The Asian side of the world - II
|Part Three. Constructing theories
Some thoughts on the role and tools of archaeology in Japan
Texte intégral
1August 2012
2The discipline of archaeology established itself progressively during the “long 19th century” (from the end of the 18th century to 1914) in western Europe. It thus developed in the context of the building of European nations. This was also the case in Japan from the last third of the 19th century. The slow growth of this “science of remains” would bring original perspectives to the immemorial past of humanity, to history before written history, in a time when some of the people entering the “modern” 19th century were precisely looking for a political identity, a national consciousness.
3Whether one is dealing with “our ancestors the Gauls” or with the tombs of the legendary sovereigns of Japan makes no difference: the main goal is to find the roots, in a remote past minimally described in written documents (if any), leading to something completely new: the nation and the official state framework that relies on it. Archaeology, opening new horizons in knowledge of the past, has thus from the very beginning been the witness of its own contextual development. More importantly, it bears witness to the main concerns of modern societies and to the frameworks within which they evolve.
4Japan and northern and western European countries were among the first in the world to build a particular relationship between past and present. More than a century after its first steps, with the nation, recounting “history before History” is still an attractive field of research. For Japan, what interpretation can be placed on its archaeology, which has some of the most financial support and human resources in the world?
5Until the end of the Second World War, Japan responded to an imperial monarchy, within which the question of the origin of the nation was clearly secondary. Officially, the nation was strictly “defined” and existed mainly through the tutelary figure of its sovereign. Within this context, archaeology contributed to establishing the age of the lineage of the sovereigns of the archipelago, but it could not develop a scientific or critical approach to explain the origins of both the State and the population of the archipelago. Archaeology thus spent a long time “in the wilderness”, between the birth of a methodologically sound archaeology (at the Imperial University of Kyôto in 1917) and the time when it became possible to use its methods to describe the archipelago’s history. In the previous period, scientific archaeology, with its methodological capacity to give new chronological perspectives, had to remain silent in the face of the official, legendary chronology imposed by the Imperial system.
6The defeat of Japan in 1945 led to the end of this prohibition, and a genuine chronological division into “periods” before antiquity was rapidly formulated. The year 1945 also saw the end of the colonial empire, which, with its monarchy, had defined Japan since the Meiji era, from the end of the 19th century. It was thus necessary to rebuild Japan not only within its physical, insular limits but also in terms of mental representations. This fostered a new conceptualization of the Japanese nation, with real questions about the origins and the originality of the Japanese people, which might yield a new national imagery. In this post-war context, archaeology became a crucial factor in the construction of Japan and the Japanese identity.
7The extensive academic work on the Japanese nation after the war is interesting in many ways. While in Europe we are progressively setting aside national descriptions of the past, in Japan it is yet to begin. Although nationalism was one of the main reasons for the ruin of the European powers in the first half of the 20th century, in Japan it was imperial expansionism that was blamed. The construction of post-war insularity, national narration and the new chronologies are elements that represent a complete rupture with the landmarks of the imperialist monarchy.
8Between the 1950s and the 1970s, archaeology thus provided concrete elements to characterize the birth of the Japanese people, such as, for instance, the remains of the first rice-growing societies in the archipelago (Yayoi period, from the first half of the first millennium BCE to the first half of the 3rd century CE, the name coming from pottery found in the Yayoi quarter in Tôkyô at the end of the 19th century. History thus “serves the people” by providing it with ancient cultural roots, going back to days well before the antique monarchist system and the figure of the sovereign.
9Archaeological studies during 1970–1980 of the end of the Yayoi period and the period just before antiquity (Kofun period, named after protohistorical burial mounds erected on the archipelago between the 3rd and the 8th centuries) indicated the existence of an already strong, complex political system that preceded the antique system. The question of the origin of a Japanese state, beyond the question of the Imperial lineage, was raised in the 1990s.
10The Jômon period (named after pottery with “cord marks”), set temporally between the Palaeolithic period and the appearance of the first peasantry on the archipelago, was very long, lasting from the end of the last ice age to the first millennium BCE (i.e. a “very long Mesolithic period” of about 10 000 years). This period has, however, been ignored in the national narration. During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Jômon was usually considered “pre-Japanese” and associated with the “interior otherness” of Japan, represented by the Ainu population of Hokkaidô. Jômon was nevertheless progressively (re)integrated into the national narration between the 1970s and the 1990s on the basis of a set of theories in physical anthropology (the people from the archipelago being considered a biological cross-breed between “indigenous Jômon” and “allogenous Yayoi”) and the discovery of important archaeological sites (such as Sannai Maruyama in north-western Honshû: a settlement of very high population density for the time), which demonstrated an unexpected complexity in the societies of the Jômon period, strongly deprecated for a long time and often considered “barbaric” in Japanese historiography.
11Japanese archaeology is rich and exceptionally well documented, as a result of intensive, long-term research, and thus developed fully autonomously from European archaeology, with its own chrono-cultural landmarks. Nevertheless, the contemporary scientific issues of Japanese archaeology are similar to those in Europe: the trajectories of the last hunters-gatherers, their interaction with the first farmers and rice-growers, the process by which societies became more complex and the creation of the first political elites, until the full establishment of the State. Theoretically, the spectrum is wide, making Japan a partner with its own specificities, which could play a prominent part in assessing and validating the solutions to the big questions that all archaeologists pose.
12The aims of a highly desirable, fruitful collaboration among archaeologists all over the world should not be limited to the domain of scientific research but in Japan should also involve policies of national heritage. For years, Japan has been marked by strong centralism; however, with policies to reduce the State prerogatives in education, research and culture (e. g. autonomy of the universities since 2004 and giving legal status to several actors of archaeological rescue plans in the 1990s) after standardization of governance in line with liberal globalisation, local and regional levels of decision have become primordial, rather than the national level. This creates a strong dependence of archaeology on the opinions of local structures, which are now essential for its support and development. It also results in strong distinctive features across the archipelago, which do not simply mirror ancient regionalism, as the “software” used is still that of national archaeology, applied in the local and regional structures that now defend and (financially) support heritage policies.
13Japan, having depended for years on a national archaeology with centralized decision-making, is now a pioneer in cultural and patrimonial reforms according to the liberal paradigm. It is thus important to draw lessons for countries such as France, where autonomy and general decentralization have been mooted for many years. Questions about the future and the social role of archaeology and national heritage are also relevant for other European countries. These questions are the basis for a twofold problem: how to protect a country’s heritage in the context of reduced financial support, without resorting to local cultural jingoism, which could however be an effective way to bypass current austerity measures.
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