Early agrarian society in Japan and the social implications of paddy rice farming
Discussions of the social and cultural significance and consequences of paddy rice agriculture during the Yayoi period are becoming increasingly sophisticated, based on the large amounts of information generated through the high levels of archaeological investigation carried out in advance of land development since the later twentieth century across Japan.
The routine practices involved in growing rice in paddy fields, from the construction of the paddies themselves, and the control of the water supply essential to the successful harvest, to the post-harvest storage and processing, structured everyday life for most Yayoi people.[782]Rice agriculture supported massive population increase, and in certain places, most notably northern Kyushu and the Kansai region around Osaka Bay during parts of the Yayoi period, supported very large settlement agglomerations up to 100 ha in area with up to 1,500 residents. These regional centres developed at key locations in the Yayoi landscape, central nodes in networks along which flowed commodities including metal-work and fine stone, information, and people wanting access to the most advantageous points in those networks. Paddy rice farming, however, also depended heavily on a high degree of social co-operation, community cohesion, and reciprocity which, until towards the end of the Yayoi period, meant that there was a resistance to the development of inherited social hierarchies.
All of this occurred in a context of environmental unpredictability, with low- lying settlements and paddies regularly being inundated by floods, which had a devastating effect on local carrying capacity. The tensions generated through large populations living in close proximity to each other, the competition for limited supplies of high-value commodities, and the threat of flood or failed harvest, were in part mediated by an ideological framework, described by Mizoguchi as the ‘Yayoi myth'.
One expression of this myth is found in the depictions on a small number of the bronze bell-shaped objects known as dotaku, which were deposited near agricultural areas during much of the Yayoi period, interpreted by Kobayashi Yukio as representing an epic story celebrating rice farming. Some of these dotaku depict people and creatures in scenes of an intermediary nature that can be interpreted as representing the transformation from nature to culture. This transformation from nature to culture is expressed through the change from rice seed to food, which becomes a metaphor for the reproduction of Yayoi society: the death and regeneration of rice grains being linked to the death and regeneration of human beings and the community, in what Mizoguchi terms the ‘Yayoi structuring principle'.As well as transforming the worldview of the people engaged in rice farming, paddy-field agriculture was associated with major changes in social organization, facilitating for the first time the division of society in terms of inherited social differences. This process took several centuries and, until the late Yayoi period, an egalitarian principle was enacted through residential practices, with no evidence of the spatial segregation of elites, and reproduced through communal burial rites. Northern Kyushu, where wet rice farming was first introduced, followed a somewhat different trajectory to other areas, with elites being interred in distinct burial areas or mounds from the end of the early Yayoi. Though the power of these elites was played out through competition and warfare, the success of Yayoi farming depended mainly on social cohesion and co-operation, ensuring the management and maintenance of the infrastructure of paddies and irrigation systems, without which the elites could not survive.
The tensions inherent in Yayoi society, which included high-density populations living in close proximity and gradually increasing competition over land, resources, and commodities, were not always resolved peaceably.
There is evidence for violence, including headless burials and individuals apparently killed with arrows and swords. The defences at many later Yayoi settlements, and the move to upland locations, indicate raiding and fighting. The earliest accounts of Japan in the Chinese chronicles refer to violent disturbances during the third century ce, out of which emerged regional leaders such as Queen Himiko who ruled with her brother over a country known as Yamataikoku. Mark Hudson has argued that ‘the need for warfare and social cohesion was negotiated through the ritualization of war and its association with hunting'.[783] Deer are the most common animal to appear in Yayoi art, on bronze bells and pottery sherds, and are interpreted as representing spirits of the land in agricultural rituals. In another manifestation of the Yayoi ‘myth', Hudson suggests a metaphorical connection between these depictions of deer controlled by hunting, and the control of rice through agriculture, and the control of society through warfare.These disturbances were part of a broader set of changes in the third century ce that saw new forms of burial and greater control over the production of important resources, including bronze and iron. Large, centralized settlements developed, some supported by trade, and others depending on increasingly intensive paddy agriculture. There is some evidence of stone weights from Yayoi sites, interpreted as further evidence for market-based trade.