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Yayoi is an era in Japan from 300 BC to A.D. 250. It is named
after the section of Tokyo where archaeological investigations uncovered its
trace.
Yayoi flourished between about 300 BC.
and A.D. 250 from southern Kyushu to northern Honshu. The earliest of these
people, who are thought to have migrated from Korea to northern Kyushu and
intermixed with the Jomon, also used chipped stone tools. Although the
pottery of the Yayoi was more technologically advanced--produced on a
potter's wheel--it was more simply decorated than Jomon ware. The Yayoi made
bronze ceremonial nonfunctional bells, mirrors, and weapons and, by the 1st
century A.D., iron agricultural tools and weapons. As the population
increased and society became more complex, they wove cloth, lived in
permanent farming villages, constructed buildings of wood and stone,
accumulated wealth through landownership and the storage of grain, and
developed distinct social classes. Their irrigated, wet-rice culture was
similar to that of central and south China, requiring heavy inputs of human
labor, which led to the development and eventual growth of a highly
sedentary, agrarian society.
 Unlike China, which had to undertake massive
public works and water-control projects, leading to a highly centralized
government, Japan had abundant water. In Japan, then, local political and
social developments were relatively more important than the activities of
the central authority and a stratified society. The earliest written records about Japan are from Chinese sources from
this period. Wa (the Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for
Japan) was first mentioned in A.D. 57. Early Chinese historians described Wa
as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, not the unified land
with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the Nihongi, which puts the
foundation of Japan at 660 BC. 3rd century Chinese sources reported that the
Wa people lived on raw vegetables, rice, and fish served on bamboo and
wooden trays, had vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial
granaries and markets, clapped their hands in worship (something still done
in Shinto shrines), had violent succession struggles, built earthen grave
mounds, and observed mourning. Himiko, a female ruler of an early political
federation known as Yamatai, flourished during the 3rd century. While Himiko
reigned as spiritual leader, her younger brother carried out affairs of
state, which included diplomatic relations with the court of the Chinese
Kingdom of Wei (A.D. 220-265).
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