Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization

  Since it was for a long while more or less automatically assumed that the Yayoi brought rice cultivation to Japan it is also highly significant that archaeologists have now found undisputed evidence of paddyfield rice cultivation by the Jomon at Itazuke on the island of Kyushu. This evidence has been firmly dated to around 3200 years ago and thus is older than the Yayoi period by several hundreds of years. Matsuo Tsukada of the Quaternary Ecology Laboratory of the University of Washington summed up the findings this way:

  The oldest evidence of rice pollen [in Japan]… comes from the well-known Itazuke site, Fukuoka, which dates to about 3200 BP. Since the plant is not a Japanese native, its presence provides definite evidence that rice cultivation began in Late or Latest Jomon in Kyushu. Phylolith studies also support the fact that rice cultivation began at this time. It has been clear for some time that the notion that its cultivation appeared in Japan at the beginning of the Yayoi is outdated. Yet this idea persists in the writings of many specialists in East Asian archaeology!12

  But it was Sahara Makoto, the Director-General of the National Museum of Japanese History, who dropped the biggest bombshell on my preconceptions about the Jomon. When I met him on 17 May 2000 he told me quite casually of new evidence that had just come his way, unconfirmed as yet but startling if true, which suggested that the Jomon could have been cultivating rice as early as 12,000 years ago.

  Revolution

  So first rice was thought to be a Yayoi introduction to Japan. Then it was discovered that the Jomon grew rice hundreds of years before the arrival of the Yayoi. Now suddenly here was the dizzying possibility that the Jomon could have been growing rice deep in the Old Stone Age, thousands of years before anybody else …

  ‘If that’s true it’s a revolution, isn’t it?’ I stuttered.

  ‘Yes, in a sense,’ replied Makoto, ‘but then you see with the Jomon you always have to be ready for a revolution.’

  There was other evidence, Makoto now told me, tiny particles of rice that had somehow got into the potters’ clay before firing. Known to Jomon scholars for a decade, this evidence concerned several different pieces of pottery and several different sites, all of them in the range from 5000 to 3000 years old. Some archaeologists had gone to great lengths to underplay the significance of these finds, even arguing that the rice fragments had been brought over from China on the wind, or on the feet of grasshoppers – any logical contortion would be worthwhile, it would seem, rather than question the central paradigm of the Jomon as ‘simple hunter-gatherers’.

  Yet the more I looked into these matters the more obvious it became that increasing numbers of Japanese archaeologists are abandoning the ‘hunter-gatherer’ paradigm and are moving towards a new view of the Jomon as a sophisticated and very ancient culture – perhaps even as a ‘civilization’.

  Everything is up for grabs

  Because we keep on learning new things about the Jomon at a very rapid rate it is inevitable that our impression of them will constantly have to be revised. We have seen how cherished views about their primitive hunter-gatherer economy are being challenged by new evidence of rice-growing. When a find of pottery like the 16,500-year-old fragments at Odayamamaoto No. 1 Iseki is made, it can push back previously accepted dating schemes by thousands of years. Indeed, almost everything is subject to revision. The excavation of sophisticated, well-planned urban settlements like Sannai-Muryama and Uenohara (the latter going back almost 10,000 years) has forced revision of the old idea that Jomon society was nomadic. Likewise at Sakuramachi Iseki, near Oyabe City in western Honshu, archaeologists have recently excavated examples of 4000-year-old Jomon carpentry using complex joints, dovetails and corners of a type not previously thought to have been introduced into Japan before AD 700.

  Another example of historians radically misdating and misattributing inventions, ideas and icons concerns the classic curved jewel of the Japanese nobility – the comma-shaped (or foetus-shaped?) magatama, often carved from jade. References to magatama in Japan’s national epic, the Nihon Shoki, which was compiled at the end of the seventh century AD, and the frequent finds of magatama in archaeological sites of that period have led most Japanese to an unquestioned assumption that the magatama is an invention of the so-called ‘Yayoi’ and ‘Kofun’ periods, roughly from 300 BC to AD 800. Yet on my travels through Japan archaeologists showed me dozens of beautiful magatama from Jomon times, some of them more than 8000 years old.

  This speaks of more than just the antiquity of Jomon craftsmanship. The real point is the way in which a very ancient Jomon religious symbol survived the arrival of the Yayoi in the first millennium BC and continued to be regarded as a revered object at the time when the earliest texts of Japan’s unique Shinto religion were written down.

  Rock temples of the sea?

  In how many other ways did the prehistoric culture of the Jomon impose itself on the culture of the invaders? How much more of the Jomon story remains to be told?

  There is one obvious line of inquiry to pursue. Archaeologists admit that areas of the Japanese islands that previously stood above water and that at one time were almost certainly inhabited by the Jomon were inundated at the end of the Ice Age. The flooding was less massive and rapid than elsewhere. But since the Jomon were and remained for more than 14,000 years predominantly a coastal people, it is entirely possible – probable even – that this remorseless rise in sea-levels could have concealed important parts of their story. Had they carved structures out of rock along the ancient sea-shores, for example, then these would have been the first to be covered by the waves.

  So, alongside the theory that they are freak natural phenomena, and alongside the theory that they are the work of a lost civilization, I think there is also room to ask whether the underwater ruins of Japan might not be the work of a known civilization – the Jomon – in a hitherto unknown and perhaps extraordinary phase of their culture.

  Big stones; sacred mountains

  There is a curious reverence for big stones – iwakura – which persists in Japan to this day. Auspiciously shaped and positioned stones are thought of as junctures between heaven and earth, places where a god can descend from sky to ground. In 1998, following a kind invitation from the Governor of Gifu Prefecture, I was able to spend several days exploring iwakura in the beautiful mountainous district of Ena, located near the centre of the Japanese landmass on the island of Honshu.

  I was guided by a delightful group of local enthusiasts from the township of Yamaoka, who had formed themselves into a society in order to study all of the megaliths in their region. There were a great many iwakura that they wanted me to see. But here, as so often in Japan, the problem that immediately presented itself was whether the megaliths in question were in any sense man-made (or even ‘man-arranged’) as opposed to being just striking and unusual natural formations. Many of the towering rock piles, weathered boulders and huge, strangely shaped arrangements of stone that I was shown were, I am certain, entirely natural. However, in Japan – where the wonderful and awe-inspiring in nature have been noted and worshipped for millennia – such a provenance does not contradict ancient beliefs that the stones are sacred shrines descended from the Age of the Gods. Indeed, traditions state that it was here, amongst the rocks and trees of Mount Ena, that the placenta of Amaterasu O-Mikami, the sun-goddess and ancestral mother of the Japanese Imperial Family, was enshrined.13

  Much less frequent than the natural iwakura of the Ena district are several that are undoubtedly the work of humans. These include a bizarre chain of grey granite tetrahedrons up to a metre high that run in a straight line through forests and valleys between the bases of two neighbouring mountains, finally culminating at a conspicuously large rock which, authorities confirm, was ‘worshipped as a deity until recent times’.14

  Another man-made iwakura, revered by local villagers as ‘the sacred rock deity, the object of worship’ and recently classified by archaeologists at the Ena Municipality as an Important Cultural Property, was exc
avated by the late Ryuzo Torii, Professor of Archaeology at the Imperial University of Tokyo, who dated it to the Jomon period.15 It consists of a parallel pair of upright granite megaliths 1.6 metres high that stand isolated in a forest on the slopes of Mount Nabeyama in the southern part of the Ena Basin. The megaliths, which are massive in cross-section and roughly squared off, have a gap of a few centimetres between them that is aligned with spectacular effect on the summer solstice sunrise.16 More curiously, a straight line joining the tops of the two megaliths and extended northwards culminates at the sacred mountain of Kasagi, where numerous Jomon artefacts have been excavated by archaeologists.17 An archaic ceremony of unknown origin that was conducted there until recent times involved the procession of a huge model serpent with scales made of leaves of magnolia hypoleuca followed by villagers praying to the mountain itself for rain.18

  There are many sacred mountains in Japan. They are known as reizan (which means simply ‘the sacred mountain’) and also as shintaizan, which means ‘the mountain as object of worship’.19 The evidence from the radar-mapping and excavations at Kuromata Yama raises the possibility that at least some of these mountains might have been ‘landscaped’ by the Jomon in similar ways. Whether entirely natural, or touched by man, however, much suggests that they were sacred first to the Jomon and then inherited by later cultures.

  Take the case of Hakuzan (‘white mountain’) in western Honshu. A focus of active pilgrimage today, the roots of its sanctity seem to be extremely ancient. This at any rate is a legitimate interpretation of recent archaeological evidence from the Jomon site of Chichamori Iseki near the modern city of Kanazawa. As well as many beautiful pieces of Jomon pottery, dogu figures and magatama, excavations at Chichamori Iseki have revealed the remains of two spacious ‘wood-henges’, built by the Jomon, which are thought to be about 3600 years old. The uprights consist of the split trunks of twelve huge chestnut trees arranged in a circle. Each circle has a ceremonial entrance aligned exactly on Hakuzan.

  And just as the Jomon seem the most likely source of the sacred mountain idea, so it seems increasingly obvious that the origin of the iwakura idea must be theirs too.

  After visiting Kuromata Yama and the Oyu stone circles in 1998 I returned to the Aomori region in May 2000 on hearing the news that seven small stone circles had been uncovered by archaeologists at the great Jomon settlement of Sannai-Muryama. They had been measured and catalogued and then immediately buried again by the excavators. A few kilometres away another, much larger Jomon stone circle (more exactly, it should be described as an oval, since it is somewhat elliptical in shape] had also recently been excavated and had been left exposed. Its name is Komakino Iseki. Climbing on to the top of a plinth to get an overview of it, I could see that the outer circle, or oval, built up out of distinctive rounded river stones, had a diameter of about 150 metres and that it in turn surrounded a series of inner rings arranged concentrically, with groups of smaller ovals – touching at the edges like the links of a chain -sometimes scattered across the width of a ring.

  Komakino Iseki, which will have an important part to play later in this story, is thought to be about 4500 years old.

  From Aomori I travelled further north to the island of Hokkaido. There within half an hour’s drive of the modern port of Otaru I visited three more stone circles. Two of them, Nishizaki-Yama and Jichin-Yama, crown hill-tops, the former with a mass of small, interconnected stone circles, the latter with a ring of mid-sized megaliths. The third, Oshoro, is the largest intact circle in Japan and includes on its south side twenty stones that are in the half-tonne range. Like Komakino Iseki, Oshoro is arranged in concentric circles. Excavations suggest that it is about 4000 years old.

  A helping hand

  We had a strange experience at Oshoro – which I visited, as always, with Santha. Two friends were also with us there – the historian Akira Suzuki and Shun Daichi, the Japanese translator of my books. Had they not witnessed what happened I would hesitate to report it.

  From the perspective of a photographer the problem with Oshoro is that it is too big. As at Komakino Iseki it was therefore necessary to climb on top of something in order to get an overview. And, as at Komakino Iseki, the local government had conveniently provided a stone plinth, bearing a carved inscription, on top of which it was possible to climb. At Oshoro the plinth was a thick granite column about a metre and a half high mounted on top of a metre-high stone and concrete base.

  Hanging on to the branches of a nearby tree, I scrambled on to the base, with my feet on either side of the column, then hauled myself up the column and perched unsteadily on top of it. I spent five minutes sitting up there with my video camera shooting panoramics of the stone circle, wanting to remember the scale and flow of the great outer ring, looking at the soft shadows the megaliths cast, at the manner in which the sunlight descended on them, trying to put my finger on the special way they felt they belonged among the tall cedars that grew around and amongst them. Wind blew, still a cold wind in May at this latitude in Japan, rustling through the trees, whistling down from the still snow-covered mountains of Hokkaido. And it was easy to visualize the spirit of the wind, the spirit of the trees, the spirit of the stone, the spirit of the sun – as I knew the ancient Japanese had – not just as poetic metaphors for natural powers but as real trans dimensional entities capable of operating in both the spiritual and material realms.

  The characters of these kami – let us call them by their Japanese name – are not always consistent or predictable. They are more than spirits. But, although the word kami is often translated into English as ‘god’, a kami is less than God in the Judaeo-Christian sense. Kami are supernaturally powerful, but not omnipotent. They can be killed. Sometimes they do good for mankind, sometimes they might harm us. They are everywhere, in everything. And it always pays to treat them with respect.

  I lowered myself down from the granite column, placed my feet on the ground, and turned to put the video away in our rented car which was parked right behind us just outside the northern edge of the circle. Meanwhile, Santha, Suzuki and Shun had also been standing just outside the circle immediately behind the column. Now that I’d finished filming from it, Santha handed her Nikons over to Shun, stepped forward, climbed on to the platform, then wrapped her arms around the granite pillar and tried to shin up.

  I’m quite heavily built and I think that when I climbed I must have loosened the cement that held the pillar to its base. Now as Santha began her climb the pillar rocked dangerously then broke off completely. For a moment she and the pillar seemed to hang in mid-air, locked in a deadly embrace; then the solid granite mass, weighing perhaps 100 kilos, bore her down to the ground and smashed her into it with an awful thud.

  It all happened so quickly, that Shun, Suzuki and I were dumbfounded, stunned, confused. For a moment none of us could move, then we rushed to lift the pillar that lay diagonally across Santha’s body pinning her from her pelvis, across her ribs and over her left shoulder, just missing her neck and her face. It took all our strength and a determined effort to move the big, sharp-cornered stone and as we hefted its weight I had a horrified premonition of the terrible internal damage that it must have done in such a fall.

  Santha was gasping with shock, her eyes rolling upwards, exposing the whites. A couple of times she cried out, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying.’

  While an ambulance was called I gingerly felt her ribs, her collarbone, her hip, finding nothing broken, trying to reassure her. Gradually she quietened then informed me in an almost normal voice. ‘Somebody caught me as I was falling. A hand came from behind me, over the top of my shoulder, and supported the stone. Another hand pressed into my back as I went down. It stopped me hitting the ground too hard.’

  I presumed it must have been Shun or Suzuki since it certainly hadn’t been me – I hadn’t even seen the whole thing, let alone been fast enough to lend a helping hand. But I paid no further attention to the matter then and didn’t remember it until Santha brough
t it up again later that day after being discharged from the excellent private hospital in Otaru where her injuries were thoroughly scanned, x-rayed, examined and found to be minor. Bruised ribs and a twisted neck were about the worst of it – although strangely as I write these words eighteen months after the accident, Santha’s ribs are still bruised, still tender and painful, though they long ago should have healed.

  Amazingly there was no further damage and everyone, particularly the ambulance paramedics who had seen the size of the object that she had fallen under, regarded her escape as a miracle. Santha put it down more simply to the fast actions of Shun or Suzuki reaching out from behind her to take the weight of the pillar and cushion her fall.

  But this was where the mystery began. Because as we talked the whole incident through with Shun and Suzuki the next day it emerged that neither of them had reached out a hand to catch Santha. Shun had been standing too far back and holding her cameras; Suzuki had been looking the other way when she fell. But Santha remained adamant that she had seen a man’s hand coming in over her left shoulder to support the pillar and had felt a hand cushioning her back as well …

  As we inquired into the matter further a curious story began to unfold. It seemed that we had arrived at Oshoro one day later than planned and that our original schedule had included a visit to a private house near the stone circle, where a small museum of objects from Oshoro was kept. This house belonged to the family of a farmer, now deceased, who had spent almost half a century as the self-appointed guardian and caretaker of the stone circle, which he was known to have loved and venerated. The objects in the museum had been his own collection.