The history of research into agricultural origins in Japan
Although Yayoi-style pottery was first identified at a location adjacent to the University of Tokyo campus in 1888, the significance of the Yayoi period in Japanese history was not recognized till the 1910s.
In 1925 Yamanouchi Sugao discovered the imprint of a rice grain in the surface of a Yayoi pot, and in 1936 many wooden agricultural implements were discovered at Karako (from 1977 known as Karako-Kagi) in Nara. Although these discoveries led Japanese archaeologists to believe that paddy-field agriculture began in the Yayoi period, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that the first prehistoric farming settlement with associated paddy fields was excavated, at Toro in Shizuoka prefecture, dating to the late Yayoi period.[738] In 1978 the oldest known paddy fields from Japan were discovered at Itazuke in Fukuoka prefecture (Figure 14.1). Over the following decades, more than 200 examples of ancient paddy fields have been discovered along with a rich material culture and evidence for settlement structure and pattern, discoveries that permit sophisticated discussion of the nature of early agricultural society in the Japanese archipelago.[739] For much of the twentieth century, discussions about the nature of agrarian society in ancient Japan were structured in terms of Marxist-inspired ideas of historical materialism and modes of production. Although the explicit use of these ideas has been critiqued, social and cultural change during this period, and associated developments in agricultural technology, continue to be interpreted using a framework of contradictions. Much of the material culture of the Yayoi period in Japan has its origins on the East Asian continent, and crossdating with the historical sequence in ancient China has traditionally been very important. In recent years extensive programmes of radiocarbon dating have resulted in a major reassessment of the dating of the beginning of the Yayoi period.[740] [741]Discoveries at Yoshinogari in Saga prefecture have been instrumental in revising the representation of the Yayoi period.
While Toro provided images of a self-sufficient small-scale farming community, Yoshinogari is evidence of an urban form with a high level of social organization (Figure 14.2).11
Figure 14.ι Excavations of early Yayoi rice paddies at Itazuke, Fukuoka prefecture, revealed the footprints of some of the earliest known rice farmers in the Japanese archipelago.
From resistance to resilience: the significance of Jomon cultivation in the history of early Japanese agriculture
For many, the commencement of the Yayoi period, over the last decade redated from 300 bce to the start of the first millennium bce, represents the
Figure 14.2 Material culture associated with early rice farming: Yayoi pottery from Itazuke, Fukuoka prefecture, stone reaping knives from Yoshinogari, Saga prefecture, and wooden agricultural tools from Sasai, Fukuoka prefecture.
start of a distinctly Japanese archaeology, with the appearance of rice farming, the identification of elements of later Shinto cults and beliefs, the first mentions of Japan in historical documents,[742] and the arrival of people who were to mix with Jomon people to become the ancestors of most modern Japanese populations, speaking languages akin to modern Japanese.[743] Yayoi culture, based on rice farming, is often regarded as replacing the huntergatherer, aboriginal, Jomon cultures that preceded it, cultures that are traditionally not regarded as directly ancestral to present-day Japanese.
In the face of this dominant view, however, from early on some Japanese archaeologists, such as Oyama Kashiwa in the 1910s and 1920s and Fujimori Eiichi in the 1950s and 1960s, argued for some form of incipient farming before the advent of wet rice agriculture. They were supported by prominent scholars from other disciplines, such as the botanist Nakao Sasuke, the philosopher Ueyama Shunpei, and the geographer Sasaki Takaki, whose ideas underpinned the theory of cultivation in the Jomon as part of what was regarded as the ‘laurel forest culture', named after the major forest zone that extends across southwestern Japan into the East Asian mainland.
Although this theory, which has influenced ideas of Japanese identity, remains problematic in terms of archaeological proof, recent years, however, have seen a rehabilitation of Jomon culture as something much more connected to modern Japan than previously recognized.[744] Jomon populations are now regarded as having developed a very successful, resilient series of adaptations to living in the archipelago that secured their continuation for over ten millennia. These adaptations included ecological engineering based on effective understanding of the potential offered by a wide range of plants and animals, and terrestrial, riverine, and marine resources. Nuts, beans, grains, and very likely starchy tubers, along with a range of mammals (in particular boar and deer), fish, and shellfish, were utilized for food, while animal bone, plant fibres, and resins such as lacquer were central to the material culture repertoire.[745]There are suggestions of a degree of manipulation and interference, including swidden agriculture, with some species indicative of cultivation and husbandry, on occasion resulting in some genetic modification, notably chestnuts.[746] The presence of grains, including rice, is attested from the middle Jomon, with impressions of rice grains being found on sherds of pottery.[747] Fujimori Eiichi was among the first to propose a theory of Jomon cultivation in the 1950s,[748] around the same time that Okamoto Taro was arguing for the recognition of the artistic merits of Jomon pottery.[749] In the absence of actual cultivated plant remains from Jomon sites, which were only discovered after his work, Fujimori interpreted large numbers of chipped stone axes from Chubu and Kanto as hoes for plant cultivation, which he backed up with circumstantial evidence, including changes in lithic assemblages, site size, and site location, and evidence for rituals.
This longer-term understanding of the development of rice agriculture in Japan is demanding a redefinition of the debate about the origins of agriculture in Japan, and resonates with a revised view of Japanese history which seeks to de-emphasize the significance of rice farming as the predominant lifestyle in the archipelago until the advent of industrialization.[750] In the new model, rice farming is seen as one component of a diverse complex of ways of procuring and producing food, rather than being a clear break with what had gone before, a foreign import resisted by native hunter-gatherers. It was something for which Jomon lifeways were ‘pre-adapted', perhaps explaining why agriculture spread across much of the archipelago relatively rapidly.[751] It is quite possible that Jomon foragers were experimenting with rice themselves, or that rice was being imported and consumed even if not grown. The early AMS dates on rice grains from Kazahari in Aomori prefecture, dating to 900 bce, just around the time when the first paddies were being constructed at the other end of the archipelago, indicate that Jomon people were exercising a degree of choice over their adoption of this new superfood.[752]
Gary Crawford, in recent surveys of early agriculture in Japan, argues that the Jomon should be considered neither as hunter-gatherers nor as agriculturalists as traditionally defined. Instead, he suggests that debates around the nature of Jomon subsistence be moved away from arguments around whether the relationship between people and plants in the Jomon should
Figure 14.3 TheJomon (left) and Yayoi (right) annual ‘calendars' of subsistence activities. Left: Jomon calendar; right: Yayoi calendar.
be classified as foraging or collecting, or farming, to understanding the ways in which Jomon people engaged in ‘plant husbandry' during their niche construction, and had an impact on their surrounding environment.
This idea is familiar in Japan through the work of Nakao Sasuke, who proposed ‘semi-cultivation' in the Jomon. Such behaviours included ‘annual plant encouragement and probably management', and probably the indigenous domestication of barnyard millet and soybean, as well as the cultivation of bottle gourd, hemp, perilla, and adzuki bean.[753] Other possible Jomon cultigens include barley, buckwheat, burdock, rice, and shiso mint. Crawford also argues that Jomon subsistence should be understood in the context of broader ‘resource production', which makes sense given that plants were certainly exploited for more than just their dietary value, notably lacquer and timber. Many of these resources continued to be exploited through the Yayoi period (Figure 14.3).One area of archaeological methodology that continues to constrain understanding of early plant use in Japan is the very limited use of flotation to recover plant remains.[754] There is, however, increasing evidence for plant cultigens identified in the fabric of Jomon pots.[755] Further new lines of investigation include the identification of starch grains on grinding tools, in research being undertaken by Shibutani Ayako and others.[756] An increase in the excavation of waterlogged sites from the Jomon, beginning with Torihama in Fukui prefecture in the 1970s[757] and more recently including sites such as Aota, Niigata prefecture, and Shimoyakebe, Tokyo, has produced additional evidence for intensive plant use, so that many archaeologists since the 1980s have accepted that cultivation and some domestication did take place before the appearance of paddy fields in northern Kyushu. Although the importance of intensive relationships with plant foods during the Jomon is now recognized, however, most scholars still argue against agriculture as such during the Jomon.[758]
Isotopic analysis of human remains is also proving fruitful in terms of understanding diversity and change in Jomon and Yayoi diets, suggesting differential regional and temporal patterning in the amount of C3 and C4 plants and animals consumed, and marine versus terrestrial foodstuffs, as well as differences in the diets of men and women.[759] New research into the chemical composition of food crusts on pottery is also beginning to cast light on the way ceramics were actually being used in the preparation of food as early as 16,000 years ago.[760]
The development of agricultural settlements and landscapes
Initial Yayoi: the introduction of paddy technology and the earliest farming settlements
Although even before World War II Japanese archaeologists thought that Yayoi people cultivated rice, one of the reasons the discoveries at Toro
Figure 14.4 Plan of Toro, a late Yayoi farming village in Shizuoka prefecture.
(Figure 14.4) caused such a sensation was that for the first time archaeology was able to demonstrate the great antiquity of the technology of rice farming. The range of artefacts discovered was recognizable to what was still a predominantly agricultural population. This happened at the end of World War II, just as the traditional Japanese study of the past was freed from the long dependence on the acceptance of the quasi-historical narratives set out in the eighth-century Kojiki and Nihon Shoki and the imperial ideology as propagated through these works - changes which enabled for the first time in Japan the unfettered investigation of everyday life in the ancient past.[761]
The presence of rice agriculture was originally inferred through a new set of tools, unlike those used by Jomon peoples. The agricultural tools required by paddy farming include rice-reaping knives, originally made of stone but eventually replaced by the late Yayoi with iron, for which raw material was imported from the continent. Wooden tools included different types of hoes, with wide, narrow, rounded, and composite blades, some with the blade attached at an oblique angle, and others with forked ends, probable plough blades, fragments of spades and picks, and objects for processing the rice, including pounders.
A number of routes for the arrival of rice farming into northern Kyushu have been proposed (see Map 14.1). Kazuo Miyamoto argues that farmers from the Korean peninsula, where paddy rice was being grown from about 1500 BCE, migrated across the Tsushima Straits into northern Kyushu in search for new land for agriculture, prompted by cooler climatic conditions which may have impacted on the productivity of farming on the peninsula, where larger settlements had already developed and a degree of social differentiation was being expressed through the burial of elites. Miyamoto argues for a series of such migration events, the most significant coinciding with a cooler climatic phase between 850 and 700 bce, associated with the undecorated pottery recognized as the Yu'usu style in Kyushu.[762]
One of the earliest known paddy fields in Japan was discovered at Nabatake in Saga prefecture. Located in the bottom of a small valley, this paddy required no artificial irrigation. Within a relatively short time, however, paddies that required irrigation were being constructed at Itazuke, a short distance to the northeast of Nabatake. Although the whole area was not excavated, the paddies at Itazuke are thought to extend across an area some 400 ? 80 m, just below a ditch-enclosed settlement area. The paddies were divided into segments by low banks, 10 cm high. Water was supplied via a canal which ran along the edge of the upper terrace, on which the settlement area was located, with a series of dams and outlets controlling the flow of water to the paddies below.
Map 14.1 Japan showing the principal sites mentioned in the chapter: ι. Yagi; 2. Kakinoshima B; 3. Sannai Maruyama; 4. Sunazawa; 5. Kazahari; 6. Taretabagi; 7. Jizoden; 8. Kutsukata; 9. Aota; 10. SugitaniChanobatake; ιι. Yashiro; 12. Hidaka; 13. Kuroimine; 14. Mitsudera; 15. Shimoyakebe; 16. Otsuka and Saikachido; 17. Torihama; 18. Asahi; 19. Toro; 20. Aoya-Kamijichi; 21. Hoenzaka; 22. Uryudo; 23. Ikeshima-Fukumanji; 24. Daikai; 25. Karako-Kagi; 26. Hyakkendawa; 27. Ama; 28. Ikegami-Sone; 29. Doigahama; 30.
Haranotsuji; 31. Itazuke; 32. Nishijinmachi; 33. Nabatake; 34. Etsuji; 35. Hie-Naka; 36. Kuma- Nishida; 37. Yoshinogari.
The first rice farming communities such as Etsuji and Itazuke on the Fukuoka plain were enclosed by ditches. A number of settlements dating to this initial Yayoi stage have been identified in northwestern Kyushu. Polished stone reaping knives were found at the settlement of Etsuji, which was occupied by rice farmers in an area with considerable evidence for Jomon activity.[763] The site exhibits an interesting combination of Jomon and Yayoi features. Although no settlements that can be considered actual colonies from Korea have been found to date, new house types, similar to those found on the Korean peninsula, were constructed, along with V-sectioned ditches enclosing settlement areas. Burial areas were spatially distinct from residential areas. The ceramics used in these new settlements, however, remained of the indigenous variety, arguing against the presence of migrants, and for the adoption of certain aspects of continental culture by some of the residents of northern Kyushu.
Early Yayoi
The next phase in the development of agricultural landscapes began around 500 bce (the start of the early Yayoi period), when rice farming villages began to appear in many parts of western Japan as the technology of paddy agriculture spread across western Honshu, along the coasts of the Japan Sea and the Inland Sea. During the early Yayoi period the number of settlements increased markedly, new hamlets fissioning off from older, established ones, probably due to population increase facilitated by the stability of food supply afforded by rice farming. Many of these settlements, although the majority were newly established, reflecting the need for particular locational attributes, also exhibit traces of Jomon culture, suggesting that they were being established by, or in conjunction with, the local populations. Akazawa Takeru was among the first to argue that the Jomon populations of western Japan were to an extent pre-adapted to taking up rice farming. These new farming communities were relatively small, often enclosed by ditches and comprising just a few pit-buildings and a raised-floor storage granary. Examples include the Hyakkengawa-Sawada settlement in Okayama prefecture, where the Jomon tradition of burying the dead within the residential area continued, and Daikai in Hyogo prefecture, where Jomon- type stone tools, including polished stone bars, were found within a ditch- enclosed farming settlement.[764] The Kawachi plain in modern-day Osaka began to be settled, but the low-lying topography meant that the early occupations of sites such as Ama and Uryudo were susceptible to flooding.[765] Paddy fields also began to be constructed in inland basins, as at the Nakanishi-Akitsu complex in the Nara basin, separated from the Osaka plain by a range of mountains.[766] This period also saw the establishment of a number of sites that were to develop into major centres during the subsequent middle Yayoi, including Ikegami- Sone in Osaka[767] and Karako-Kagi in Nara.[768]
Other domesticated plants that regularly occur on Yayoi period sites include millet (barnyard millet, Echinochloa utilis, Japanese hie; broomcorn millet, Panicum miliaceum, Japanese kibi; and foxtail millet, Setaria italica, Japanese awa); barley (Japanese omugi), although this does not become common until the Kofun period; and pulses, including adzuki beans, pea, and soybean. A number of fruits were imported from the continent, including apricot, melon, peach, pear, and plum. Nuts, including acorns, chestnuts, and walnuts, continued to be exploited from the Jomon period. The presence of these plants demonstrates that dry-field agriculture and horticulture were practised from the beginning of the Yayoi period in conjunction with paddy rice farming.[769]
Middle Yayoi
Entering the middle Yayoi, larger villages developed, comprising a cluster of hamlets, each from several to tens of dwellings with shared storage facilities and public areas. Mizoguchi and others argue for the existence of some form of social organization that cross-cut a number of such villages, akin to clans or sodalities, forming larger-scale inter-settlement descent groups. Towards the end of the middle Yayoi, large regional centres appeared at key locations on the coastal plains in Kyushu, serving as centres of production, distribution, and ritual activity. At Sugu in Fukuoka, for example, some estimates suggest that as many as 1,500 people lived in an agglomeration comprising some 40 to 50 hamlets extending over 200 ha.
Following the period of rapid growth in the early Yayoi, the number of settlements remained relatively stable during the middle Yayoi. Karako-Kagi in the Nara basin is one of the most famous examples of central settlements. Oksbjerg describes how by the start of the middle Yayoi, a dual settlement system was established in the Kinki region, with large moated centres of craft production (such as Karako-Kagi) and smaller farming hamlets. Although Karako-Kagi has been excavated many times since the 1940s, only two pit-houses have been discovered, along with many post holes amid the patchwork of the many small-scale excavations that have taken place there, suggesting that these large moated sites may have functioned as centres of production, exchange, and ceremonial activity as much as residential centres.[770] There is also evidence for large structures, perhaps akin to a 17 ? 7 m building discovered in 1995 at the Yayoi ‘city' of Ikegami-Sone in Osaka prefecture. Karako-Kagi, the earliest known agricultural settlement in the Nara basin, was established in the early Yayoi, at the same time as the initial agricultural settlement of the Osaka plain. In the first phase of occupation, three individual settlements, each measuring between 150 and 300 m2, formed around a central natural depression. Each settlement comprised a cluster of five or six pit-houses and was enclosed by a series of ditches. Between phases ii and iii, in the first half of the middle Yayoi, this complex of ditches was deliberately filled in and replaced by a much larger, single moat, up to 10 m wide and 2 m deep. This was followed by the further digging of a series of concentric moats, eventually creating a ditched zone up to 200 m wide, along with a series of internal ditches which divided up the enclosed area. An episode of catastrophic inundation occurred at the end of the middle Yayoi, after which ditches were redug on a reduced scale at the start of the late Yayoi. These ditches were then again filled in at the end of the late Yayoi, and the settlement continued to function, though without moats, during the early Kofun period. Although clear evidence for residential occupation following the enclosure of the whole site remains elusive, traces of large buildings have been identified, along with remains of bronze casting (including for bronze bells), and stone (notably for rice-reaping knives), woodworking, weaving, and ceramic production. Large quantities of pottery imported from other regions of western Japan attest to the central nature of Karako-Kagi. The site also functioned as a ceremonial ritual centre, as indicated by the large number of pottery sherds with incised pictures, with the deliberate deposition of large quantities of ceramic vessels in ditches and around wells, often rapidly followed by the intentional filling in of the ditches. The site also produced quantities of animal bones that had received special attention, including boar and deer bones that appear to have been used for purposes of divination.
By the turn of the millennium, ‘substantial portions of the major floodplains in western Japan were covered by paddies watered by sophisticated irrigation systems. The latter often consisted of large irrigation canals and/or triangular-sectioned dams of substantial scale constructed by compositing logs across small rivers.'[771] Excavated examples include Hyakkengawa in Okayama and Ikeshima-Fukumanji in Osaka. Despite the scale and complexity of these facilities (that at Hyakkengawa is over 1 km in length), the way in which the water was divided indicates that paddies and their irrigation systems were a device well suited to communal egalitarianism.
By the end of the late Yayoi, these major centres were enclosed, and individual residential zones divided by ditches, sometimes on a massive scale. Some of these settlements, such as Hie-Naka in Fukuoka prefecture, which extended over 100 ha in area, were almost urban in character. These large settlements also had huge cemeteries whose catchments clearly transcended individual residential groupings: over a thousand burials were excavated at Kuma-Nishida, some set out in a linear fashion, suggestive of descent groups or moieties. Despite the scale of some of these settlements, however, there is no evidence for any clear social hierarchies, for example overtly rich individual burials or elite-precinct-type compounds as are found later.
The middle Yayoi also witnessed considerable increase in population in the eastern part of Honshu, with some larger centres appearing. Hidaka in Gunma prefecture and the deeply buried paddies at Yashiro in Nagano prefecture are examples of rice-farming communities in inland parts of central Honshu. Large settlements and settlement clusters developed around the Kanto region, one of the most famous being the moated settlement of Otsuka and associated cemetery of ditched burial enclosures at Saikachido, in Kanagawa prefecture (Figure 14.5).[772] Rice paddies had already appeared in northern Honshu, for example at Tareyanagi and Sunazawa in Aomori prefecture.[773] These fields were used for several decades before being abandoned. Paddies at Kutsukata 4 km inland from the Pacific coast in Miyagi prefecture were inundated by a huge tidal wave, which left lenses of marine sand across the site.
Figure 14.5 Ditch-enclosed Yayoi settlement at Otsuka Kanagawa prefecture.
Late Yayoi
The beginning of the late Yayoi witnessed some marked changes. While in some areas, especially in central and eastern Japan, the number of settlements increased, elsewhere there were significant declines, possibly related to political changes on the continent disrupting the flow of imported prestige goods, and to
irrigation ditch
Figure 14.6 Yayoi period paddy fields from Osaka.
another cold spell, adversely affecting productivity. Many small settlements were abandoned altogether, with a greater degree of aggregation in the established regional centres in northern Kyushu, and a series of larger hilltop settlements appear in the Kinki region, especially around Osaka Bay.[774] One of the regional centres that survived in Kinki was Karako-Kagi in the Nara basin.
The scale of paddy complexes and the associated infrastructure required for effective irrigation increased, in turn demanding new levels of management. Large-scale irrigation facilities are present in various parts of Japan, notably Osaka, and at sites such as Hyakkengawa in Okayama and Naka- Kunryu in Fukuoka (Figure 14.6). At Toro, for example, some fifty paddies, the largest of which was about 2,000 m2 in area, extended over 70,000 m2, irrigated by wide canals and possibly farmed in collaboration with the inhabitants of nearby settlements.[775] The organization of labour needed to support rice production on this scale required significant collaboration, and it appears that ritual practices may have been employed to reassert the egalitarian ethos. About this time, however, new forms of settlement and burial began to appear which suggest that social status was for the first time ascribed rather than just achieved. Residential compounds segregated from the ordinary dwelling areas began to appear, sometimes with exclusive storage facilities. These elite residential precincts begin to be constructed at the same time as individual burial compounds, with children receiving the same special funerary treatment as adults, replacing the large communal burial facilities.
The site of Yoshinogari in Saga prefecture provides a clear example of a large late Yayoi settlement.[776] Yayoi settlement in this area extends back to the early Yayoi, and during the middle and late Yayoi a very large settlement developed covering some 25 ha in total, enclosed by a moat that was in places 7 m wide and 3 m deep. Large parts of Yoshinogari have been reconstructed as a historical park, and visitors today gain a strong impression of this Yayoi town divided into a number of sectors by internal ditches and palisades, including cemeteries and an elite residential compound. Over 100 pit-buildings from the middle to late Yayoi were excavated and the population is estimated to have been between 1,000 and 1,500 people at any one time. In the northwestern part of the inner moated sector was located an elite residential compound, with pillared buildings and pit-buildings. A series of pillared watchtowers, each estimated as originally being 10 m in height, overlooked the settlement from the inner moat. Such towers are described in the third-century ce Chinese historical document, the Wei Zhi. In addition, the remains of a number of large raised-floor storehouses were found: a cluster of thirty such buildings was located outside the main fortifications. The largest were 5 ? 6.5 m in area, much larger than normal Yayoi raised-floor buildings.
Large numbers of burials were also found at Yoshinogari, most notably a large oval burial mound, 40 m long and 30 m wide, estimated to have had an original height of between 4 and 5 m, dating to the end of the early Yayoi and the beginning of the early middle Yayoi. This mound contained a series of jar burials, with bronze daggers and glass beads that originated on the East Asian mainland. Elsewhere over 2,500 other burials, including jar burials, pit burials, wooden coffins, and cists, have been excavated from at least twelve cemetery areas. Some of those interred died a violent death, as attested by headless bodies and individuals with arrowheads and sword fragments. Shell bracelets evidence trade and exchange of commodities across a wide area, as far as the Ryukyu islands southwest of Kyushu, and Hokkaido to the north. Fragments of linen and silk were recovered from some of the burials, silkworm cocoons having been introduced from southern China by the end of the early Yayoi. Enormous quantities of artefacts included numerous stone reaping knives, axes, chisels, grinding stones, querns, and spindle whorls, and from the middle Yayoi, large numbers of iron tools, including arrowheads, axes, knives, sickles, and spade-shoes. Bronze-working was also undertaken at the site, and a number of stone moulds were discovered. Rice agriculture was the major subsistence activity. The production of sufficient surplus to fill the large-scale storage facilities mentioned above would have required large areas of rice paddy, as discussed further below. Dog, deer, boar, and pig bones and shells indicate that hunting and shellfish gathering were undertaken, especially during the earlier phases of occupation.
Kofun period: agriculture and state formation
The fifth and sixth centuries saw the arrival from the continent of a new generation of agricultural technology which facilitated unprecedented land development for farming. Iron bits on ploughs began to be used in the fourth century ce, and in the fifth century a new type of U-shaped iron shoe to fit on the end of the blade of a hoe made turning the soil much easier, especially in dry upland areas. From this time it seems that draught animals - cattle and horses - were increasingly used to prepare the ground for farming.[777]
The eruption of Mount Haruna in Gunma prefecture in the middle of the sixth century c e, however, covered the surrounding landscape in up to 2 m of pumice and ash, and excavations since the 1980s have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved landscape with complete farming communities, complementing the evidence for elite residential compounds and burial facilities at Mitsudera i and Hodaka. Discoveries at Kuroimine have revealed exceptionally well-preserved remains of buildings, including dwellings and cowsheds, storage structures with raised floors, possible rice seedbeds, and irrigated rice paddies (Figure 14.7).[778] The buildings and other facilities were connected by footpaths and the residential units were enclosed by brushwood fences. At least eight such units measuring 30 ? 40 m were uncovered, along with one much larger house.
By the fifth century ce, the storage and control of agricultural surpluses were transformed. The remains of massive centralized storage facilities have been discovered at Hoenzaka in Osaka prefecture and Narutaki in Wakayama prefecture.[779] At Hoenzaka, it is estimated that the sixteen large storehouses,
Figure 14.7 Plan of the sixth-century farmstead at Kuroimine, Gunma prefecture: (a) Kuroimine western area; (b) Kuroimine eastern area.
each up to 90 m2 in area and greatly exceeding the scale of storehouses in contemporary settlements, had an overall capacity of some 37,000 koku of rice, or 189,000 bushels. Accepting that such huge storage facilities may also have held other important commodities (iron, salt, textiles), and drawing on early historic tax records, Tsude suggests that the area of paddy required to yield such amounts would be in the region of 400,000 acres.[780]
Figure 14.7 (cont.)
The fifth century also saw a number of civil engineering projects on a new, massive scale. These included the largest of the keyhole-shaped tombs in which paramount leaders were interred. One estimate suggests that 6.8 million man days were required for the construction of the largest of all the tombs, Daisen in Osaka prefecture, traditionally assigned to the fifth-century Emperor Nintoku, at 486 m in length the largest tomb in Japan and one of the largest funerary monuments from the ancient world. Other large-scale projects included the new development of cultivated land, and associated irrigation canals, such as that at Furuichi Omizo, 2 km long and 20 m wide.[781] Large-scale land development such as this is thought to have been directed by chiefs and rulers living in spatially distinct residential enclosures such as that found at Mitsudera.