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Japanese crane in watercolor

Japanese jar from 1st to 3rd centuries

Prince Yamato Takeru, of the 300s CE. Note the sword

The Japanese Arrive and Expand against Native Peoples

Before the 200s BCE Japan was very sparsely populated with people who were still using stone tools and living by hunting, fishing and gathering food that grew wild. Then, in 200s, on Japan’s major southern island, Kyushu, a culture with iron, bronze, tool making and wet-rice agriculture appeared. The new culture is believed to have come with migrants, perhaps from Korea - the shortest distance from the Asian mainland, where such ways of living already existed.

People with the new culture, called Yayoi-Japanese, expanded against native people, and around the time of Augustus Caesar they reached the Kanto plain, where Tokyo would one day be. They raised horses and cows, hunted and fished, and grew rice where they could. From their contacts with the Asian mainland they acquired the potter's wheel, and they improved their kiln techniques. From China and Korea they imported coins, bronze mirrors, bracelets and beads, iron and bronze knives and swords. They began smelting their own iron, making swords, saws, nails and clamps.

With a greater supply of food, the population of the Yayoi-Japanese grew rapidly.  They were perhaps healthier than other peoples in Japan, and they continued to spread and to displace native peoples. By 100 CE, the agricultural Japanese had pushed into northeastern Honshu. They pushed against and absorbed those called Ainu, who are believed to have lived more in the northern half of - a people with blue eyes and lighter skins, and with more hair than most Asians, perhaps accounting for the greater hairiness of today's Japanese.

Soon a highway system facilitated movement of people and goods, and the Yayoi-Japanese developed a fleet of ships that moved goods up and down Japan's coast and between Japan and the Asian continent. Closer ties between Japan and Korea developed. Literate Koreans and Koreans with other skills were in great demand in Japan, and such Koreans who came to Japan were given noble rank. The Yayoi-Japanese imported iron from Korea, with which they made plows, hoes, sickles, axes, adzes and chisels.

A Chinese report called the Weizhi (Wei records), dated for the year 297, described the Japanese as having developed a society not much different from other civilizations. The report described Japan divided into numerous states, or kingdoms, and as having class divisions. The Chinese described Japanese men who were most wealthy as having four or five wives, and they described some Japanese households as having slaves. They described people of lower rank as getting off a road and kneeling to show respect to people of higher rank, and people paying taxes to their local lords. The Chinese described some Japanese common folk as having become vassals, and a new class of warriors as having appeared, with horses and military technology imported from the continent.

According to the Chinese the Japanese had no theft. Members of families were described as responsible for one another, and the violations of law or custom by one member of a family brought retribution against the entire family - similar to other peoples organized by clan. In other than light violations of law, the entire household of the offender and his relatives were exterminated – a strong incentive to refrain from crime. And according to the Chinese, the Japanese treated women equally at community meetings, and clans were sometimes headed by a woman.

One such clan leader was an unmarried woman called Queen Himiko, who according to the Chinese, controlled a large part of Kyushu between the years 183 and 248. Himiko meant Sun Daughter, reflecting the belief among the Japanese that their chiefs were descendant from a sun goddess.

The Legends of Jimmu, Queen Jingo and Hachiman

Like others, the Japanese had legends about their ancestral rulers. They believed their earliest ruler was Jimmu, who was supposed to have reigned from 660 to 582 BCE and was believed to be descendant of the sun goddess. Japanese legend describes a ruling regent in the third century as Queen Jingo, and it describes Queen Jingo as a direct descendant of Jimmu and the Sun Goddess. It describes Queen Jingo and her son, Ojin, sending a military expedition to Korea. Gentle winds and god-like fish are said to have helped their armada cross the sea to Korea, so that no oars had to be used. Then, according to legend, a vast tidal wave carried the fleet inland, into the kingdom of Silla. The surprised and terrified Koreans are said to have surrendered at once and to have promised to pay homage and tribute to Queen Jingo until the sun rose in the west, rivers flowed backwards and stones turned into stars.

After Queen Jingo's death, Ojin is said to have ruled alone -  until the year 310 BCE, when he was 110 years-old. After his death he was deified as Hachiman, the God of War. In Tokyo, Kyoto and Kamakura (just south of Tokyo), beautiful temples were built in Ojin's honor, and Japan's warriors into modern times would pray to Ojin as they embarked upon battle.

and Legend of the World's Creation

The islands of Japan are farther from the continent of Asia than England is from the continent of Europe, which gave people on the islands of Japan a little more protection from invasion than the Britons had around the time of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. And not having been oppressed by invaders, the religion of the Japanese had no martyrs. Nor did it have proselytizing teachers or reason for proselytizing teachers. The Japanese were animists, seeing the same magic and variety of spirits in nature as other peoples. They too believed that their supplications to the gods provided and protected them as a community.

The Japanese looked to guidance in fortune telling techniques that had been used by the Chinese, such as following the cracks in heated bones. Their rituals became known as Shinto, meaning Way of Life, or Way of the Gods. Like the gods of others, these gods were forces of nature: gods of mountain and valley, field and stream, fire and water, wind and rain, floods and earthquakes – all that was beautiful and terrible in nature. And that which seemed to contain a superior godly power, the Japanese called kami.

The Japanese perceived as gods those who had died after having made an exceptional contribution to society. Everyone believed his family had an ancestor who had become a god. Everyone saw him or herself as descendant of gods. It was believed that every Japanese was descended from the Sun Goddess, the common people more distantly than ruling families and aristocrats.

Like others, before the Japanese had writing they had professional reciters, and the reciters had passed stories from generation to generation. Among these stories was the Japanese version of the Creation. According to this version, matter and spirit were not in the beginning separate and distinct. In the beginning heaven and earth were joined in a chaotic mass. The purest and clear elements of the mass rose and became the sky and heaven, and the more gross and heavy elements of the mass sank and became earth. In heaven, of course, were the gods, and from the gross and heavy elements of earth came humanity. One of the gods was banished to earth and became a god of the ocean, and here began humanity's ancestral tie with the gods. The god of the ocean married a farmer's daughter. The son from this union, Ninigi, with a retinue of attendant gods, appeared on Mount Takachiho in southern Kyushu. Ninigi built a palace at the foot of the mountain, and then he married a younger daughter of the local ruler. The eldest daughter of the local ruler was outraged at being bypassed in favor of her younger sister, and she cursed humankind. Here was the Japanese version of the fall of humanity: the outraged daughter announced that if she had been chosen instead of her sister, children fathered by Ninigi would have lived forever, but now she was putting a curse on his offspring, and humans forever after would grow and die like the flowers.

Rise of the Yamato Family

Being basically similar to other peoples, territorial conflicts arose between local rulers. Some rulers gained in territory and some lost. Greater territory among the winners meant more wealth, more available manpower, bigger armies and more military strength. Competition among the kingdoms created insecurity, which inspired the belief in growth for the sake of power. A ruler had to keep growing or he would be swallowed by one who had. So among the rulers were attempts to expand, which produced more war.

One of the more successful ruling families was the Yamato. The Yamato family dominated the agriculturally productive plain near what are now the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. As elsewhere in the world of civilization and empire, those rulers whom the Yamato conquered remained as local lords and paid tribute to the Yamato ruler. The local lords were watched by Yamato subordinates territorial administrators, technical experts and scribes. A hierarchy of authority had developed, with the local lords remaining proud of their family and conscious of their own powers and potential powers.

The Yamato rulers called themselves Tenno, or heavenly ruler, and the Yamato family believed that they were directly descended from Jimmu and the gods and that they ruled by divine right. The Yamato spread their rule northward onto the Kanto plain and to most other areas populated by the Yayoi-Japanese.

According to Japanese legend, during the 300s CE, the Yamato spread their rule to the southern coast of Korea, to an enclave they called Mimana, and that the Korean kingdoms of Paekche and Silla were soon paying the Yamato tribute. Koreans scholars do not accept this claim. [READER COMMENT]

Also in the 300s, it is claimed, more Koreans were moving to Japan: weavers, smiths, irrigation experts, and teachers of Chinese writing and Chinese arts. And the Koreans brought with them to Japan more ideas on Chinese law, medicine, science and social and political organization.

In the 400s, Japan built more complex irrigation systems, and Yamato emperors raised various families to a position of responsibility over specific matters, such  as the military, supervision of religion, technological projects and over territorial administration. Yamato rule was developing toward a Chinese-style bureaucratic state. And in the mid-500s would come the Buddhism that had recently been adopted by Koguryo and Paekche.

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