Mythology and Archeology in Modern Japan

Articulation of Nostalgia

Jun’ichi ISOMAE

International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, Japan

Excavation of the shell mound Omori by Edward Morse (1877)

1. The sense of nostalgia towards the past in Japanese scholars of archeology

2. The relationship between archeology and mythology

3. The discursive space of the Postwar Japan on Japanese archeology

Iwajiku Relic

stone implements

AIZAWA Tadahiro

Paleolith of Iwajiku Relic

I was so moved by the thought that under my foot was a relic of a  people that lived thousands years ago. The visit elated me, calling up images of a happy home. Actually, I searched for the image of  a happy home in the relics because I missed my own lost family.

On the voiceless fragments of the pottery and stone implements I felt the heart beats of an ancient people transmit through my body.

Ancient Buddha StatueJomon Pottery

of course, as the country was divided into many domains and social groups with vast dialectical and stylistic variety, nowhere could the Japanese language as universally spoken by the “Japanese people” be founded in the eighteenth century. The Japanese language could only be conceived of al lost and dead language whose restoration was earnestly called for. I argued that the Japanese language and the Japanese ethnos were stillborn, then, as the phonocentric notion of Japanese become dominant in certain discourses.

(Naoki Sakai, Translation & Subjectivity: on “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism, 1997)

Nativist, MOTOORI Norinaga

Commentary of Japanese Mythology

TSUBOI SyogoroChair of Tokyo Imperial University

Argument on the original Japanese race

In general, archeology can be defined as the science of discovering the ancient past through the investigation of old things and relics. The recognition of the ancient past is achieved by the writing of literal history, although non-literal history is explored through research of various things and relics.

(TSUBOI Shogoro)

Meiji Emperor

Meiji Shrine

TSUDA Sokichi

The history of the Age of the Gods is not the story of a nation but rather a production by the imperial court. Obviously, it was not the spontaneous represenation of a national life and the crystalization of a national spirit. Namely, the history of the Age of the Gods is characterized by aristocratic elements.

Transition of Jomon Pottery’s Type

Chronological Table of Jomon Pottery’s Type

Dr. Koganei called the Ainu “an island of race,” while I call the cultural area of Jomon pottery “an island of culture.” We recognize that Jomon pottery comes from a single substantive line. It has demonstrated great change over time and over a wide spatial range, although it can be qualitatively reduced to a single style of pottery.

(YAMANOUCHI Sugao) 

The Burial Mound of First Emperor, Jinmu

The Site of his Accession to the Throne

The continuity of the Imperial family has characterized Japan since the beginning of recorded history, for some two thousand six hundred years. The virtue of the emperor pervades the nation like a sacred light. Japanese archeology has demonstrated that our imperial nation retains the oldest cultural origins, and thus our reign over East Asia is a natural consequence that has the deepest and oldest foundation, and still persists until the present. Herein lies the task of Japanese archeology.

Excavation by the Local Inhabitant

Jomon Potteries