Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Exploring Ancient Hybridity –"YOSHINOGARI: Ancient Korean Culture in Japan" at National Museum of Korea & Saga Prefecture Museum

The National Museum of Korea and the Saga Prefecture Education Committee have partnered to create "YOSHINOGARI; Ancient Korean Culture in Japan," the first exhibition of relics from Yoshinogari, a Yayoi era settlement, to be shown in Korea. This transnational co-curatorial endeavor is another highlight in a new wave of framing East Asian intercultural mutuality in museums in Korea and Japan:

"As Japan's largest archaeological remains of the ancient Yayoi Culture, the Yoshinogari site, located in Saga Prefecture, Northern Kyushu, has been under excavation since 1986. The site, which dates back some 2,000 years, has fascinated archaeologists around the world thanks to its sheer size and the discovery of a large amount of important relics that are characteristic of Yayoi Culture (the 5th century BCE-the 3rd century CE). Many relics excavated here are regarded as evidence of the ongoing process of cultural exchange which took place between Korea and Japan throughout the prehistoric period.

"In this special exhibition, viewers are offered a rare opportunity to enjoy a comprehensive view of relics evincing the characteristic features of the Yayoi Culture and the active exchanges conducted by the inhabitants of Korea and Japan in ancient times. The exhibition also shows how a Yoshinogari village that was initially established as a tiny settlement on the basis of paddy agriculture and farming skills introduced from the Korean Peninsula continued to grow until the late Yayoi Period (the 1st-the 3rd century CE), when it became a large town complete with a religious sanctuary, storage facilities, and a market.

"This exhibition of relics produced about 2000 years ago by the early residents of Korea and Japan is expected to help visitors acquire a new perception of the process of cultural exchange in East Asia."

The exhibition runs at the National Museum of Korea from October 16th to December 2nd, and then moves to Saga Prefectural Museum & Art Museum from January 1 to February 11, 2008.

The exhibition consists of four parts: "Agriculture on the Korean Peninsula and its Spread to Japan," "Birth of Yayoi (Period) Village," "Life on the Ancient Korean Peninsula and Yayoi Village," and "Japanese Relics Discovered in Korea and Cultural Exchanges between Korea and Japan."

Yoshinogari was formed during the Yayoi period (about 400 B.C. to A.D. 300), the era during which peninsular immigrants brought rice-growing agriculture and bronze culture to the southern part of the archipelago. The Yayoi immigrants disrupted the archipelago's first Jomon culture created by the direct ancestors of the Ainu people. The two groups both warred and intermixed, creating a creole culture.

Yoshinogari first attracted national attention in the spring of 1989 at the end of three years of excavation, according to archaeologists Mark Hudson and Gina L. Barnes, who described the Yayoi settlement as "without doubt one of the most important archaeological sites in East Asia," in a 1991 Monumenta Nipponica article.

The earliest documented record of the archipelago is provided in Wajin-den section of Wei-zhi (280-297 A.D.) and Hou Han-shu records (compiled in 445 A.D.) both from China. According to these records, the lower archipelago had more than a hundred communities before 187 B.C.. They also mention the islands had no oxen, horses, or tigers, and that the men tattooed their faces and adorned their bodies with designs, as well as a ranking polity during the 240's. Around 29 chiefdoms, some in Kyushu, reputedly owed allegiance to the chiefdom, headed by Queen Himiko, a shamaness-ruler, who died in 247.

According to Hudson and Barnes, the early excitement surrounding Yoshinogari could "only be understood against the background of the search for Yamatai," the modern Japanese reading of the chiefdom named in Wei dynasty literature.

The location of Yamatai has been a wonderfully debated historical controversy for centuries -- with two opposing views dominating the field: northwest Kyushu versus Kinai (the location of the ancient capitals of nascent imperial Japan: Osaka-Kyoto-Nara region).

Excitement for Kyushu adherents increased when Yoshinogari was the first site in Kyushu where a "dotaku," an ancient bronze bell has been discovered in 1998. Previously, all such bells were found in the Kinai region.

William Wayne Farris brought great detail to this ongoing debate in his 1998 Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan, giving balanced evidence for both views. In a book dated almost ten years later, J. Edward Kidder argues for the Kinai location in Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology, published in spring 2007, and endorsed by a delightful popular ancient Japanese history site, The Ancient Japanese Blog that focuses on lower archipelago exchanges with East Asia.

Despite the continued lack of scholarly consensus, the Yoshinogari Historical Park proudly proclaims itself as Yamatai in its tourist literature:

"The largest ruin among all the Yayoi ruins excavated in Japan, Yoshinogari spreads throughout the Kanzaki area of Saga Prefecture (Kanzaki town, Mitagawa town and Higashisefuri village). The Yoshinogari ruins, as the center of the “nation state”, have proved invaluable as a source of understanding of the approximately 600 years covering the Yayoi period.

"The country of “Yamatai”, modern day Japan, was first mentioned in the Chinese chronicles “Gishi Wajinden”. Corresponding in both period and location, the Yoshinogari ruins are believed to be this ancient country making it a national site of special historic importance."

The site has also revealed the archipelago's ancient connections with China. Archaeologist Tadaaki Shichida, mentions some of Yoshinogari's linkages with ancient China in a 1999 Japan Times article, "Ties to China unearthed from Yoshinogari ruins" written before the area became a national park.

Beyond the ongoing historical debate of Kyushu versus Kinai as the location of Yamatai, perhaps the popular revisionings following a couple of decades of multicultural reframing of Japan's national narratives we see in play are even more fascinating, as millennia-old linkages between the Korean peninsula (as well as the rest of Asia) and the lower Japanese archipelago are increasingly embraced with enthusiasm, as they were by cosmopolitan Japanese, before parochial nativist attitudes that developed during the Edo (1603-1868) period became popularized during the nation-building Meiji (1868-1912) period.

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