago, we highly recommend you read the previous part before continuing this article.  

The adoption of rice culture had a consequent impact on behavioural patterns and societies of the times, as cooperation was one of the key factors that allowed a village to prosper. Communities were getting bigger in numbers while extending their dominions. It was a time of conflicts, and power relations were being established among tribes. Such hierarchisation not only happened outside of the village, but also within its perimeter, as a social stratification emerged early on. The first leaders most likely held both shamanic and chieftain roles. Soon other categories came into play, complexifying Yayoi societies. Such differences, or even discriminations as some might argue, were clearly visible in the structure of the village, its burial grounds as well as the possession of bronze objects, which was likely considered to be a display of wealth and importance.

Yoshinogari archeological site and its reconstruction of a middle stage Yayoi village. © Saga Prefectural Tourism Federation

Earlier Ethnographic Observations Through Chinese Records

It is noteworthy how the customs of the Yayoi people weere presented in the Wei Zhi (record of the ‘History of the Kingdom of Wei'):

Their customs are not indecent. All the males have looped hair, with a cotton cloth around their heads.Their wide, unsewn clothes are tied together.The women wear their hair in curvy loops.The clothes are like a single cloth, worn by sticking the head through the pierced center. […] The Wa land is warm in winter and summer. The staple food is vegetables, and all walk around barefoot. The houses have rooms. Father and mother, brothers and sisters sleep separately. They paint their bodies with red ochre like the Chinese use powder. For eating and drinking they use stands, eating with their fingers. At death they use a coffin with no outer sealing box. Earth is built up like a mound. At death they observe more than ten days of obsequies, during which time they do not eat meat. The chief mourner wails, and others sing, dance, and drink sake. After interment the family assembles to go in water for purification, just like ablutions. […] It is the custom on the occasion of an event or a trip, whatever they do, to divine by baking bones so as to determine future good or bad fortune.The words are the same as those for tortoise shell divination. The fire cracks are examined for signs. In their meetings, [whether] sitting or standing, there is no distinction between fathers and sons or between men and women by sex. […] The people live long, some perhaps to one hundred and others to eighty or ninety years. The custom is for all aristocrats to have four or five wives, commoners perhaps two or three. Women are not morally loose or jealous. […] There are higher and lower social classes, subordinate to supervisors.Taxes are collected for which each chiefdom has buildings.The chiefdoms have markets for trading, though not without a controlling high Wa representative. […] When commoners meet aristocrats on the road they step back modestly into the roadside grass and wait. If they wish to say something, some may crouch and some may kneel with two hands on the ground in order to show respect. When replying, they say ‘ai’ which is sort of like ‘yes’. [1]

Toward More Elaborate Village Structures

Scholars relied heavily on observation of Yayoi village structures to infer what the social life at the time might have looked like. Yayoi settlements have been divided into three categories: the Extinction type, the Intermission type and the Successive type.

The first one describes abandoned settlements never occupied after being ruined. Such sites are mainly found across northern Kyūshū, a clear sign of the rapid migration of Yayoi populations towards Honshū. Such regions probably had little to offer, and the continuous destruction brought upon them by floods and typhoons might have been a strong push factor toward the main island. Across the migration path of the western coast are found both Intermission type and Successive type villages. The Intermission type defines a settlement that was inhabited and abandoned multiple times throughout its existence, while the Successive type indicates a continual habitation of the site. This latter category is particularly predominant in the Kinki area, where Yayoi culture prospered thanks to an ideal environment and a relative sheltering from natural disasters.

By the middle Yayoi stage (5th century BC – 1st century AD) villages were subdivided into units comprising several houses, who likely managed and farmed their lands jointly. In correlation with the availability of paddies, many units could also form bigger communities who carried out religious and military activities together, although the farming itself was likely managed separately. The expansion of the perimeter of the village was progressively organised in many branches associated to specific locations, and conflicts concerning land management might have happened within the community. Nonetheless, cooperation seemed to win over conflict, as archaeological studies have found that each unit shared communal storehouses for rice and warehouses to gather their tools.

Reconstruction of a storehouse from the middle stage Yayoi at Yoshinogari site, Saga prefecture. © Wae35244

Yayoi villages were easily recognized for their characteristic tall pile dwellings, initially used as storehouses and later inhabited by rich and important members of the community. Some scholars argued that such buildings were used as an inspiration for the construction of the first Shinto shrines, while others go further and define them as proper proto shrines since they were inhabited by shaman chieftains. The Cambridge History of Japan brilliantly describes such buildings as follows: ‘Built with planks of regular shape and with floors, doors, and a structural style making it possible to include windows, these storehouses embodied the major architectural advances of the time’. Yet another hint at Yayoi inventiveness.

Reconstruction of a huge building from Yoshinogari site, probably used for religious or political purposes, or the house of a chieftain. © Saigen Jiro

Burial as a Signifier of Social Stratification

Another peculiarity of Yayoi culture was the separation of burial grounds and inhabited villages, suggesting that death cult was becoming a matter of land management as well. The Yayoi people initially imitated continental practices by using wooden coffins to bury their dead, a probable sign that this separation between the village and the graveyard was somewhat connected to continental migrants. Burial grounds were spatially marked by mounds and stone pillars, while corpses were usually accompanied by several ornaments and ritualistic tools such as pots, bowls, bones and bronze artifacts. It is difficult to speculate about the spiritual systems of the time, but we could argue that continental and Jōmon influences merged into the Yayoi culture. At later stages, wooden coffins were replaced by clay jars as burial grounds were subject to a more accurate management.

An example of a horizontal burial jar of the middle stage Yayoi. © Michael Gunther

It is through sepultures that the most significative display of social stratification happened, as not all villagers were buried in the same way. By the middle stage Yayoi, graveyards were reflecting the social composition of the village, as a sort of a parallel world for the dead. Each village unit had its own burial land within the perimeter of the graveyard, and older natives, usually males, were buried at the centre of such spaces surrounded by ornaments and decorations. The peripheric spots were soberly occupied by women and people thought to be outsiders who entered the community through marriage, as they presented peculiar teeth mutilations. Such mutilations might have been used to physically mark those outsiders and differentiate them from natives of the village who, supposedly, occupied more important roles within the community. Those outsiders might have been segregated to do certain tasks, or precluded from certain roles, as it is has been inferred by such different burial practices. In short, funerary spatiality was probably used as a social signifier to further convey the stratification happening within the village.

Burial grounds within the Yoshinogari site, Saga prefecture. A clear example of Yayoi burial practices. © Saigen Jiro

However, such demarcation was not only portrayed through spatiality, but also through objects, as the central corpses were usually buried alongside several bronze items. At that time, accumulation of goods was a probable characteristic of the elites, who were able to bury their most respected members with precious bronze objects such as mirrors, bells, halberds and swords. Such items were probably related to religious practices as their usage was not only reserved to burials, but appears to have been part of some sort of fertility rituals as well. Interestingly, similar numbers of goods have been rarely found in Kinki’s burials grounds, leading specialists to believe that tribal chieftains of the region might have had some kind of collective perspective. Another plausible explanation of this scarcity might be related to a progressive mastery of bronze casting, which allowed people to hand down their goods through generations and recast them periodically.

Yayoi bronze spears from the 1st or 2nd century AC, excavated from a Kyūshū site, on display at Musée Guimet, Paris. © I, PHGCOM

Bronze, a Sacred Material and the Ultimate Social Marker

Bronze objects were mostly relegated to a function of status marker due to their scarcity, their complicated crafting process and, probably, for their shining looks. Being able to gather them might have been perceived as the ultimate display of wealth and power. Chieftains’ political and military abilities were probably consolidated by the capacity to obtain and protect such precious and spiritually important objects. During the initial Yayoi stage (10th – 5th century BC) bronze goods were mainly acquired through exchange with the continent, as local populations lacked both knowledge and craftmanship to successfully cast bronze. Therefore, possessing them might have been a rare and exceptional feat that progressively became a privilege reserved for upper social classes.

Moulds of bronze sword from the 1st century, excavated in Yasunagata site, Tosu city, Saga prefecture, on dispaly at Saga Prefectural Museum. ©Pekachu

Bells (dōtaku 銅鐸), mirrors (dōkyō 銅鏡) swords (dōken 銅剣) and spearheads (dōhoko 銅矛) were imported from China and Korea and relegated to the realm of spirituality, while other items, such as bracelets and heirlooms, were used as jewellery. Early on, Yayoi people tried to replicate those objects, as proven by several moulds unearthed throughout Japan, but it is very likely that their crafts did not satisfy them. After several centuries of failed attempts, a few highly skilled craftsmen finally mastered bronze casting and the first bronze items made in Japan started to appear in sites related to middle stage Yayoi. While imported goods were primarily used for burials, Japanese-made objects were destined for different ritualistic functions related to fertility and protection of crops. As such, they were periodically buried and unearthed nearby farmed fields, probably to ask for abundant harvests and ward off evil spirits from those territories.

Bronze bells and spears unearthed at Kojindani site, Shimane prefecture. ©Reggaeman

Among the many bronze objects, bells came to be the most representative of the Yayoi period and its art. Oddly enough, such items were firstly found only during the 1960’s and considered to be imported from Korea. Short after, and thanks to further discoveries, scholars were able to trace back the learning process that the Yayoi people went through to master bronze. The first Japanese-crafted bells were quite small in size and poorly made, as their casting proved to be a technological endeavour at the time. However, by the end of the period, some blacksmiths were able to produce huge pieces with refined decorations that might have amazed their fellow villagers as much as they captivate today’s museums visitors. There is little doubt regarding the fact that religious officiants might have used them in their rituals, both as tools and as protective wards.

Middle Yayoi bronze bell, unearthed at Sakuragaoka, Kobe prefecture, on display at Kobe City Museum. © Saigen Jiro

Late Yayoi bronze bell, unearthed at Habikino, Osaka prefecture, preserved at Habikino Municipal Ryonan-no-Mori General Center. © Saigen Jiro

There are two main reasons as to why bronze was so highly valued within societies of the time: its rarity and the level of expertise needed to cast it properly. While iron could virtually be cast by anyone, handling bronze was probably a task reserved for very few highly skilled and trained artisans. Moreover, as the Yayoi people mastered bronze casting, imported bronze goods ceased to have an inherent value and were rather perceived as rough material bound to be melted and re-casted. By the late Yayoi stage (1st – 3rd century AC) bronze was also rarely used to produced weapons for the warrior class, such as arrowheads. Nonetheless, its handling was never democratized and remained a prerogative of the elites.

The concentration of bronze objects suggests how affirming and displaying power balances was an important social behaviour of the time. The late Yayoi seems to have been quite a turbulent period, as tribes were gathering important resources and expanding their territories to the points of armed conflicts becoming more frequent. Such times have been witnessed through contemporary Chinese chronicles, namely the Book of Han (111 AC) relating mentions of the ‘Wajiri’, people of the land of Wa, and serious tribal conflicts in territories identified as the Japanese islands. These written sources are backed up by archaeological findings indicating fierce battles between Kinki’s and southern populations. Lastly, Japanese myths also speak about such times, despite doing it through the figurative speech of mythology, thus making all possible historical interpretation quite hazardous. What could be stated without constructing frail theories is that somewhere between northern Kyūshū and Honshū an incipient Yamato kingdom, in the form of what is known as Yamatai-koku, was about to subdue all other tribes. Both Chinese and Japanese historical records mention this semi-mythical realm and how it was ruled by a queen–priestess known as Himiko. But all this will be the subject of next month’s articles, as we believe we kept you here long enough already. We hope to see you next month, as we continue our journey through the first internal Japanese war and publish an article dedicated to Queen Himiko.
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[1] Kidder, Edward J. Himiko and Japan’s Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai Archaeology, History, and Mythology. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007.

 Written by Marty Borsotti