As a followup to our last post entitled Ritual tooth ablation: Why did prehistoric peoples pull out perfectly good teeth?, we would like to add this excerpt on “The Dispersal of Teeth Extraction” which pulled from Yoshinori Yasuda’s “Water Civilization: From Yangtze to Khmer Civilizations“, pp. 59-62. It reveals who the people who practised ritual tooth ablation people were, why they dispersed and how they brought rice cultivation with them when they dispersed to Taiwan and Japanese archipelago.

“The Dispersal of Teeth Extraction

The period of climate deterioration* that began at 3500 cal. yr BO and climaxed at 3200 cal. yr BP triggered the massive ethnic migration in the Mediterranean. It also was a time in which similar large-scale migrations swept through East Asia. During this climate deterioration period, the wheat/barley/millet-cultivating pastoral people again started their southward invasion, plunging China into the tumultuous Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods. It also was during this period that waves of refugees moved into Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces, and even headed downstream along the Mekong, Hong Ha, and Irrawaddy rivers into Southeast Asia. Recent analysis of the Y-chromosome indicated that these invaded people slotted to characteristic Y-chromosomal 03e haplogroups# (Sakitani 2003, 2009). Refugees, however, had the Y-chromosomal 02a or 02b haplotypes.]

Thus widespread dispersal of rice cultivation in Southeast Asia did not take place until the onset of climate deterioration at 4200 cal. yr BP.

As with the refugees who fled to the Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian Provinces and across the sea to Taiwan and the Japanese archipelago, the people who fled into Southeast Asia adhered to the practice of ritual teeth extraction (Fig. 2.11), Matsushita and Matsushita (2011) clearly were able to confirm the teeth extraction practice from human skeletal samples unearthed during the 2007 excavation at the Phum Snay site in Cambodia (see Chap 6). The people who conquested from the north and west during the climate deterioration events at 42300 ca. yr BP and they had been wheat/barley/millet-cultivating pastoral people on horse back who bred sheep and goats and cultivated wheat and foxtail millet. They did not practice the ritual teeth extraction and seem to have the prototype-M8a mtDNA haplogroup and Y-chromosome O3e haplogroup, which typify the present Han people, as pointed out by Shinoda (2007) and Sakitani (2009). In contrast, the peripheral people who were forced to flee from their homeland into the Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces and into the mountainous regions of the Fujian Province, and then eventually across to the Taiwan and Japanese archipelago as boat people or down the Mekong or Hong Ha rivers into southeast Asia, were rice-cultivating piscatory people who adhered to the practice of teeth extraction.

The migration of people from north to south in Neolithic Asia also identified by Higham (1996, 2002) and Bellwood (2004, 2006) was mainly based on linguistic studies…Recent studies using DNA, physical anthropological, environmental archaeological, and lead isotope ratio analyses also point to the migration of the Asian people from north to south. In this chapter, I describe how this southward movement of Asian people that took place at 4200 cal. yr. BP, triggered by climate deterioration. The rice- cultivating piscatory people expanded as refugees to East and Southeast Asia with their various customs and cultural values.

In addition to the movement of people from southern China, results of lead isotope ratio analysis of bronze artifacts by No et al. (2011) seem to indicate the possibility that the people who migrated down the Mekong and those who traveled down the Hong Ha into Vietnam had different ancestries.
A group of boat people who may bear a resemblance to those who lived in the ancient times are those who now lie on the floating villages on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia. Originally, these people came from Vietnam. Now they live on wooden boats and bamboo rafts on which various facilities for everyday life are erected–pigpens, hen houses, and even soccer fields (Fig. 2.12). The boats are moored in the lake during the dry season and are moved inland as the waters rise during the wet season. Such may have been the lifestyle of the people who introduced rice cultivation to Japan–a migrating community living on wooden boats with bamboo rafts tied to them, complete with pigpens and fishing wells. Although researchers are inclined to maintain the preconceived idea that the transportation of pigs and fowl would require large vessels, a setup like the one described would have been sufficient for crossing the East China Sea with livestock. The expansion of rice-cultivating piscatory people and the direction of their migration is summarized in Fig. 2.13″

*p. 54 “Nearly a millennium after the climate deterioration at 4200 cal. yr BP there was another episode of climate deterioration at 3200 cal, yr BP that had a critical impact on rice dispersal. The period of severe cold in 4200-4000 cal. yr. BP was followed by a period of slight climate amelioration in 4000-3500 cal. yr BP. However, again the climate changed for the worse from 3500 cal. yr BP and a period of severe cold was reached at 3200 cal . yr BP.
Sakaguchi (1984) and Yasuda (2003) point out, as well as numerous researchers conducting palynological studies, that 3200 cal. yr BP, the final Jomon period in Japan, corresponds to a cold period. According to the pollen diagram of the Karakemi Marsh in Nagano prefecture (Sakaguchi 1986), an abrupt increase in Abies, Picea, Pinus parviflora and Pinuspumila, and Tsuga are observed at the horizon corresponding to approximately 3300 cal yr BP, which clearly indicates the onset of climate deterioration Sakaguchi (1989) also has performed a more detailed reconstruction of the paleoclimate based on the results of pollen analusis of the Ozegahara moor , which also supports the trend of climate deterioration during this period. According to Sakaguchi’s temperature variation curve drawn using P. pumila pollen revealed an onset of dramatic climate changes at 3500 cal. yr BP.”

(The authors also find Cambodian pottery artifacts that resemble closely the hajiki blackware pottery found in Japan)

# A word about the origins of the O3e people:

A study on oesaphageal cancer occurring in O3 an O3e populations sheds light on the origins of the O3e people, see Huang H, Su M, Li X, Li H, Tian D, et al. (2010) Y-Chromosome Evidence for Common Ancestry of Three Chinese Populations with a High Risk of Esophageal Cancer. PLoS ONE 5(6): e11118. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011118:

High rates of esophageal cancer (EC) are found in people of the Henan Taihang Mountain, Fujian Minnan, and Chaoshan regions of China. Although these regions are geographically distant, we hypothesized that EC high-risk populations in these three areas could share a common ancestry. What is that ancestry?

The Chaoshan Population, Fujian Population and Henan Taihang Mountain Population are more closely related to Chinese Hans than to minorities, except Manchu Chinese, and are descendants of Sino-Tibetans, not Baiyues.

The predominant haplogroups in these three populations are O3*, O3e*, and O3e1, with no significant difference between the populations in the frequency of these genotypes. Frequency distribution and principal component analysis revealed that the Chaoshan Province is closely related to the Henan Taihang Mountain Population and Fujian Province, even though the former is geographically nearer to other populations (Guangfu and Hakka clans).

Correlation analysis, hierarchical clustering analysis, and phylogenetic analysis (neighbor-joining tree) all support close genetic relatedness among the Chaoshan People, Fujian People and Henan Taihang Mountain People. The network for haplogroup O3 (including O3*, O3e* and O3e1) showed that the Henan Taihang Mountain People have highest STR haplotype diversity, suggesting that the Henan Taihang Mountain people may be a progenitor population for the Chaoshan People and Fujian People.

Historical records describe great waves of populations migrating from north-central China (the Henan – marked red in the photo below, and Shanxi Hans) through coastal Fujian Province to the Chaoshan plain.

The Raifuku (outer robe) of the ceremonial court costume of the Emperor Komei(r. 1846-1866). This ceremonial court costume originates in the Nara-period (710-784) Imperial Collections of Japan  Source: Japanese Symbols of Government

From a previous post “Ainu cloud motif and their creation myth of deity’s descent on five-colored cloud“, we traced the use of the cloud motif and symbolism in conjunction with deities or divinities, ancestors, sages and heroes to their early use both in art and in concepts in genealogies and myths of the peoples of the Northeast Eurasia or Far East.

From Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority” by David T. Bialock, comes an understanding of the origin of the “chinkon” and tama “cloudsoul” concept and the rites, and the purpose behind it and the cosmological framework that surrounded it:

Although Nihon shoki’s entry on Temmu’s rite is regarded as the earliest extant mention of the chinkon (spirit pacification), the graphs glossed as “mitama-furi” in the text are actually shokon, also read tama-yobai (“soul-summoning”). The conventional chinkon reading of the passage together with its vernacular gloss “mitama-furi” probably dates from a commentarial tradition transmitted by the Urabe lineage. Thus, according to a secret kun-reading given in the twenty-first scroll of the Shaku nihongi, the graphs were intended to be read “mitama-furi,” a ritual elsewhere represented in Shaku nihongi by the graphs chinkonsai. This eading of the graphs, now well established, was also argued for by Ban Nobutomo in his classic study Chinkon den, where he noted that the phrase “should be recorded as , but one can surmise that it was written in conformance with the usual Chinese practice.”51
… turn to some descriptions of the chinkon rite in the law codes and their commentaries, which have been the basis for most attempts to construct its ancient ritual function. These include the Taiho Code o 701 (extant only fragmentarily in the later Yoro Code), the Ryo no shuge (selected in 833), and the Ryo no guge (selected prior to 868). According to the Taiho Code , the chinkonsai was held in midwinter in the Eleventh Month on a tora no hi (days of the tiger), and followed by the daijosai on a u no hi (day of the rabbit), a period that coincided with the winter solstice. In Chinese yin-yang five agents thought, both of these days were identified with the agent wood (the beginning of the cycle), which corresponded to the direction east and the season spring. Both the month and days were a time when the positive yang pneumas were believed to mount upward and all things were held to be in a state of movement. It was thus an ideal time for initiating activities such as royal accessions. 52
turning to some actual definitions of the chinkon rite, we find the following explanation in the Ryo no gige under the heading chinkon: “The graph means to pacify. A person’s yang spirit (yoki) is called soul (tama). The tama moves about, meaning one summons back the tama that wanders about in a state of separation and pacifies it inside the body (literally “bowels”.] Therefore it is named “chinkon” (to pacify the soul), another definition from the Ryo no shuge contains some additional details: A person’s yang spirit is called ‘kon’ it moves about. A person’s yin spirit is called ‘haku’ it is white. Therefore one calls back the white soul wandering about in a state of separation and causes it to be pacified inside the bowels. Therefore it is called chinkon.
The exact source for the ideas contained in these descriptions remains uncertain, but the language recalls ancient Chinese ideas about the fate of the soul after death. According to the Li ji: the yang qi of the “cloudsoul” (hun) rises up to the sky (tian) after death, whereas the yin or dark elements associated with the body or “whitesoul” (po) return to the earth. 55 Another passage in the Li Ji , on the rites of mourning , speaks of summoning back the cloudsoul and returning it to the body (po)56. It was under the influence of such commentaries, according to Watanabe Katsuyoshi, that modern scholars developed the idea of a “soul that wanders about in separation from its body” and interpreted chinkon as a rite primarily aimed at preventing such separation by placating the “tama” and thereby obviating the illness and death that were held to result from such separation57.
The yin-yang five agents principles and the related concept of “qi” which informed the ritual setting (temporal and geomantic) of the chinkonsai and the descriptive language of the law doctors, were fundamental, of course to Chinese philosophical thought. In Daoism, the induction of qi into the body and its proper regulation became one of the basic practices for achieving longevity, a central concern of later Daoist literature, as in Xiang’er’s commentary on the Daodejing, which also functioned as a guide to the enlightened ruler.58 thus in Bokenkamp’s paraphrase of one Xiang’er passage “the pneumas of morning and evening should be caused to descend into the human body , where they should be mixed with the body’s own pneumas so that they are evenly distributed throughout.” On the other hand, this time citing directly from the Xiang’er “When the heart produced ill-omened and evil conduct, the Dao departs, leaving the sack (belly) empty. Once it is empty, deviance enters, killing the person.”60 As these citations make clear, the principle of balancing and harmonizing qu was of paramount importance; deviance” (xie) on the other hand, arose from a  failure to achieve a proper balance or mixing o pneumas resulting in illness and death. … The emphasis in the Xiang’er passage on the belly, for example, recalls what Watanabe characterizes as the peculiar language of the law commentaries where the aim of the rite was to draw the erring “tama” back into the “bowel“.  A related notion found in the Chuxue ji, a Tang period encyclopedia compiled at the order of Emperor Xuangzong (r. 712-756), states that on the winter solstice the yang qi is restored to the belly and hot things placed in qi are easily digested.61 If this Daoist medical advice offers a parallel to the ideas of the law doctors in their attempts to describe the chinkon rite, recipes for the production of immortality elixirs provide a suggestive context for understanding the relationship between the medicinal herb and Temmu’s spirit-summoning rite. An entry from scroll seventy-seven on “elixirs” in Yunqi qiqian (Seven Lots from the Satchel of the Clouds), an encyclopedia of older Daoist texts and extracts compiled under the Northern Song, describes a life-extending elixir called lingwan that allows one to “pacify the cloud souls, coagulate the white souls, and fly off into the seventy-four directions,” and in another passage “to sport about on the Five Mountain Peaks.” Not least interesting here is the combination of graphs chinkon, “pacify the cloud souls”) the same two graphs that are used for the Japanese chinkon or “mitama-furi” rite.  Another entry from the Inner Transmission of the Purple Sun Master (Ziyang zhenren neichuan, 399), collected in scroll 106 of the Yunji qiqian, relates that the consumption of zhu over a period of five years–the same medicinal herb ingested by Temmu–produces a glow in the body, gives one a vision that can see right through to the five viscera, and enables one to become an immortal.

By now it should be evident that Temmu’s ingestion of the herb hakuchi cannot be fully accounted for by a straitforward medical reading. The calendrical and yin-yang principles that informed its consumption and the accompanying shokon rite belonged to the same sphere of symbolic activity that would soon be housed in the Yin-Yang bureau and Medical bureau and as the following notice from Jito’s chronicle makes clear: “The Yin-yang Doctors, the priest (shoshi) Hozo and Doki, received twenty of ryo of silver.”64 The date of this third reference to Hozo, just prior to the establishment of the official Yin-Yang Bureau, indicates that he was one of than important group of technical experts who mediated the cultural assemblage transmitted from  the continent. Although the ingestion of the herb zhu (hakuchi) and its efficacy as both a medicinal and immortality elixir are well documented in Daoist lore and herbals the practice seems to have especially flourished in the period of the Southern dynasties (420-589) when Tao Hongjing composed his herbal and Daoist works.65  It can be assumed that Hozo, a Paekche immigrant would have been knowledgeable about this tradition–its influence having reached the Korean kingdom–as well as conversant with practices from Tao honjing’s region that were outside the written transmission.66  In the early Tang work Qianjinyaogang (Essential Prescriptions Worth a hundred Weight in Gold), composed by the Daoist master and physician Sun Simiao (d. 682) sometimes between 650 and 658. Predating the Tang medical reforms , this text transmitted a tradition very close to the earlier Southern dynasties ‘ tradition and contained detailed discussions on the preparation of zhu and its capacity to harmonize in accord with yin-yang five agents principles.67

The cosmological theory of resonance, much of which is recorded in the Gogyo taigi that reached Japan no later than the end of the seventh century invests Temmu’s ingestion of the elixir and the shokon rite with its reliopolitical significance. Held in the Eleventh Month on a a tora no hi (day of the tiger), the rite’s timing corresponded to the agent wood and the direction east. In Daoist medical lore pertaining to the five viscera, the cloudsoul (kon) resided in the liver (kan), which was identified with the element wood and controlled the eyes, hair, nail, and muscles. The liver was also known as the Office of the General, the faculty responsible for wise counsel; and its element wood was identified with “virtue” (jin) that actifies the myriad things making its analogous to the ruler.68 According to another text cited in Gogyo taigi, The lineage of Thearchs (DIXI pu), “Heaven and earth first arose, then generated the Heavenly Thearch (tenno) who rules through the virtue wood,” a formulation that derives from the symbolism of the hexagram zhen, identified variously with lightning, the dragon and the dark springs. The Yijing states that the thearch and myriad things arise from zhen, with zhen identified with the direction east.69 Although these correspondences add weight to the medical aim of this  hybrid rite, they do so by locating Temmu at the center of a radiating cosmological order, which gains additional significance because the rite took place at a critical juncture when the tenno was being newly adopted as a title of authority.70

The belief of musubi – binding the soul to keep it from wandering off (see also The symbolism of knots, and Frazer on the separable external soul)

During the Chinkonsai,

“The chief officiant counts eight times from one to ten, knotting the yufu each time. By tying knots in this symbol of the emperor’s life span, the officiant keeps his tama from slipping away. the eight times and eight knots refer to the eight musubi (binding) tama of deities.
As one can see by these examples, the mitamashizume or chinkon-sai was a ritual means to fix the emperor’s tama so that it would not leave his body. the ancient Japanese greatly feared wandering tama and made the utmost efforts to affix them. A similar ceremony is still being carried out secretly each year at the Isonokami shrine (Renri City, Nara prefecture). This ritual may have to do partly with the Kyujiki, a text which gives much more importance to the Mononobe clan whose ancestral deity is enshrined at Isonokami, than the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.
Such tamafuri and tamashizume rituals were often popularly called iki-bon, the Bon of living spirits. the Buddhist Urabon festival of late summer, however, a festival primarily concerned with the souls of the dead, has now superseded in importance this ceremony for the souls of the living.”

Source: Rethinking Japan Vol 1.: Literature, Visual Arts & Linguistics (by Adriana Boscaro, Franco Gatti, Massimo Raveri)

The Taoist concept of soul summoning may have been transmitted via Korean immigrants, or directly by Chinese immigrants, or both.

A celestial being on a cloud motif seen on an ancient bronze bell of the Korean kingdom Silla. c. 833 Photo source: Imperial Japanese Commission to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition: Japanese Temples and their Treasures (The Shimbi Shoin 1915) Wikimedia Commons

Chinkon rituals of “shaking the soul”

From Ze’ev Erlich’s Torifune and tama furi:

TAMA FURI/ Furitama-no-Gyo
Tama(soul) Furi (shake) basic meaning is the self Chin-kon and relates directly to the furube-no-kamu-waza of Chinkon Saho.
Furitama ( Soul Shaking)
1. Stand with your legs apart about shoulder width .
2. Place your hands together with the right hand over the left. Leave space between them big enough for an imaginary ping pong ball.
3. Place your hands in that position in front of your stomach and 0shake them vigorously up and down.
4. While shaking them concentrate and repeat the words: Harae-do-no-Okami – an invocation to the kami of the place of harai.

The Object Furitama-no-gyo

The purpose of shaking the soul is to generate awareness of it within yourself. Kon, (the soul), in Shinto, is one of the four important elements along with Mei (life), Rei (spirit) and Ki (which means Spirit in its causal aspect – Ki is a kind of energy source). Kon is the most important of the four since human beings can also be described as Waketama (separated individual souls), which is another way of saying “children of the kami”.

…

In Chinese art, an ancient cloud “meander” motif is related to the Hun and Po concepts of the afterlife. The cloud is a commonly seen design and when repeated in a pattern symbolizes never-ending fortune.

Clouds, sometimes referred to as “auspicious clouds” (xiangyun 祥云), represent the heavens and also “good luck” because the Chinese word for cloud (yun 云) is pronounced the same as yun (运) meaning “luck” or “fortune”. Auspicious clouds may be seen on coins and charms or amulets.

The cloud motif or form often resembles the auspicious shape of the lingzhi “fungus of immortality”. These are concepts that are related to thunder and the ability to call down rain, and also closely related to dragon and star symbolism.  (Source: The Hidden or Implied Meaning of Chinese Charm Symbols)

Theories on the Taoist concepts of Hun and Po souls

Chinese Taoist or daoist texts

Hun controls yang spirits in the body,
Po controls yin spirits in the body,
all are made of qi.
Hun is responsible for all formless consciousness,
including the three treasures: jing, qi and shen.
Po is responsible for all tangible consciousness,
including the seven apertures: two eyes, two ears, two nose holes, mouth.
Therefore, we call them 3-Hun and 7-Po.

Master Hu continues with an elaboration of these dynamics; and ends by pointing out that, like all of cyclic existence, the relationship between Hun and Po is a seemingly “endless cycle,” which is transcended “only by the achieved,” i.e. by the Immortals (in their transcendence of all duality):

He Yin-Yang’s Framework For Understanding Hun & Po

Another way of understanding Hun and Po is as an expression of Yin and Yang. As Twicken points out, the Yin-Yang framework is the foundational model of Chinese metaphysics. In other words: it is in understanding how Yin and Yang relate to one another (as mutually-arising and inter-dependent) that we can understand how — from a Taoist perspective — all pairs of opposites “dance” together, as not-two and not-one: appearing without actually “existing” as permanent, fixed “entities.”

In this way of viewing things, Po is associated with Yin. It is the more dense or physical of the two “spirits,” and is known also as the “corporeal soul,” since it returns to earth — dissolving into gross elements — at time of the time of the death of the body.

Hun, on the other hand, is associated with Yang, since it is the more light or subtle of the two “spirits.” It’s known also as the “ethereal soul,” and at the time of death leaves body to merge into more subtle realms of existence.

In the process of Taoist cultivation, the practitioner seeks to harmonize the Hun and Po, in a way which gradually allows the Po (the more dense) aspects to more and more fully support the Hun (the more subtle) aspects. The outcome of this kind of refinement process is the manifestation of a way-of-being and way-of-perceiving known by Taoist practitioners as “Heaven on Earth.”

Staying & Moving In The Mahamudra Tradition

In the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition (associated primarily with the Kagyu lineage), a distinction is drawn between the “staying” and the “moving” aspects of mind.

The “staying” aspect of mind refers more-or-less to what is sometimes also called the “witnessing” capacity. It is the perspective from which the arising and dissolving of various phenomena (thoughts, sensations, perceptions) is observed. It is the aspect of mind which has the capacity to remain (and is quite naturally) “continuously present,” and unaffected by the “objects” or “events” that arise within it.

The “moving” aspect of mind refers to the various appearances which — like waves on an ocean — arise and dissolve. These are the “objects” and “events” that seem (at least initially) to have a space/time duration: an arising, an abiding, and a dissolution. As such, they seem to undergo change or transformation — in opposition to the “staying” aspect of mind, which is unchanging.

A Mahamudra practitioner trains, first, in the capacity to toggle back and forth between these two (“staying” and “moving”) perspectives (known also as the “mind-perspective” and the “event-perspective”). And then, eventually, to experience them as simultaneously-arising and indistinguishable (i.e. nondual) — in the way that waves and ocean, as water, actually are mutually-arising and indistinguishable.

Taoism Meets Mahamudra, For A Cup Of Tea

The resolution of the moving/staying polarity, I would suggest, is basically equivalent (or at least opens the way for) the transcending of what Master Hu refers to as the tangible-consciousness/formless-consciousness polarity; and the absorption of the more densely-vibrating Po into the more subtle Hun.

Or, to put it another way: the corporeal Po “serves” the ethereal Hun — in Taoist cultivation — to the extent that mind’s appearances become self-aware, i.e. conscious of their source & destination in/as the Hun — like waves becoming conscious of their essential nature as water.

Source: Hun and Po

Hun (Chinese: 魂; pinyin: hún; Wade–Giles: hun; literally: “cloud-soul”) and po (Chinese: 魄; pinyin: pò; Wade–Giles: p’o; literally: “white-soul”) are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and traditional religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hunspiritual, ethereal, yang soul which leaves the body after death, and also a po corporeal, substantive, yin soul which remains with the corpse of the deceased. Some controversy exists over the number of souls in a person; for instance, one of the traditions within Daoism proposes a soul structure of sanhunqipo 三魂七魄; that is, “three hun and seven po“. The historian Yü Ying-shih describes hun and po as “two pivotal concepts that have been, and remain today, the key to understanding Chinese views of the human soul and the afterlife.”^[1]

The Chinese characters 魂 and 魄 for hun and po typify the most common character classification of “radical-phonetic” or “phono-semantic” graphs, which combine a “radical” or “signific” (recurring graphic elements that roughly provide semanticinformation) with a “phonetic” (suggesting ancient pronunciation). Hun 魂 (or 䰟) and po 魄 have the “ghost radical” gui 鬼 “ghost; devil” and phonetics of yun 云 “cloud; cloudy” and bai 白 “white; clear; pure”.

Besides the common meaning of “a soul”, po 魄 was a variant Chinese character for po 霸 “a lunar phase” and po 粕 “dregs”. The Shujing “Book of History” used po 魄 as a graphic variant for po 霸 “dark aspect of the moon” – this character usually means ba 霸 “overlord; hegemon”. For example, “On the third month, when (the growth phase, 生魄) of the moon began to wane, the duke of Chow [i.e., Duke of Zhou] commenced the foundations, and proceeded to build the new great city of Lǒ” (tr. Legge 1865:434). The Zhuangzi “[Writings of] Master Zhuang” wrote zaopo 糟粕 (lit. “rotten dregs”) “worthless; unwanted; waste matter” with a po 魄 variant. A wheelwright sees Duke Huan of Qi with books by dead sages and says, “what you are reading there is nothing but the [糟魄] chaff and dregs of the men of old!” (tr. Watson 1968:152).

In the history of Chinese writing, characters for po 魄/霸 “lunar brightness” appeared before those for hun 魂 “soul; spirit”. The spiritual hun 魂 and po 魄 “dual souls” are first recorded in Warring States period (475–221 BCE) Seal Script characters. The lunar po 魄 or 霸 “moon’s brightness” appears in both Zhou Dynasty (1045–256 BCE) Bronzeware script and Oracle bone script, but not in Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) oracle inscriptions. The earliest form of this “lunar brightness” character was found on a (ca. 11th century BCE) Zhou oracle bone inscription (Yü 1987:370).

Etymologies

The po soul’s etymology is better understood than the hun soul’s. Schuessler (2007:290, 417) reconstructs hun 魂 “‘spiritual soul’ which makes a human personality” and po 魄 “vegetative or animal soul … which accounts for growth and physiological functions” as Middle Chinese γuən and pʰak from Old Chinese *wûn and *phrâk.

The (ca. 80 CE) Baihu Tang 白虎堂 gave pseudo-etymologies for hun and po through Chinese character puns. It explains hun 魂 with zhuan 傳 “deliver; pass on; impart; spread” and yun 芸 “rue (used to keep insects out of books); to weed”, and po 魄 withpo 迫 ” compel; force; coerce; urgent” and bai 白 “white; bright”.

What do the words hun and [po] mean? Hun expresses the idea of continuous propagation ([zhuan] 傳), unresting flight; it is the qi of the Lesser Yang, working in man in an external direction, and it governs the nature (or the instincts, [xing] 性). [Po] expresses the idea of a continuous pressing urge ([po] 迫) on man; it is the [qi] of the Lesser Yin, and works in him, governing the emotions ([qing] 情). Hun is connected with the idea of weeding ([yun] 芸), for with the instincts the evil weeds (in man’s nature) are removed. [Po] is connected with the idea of brightening ([bai] 白), for with the emotions the interior (of the personality) is governed. (tr. Needham and Lu 1974:87)

Etymologically, Schuessler says pò 魄 “animal soul” “is the same word as” pò 霸 “a lunar phase“. He cites the Zuozhuan (534 BCE, see below) using the lunar jishengpo 既生魄 to mean “With the first development of a fetus grows the vegetative soul”.

Pò, the soul responsible for growth, is the same as pò the waxing and waning of the moon”. The meaning ‘soul’ has probably been transferred from the moon since men must have been aware of lunar phases long before they had developed theories on the soul. This is supported by the etymology ‘bright’, and by the inverted word order which can only have originated with meteorological expressions … The association with the moon explains perhaps why the pò soul is classified as Yin … in spite of the etymology ‘bright’ (which should be Yang), hun’s Yang classificiation may be due to the association with clouds and by extension sky, even though the word invokes ‘dark’. ‘Soul’ and ‘moon’ are related in other cultures, by cognation or convergence, as in Tibeto-Burman and Proto-Lolo–Burmese *s/ʼ-la “moon; soul; spirit”, Written Tibetan cognates bla “soul” and zla “moon”, and Proto-Miao–Yao *bla “spirit; soul; moon”. (2007:417)

Lunar associations of po are evident in the Classical Chinese terms chanpo 蟾魄 “the moon” (with “toad; toad in the moon; moon”) and haopo 皓魄 “moon; moonlight” (with “white; bright; luminous”).

The semantics of po 魄 “white soul” probably originated with 霸 “lunar whiteness”. Zhou bronze inscriptions commonly recorded lunar phases with the terms jishengpo 既生魄 “after the brightness has grown” and jisipo 既死魄 “after the brightness has died”, which Schuessler explains as “second quarter of the lunar month” and “last quarter of the lunar month”. Chinese scholars have variously interpreted these two terms as lunar quarters or fixed days, and (Shaughnessy 1992:136–145) Wang Guowei‘s lunar-quarter analysis the most likely. Thus, jishengpo is from the 7th/8th to the 14th/15th days of the lunar month and jisipo is from the 23rd/24th to the end of the month. Yü (1987:370) translates them as “after the birth of the crescent” and “after the death of the crescent”. Etymologically, lunar and spiritual po <pʰak < *phrâk 魄 are cognate with bai < bɐk < *brâk 白 “white” (Matisoff 1980, Yü 1981, Carr 1985). According to Hu Shih (1946:30), po etymologically means “white, whiteness, and bright light”; “The primitive Chinese seem to have regarded the changing phases of the moon as periodic birth and death of its [po], its ‘white light’ or soul.” Yü (1981:83) says this ancient association between the po soul and the “growing light of the new moon is of tremendous importance to our understanding of certain myths related to the seventh day of the months.” Two celebrated examples in Chinese mythology are Xi Wangmu and Emperor Wu meeting on the seventh day of the first lunar month and The Princess and the Cowherd or Qixi Festival held on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.

The etymology of hun < γuən < *wûn 魂 is comparatively less certain. Hu (1946:31) said, “The word hun is etymologically the same as the word yun, meaning “clouds.” The clouds float about and seem more free and more active than the cold, white-lighted portion of the growing and waning moon.” Schuessler cites two possibilities.

Since pò is the ‘bright’ soul, hún is the ‘dark’ soul and therefore cognate to yún 雲 ‘cloud’ [Carr 1985:62], perhaps in the sense of ‘shadowy’ because some believe that the hún soul will live after death in a world of shadows [Eberhard 1967:17]. (2007:290)

Both Chinese hun and po are translatable as English “soul” or “spirit“, and both are basic components in “soul” compounds. In the following examples, all Chinese-English translation equivalents are from DeFrancis (2003).

• hunpo 魂魄 “soul; psyche”
• linghun 靈魂 “soul; spirit”
• hunling 魂靈 “(colloquial) soul; ghost”
• yinhun 陰魂 “soul; spirit; apparition”
• sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 “soul; three finer spirits and several baser instincts that motivate a human being”
• xinpo 心魄 “soul”

Hunpo and linghun are the most frequently used among these “soul” words.

Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, eminent historians of science and technology in China, (1974:88) define hun and po in modern terms. “Peering as far as one can into these ancient psycho-physiological ideas, one gains the impression that the distinction was something like that between what we would call motor and sensory activity on the one hand, and also voluntary as against vegetative processes on the other.”

Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein (2008:521) cautions about hun and po translations: “Although the term “souls” is often used to refer to them, they are better seen as two types of vital entities, the source of life in every individual. The hun is Yang, luminous, and volatile, while the po is Yin, somber, and heavy.”

History

Based on Zuozhuan usages of hun and po in four historical contexts, Yü (1987:370) extrapolates that po was the original name for a human soul, and the dualistic conception of hun and po “began to gain currency in the middle of the sixth century” BCE.

Two earlier 6th century contexts used the po soul alone. Both describe Tian 天 “heaven; god” duo 奪 “seizing; taking away” a person’s po, which resulted in a loss of mental faculties. In 593 BCE (Duke Xuan 15th year, tr. Legge 1872:329), after Zhao Tong 趙同 behaved inappropriately at the Zhou court, an observer predicted: “In less than ten years [Zhao Tong] will be sure to meet with great calamity. Heaven has taken his [魄] wits away from him.” In 543 BCE (Duke Xiang 29th year, tr. Legge 1872:551), Boyou 伯有 from Zheng (state) acted irrationally, which an official interpreted as: “Heaven is destroying [Boyou], and has taken away his [魄] reason.” Boyou’s political enemies subsequently arranged to take away his hereditary position and assassinate him.

Two later 6th century Zuozhuan contexts used po together with the hun soul. In 534 BCE (Duke Zhao 7th year, tr. Legge 1872:618), the ghost of Boyou 伯有 (above) was seeking revenge on his murderers, and terrifying the people of Zheng. The philosopher and statesman Zi Chan, realizing that Boyou’s loss of hereditary office had caused his spirit to be deprived of sacrifices, reinstated his son to the family position, and the ghost disappeared. When a friend asked Zi Chan to explain ghosts, he gave what Yu (1972:372) calls “the locus classicus on the subject of the human soul in the Chinese tradition.”

When a man is born, (we see) in his first movements what is called the [魄] animal soul. [既生魄] After this has been produced, it is developed into what is called the [魂] spirit. By the use of things the subtle elements are multiplied, and the [魂魄] soul and spirit become strong. They go on in this way, growing in etherealness and brightness, till they become (thoroughly) spiritual and intelligent. When an ordinary man or woman dies a violent death, the [魂魄] soul and spirit are still able to keep hanging about men in the shape of an evil apparition; how much more might this be expected in the case of [Boyou]. … Belonging to a family which had held for three generations the handle of government, his use of things had been extensive, the subtle essences which he had imbibed had been many. His clan also was a great one, and his connexions [sic] were distinguished. Is it not entirely reasonable that, having died a violent death, he should be a [鬼] ghost?

Compare the translation of Needham and Lu (1974:86), who interpret this as an early Chinese discourse on embryology.

When a foetus begins to develop, it is (due to) the [po]. (When this soul has given it a form) then comes the Yang part, called hun. The essences ([qing] 情) of many things (wu 物) then give strength to these (two souls), and so they acquire the vitality, animation and good cheer (shuang 爽) of these essences. Thus eventually there arises spirituality and intelligence (shen ming 神明).”

In 516 BCE (Duke Zhao 20th year, tr. Legge 1872:708), the Duke of Song (state) and a guest named Shusun 叔孫 were both seen weeping during a supposedly joyful gathering. Yue Qi 樂祁, a Song court official, said:

“This year both our ruler and [Shusun] are likely to die. I have heard that joy in the midst of grief and grief in the midst of joy are signs of a loss of [xin 心] mind. The essential vigor and brightness of the mind is what we call the [hun] and the [po]. When these leave it, how can the man continue long?” Hun and po souls, explains Yu (1987:371), “are regarded as the very essence of the mind, the source of knowledge and intelligence. Death is thought to follow inevitably when the hun and the p’o leave the body. We have reason to believe that around this time the idea of hun was still relatively new.”

Soon after death, it was believed that a person’s hun and po could be temporarily reunited through a ritual called the fu 復 “recall; return”, zhaohun 招魂 “summon the hun soul”, or zhaohun fupo 招魂復魄 “to summon the hun-soul to reunite with the po-soul”. The earliest known account of this ritual is found in the (3rd century BCE) Chu Ci poems Zhaohun 招魂 “Summons of the Soul” and Dazhao 大招 “The Great Summons” (Csikszentmihalyi 2006:140–141). For example, Wu/Shaman Yang 巫陽 summons a man’s soul in Zhaohun.

O soul, come back! Why have you left your old abode and sped to the earth’s far corners, deserting the place of your delight to meet all those things of evil omen?

O soul, come back! In the east you cannot abide. There are giants there a thousand fathoms tall, who seek only for souls to catch, and ten suns that come out together, melting metal, dissolving stone …
O soul, come back! In the south you cannot stay. There the people have tattooed faces and blackened teeth, they sacrifice flesh of men, and pound their bones to paste …
O soul, come back! For the west holds many perils: The Moving Sands stretch on for a hundred leagues. You will be swept into the Thunder’s Chasm and dashed in pieces, unable to help yourself …
O soul, come back! In the north you may not stay. There the layered ice rises high, and the snowflakes fly for a hundred leagues and more…
O soul, come back! Climb not to heaven above. For tigers and leopards guard the gates, with jaws ever ready to rend up mortal men …

O soul, come back! Go not down to the Land of Darkness, where the Earth God lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead, and a great humped back and bloody thumbs, pursuing men, swift-footed … (tr. Hawkes 1985:244–5)

Hu (1946:31–32) proposed, “The idea of a hun may have been a contribution from the southern peoples” (who originated zhaohun rituals) and then spread to the north sometime during the sixth century BCE. Calling this southern hypothesis “quite possible”, Yu (1987:373) cites the Chuci (associated with the southern state of Chu) demonstrating “there can be little doubt that in the southern tradition the hun was regarded as a more active and vital soul than the p’o. The Chuci uses hun 65 times and po 5 times (4 in hunpo, which the Chuci uses interchangeably with hun, Brashier 1996:131).  [On the other hand, it has been shown that that cloud symbolism and the cloudsoul hun has been a distinctive belief and genealogical tradition of all the northeast Asians and Central Asians since prehistoric times which suggests a much earlier northern provenance originating with the tumuli-building peoples.]

The identification of the yin-yang principle with the hun and po souls evidently occurred in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE (Yü 1987:374), and by “the second century at the latest, the Chinese dualistic conception of soul had reached its definitive formulation.” The Liji (11, tr. Legge 1885:444) compounds hun and po with qi “breath; life force” and xing “form; shape; body” in hunqi 魂氣 and xingpo 形魄. “The [魂氣] intelligent spirit returns to heaven the [形魄] body and the animal soul return to the earth; and hence arose the idea of seeking (for the deceased) in sacrifice in the unseen darkness and in the bright region above.” Compare this modern translation (Yü 1987:374), “The breath-soul (hun-ch’I 魂氣) returns to heaven; the bodily soul (hsing-p’o 形魄) returns to earth. Therefore, in sacrificial-offering one should seek the meaning in the yin-yang 陰陽 principle.” Yü summarizes hun/po dualism.

Ancient Chinese generally believed that the individual human life consists of a bodily part as well as a spiritual part. The physical body relies for its existence on food and drink produced by the earth. The spirit depends for its existence on the invisible life force called ch’i, which comes into the body from heaven. In other words, breathing and eating are the two basic activities by which a man continually maintains his life. But the body and the spirit are each governed by a soul, namely, the p’o and the hun. It is for this reason that they are referred to in the passage just quoted above as the bodily-soul (hsing-p’o) and the breath-soul (hun-ch’i) respectively. (Yü 1987:376)

Loewe (1979:9) explains with a candle metaphor; the physical xing is the “wick and substance of a candle”, the spiritual po and hun are the “force that keeps the candle alight” and “light that emanates from the candle”.

The Yin po and Yang hun were correlated with Chinese spiritual and medical beliefs. Hun 魂 is associated with shen 神 “spirit; god” and po 魄with gui 鬼 “ghost; demon; devil” (Carr 1985:62). The (ca. 1st century BCE) Lingshu Jing medical text spiritually applies Wu Xing “Five Phase” theory to the Zang-fu “organs”, associating the hun soul with liver (Chinese medicine) and blood, and the po soul with lung (Chinese medicine) and breath.

The liver stores the blood, and the blood houses the hun. When the vital energies of the liver are depleted, this results in fear; when repleted, this results in anger. … The lungs store the breath, and the breath houses the po. When the vital energies of the lungs are depleted, then the nose becomes blocked and useless, and so there is diminished breath; when they are repleted, there is panting, a full chest, and one must elevate the head to breathe. (tr. Brashier 1996:141)

The Lingshu (Brashier 1996:142) also records that the hun and po souls taking flight can cause restless dreaming, and eye disorders can scatter the souls causing mental confusion. Han medical texts reveal that hun and po departing from the body does not necessarily cause death but rather distress and sickness. Brashier (1996:145–6) parallels the translation of hun and po, “If one were to put an English word to them, they are our “wits”, our ability to demarcate clearly, and like the English concept of “wits,” they can be scared out of us or can dissipate in old age.”

During the Han Dynasty, the belief in hun and po remained prominent, although there was a great diversity of different, sometimes contradictory, beliefs about the afterlife (Hansen 2000:119; Csikszentmihalyi 2006:116–117, 140–142). (Many of Japanese tumuli period funerary beliefs were influenced by Han Dynasty period beliefs.) Han burial customs provided nourishment and comfort for the po with the placement of grave goods, including food, commodities, and even money within the tomb of the deceased (Hansen 2000:119). Chinese jade was believed to delay the decomposition of a body. Pieces of jade were commonly placed in bodily orifices, or rarely crafted into jade burial suits.

Generations of sinologists have repeatedly asserted that Han-era people commonly believed the heavenly hun and earthly po souls separated at death, but recent scholarship and archaeology suggest that hunpo dualism was more an academic theory than a popular faith. Anna Seidel analyzed funerary texts discovered in Han tombs, which mention not only po souls but also hun remaining with entombed corpses, and wrote (1982:107), “Indeed, a clear separation of a p’o, appeased with the wealth included in the tomb, from a hun departed to heavenly realms is not possible.” Seidel later (1987:227) called for reappraising Han abstract notions of hun and po, which “do not seem to have had as wide a currency as we assumed up to now.” Pu Muzhou surveyed usages of the words hun and po on Han Dynasty bei 碑 “stele” erected at graves and shrines, and concluded (1993:216, tr. Brashier 1996126), “The thinking of ordinary people seems to have been quite hazy on the matter of what distinguished the hun from the po.” These stele texts contrasted souls between a corporeal hun or hunpo at the cemetery and a spiritual shen at the family shrine. Kenneth Brashier (1996:158) reexamined the evidence for hunpo dualism and relegated it “to the realm of scholasticism rather than general beliefs on death.” Brashier (1996:136–137) cited several Han sources (grave deeds, Houhanshu, and Jiaoshi Yilin) attesting beliefs that “the hun remains in the grave instead of flying up to heaven”, and suggested it “was sealed into the grave to prevent its escape.” Another Han text, the Fengsu Tongyi says, “The vital energy of the hun of a dead person floats away; therefore a mask is made in order to retain it.”

Divisible hun and po soul concepts in Daoism 

Hun 魂 and po 魄 spiritual concepts were important in several Daoist traditions. For instance (Baldrian-Hussein 2008:522), “Since the volatile hun is fond of wandering and leaving the body during sleep, techniques were devised to restrain it, one of which entailed a method of staying constantly awake.”

The sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 “three hun and seven po” were anthropomorphized and visualized. Ge Hong‘s (ca. 320 CE) Baopuzi frequently mentions the hun and po “ethereal and gross souls”. The “Genii” Chapter argues that these dual souls cause illness and death.

All men, wise or foolish, know that their bodies contain ethereal as well as gross breaths, and that when some of them quit the body, illness ensues; when they all leave him, a man dies. In the former case, the magicians have amulets for restraining them; in the latter case,The Rites [i.e., Yili] provide ceremonials for summoning them back. These breaths are most intimately bound up with us, for they are born when we are, but over a whole lifetime probably nobody actually hears or sees them. Would one conclude that they do not exist because they are neither seen nor heard? (2, tr. Ware 1966:49–50)

This “magicians” translates fangshi 方士 “doctor; diviner’ magician”. Both fangshi and daoshi 道士 “Daoist priests” developed methods and rituals to summon hun and po back into a person’s body. The “Gold and Cinnabar” chapter records a Daoist alchemical reanimation pill that can return the hun and po souls to a recent corpse: Taiyi zhaohunpo dan fa 太乙招魂魄丹法 “The Great One’s Elixir Method for Summoning Souls”.

In T’ai-i’s elixir for Summoning Gross and Ethereal Breaths the five minerals [i.e., cinnabar, realgar, arsenolite, malachite, and magnetite] are used and sealed with Six-One lute as in the Nine-crucible cinnabars. It is particularly effective for raising those who have died of a stroke. In cases where the corpse has been dead less than four days, force open the corpse’s mouth and insert a pill of this elixir and one of sulphur, washing them down its gullet with water. The corpse will immediately come to life. In every case the resurrected remark that they have seen a messenger with a baton of authority summoning them. (4, tr. Ware 1966:87)

For visualizing the ten souls, the Baopuzi “Truth on Earth” chapter recommends taking dayao 大藥 “great medicines” and practicing a fenxing 分形 “divide/multiply the body” multilocation technique.

My teacher used to say that to preserve Unity was to practice jointly Bright Mirror, and that on becoming successful in the mirror procedure a man would be able to multiply his body to several dozen all with the same dress and facial expression. My teacher also used to say that you should take the great medicines diligently if you wished to enjoy Fullness of Life, and that you should use metal solutions and a multiplication of your person if you wished to communicate with the gods. By multiplying the body, the three Hun and the seven Po are automatically seen within the body, and in addition it becomes possible to meet and visit the powers of heaven and the deities of earth and to have all the gods of the mountains and rivers in one’s service. (18, tr. Ware 1966:306)

The Daoist Shangqing School has several meditation techniques for visualizing the hun and po. In Shangqing Neidan “Internal Alchemy”, Baldrian-Hussein says,

the po plays a particularly somber role as it represents the passions that dominate the hun. This causes the vital force to decay, especially during sexual activity, and eventually leads to death. The inner alchemical practice seeks to concentrate the vital forces within the body by reversing the respective roles of hun and po, so that the hun (Yang) controls the po (Yin). (2008:533)

Number of souls

The number of human “souls” has been a long-standing source of controversy among Chinese religious traditions. Stevan Harrell (1979:521) concludes, “Almost every number from one to a dozen has at one time or another been proposed as the correct one.” The most commonly believed numbers of “souls” in a person are one, two, three, and ten.

One “soul” or linghun 靈魂 is the simplest idea. Harrell gives a fieldwork example.

When rural Taiwanese perform ancestral sacrifices at home, they naturally think of the ling-hun in the tablet; when they take offerings to the cemetery, they think of it in the grave; and when they go on shamanistic trips, they think of it in the yin world. Because the contexts are separate, there is little conflict and little need for abstract reasoning about a nonexistent problem. (1979:523)

Two “souls” is a common folk belief, and reinforced by yin-yang theory. These paired souls can be called hun and Three “souls” comes from widespread beliefs that the soul of a dead person can exist in the multiple locations. The missionary Justus Doolittle recorded that Chinese people in Fuzhou

believe each person has three distinct souls while living. These souls separate at the death of the adult to whom they belong. One resides in the ancestral tablet erected to his memory, if the head of a family; another lurks in the coffin or the grave, and the third departs to the infernal regions to undergo its merited punishment. (1865 II:401–2)

Ten “souls” of sanhunqipo 三魂七魄 “three hun and seven po” is not only Daoist; “Some authorities would maintain that the three-seven “soul” is basic to all Chinese religion” (Harrell 1979:522). During the Later Han period, Daoists fixed the number of hun souls at three and the number of po souls at seven. A newly deceased person may return (回魂) to his home at some nights, sometimes one week (頭七) after his death and the seven po would disappear one by one every 7 days after death. According to Needham and Lu (1974:88), “It is a little difficult to ascertain the reason for this, since fives and sixes (if they corresponded to the viscera) would have rather been expected.” Three hun may stand for the sangang 三綱 “three principles of social order: relationships between ruler-subject, father-child, and husband-wife” (Needham 1974:89). Seven po may stand for the qiqiao 七竅 “seven apertures (in the head, eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth)” or the qiqing 七情 “seven emotions (joy, anger, sorrow, fear, worry, grief, fright)” in traditional Chinese medicine (Baldrian-Hussein 2008:522). Sanhunqipo also stand for other names.

Source: Hun and Po

Chinkon is a revived Shinto practice today in Japan, as a soul-binding or soul-summoning procedure or rite for healing (an ancient shamanic calling back the wandering soul spirit) Chinkon  kishin and as a ‘Chinkon’  (‘Pacifying and Deepening the soul’ exercise, which is “a quiet journey into  the interior. This involves meditation, and focusing on specific  mental images. These three elements, purification, spiritual movements, and meditation, are the bases of Shinto training” see Green Shinto’s “Spiritual exercises: misogi, furitama and chinkon” article. The chinkon ritual practice was revived by Shinto scholar Honda Chikaatsu who based the practice on the Chinkonsai court ritual and the Kojiki account of Okinaga Tarashi Hime’s medium spirit possession, see Birgit Staemmler’s “Chinkon Kishin: Mediated Spirit Possession in Japanese New Religions” at p 117.

The cloudsoul hun, we theorize, was likely a far older motif of Northeast Asia from prehistoric times, as the cloud spirals are a common motif in ceramics of the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan as well as the Amur populations(see Ainu cloud motif), although interpretations lend themselves variously to both solar as well as cloud symbols. As a pre-Hun and proto-Tartar-Mongol belief, cloud-symbol-associated sky, storm and thunder god beliefs likely spread westwards influencing early Indo-European and Anatolian populations as well as all of East Asian civilization, see Jacqueline Taylor Basker’s, “The Cloud as a Symbol“.  Cloud symbolism is given detailed treatment in Camman Schuyler’s article “The Symbolism of the Cloud Collar“, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Mar., 1951), pp. 1-9 URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3047324, as well as Hubert Damisch’s “A Theory of Cloud: Toward a History of Painting“. In The Language of Kilim of Anatolia, Uzeyir Ozeyurt showed that Mongolian princes of Hitay and Anatolian Hittite village weaving used the same fertility motifs, and that many basic motifs are shared between East and West, including cloud spirals and storm/thunder meander patterns. We may therefore surmise that while the cloud-soul meaning was lost during the cloud motif’s diffusion westwards, cloud symbolism associations with a divinity’s descent, and particularly that of sky-storm gods, remained.

The moat in Asuka, Nara Prefecture, that is believed to be part of the first burial site of Emperor Jomei (593-641) (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Possible ruins of ancient emperor’s grave unearthed in Asuka
January 16, 2015, Asahi AWJ

By KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO/ Staff Writer
ASUKA, Nara Prefecture–Local archaeologists said Jan. 15 that they have unearthed the remnants of a possible mid-seventh century burial mound for an ancient emperor at the Koyamada ruins on the site of a school.

“The mound is highly likely the first burial site of Emperor Jomei (593-641), described in the ‘Nihon Shoki’ (The Chronicles of Japan) as the place where his body rested until it was later transferred to another location,” said Fuminori Sugaya, the director of the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.

The researchers made the estimate based on the ruin’s location, size and unique construction method.

The ancient emperor was the father of two more well-known emperors, Emperor Tenji (626-671) and Emperor Tenmu (?-686).

The ruins were excavated during archaeological digging associated with school replacement work on the site.

An aerial view of newly discovered remains at the burial mound Photo: Kazunori Takahashi

The excavation site contains what is believed to be part of a moat lined with boulders along one of its slopes, according to the researchers. The remnants of the moat measures 48 meters in length and 3.9 to 7 meters in width.

An artist rendering of how the burial mound originally looked (Provided by the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara)

While 40-centimeter quartz diorite boulders line the northern slope of the moat, the bottom is covered with stones measuring 15 cm to 30 cm.

The southern slope is covered with flagstones made of two-step chlorite schist that are topped with special flagstones known as “Haibara,” a type of rhyolite stone, stacked in a staircase pattern. The total number of steps in some areas is 10.

Based on speculation that the ruins are a moat belonging to a burial site, the researchers estimate the mound was square-shaped with each side measuring 50 to 80 meters, far larger in size than the ancient and renowned Ishibutai grave in Asuka, which measures 50 meters by 50 meters.

It is rare for chlorite schist and Haibara stones to be laid out around a burial mound.

The Dannozuka burial mound in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, which has been designated as Jomei’s grave by the Imperial Household Agency, was built according to the same design and with the same materials.

A tiber with a tenon discovered at the Mawaki remains of the Jomon period Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Yomiuri Shimbun, 30 Jan 2015
KANAZAWA — A rectangular timber with its tip shaped into a tenon, presumably from the Jomon period, has been discovered among ancient ruins in Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, according to the town’s board of education.

The timber, discovered at the town’s Mawaki remains from the Jomon period (ca 10,000 B.C. to 300 B.C.), is believed to be the oldest of its kind ever found in Japan, according to the education board.

Until today, the mortise-tenon joint technique is believed to have started in the Yayoi period (ca 300 B.C. to A.D. 300), as no timbers with a tenon were discovered from any timber remains before the Yayoi period.

The mortise-tenon technique is a method used to join two pieces of timber. According to the announcement, the discovered timber, about 1 meter long, had a 10-centimeter-long tenon that is 6 centimeters thick.

The timber is 16 centimeters wide at its widest area and about 7 centimeters thick. The tenon and the joint part were elaborately whittled so the timber could be connected vertically. The shape of the tenon was close to that of a contemporary tenon, according to observers. No timber pieces with a corresponding mortise have been found.

“It is an important historical discovery in terms of studying woodwork from the Jomon period,” said Tokyo Metropolitan University Prof. Masahisa Yamada, an expert on archaeology who participated in the excavation. “It is possible the timber was made as part of a column for a special facility for a ritual of some sort, not for a house.”

According to Yamada, timbers were excavated from the Jomon-period Miyanomae remains in Hida, Gifu Prefecture, but they were not processed to make a mortise-tenon joint.

Primitive tenons had been disocvered in two ruins of the Jomon period — the Oshorodoba remains in Otaru, Hokkaido, and the Shimoyakabe remains in Higashi-Murayama, Tokyo. However, they were logs, and their tenons had been made simply by shaving the edge of the log.

The Yomiuri Shimbun
A bokkotsu bone of a wild boar found at the ancient Makimuku ruins in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture

Feb 7, 2014 The Yomiuri Shimbun

NARA — The bone of a wild boar believed to have been used for fortune-telling sometime between the late 3rd century and early 4th century was found among the ancient Makimuku ruins in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture.

According to the Research Center for Makimukugau, the wild boar bone, or bokkotsu, was found in a hole at the ruins, which is known as one of the potential spots of the legendary Yamataikoku kingdom.

Bokkotsu has been discovered in sites around the nation, but it was the first found at the Makimuku ruins, which was believed to be the political center at the period.

“The bone suggests that ancient fortune-telling may have been passed down from generation to generation, and developed into a nationwide religious service at that time,” said a spokesman for the research center.

In ancient times, animal bones were burned for fortune-telling, with the shape of cracks left on the bones serving as a guide to the future. This style of fortune-telling was depicted in the Chinese documents of the “Gishi Wajin-den” (The Record of Japan in the History of Wei).

The bokkotsu found this time was 16.7-centimeter long and 6.7-centimeter wide in its widest area and is believed to have been taken from the right shoulder of a wild boar. It was found in a one-meter-deep hole at the ruins. Part of the bokkotsu is missing, and no cracks remain in the bone, but three marks on the bone show that a burned rod was pressed against it.

The late 3rd century is believed to be the era of Queen Toyo, the successor of Himiko, the powerful queen of the Yamataikoku who also conducted religious rites of the kingdom.

“Bokkotsu is believed to have been used for fortune-telling on important occasions, such as war, marriage and burial,” said Hironobu Ishino, director of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Archaeology.

“There is a possibility that Toyo was involved” in the fortune-telling, Ishino added.

Salt, and iron, aside from rice, were the most precious economic and trading commodities and resources of ancient East Asian states. When the rulers of the polities controlled or monopolized trade in those resources, they gained the keys to the kingdom (See Chinese Discourses on Salt and Iron and Yellow River Emperor Huang Ti is said to have presided over a war fought over salt).

Photo: Ryo Murakami

Japan developed its own unique method of salt production because the islands lacked salt lakes and rock salt mines. Moshio salt-making techniques involving seawater and seaweed gathered from the Seto-uchi Inland Sea began 2,500 years ago, and the region remained the most important of salt centres in Japan throughout (see “Salt” by Mark Kurlansky, p. 373). The Shio no Michi or salt road to the inland regions such as Shinshu-Nagano was one of the most important trade routes, with salt being the most important commodity of all.

Below is an article on the ancient heritage of salt production …the article focuses on methods that have been known in Japan since at least the 5th c. that are still seen today, although even earlier salt production centres, and salt production involving evaporation pots from 100 sites have been found, and have been known since the prehistoric and neolithic Jomon period.

Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition by Laura Cocora and Kaori Brand United Nations University

Japan’s culture is one of sea salt. For centuries, salt production has been an important activity throughout Japan and coastal communities have developed sophisticated techniques for producing this vital mineral from seawater.

One of the oldest records of salt making appears in the eighth-century chronicles of Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan’s oldest mythological and historical writings. There it is said that when the ship that brought water for the imperial table became too old to be used, it was turned into firewood used to boil thick brine down to salt that was then given away to the provinces. Snapshots of salt making scenes also appear in court poetry and in noh theatre. Typically, they depict the lonesomeness and isolation of salt shores.

Outside the world of literature, the importance of salt is reflected in the presence of salt routes, place names associated with salt and shrines where salt gods are worshipped. Salt is used as a cleansing and purifying agent in a variety of ritual contexts.

Salt making in Noto Peninsula

The small artisanal salt farms still found today on the shores of Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture stand as a symbol of the co-evolution of human societies and their environment in the context of the extraction and use of salt as a fundamental marine resource.

Salt production in Noto dates back at least as far as the fifth century, when small ceramic pots were used to boil the seawater. Later, these techniques fell into oblivion, as a new salt manufacturing method, known as the agehama style, started to develop sometime around the eighth century. The new method consisted of two separate stages — water was first drawn from the sea and spread on banked sand terraces to evaporate and the resulting brine was then boiled down over a specially constructed kiln.

Even after technological advances led to the introduction of a more efficient, labour-saving production method elsewhere in Japan, older agehama techniques live on in the Noto Peninsula. Their survival was the result of a locally-specific combination of natural environmental characteristics and socio-economic factors.

The peninsula’s rocky shoreline, with minimal tidal flows, and its climate (characterized by high humidity and limited sunshine) were not suitable for the new method that relied on the flooding of terraces by natural tidal variations.

Despite the not so favourable natural conditions, the tax policies of the Edo period’s (1603-1868) ruling local authorities, the Kaga Clan, played a crucial role in shaping the peninsula’s identity as a salt producing area. During the Edo period, rice was the basis of the taxation system, but cultivable land was scarce in Noto. Under the Kaga Clan’s ‘rice for salt’ system, farmers who did not own enough land to allow them to pay their rice taxes and secure the food necessary for their subsistence borrowed rice from the government, paying for it in salt at a fixed rate.

The clan held a monopoly on the salt trade, with profits from sales being used to pay up to a quarter of the daimyo’s (territorial lord) travels to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) as part of the system of alternate attendance established by the Edo shogunate (feudal military dictatorship).

The rice for salt system was instrumental in making salt production one of the most important occupations of people along the coasts of Noto, while restricting the salt workers’ freedom for social or geographical mobility.

Thus, the salt terraces that once lined the peninsula’s shores — which can still be seen in photographs from the 1940s — emerged as veritable ‘cultural landscapes’. These reflected not only the specific constraints and opportunities of the natural environment, but also a unique socio-economic context that fused the local people’s dependence on natural resources with their control by the elites.

The knowledge heritage of agehama salt making

In 1868, the Meiji Restoration marked the end of feudalism and launched an era of modernization influenced by western models. Overall social and economic restructuring, the abolition of the clan monopoly on salt, and the introduction of new policies and technologies led to a sharp decline in traditional salt production in Noto Peninsula. With new employment opportunities offering different life choices, former salt makers moved to other industries and salt terraces disappeared from the landscape.

When a new wave of salt industry modernization measures — introduced by the central government in 1958 — threatened to wipe out traditional production, the local administration of Suzu City in Ishikawa Prefecture provided funding to the families still practising this cultural tradition. Eventually, only one family remained. In recognition of its value, both culturally and as a tourism resource, agehama-style salt making was designated an intangible folk cultural asset of Ishikawa Prefecture in 1992 and a national intangible folk cultural asset by the Culture Agency in 2008, stimulating new initiatives to revive traditional techniques in recent years.

Agehama-style salt making, as practiced today in Noto, evokes the shadows of the salt farms as places of intense labour and the working and social conditions of the people employed in salt making. However, it is not only in the reconstruction of the past that its value resides, but also in the transmission of the traditional knowledge and practices that are vital to its survival.

On a first level, such traditional knowledge encompasses the architectural aspects, equipment and ways of production associated with salt making. While many of the tools and materials used have undergone little change for centuries, others have been replaced with new ones in the quest for comfort and efficiency. The artisanal knowledge needed to craft these tools and build ovens using traditional techniques is increasingly in danger of being lost.

Agehama-style salt makers are also custodians of a wealth of experiential and traditional knowledge of their natural environment, which includes elements of integrated management of land and marine ecosystems. Such knowledge embraces various dimensions, from the salt makers’ renowned ability to predict the weather by reading cloud patterns and sea currents, to their empirical knowledge of the state and change of marine ecosystems and resources.

Although salt makers now tend to use cheap wood waste from construction sites as fuel, in the past, salt production practices were closely connected with inland regions through the supply of fuel wood, with salt makers owning and managing forest areas to ensure a sustainable wood supply. The two-stage process of agehama salt making reflects this interconnectedness in its effort to reduce fuel consumption by relying on human and natural forces to produce a highly saturated brine solution prior to boiling.

Such elements of sustainable land and resource use at the landscape level make salt farms more than just salt yielding sites. They have the potential of contributing to new approaches to resource conservation and use, such as ‘satoumi’, a recently introduced concept designating socio-ecological production landscapes in coastal areas, which are managed for the ecosystem services they provide.

The question that remains unanswered is how the knowledge associated with these unique cultural landscapes — which have developed as part of salt’s complex itinerary in the culture and history of Japan — can be integrated with scientific knowledge to develop models of resource use and management that maintain or enhance natural values in the landscape.

• ♦ •

This video was produced by Kaori Brand of United Nations University in collaboration with Ishikawa Prefecture as part of an initiative on traditional knowledge and the wisdom of satoyama/satoumi charcoal and salt making traditions in Ishikawa.

Creative Commons License
Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (2010•06•09, Our World) by Laura Cocora is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Dotaku bells found on Awajishima Island (The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 20, 2015)

Source: The Yomiuri Shimbun

Seven dotaku bronze bells from the mid-Yayoi period, or around the second century B.C., were found in Minami-Awaji, Hyogo Prefecture, on Awajishima island, the prefectural and municipal boards of education said Tuesday.

The bells were found in a pile of sand taken from the city’s coastal district Matsuho, and they were named “Matsuho dotaku.”

This is the fourth-largest number of dotaku bells to be excavated from a single site. The biggest trove, 39 bells, was found at the Kamo Iwakura Ruins in Unnan, Shimane Prefecture. The latest discovery is the oldest trove of dotaku bells to be unearthed at one time. Experts say “These dotaku bells are worthy to be designated as national treasures as they could help understand the use of dotaku bells in ancient rituals.”

The dotaku bells are from 22 to 32 centimeters in height and from 13 to 19 centimeters in base width, and do not have any drawings on them. One of the seven bells has a handle — called a chu — with a lozenge-shaped cross section. This is believed to be the oldest type of dotaku bell, and only 11 other bells of this type have been confirmed in the nation so far.

Meanwhile, three of the seven bells have 8- to 13-centimeter tongues made of bronze. This is the largest number of tongues found at once.

Picture illustrates what a tongue is Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun

There are no other known cases of a number of dotaku bells with tongues found buried at one time. So there is a possibility that the recently discovered bells were used in the oldest form of rituals in which many dotaku bells were buried together.

Clue for use of dotaku bells in rituals

The seven dotaku bronze bells discovered on Awajishima island can provide clues for the study of their use in rituals in early times.

The practice of burying a number of dotaku bells together is believed to have been concentrated in two periods — the mid-Yayoi period — from the first century B.C. through to the first century — and the late-Yayoi period at the end of the second century. However, the latest discovery has pushed back the beginning of the practice by more than a century, and some theorize that the practice resumed after a certain period.

Depiction of the samurai  Suenaga Takezaki repelling Mongol and Korean arrows and bombs at Torikai-Gata. “Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba” by 竹崎季長 – 蒙古襲来絵詞. Open source:  Wikimedia Commons

Genetics researchers in a 2003 report, The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols, AJHG,  Volume 72, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 717–721, Tatiana Zerjal, et al., found that the Mongol Y-DNA marker showed up in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea. The report also identified the origin to be “most likely in Mongolia, where the largest number of different star-cluster haplotypes is found ( fig. 1). Thus, a single male line, probably originating in Mongolia, has spread in the last ∼1,000 years to represent ∼8% of the males in a region stretching from northeast China to Uzbekistan”.

Researchers show the footprint of Genghis Khan Y-chromosome star-cluster marker across Eurasia. The Mongols left no genetic trace in Japan, however, corroborating the historical accounts of the Japanese having successfully repelled the Mongols and eventually driving them back to the mainland, despite the earlier devastating defeats during the Battles of Bunei. Fig. 2 from the report

Excerpted from the report:

Courtesy of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government

The ancient art of cormorant fishing is called ukai and is still practised in 13 cities in Japan today. Usho fishing masters are charged with procuring ayu fishes specially for the Imperial Royal Household.  Cormorant fishing is known to be a traditional fishing method in East Asia since the 3rd century, while the practice apears to have emerged in Europe in medieval times from Venice, in Europe, cormorant fishing is a practice restricted to a leisure activity of the royal courts and the aristocracy (see Marcus Beike’s “The history of cormorant fishing in Europe”). In Japan, engravings of cormorants and fish on earthenware excavated from 9th c. Kofu now informs us that cormorant fishing began much earlier than thought. In China, cormorant fishing is said to be dying out (Business Insider, Dec 2013).

***

Drawings reveal evidence of early cormorant fishing (The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 12, 2015)

KOFU — A piece of ninth-century earthenware excavated in Kofu at the ruins of an ancient village has been found to feature a drawing that may show cormorant fishing, the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum has announced. According to the Fuefuki-based museum, the earthenware — found in the Sotochudai ruins, which date back to a span of time from the Kofun period (ca 300-ca 710) to the Heian period (eighth-12th century) — shows pictures of cormorants believed to be diving into the water and catching a fish. It is said that local people usually fished with the assistance of cormorants in the Fuefukigawa river near the village ruins during the Kamakura period in the late 12th century to the early 14th century. A curator at the museum said the earthenware indicates that fishing using the birds had already started in the region before the Kamakura period. Excavated in 1993, the disc-shaped earthenware with a handgrip-like piece on the central part is about 16 centimeters in diameter, and researchers believe that it was used as the lid of a vessel for eating. Pictures on the reverse display up to nine cormorants, with lines carved using an implement with a spatulate tip. Fishermen are not seen in the drawing, but examination conducted by experts in April this year indicated the possibility that it describes the sequence of a cormorant’s actions in fishing — diving into water, catching a fish, returning to the water’s surface and so on. Nowadays, people in the Isawa district of Fuefuki engage in cormorant fishing in the summer. The unearthed lid will be on display at the museum through July 6.

….

Read more about the origin of cormorant fishing here.  The practice though both once widespread in both China and Japan, is recorded as an early practice of Japan’s by the Chinese in the Book of Sui (See Wikipedia article on Cormorant fishing.)

According to Amino Yoshihiko, see “Rethinking Japanese History” at pp. 36-37, cormorant fishing arrived in Japan together with rice agriculturalists around 300 B.C.E.

A marvelous write-up on Bakekujira and whale cults of Japan, and a visual treat for lovers of kaidan and whales, is to be found at Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

Source: PNAS study  Fig. 1 Cishan site in North China, proposed centre of millet domestication in East Asia

Broomcorn millet, barnyard millet, and foxtail millet were all species of millet cultivated by the Jomon people of Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea). Millet finds are from late Middle Jomon sites in Hokkaido, late Jomon Kazaharai site in Aomori, Northeastern Japan (see 1995, D’Andrea); and Yayoi Nabatake site in Kyushu (Cowan, The Origins of Agriculture p. 24). Broomcorn millet was present in southwestern Japan by the 2,000 B.C. (Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture, p 121). Foxtail millet cultigens are found in a widespread sphere from Southwestern Asia, Europe to Transcaucasian Russia and the Far East (C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 24; Rao et al., 1987). It is thought that from China foxtail millet spread westward towards Europe (Oelke, E.A., 1990).

It was earlier established that China is at the primary center of the diversity of broomcorn millet cultivation (see C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 23; Zeven and Zhukovsky, 1975:32). A new study on the origins of millet domestication, could establish the routes of dispersal of millet cultivation/gathering, storage pit usage and associated tools to Japan, and thereby also shed some light on the possible origins of the incoming migrations of people during the Jomon or on early exchanges with the continent. Historical documents show that foxtail millet was an important crop during Zhou dynasty China, while the earliest foxtail millet sites are from Hunamni and Hohnamni Bronze Age sites in South Korea ( C.W. Cowan et al., The Origins of Agriculture, p. 25). All evidence points to millet plant domestication and cultivation in Japan earlier than the Late Jomon period, and certainly, by the end of the Late Jomon period in northeastern Japan (Gremillion, KJ, People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp 102-103)

Research analysis in “Earliest domestication of common millet (Panicum miliaceum) in East Asia extended to 10,000 years ago” concluded that

“the earliest significant common millet cultivation system was established in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP, and that the relatively dry condition in the early Holocene may have been favorable for the domestication of common millet over foxtail millet. Our study shows that common millet appeared as a staple crop in northern China ≈10,000 years ago, suggesting that common millet might have been domesticated independently in this area and later spread to Russia, India, the Middle East, and Europe. Nevertheless, like Mesopotamia, where the spread of wheat and barley to the fertile floodplains of the Lower Tigris and Euphrates was a key factor in the emergence of civilization, the spread of common millet to the more productive regions of the Yellow River and its tributaries provided the essential food surplus that later permitted the development of social complexity in the Chinese civilization.”

The above study reported “the discovery of husk phytoliths and biomolecular components identifiable solely as common millet from newly excavated storage pits at the Neolithic Cishan site, China, dated to between ca. 10,300 and ca. 8,700 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP). After ca. 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops began to contain a small quantity of foxtail millet. Our research reveals that the common millet was the earliest dry farming crop in East Asia, which is probably attributed to its excellent resistance to drought.”

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and common millet (or broomcorn millet; Panicum miliaceum) were among the world’s most important and ancient domesticated crops. They were staple foods in the semiarid regions of East Asia (China, Japan, Russia, India, and Korea) and even in the entire Eurasian continent before the popularity of rice and wheat, and are still important foods in these regions today….

Thirty years ago, the world’s oldest millet remains, dating to ca. 8,200 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), were discovered at the Early Neolithic site of Cishan, northern China. The site contained >50,000 kg of grain crops stored in the storage pits (7–9). Until now, the importance of these findings has been constrained by limited taxonomic identification with regard to whether they are from foxtail millet (S. italica) or common millet (P. miliaceum), because the early reported S. italica identifications are not all accepted (4,9–12). This article presents the phytoliths, biomolecular records, and new radiocarbon dating from newly excavated grain crop storage pits at the Cishan site. Large modern reference collections are used to compare and contrast microfossil morphology and biomolecular components in different millets and related grass species (13). The renewed investigations show that common millet agriculture arose independently in the semiarid regions of China by 10,000 cal yr BP. Our findings contribute to our knowledge of agricultural origins across the globe and have broader implications for understanding the development of human societies.

The Cishan site (36°34.511′ N, 114°06.720′ E) is located near the junction between the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain at an elevation of 260–270 m above sea level (Fig. 1). The archaeological site, containing a total of 88 storage pits with significant quantities (≈109 m³) of grain crop remains, was excavated from 1976 to 1978 (7, 8). Each storage pit included 0.3- to 2-m-thick grain crops, which were well preserved and found in situ in the 3- to 5-m-deep loess layer (9). All grain remains have been oxidized to ashes soon after they were exposed to air. Archaeological excavations also revealed the remains of houses and numerous millstones (Fig. S1), stone shovels, grind rollers, potteries, rich faunal remains, and plant assemblages including charred fruits of walnut (Juglans regia), hazel (Corylus heterophylla), and hackberry (Celtis bungeana) (7–9). Only 2 ¹⁴C dates of charcoal from previously excavated H145 and H48 storage pits yielded uncalibrated ages of 7355 ± 100 yr BP and 7235 ± 105 yr BP, respectively (8). These remains represent the earliest evidence for the significant use of dry-farming crop plants in the human diet in East Asia. They also suggest that by this time agriculture had already been relatively well developed here.

According to archeobotanical research, the early charred grains of common millet occurred during the initial stages of various Early Neolithic sites (Fig. 1), including Dadiwan (ca. 7.8–7.35 cal kyr BP) (21), Xinglonggou (ca. 8.0–7.5 cal kyr BP) (22), and Yuezhuang (ca. 7.87 cal kyr BP) (23) in North China, but foxtail millet was barely present during these stages. Lee et al. (24) have speculated that the Early Neolithic predominance of broomcorn over foxtail millet at Xinglonggou and Yuezhuang ca. 6000 cal B.C. might be a regional phenomenon, implying that broomcorn millet might have been domesticated earlier than foxtail millet. Our analytical results of both phytoliths and biomolecular components have established that the earliest cereal remains stored in the Cishan Neolithic sites, during ca. 10,300–8,700 cal yr BP, are not foxtail millet, but only common millet. After 8,700 cal yr BP, the grain crops gradually contained 0.4–2.8% foxtail millet. Our study also suggests that common millet was used as a staple food significantly earlier than foxtail millet in northern China. It provides direct evidence to show that, by 10,000 cal yr BP, the early people in northern China had developed various methods of maintenance and multiplication of millet seeds for the next generation, and had known how to store crops of staple food in secure, dry places of storage pits during the Early Neolithic epoch.

Common millet has the lowest water requirement among all grain crops; it is also a relatively short-season crop, and could grow well in poor soils (5, 6, 25). The geographical distribution of both foxtail millet and common millet in China (Fig. S4) shows that foxtail millet is more common in the semiwet eastern areas, and its optimal growth occurs at mean annual temperature (MAT) from 8 to 10 °C and mean annual precipitation (MAP) from 450 to 550 mm. However, common millet is more adapted to the drier interior areas, and its optimal growing conditions occur at MAT from 6 to 8 °C and MAP from 350 to 450 mm (5, 6). The origin and dispersal of millet agriculture is a key problem closely related to the history of human impact on the environment and transformation of natural vegetation.

Paleoenvironmental data from the Weinan section (26–29) (Fig. 1) in the southern part of the Loess Plateau between the Cishan and Dadiwan sites are crucial for understanding the early stage of the forager–cultivator transition. The early Holocene was a period of significant environmental change marked by dry climate conditions as inferred from sediment texture (26, 28), magnetic susceptibility (26, 28), pollen (27), phytoliths (28), and mollusk assemblages (29). These proxy records show an environmental transition from cold–dry (ca. 11,000–8,700 cal yr BP) to warm–wet (ca. 8,700–5,500 cal yr BP) conditions. Many lacustrine and loess records from the Chinese Loess Plateau to Central Asia also support the scenario of a dry climate during the early Holocene (30–34). Under the drier climate conditions, soil development was slowed, and the soil developed on the underlying older and coarser loess of the glacial period was poor in nutrients (28). This raises the possibility that common millet was more significant than foxtail millet in the early stages of food production in North China because it was more adaptable than foxtail millet to the dry condition prevailing during the early Holocene. The common millet cultivation may involve complex selection by natural forces and human activities, although no clear evidence has been documented in this region for the transitions from gathering to cultivation and/or from a wild ancestor to domesticated common millet.

…

References and source readings:

COWAN, C.Wesley., WATSON, Patty Jo; BENO, Nancy L., The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective p. 23-24).

D’Andrea, A. C. 1995. Later Jomon Subsistence in Northeastern Japan: New Evidence from Palaeoethnobotanical Studies. Asian Perspectives 34 (2): 195-227

This paper discusses prehistoric subsistence and the development of plant husbandry in northeastern Tohoku (northern Honshu). Archaeobotanical sampling was carried out at two sites in eastern Aomori Prefecture. Tominosawa is a Middle Jomon village site which produced a spectrum of nut and weedy plant species similar to that recovered from contemporary sites in southwestern Hokkaido. At the Kazahari site, pithouses from two phases of occupation were sampled for archaeobotanical remains: Tokoshinai IV (c. 1000 B.C.) and Fukurashima (c. 150 B.C.). The pithouse deposits produced evidence for Late Jomon rice, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet dating to the first millennium B.C. Sampling of later Fukurashima contexts produced evidence of rice, foxtail and broomcorn millet, Japanese barnyard millet, and hemp. These data demonstrate that rice and millets have been present in northeastern Tohoku since c. 1000 B.C.

NASU, Hiroo The Initial Form of Rice and Millet Cultivation during the Final Jomon-Yayoi Transition Era from the View of Archaeobotanical Weed Assemblages Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History Vol. 187 July 2014

Gremillion, Kristen J., People, Plants, and Landscapes: Studies in Paleoethnobotany, pp. 102-3

Crawford, Gary, Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory, pp 117-132, Monographs in Archaeology, No. 4 Prehistory Press p. 121

Oelke, E.A., Oplinger, E.S., Putnam, D.H., Durgan, B.R., Doll, J.D. and Undersander, D.J. (1990) Millets, in Alternative Field Crops Manual)

Setaria introduction

A microscopic image of basil pollen, found at a third-century ruin in Nara prefecture, central Japan. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City

Source: WSJ, March 2015
Researchers in Japan’s Nara prefecture said they have confirmed that the oldest basil pollen in the country originally came from China or the Korean peninsula, indicating that a trading society existed in the area then.

The pollen was found in 1991 in a ditch at the third-century Makimuku ruins, a national historic site thought to be one of the possible locations of the Yamataikoku kingdom, which was led by Queen Himiko. The kingdom’s exact location is still being debated.

Academics at the Research Center for Makimukugaku had compared the basil pollen in question to other types in Japan today, and traced its roots to those that grow in Southeast Asia.

…

The Makimuku ruins in Nara prefecture where the basil pollen was found. Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City
“The findings show that there was exchange between those in the area and other countries back then,” Teruhiko Hashimoto, a researcher at the center, told Japan Real Time Friday.

The pollen was found in a ditch which was a part of a drainage system that connected the central part of the town and its outskirts. Pollen from safflower has also been found there.

“Safflower was likely used for dyeing. Basil was probably used for medical purposes, but it isn’t clear. It was possibly used for a powerful figure,” Mr. Hashimoto said.

Salt, and iron, aside from rice, were the most precious economic and trading commodities and resources of ancient East Asian states. When the rulers of the polities controlled or monopolized trade in those resources, they gained the keys to the kingdom (See Chinese Discourses on Salt and Iron and Yellow River Emperor Huang Ti is said to have presided over a war fought over salt).

Photo: Ryo Murakami

Japan developed its own unique method of salt production because the islands lacked salt lakes and rock salt mines. Moshio salt-making techniques involving seawater and seaweed gathered from the Seto-uchi Inland Sea began 2,500 years ago, and the region remained the most important of salt centres in Japan throughout (see “Salt” by Mark Kurlansky, p. 373). The Shio no Michi or salt road to the inland regions such as Shinshu-Nagano was one of the most important trade routes, with salt being the most important commodity of all.

Below is an article on the ancient heritage of salt production …the article focuses on methods that have been known in Japan since at least the 5th c. that are still seen today, although even earlier salt production centres, and salt production involving evaporation pots from 100 sites have been found, and have been known since the prehistoric and neolithic Jomon period.

Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition by Laura Cocora and Kaori Brand United Nations University

Japan’s culture is one of sea salt. For centuries, salt production has been an important activity throughout Japan and coastal communities have developed sophisticated techniques for producing this vital mineral from seawater.

One of the oldest records of salt making appears in the eighth-century chronicles of Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan’s oldest mythological and historical writings. There it is said that when the ship that brought water for the imperial table became too old to be used, it was turned into firewood used to boil thick brine down to salt that was then given away to the provinces. Snapshots of salt making scenes also appear in court poetry and in noh theatre. Typically, they depict the lonesomeness and isolation of salt shores.

Outside the world of literature, the importance of salt is reflected in the presence of salt routes, place names associated with salt and shrines where salt gods are worshipped. Salt is used as a cleansing and purifying agent in a variety of ritual contexts.

Salt making in Noto Peninsula

The small artisanal salt farms still found today on the shores of Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture stand as a symbol of the co-evolution of human societies and their environment in the context of the extraction and use of salt as a fundamental marine resource.

Salt production in Noto dates back at least as far as the fifth century, when small ceramic pots were used to boil the seawater. Later, these techniques fell into oblivion, as a new salt manufacturing method, known as the agehama style, started to develop sometime around the eighth century. The new method consisted of two separate stages — water was first drawn from the sea and spread on banked sand terraces to evaporate and the resulting brine was then boiled down over a specially constructed kiln.

Even after technological advances led to the introduction of a more efficient, labour-saving production method elsewhere in Japan, older agehama techniques live on in the Noto Peninsula. Their survival was the result of a locally-specific combination of natural environmental characteristics and socio-economic factors.

The peninsula’s rocky shoreline, with minimal tidal flows, and its climate (characterized by high humidity and limited sunshine) were not suitable for the new method that relied on the flooding of terraces by natural tidal variations.

Despite the not so favourable natural conditions, the tax policies of the Edo period’s (1603-1868) ruling local authorities, the Kaga Clan, played a crucial role in shaping the peninsula’s identity as a salt producing area. During the Edo period, rice was the basis of the taxation system, but cultivable land was scarce in Noto. Under the Kaga Clan’s ‘rice for salt’ system, farmers who did not own enough land to allow them to pay their rice taxes and secure the food necessary for their subsistence borrowed rice from the government, paying for it in salt at a fixed rate.

The clan held a monopoly on the salt trade, with profits from sales being used to pay up to a quarter of the daimyo’s (territorial lord) travels to the capital Edo (now Tokyo) as part of the system of alternate attendance established by the Edo shogunate (feudal military dictatorship).

The rice for salt system was instrumental in making salt production one of the most important occupations of people along the coasts of Noto, while restricting the salt workers’ freedom for social or geographical mobility.

Thus, the salt terraces that once lined the peninsula’s shores — which can still be seen in photographs from the 1940s — emerged as veritable ‘cultural landscapes’. These reflected not only the specific constraints and opportunities of the natural environment, but also a unique socio-economic context that fused the local people’s dependence on natural resources with their control by the elites.

The knowledge heritage of agehama salt making

In 1868, the Meiji Restoration marked the end of feudalism and launched an era of modernization influenced by western models. Overall social and economic restructuring, the abolition of the clan monopoly on salt, and the introduction of new policies and technologies led to a sharp decline in traditional salt production in Noto Peninsula. With new employment opportunities offering different life choices, former salt makers moved to other industries and salt terraces disappeared from the landscape.

When a new wave of salt industry modernization measures — introduced by the central government in 1958 — threatened to wipe out traditional production, the local administration of Suzu City in Ishikawa Prefecture provided funding to the families still practising this cultural tradition. Eventually, only one family remained. In recognition of its value, both culturally and as a tourism resource, agehama-style salt making was designated an intangible folk cultural asset of Ishikawa Prefecture in 1992 and a national intangible folk cultural asset by the Culture Agency in 2008, stimulating new initiatives to revive traditional techniques in recent years.

Agehama-style salt making, as practiced today in Noto, evokes the shadows of the salt farms as places of intense labour and the working and social conditions of the people employed in salt making. However, it is not only in the reconstruction of the past that its value resides, but also in the transmission of the traditional knowledge and practices that are vital to its survival.

On a first level, such traditional knowledge encompasses the architectural aspects, equipment and ways of production associated with salt making. While many of the tools and materials used have undergone little change for centuries, others have been replaced with new ones in the quest for comfort and efficiency. The artisanal knowledge needed to craft these tools and build ovens using traditional techniques is increasingly in danger of being lost.

Agehama-style salt makers are also custodians of a wealth of experiential and traditional knowledge of their natural environment, which includes elements of integrated management of land and marine ecosystems. Such knowledge embraces various dimensions, from the salt makers’ renowned ability to predict the weather by reading cloud patterns and sea currents, to their empirical knowledge of the state and change of marine ecosystems and resources.

Although salt makers now tend to use cheap wood waste from construction sites as fuel, in the past, salt production practices were closely connected with inland regions through the supply of fuel wood, with salt makers owning and managing forest areas to ensure a sustainable wood supply. The two-stage process of agehama salt making reflects this interconnectedness in its effort to reduce fuel consumption by relying on human and natural forces to produce a highly saturated brine solution prior to boiling.

Such elements of sustainable land and resource use at the landscape level make salt farms more than just salt yielding sites. They have the potential of contributing to new approaches to resource conservation and use, such as ‘satoumi’, a recently introduced concept designating socio-ecological production landscapes in coastal areas, which are managed for the ecosystem services they provide.

The question that remains unanswered is how the knowledge associated with these unique cultural landscapes — which have developed as part of salt’s complex itinerary in the culture and history of Japan — can be integrated with scientific knowledge to develop models of resource use and management that maintain or enhance natural values in the landscape.

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This video was produced by Kaori Brand of United Nations University in collaboration with Ishikawa Prefecture as part of an initiative on traditional knowledge and the wisdom of satoyama/satoumi charcoal and salt making traditions in Ishikawa.

Creative Commons License
Preserving Japan’s Sea Salt Making Tradition (2010•06•09, Our World) by Laura Cocora is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Dotaku bells found on Awajishima Island (The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 20, 2015)

Source: The Yomiuri Shimbun

Seven dotaku bronze bells from the mid-Yayoi period, or around the second century B.C., were found in Minami-Awaji, Hyogo Prefecture, on Awajishima island, the prefectural and municipal boards of education said Tuesday.

The bells were found in a pile of sand taken from the city’s coastal district Matsuho, and they were named “Matsuho dotaku.”

This is the fourth-largest number of dotaku bells to be excavated from a single site. The biggest trove, 39 bells, was found at the Kamo Iwakura Ruins in Unnan, Shimane Prefecture. The latest discovery is the oldest trove of dotaku bells to be unearthed at one time. Experts say “These dotaku bells are worthy to be designated as national treasures as they could help understand the use of dotaku bells in ancient rituals.”

The dotaku bells are from 22 to 32 centimeters in height and from 13 to 19 centimeters in base width, and do not have any drawings on them. One of the seven bells has a handle — called a chu — with a lozenge-shaped cross section. This is believed to be the oldest type of dotaku bell, and only 11 other bells of this type have been confirmed in the nation so far.

Meanwhile, three of the seven bells have 8- to 13-centimeter tongues made of bronze. This is the largest number of tongues found at once.

Picture illustrates what a tongue is Photo: The Yomiuri Shimbun

There are no other known cases of a number of dotaku bells with tongues found buried at one time. So there is a possibility that the recently discovered bells were used in the oldest form of rituals in which many dotaku bells were buried together.

Clue for use of dotaku bells in rituals

The seven dotaku bronze bells discovered on Awajishima island can provide clues for the study of their use in rituals in early times.

The practice of burying a number of dotaku bells together is believed to have been concentrated in two periods — the mid-Yayoi period — from the first century B.C. through to the first century — and the late-Yayoi period at the end of the second century. However, the latest discovery has pushed back the beginning of the practice by more than a century, and some theorize that the practice resumed after a certain period.

Depiction of the samurai  Suenaga Takezaki repelling Mongol and Korean arrows and bombs at Torikai-Gata. “Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba” by 竹崎季長 – 蒙古襲来絵詞. Open source:  Wikimedia Commons

Genetics researchers in a 2003 report, The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols, AJHG,  Volume 72, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 717–721, Tatiana Zerjal, et al., found that the Mongol Y-DNA marker showed up in 16 populations throughout a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea. The report also identified the origin to be “most likely in Mongolia, where the largest number of different star-cluster haplotypes is found ( fig. 1). Thus, a single male line, probably originating in Mongolia, has spread in the last ∼1,000 years to represent ∼8% of the males in a region stretching from northeast China to Uzbekistan”.

Researchers show the footprint of Genghis Khan Y-chromosome star-cluster marker across Eurasia. The Mongols left no genetic trace in Japan, however, corroborating the historical accounts of the Japanese having successfully repelled the Mongols and eventually driving them back to the mainland, despite the earlier devastating defeats during the Battles of Bunei. Fig. 2 from the report

Excerpted from the report:

Courtesy of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government

The ancient art of cormorant fishing is called ukai and is still practised in 13 cities in Japan today. Usho fishing masters are charged with procuring ayu fishes specially for the Imperial Royal Household.  Cormorant fishing is known to be a traditional fishing method in East Asia since the 3rd century, while the practice apears to have emerged in Europe in medieval times from Venice, in Europe, cormorant fishing is a practice restricted to a leisure activity of the royal courts and the aristocracy (see Marcus Beike’s “The history of cormorant fishing in Europe”). In Japan, engravings of cormorants and fish on earthenware excavated from 9th c. Kofu now informs us that cormorant fishing began much earlier than thought. In China, cormorant fishing is said to be dying out (Business Insider, Dec 2013).

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Drawings reveal evidence of early cormorant fishing (The Yomiuri Shimbun, June 12, 2015)

KOFU — A piece of ninth-century earthenware excavated in Kofu at the ruins of an ancient village has been found to feature a drawing that may show cormorant fishing, the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum has announced. According to the Fuefuki-based museum, the earthenware — found in the Sotochudai ruins, which date back to a span of time from the Kofun period (ca 300-ca 710) to the Heian period (eighth-12th century) — shows pictures of cormorants believed to be diving into the water and catching a fish. It is said that local people usually fished with the assistance of cormorants in the Fuefukigawa river near the village ruins during the Kamakura period in the late 12th century to the early 14th century. A curator at the museum said the earthenware indicates that fishing using the birds had already started in the region before the Kamakura period. Excavated in 1993, the disc-shaped earthenware with a handgrip-like piece on the central part is about 16 centimeters in diameter, and researchers believe that it was used as the lid of a vessel for eating. Pictures on the reverse display up to nine cormorants, with lines carved using an implement with a spatulate tip. Fishermen are not seen in the drawing, but examination conducted by experts in April this year indicated the possibility that it describes the sequence of a cormorant’s actions in fishing — diving into water, catching a fish, returning to the water’s surface and so on. Nowadays, people in the Isawa district of Fuefuki engage in cormorant fishing in the summer. The unearthed lid will be on display at the museum through July 6.

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Read more about the origin of cormorant fishing here.  The practice though both once widespread in both China and Japan, is recorded as an early practice of Japan’s by the Chinese in the Book of Sui (See Wikipedia article on Cormorant fishing.)

According to Amino Yoshihiko, see “Rethinking Japanese History” at pp. 36-37, cormorant fishing arrived in Japan together with rice agriculturalists around 300 B.C.E.

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Where to see cormorant fishing in Japan today

Gifu Nagaragawa Ukai Cormorant fishing. It will be held every day during the period except on the night of the full moon (Sept. 28 this year) or when the water is excessively muddy. Fee is ¥3,100 (weekdays) or ¥3,400 (Sat., Sun. and national holidays), without meal. For reservation, please call 058-262-0104 (Gifu City Ukai Kanransen Jimusho), or reserve through major travel agencies, like JTB.

Schedule & Key events:
● daily (except Sept. 28)
7:15 p.m.-8:30 p.m. (Boarding time: 6:15 p.m.)

Location: Nagara River, Gifu, Gifu

Access:
JR Tokaido Honsen Line to Gifu Station. From there, take bus to Nagara-bashi Bus Stop (15 min.)

Festival information compiled in cooperation with the Tourist Information Center of the Japan National Tourist Organization. (10th floor, Tokyo Kotsu Kaikan Bldg., 2-10-1, Yurakucho, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; (03) 3201-3331). Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.