Series ・ 10 parts

The Wisdom of Jomon: A Sustainable Society That Lasted Ten Millennia

From roughly 16,000 years ago to about 2,400 years ago, the Japanese archipelago is said to have known an age that lasted more than ten thousand years without major wars or the rise and fall of dynasties. By the standards of world history, it is a strangely long stability. That age is 'Jomon.' Without over-idealizing it, this first episode traces the riddle of those ten millennia, beginning with its outline and dates.

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01 The Ten-Thousand-Year Riddle: Why Did Jomon Endure? From roughly 16,000 years ago to about 2,400 years ago, the Japanese archipelago is said to have known an age that lasted more than ten thousand years without major wars or the rise and fall of dynasties. By the standards of world history, it is a strangely long stability. That age is 'Jomon.' Without over-idealizing it, this first episode traces the riddle of those ten millennia, beginning with its outline and dates.
02 The Table That Pottery Changed: The Revolution of Boiling About 16,000 years ago, the people of the Japanese archipelago took into their hands some of the world's oldest known pottery. With the birth of a vessel that could be set over fire, hard nuts and bitter acorns turned into something edible. The small revolution of boiling gave rise to storage and is said to have nudged people toward settled life. This second episode traces the Jomon table.
03 A Life That Took No More Than Needed: The Abundance Hunting and Gathering Built No fields tilled, no seeds sown, and yet a way of life that lasted nearly ten thousand years. Hunting, gathering, and fishing; acorns and chestnuts; and the tending of chestnut groves, a kind of half-cultivation. Episode 3 traces, from the table and the forest, the secret of how people could settle without relying on farming.
04 A Jomon City: Sannai-Maruyama, a Village of a Thousand Years The Sannai-Maruyama site, a vast settlement that lay sleeping in the forests of Aomori. Home to hundreds of people and said to have lasted more than a thousand years, its scale overturned the image of hunter-gatherers. Episode 4 traces, through archaeological discovery, its six giant pillars, its planned settlement, and the riddles it left behind.
05 The Wisdom of Not Discarding: A Shell Mound Was Not a Garbage Dump A shell mound, it is said, was not merely a garbage dump. It was also a place of prayer, where shells and bones were piled, where people and dogs were buried, and where life was sent back. Episode 5 traces the true shape of Jomon's recycling society, which used resources to the last and lived alongside nature's cycles, and the limits hidden within that abundance.
06 What Did the Clay Figurines Pray For? The Shape of the Jomon Heart Across Ten Millennia Deliberately broken clay figurines, stones laid out in a circle, pottery that blazes up like flame. What did the Jomon people, who left no writing, entrust to clay and form? Episode 6 traces animism and ritual, awe and prayer toward nature, and their view of life and death, and touches on the beauty of flame-style pottery.
07 A Society Without Kings? The Mystery of Ten Thousand Years With Little Conflict The Jomon period is said to leave almost no traces of organized warfare. A study of roughly twenty-five hundred human skeletons put the death rate from violence at just 1.8 percent. But does that really mean a peaceful, egalitarian society without conflict? We follow the new debate over wealth, inequality, and whether leaders existed at all.
08 The Road of Obsidian and Jade: The Jomon Trade Network That Crossed the Sea Razor-sharp obsidian was carried from Kozushima, an island floating off the coast of Izu, and green jade journeyed from the riverbanks of Itoigawa in Niigata to the north and south of the archipelago. Stones found far from their sources tell us that the seemingly isolated Jomon settlements were bound together by a trade web that crossed sea and mountain.
09 Rice Arrives — The End of Jomon and What Did Not Disappear Wet-rice farming, brought from the mainland, gradually rewrote a way of life that had lasted ten thousand years. Population, society, conflict -- what changed, and what did not? We trace the shift into Yayoi quietly, from both the side of rupture and the side of continuity, within what is known.
10 Can We Learn from Jomon? — A Question Ten Thousand Years Old Sustainability, coexistence with nature, possession and circulation. What can the Jomon way of life teach us today? Touching on the background of the recent Jomon boom, while guarding against excessive romanticization, this final chapter receives a ten-thousand-year-old question quietly, without rushing to an easy answer.