Life in a Wet Rice Farming Village

Rice farming spread from Kyushu eastwards and northwards to Shimane’s coastal plains and mountain valleys through two major routes: the “Sea of Japan” road along the Japan Sea coast and the “Mountain Road” over the Central Japan mountain ranges and the Yayoi village began to emerge in various regions.

The Yayoi farmers chose their rice field sites carefully. Initially, they preferred to choose not the swampy lowland locations that would be submerged by water most of the year, but high terraces or valleys backed by a hill or mountain were chosen. The Itatsuke site in Fukuoka was a settlement on a high terrace encircled by an oval moat.

However, as rice farming spread, and more and more land was cleared for farming, the Yayoi farmers needed more territory and moved into the alluvial plains. The mountains that surrounded the valleys and alluvial plains separated communities from each other, so that over the era various chiefdoms consolidated their control in marked territorities (such as Yamatai, Yamato, Kibi, Tsukushi, Izumo, etc.) in geographically distinct regions or areas.

A diorama of an early rice farming scene at the Tokyo National Science Museum (in Ueno) Photo: Heritage of Japan

Immigrants must have arrived in northern Kyushu, in Japan from the Asian continent with their wet rice farming knowledge and advanced irrigation techniques at their beginning of the Yayoi period. This is clear because the technology did not show gradual innovations or advances but even the earliest Yayoi rice fields were already a complex system of canals, dams, paddy-field walls, and water intakes and outlets” to irrigate their fields. The immigrants had brought with them, new customs and traditions as well as their knowledge of how to make metal tools (iron and bronze). (While wet rice or paddy fields were cultivated and wet-rice agriculture flourished,  dry-field agriculture was practiced as well elsewhere in Japan.)

Wooden stakes were used to outline or divide the rice fields which were enclosed by embankments walled with wooden planks. The Yayoi villagers dug ditches that sometimes doubled as defensive moats. Canals were built to ensure a constant and controllable water supply system for irrigating the rice paddy. At Itatsuke, the canals had a dam for collecting water with an outlet for letting water into the rice field. Also amazing were the drainage canals that had been constructed under the rice fields so that the water could be recycled and channeled back into the rice fields.

The Yayoi farmers had learnt by the 3rd century A.D., that they could improve their rice yield by transplanting rice seedlings from seedbed into paddy field in orderly and weedable rows. When the farmers created new rice fields or built their waterways and canals, they worked closely and cooperated with one another.

A diorama of irrigationworks during the Yayoi Period, National Museum of Science (at Ueno) Photo: Heritage of Japan

They cultivated the fields with wooden rakes and hoes. The most common material used for making farming tools was hard oak wood. Stone hoes and reaping knives were used for harvesting rice. Some reaping knives were made of wood and shell but during the late Yayoi period, an iron edge was added to reaping knives made of wood.  Reaping knives were often used together with the crescent-shaped sickles used for cutting at the base of the entire rice stalk.

Few iron farming tools have been found, either because iron was still too scarce to be used for farming or because iron from the tools were constantly recycled and re-used. However, during the later part of the Yayoi period, iron tools began to replace stone ones. Iron provided sharper cutting edges so improving food production. The tools were durable and made tasks such as clearing of land for agriculture more efficient.

Other wooden tools such as eburi or paddy field smoothers, ooashi or paddy field trampers, paddy field sandals and others were found at the Toro site in Shizuoka prefecture. Other objects also found at the Toro included ground stone arrowheads, ground stone axes, spades, fire-making mortars, weaving looms, and small boats for rice fields. There were also stone sinkers for fishing nets and fish-hooks made of antler. Deer scapulae used for divination, indicated that the shaman religion played an important role in the society.

They harvested the rice and stored the rice in storage jars in underground storage pits or in elevated storehouses (similar to those in southern China). At excavated sites like the Toro Ruins, a Yayoi farming settlement located in a coastal plain in Shizuoka prefecture, pottery recovered consisted of storage jars, cooking jars, pedestalled dishes and serving bowls.

During the earliest Yayoi days, storage jars and a type of cooking pot that emerged in Kyushu and that had spread to southwestern Japan were clearly influenced by Korean mulmun plain pottery. But in other areas of Japan, Jomon styles of pottery modified or were incorporated into the Korean-influenced storage jars and cooking pots that were associated with agricultural uses.

Pottery of the Yayoi Period settlement in Yokohama

Besides rice, 37 kinds of cultivated plants were known to have been grown, including foxtail millet, adzuki beans and barley. However, rice was the most important food, a fact shown by the high percentage that was recovered from excavations compared to other cereals.

Wild boars were kept in the Yayoi village as during Jomon times. Archaeologists have also identified some excavated bones to be those of the domesticated pig, most certainly introduced from the mainland. The Yayoi people also continued to hunt animals and to fish, and gather wild roots, vegetables and fruit to supplement their rice-based diet.