Advancements in Agriculture
Engineering the environment for agriculture was the distinct characteristic of the Yayoi phase. Initially, Yayoi agriculture was confined to buckwheat but later expanded their knowledge and technical skills to paddy rice farming. Judging from this change in agriculture and fossil evidence, it is believed that the knowledge was brought over by a new wave of migration from North Asia onto the archipelago. While living alongside and slowly displacing Neolithic Jomon settlers from Southeast Asia, the Yayoi people were more efficient in survival. Engineering the environment allowed more food and higher reproduction rates. Rice was one of many food plants cultivated, but by middle and late Yayoi phase, it ranked among the dominant crops. At sites such a s Itazuke in Fukuoka prefecture and Toro, villages contained some fifty elaborate, highly engineered paddies. With rice agriculture, archaeologists estimate that the Yayoi population might have reached between 600,000 and 1 million by the first era of the Common Era
Lifestyle
On the source of records:
Observations from Chinese envoys from the Han dynasty provide a window into the Yayoi life, rituals, and governance. Around this time, the Han dynasty had conquest the Korean kingdom and had built four outposts on the Korean peninsula to govern the region, and the archipelago benefited from this opened conduit with China, welcoming cultural influence via the Korean peninsula. Chinese bronze mirrors, Korean artefacts, and fragments of bronze and iron weapons hint at the relatively robust trade between the two. Bronze became a critical import and, later, domestically produced metal, forged into weapons and valuable heirlooms such as bells. In their records, the archipelago is referred to as the 'Wa kingdom'.
Interactions with China were frequent and stable. In 57 CE, when Eastern Han dynasty dispatched envoys to the Wa kingdom, and did so again in 107 CE. in 238, Wa dignitaries returned the favor and paid tribute to the Wei emperor and received a gold seal in return, which read, 'Himiko, Queen of Wa, is designated a friend of Wei'. The most revealing of Chinese records is the Wei zhi in it which reads, 'We truly recognize this loyalty and filial piety'. By 297, some thirty Wa chiefdoms had travelled between the two countries. The Wei envovys recount vising several chiefdoms during their journey and provides us the first glimpse of Japanese kingship under a queen named Himiko.
On Gender:
The Wa kingdom was ruled b queen Himiko with the assistance of a younger brother, Himikoko. This co-gendered rule that represented equal status is played broadly as the Wei zhi records that n distinctions existed 'between fathers and sons or between men and women by sex'. Indeed, co-gendered governance became common among Japan's early 'great kings', called okimi.
On Warfare:
Although they were nutritionally well off compared to early civilizations, competition for attractive sites incited warfare, and skeletal remains - one woman from Nejiko in Nagasaki prefecture has a bronze arrow head lodged in her skull - attest to the violent struggles. The Wei zhi confirms both in reference to the 'chaos as they fought each other' and a palace 'resembling a stockade, normally heavily protected by armed guards'.
On Spiritual Life:
The Wei zhi portrays a rich spiritual life, one expressed in divination practices and elaborate burials. 'It is the custom on the occasion of an event or trip, whatever they do, to divine by baking bones so as to determine future good or bad fortune...the fire cracks are examined for signs.' The practice proved critical to determining the outcomes of wars, journeys, and agriculture.
Yayoi burial practices depicts the later Shinto rituals. Rituals of raised storage houses and water for purification are some of the early elements. The most prominent burial practices was of Himiko's. When Himiko died, 'a large mound was built more than 100 paces in diameter. Over 100 male and female attendants were immolated.' Her death was soon followed by the Tomb phase and Yamato State.
Fossil Remains
The first Yayoi sites were excavated in 1884 on the university of Tokyo campus; later finds in 1943 in Shizuoka prefecture clarified the distinctiveness of the Yayoi phase. Yayoi migrants were taller and had longer faces, but over the course of the Yayoi phase lost some of their stature.
After Himiko's Death
Wa queen's life was celebrated with an elaborate tomb, one that spoke to her triumphs on Earth, as well as her coming life beyond. After her death, several more co-gendered rulers continued until the deployment of Buddhism in the early seventh-century moved Wa kingdoms move towards male dominance. Suiko and Prince Shotoku studied Buddhism and Confucian values, leading the creation of 'Seventeen-article Constitution' (608), Taika Reforms (645) and Taiho-Yoro Codes (702 and 718). All of which cemented the formation of the ritsuryo state, which refers to a legal bureaucracy defined by penal and administrative codes. The seventh and eighth centuries witnessed the advent of this rule of administrative bureaucracy, then in 669, the Wa kingdom became known as 'Nihon', the present name for Japan.
This diorama from Tokyo National Science Museum demonstrates the vast land cultivated to grow rice. Derived from Korean influence, even the earliest Yayoi rice fields were a complex system of canals, dams, paddy-field walls, and water intakes and outlets” to irrigate the fields.
The Yayoi people built many elevated buildings or buildings that were raised above the ground, with the buildings supported by six or seven posts.
Queen Himiko lived between A.D. 183 and 248 without having ever married. She symbolized the unity of the Yayoi people
The golden seal said to have been granted to the “King of Wa” by Emperor Guangwu of Han in 238 CE with the official title, "Queen of Wa Friendly to Wei".