Jomon period: content
The Beginnings of Jomon (up to Incipient Jomon) - in progress
The Developments of Pottery - in progress
Occupation of space by the Jomon people - in progress
Subsistence strategies during Jomon - in progress
Everyday life of the Jomon people - in progress
The spiritual landscape and culture of the Jomon - in progress
The last stages of Jomon and the Yayoi transition - in construction
Jomon period: Subsistence strategies during Jomon
Text in progress
In terms of subsistence, that is securing food, the fundamental change that happened in the early stages of the Jomon period was that of the systematic approach the population would develop, and in particular the storage of part of the food available in abundance during a certain time of the year. Pottery of course must have played a part in this change that had an important impact on the way of life of the Jomon people, allowing them to lead a more settled life. We know from organic remains that have been discovered at a number of sites that the Jomon diet was extremly varied, which indicates that the most was made of everything nature had to offer (although Habu underlines that the diet did rely in essence on a limited number of resources [1]). It also revealed that plants of all kinds were also part of the diet at that time. In all, evidence of over 70 types of fish and sea mammals have been found; although it is much more difficult to find conclusive traces of it, archaeologists think they would also eat insects and seaweed
Theories about Jomon subsistence patterns
Research in the field of subsistence patterns is relatively rare in the context of Japanese archaeology, when compared to pottery, artefacts or settlements studies [2]. Nonetheless, two theories about the Jomon diet emerged in the 1950s, based mostly on circumstancial evidence: on one hand, Sugao Yamagouchi's "salmon hypothesis" (which tried to explain the greater prosperity of eastern Japan up to the Middle Jomon by the importance of salmon in the diet) and Fujimori's "plant cultivation theory" (which stated that the numerous chipped stone axes where in fact used in plant cultivation as early as the Middle Jomon). Concrete evidence of both salmon fishing and plant cultivation would be later recovered. However, neither activity seems to have played as important a role as both theories had implied (see below in particular for plant cultivation during the Jomon period)
Maybe the most popular theory on Jomon subsistence is the Jomon calendar of Kobayashi. Jomon people are known for having multiplied their activites and technics in order to make the most of their environment, as we are about to see in greater detail; this "calendar" tried to map the yearly cycle of those activities. Of course, as Habu points out, there would be great regional and temporal variations of such a calendar, but this representation has the merit to clearly picture the diversity of Jomon activities and their careful planning
Evolution of the Jomon Diet
Of course, the diet did go through changes over such a long period of time. During the Incipient Jomon, the unique period in prehistoric Japan when, it seems, caves were fairly often used as dwellings, whereas remainings of pit buildings, as well as pottery, are still rather few (see Everyday life of the Jomon people and The Development of pottery respectively - see table of content above for links), the much greater proportion of hunting tools (and in some areas, conjointly, the high number of salmon bones), compared to comparatively few plant foods processing tools, reveal that the population would, at this early stage, rely essentially on hunting, and fishing in suitable areas. However, this picture does not cover the archipelago uniformally: in the Kyushu, settlements with a few pit buildings are much more common, and the processing of plant foods, and in particular acorns (see below) played a greater part than elsewhere at the time. The more temperate climate probably explains that fact, at least in part [3]
The next period, the Initial Jomon, shows quite a different picture, and that as early as the Yoriitomon subperiod, the first in the Initial Jomon [4]: a site of this period located at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory presents with an overwhelming majority of tools used to process plant foods. Dating from the same period, the remains of the shell midden of Natsushima (Kanagawa prefecture, in the Greater Tokyo area) clearly hint at sea fishing, a first in Jomon history; this later element should however be considered with caution. Indeed, should similar remains have been deposited at Incipient sites, it is quite possible that the rising sea level would have, in time, erased any trace of it
Hunting of the Jomon
Interestingly enough, Imamura has established a stricking parallel between the importance of game food in the diet and the total Jomon population in the Kanto region: they are inversely propotional. Jomon population roughly rose from the Incipient to the Middle Jomon where it reached its peak, before decreasing during the subsequent two subperiods. On the other hand, spearheads and arrowheads, the two main weapons used by hunters throughout the Jomon period (with the exception of the Incipient Jomon where tanged points were associated with the spearheads), as well as the number of pit-traps (an important hunting device used from the Palaeolithic), were at their lowest during the Middle Jomon. This constatation is reinforced by the fact that during a short period of the Early Jomon when population brutaly dropped in Kanto, the expected increase in hunting tools did, in fact, occur. It seems therefore that prosperity of the Jomon people was mostly linked with plant foods, and that they only fell back on game as a major component of their diet when plant resources - and sea resources as well - were becoming more difficult to come by
There is very little evidence of preservation and conservation of meat, but that doesn't mean that this did not occur. In particular, a structure found at the site of Kakoinohara (Kyushu) is believed to have been used to smoke meat. However, such evidence is rare, in particular compared to evidence of nuts storage
Fishing activities
There is no doubt that, to this day, products from the rivers and seas are important elements of the Japanese diet. A look at a map of Japan is enough to understand why this would be so. It should therefore come as no surprise that, as we've mentioned earlier, fishing was an activity that was carried out from the earliest stages of Jomon. But the topography of Japan has changed over time. Remains from fishing activities do appear sometimes far away from any river or coast: the shell midden furthest from the sea dates back to 4000 BC circa (the beginning of the Early Jomon) and is located about 70 km away from the nearest coast. That's because the see level had reached its highest point at that very time before retreating to the levels we are familiar with today (with a temporary slight raise during the Late Jomon)
The tools used for fishing and processing the resulting food show a great variety both geographically and through time. One of the earliest is the fish-hook, that came in many sizes and forms, allowing to catch medium and big fishes alike. The Kanto region is famous for the many small fish bones and the fish nets weights; the latters are also found in abundance in Hokkaido and on the coasts of northern Honshu. The same regions saw also the use of harpoons which kept evolving until the very end of the Jomon period. These would have served to fish on the open sea, while fish spears would mainly have served in bays and inlets. A rare example of fish weir, dating back to the Late Jomon, has been found at the site of Shidanai, in Iwate Prefecture (northeast Honshu)
It is believed that salmon in particular, but also trout, have played an important role, and Yamanouchi believed it was in fact a staple food in the northeast half of the archipelago (see above)
Sources of salt during the Jomon period
An interesting aspect of Jomon subsistence is the way they would obtain salt. It is possible that, like other populations, they would rely on the meat and animal blood to add enough salt to their diet; however, there's also evidence of salt added to aliments at a time when its extraction from seawater wasn't practised. Since those finds happened in regions where the soil was rich in salt, it is believed the inhabitants had found a way to extract it from the soil itself. As for seawater extraction, pots with very thin walls begin to appear during the Late Jomon on the northern Pacific coast of the Honshu island and studies have revealed that they must have been used for just that purpose. Similar finds inland indicate that this commodity was traded; however, the process seems to have been abandoned in the later stages of the Final Jomon and, given the importance of salt, we have difficulties explaining they reasons why that happened
The Role of acorns and other plant foods in the Jomon diet
Maybe the aspect of Jomon subsistence that has been covered more extensively is the importance of nuts during that period. Remaining nuts in storage pits can be found as early as the Incipient Jomon (the oldest storage pits, found in southern Kyushu, date back to 11,600 BC calibrated circa), which underlines two facts: the traditional importance of nuts in the Jomon diet and the careful planning of resources that is already taking place at those early stages. It appears that storage pits are only one of the many strategies the people would use during the Jomon period to preserve food. Nuts seem to have also been preserved on shelves in pit dwellings, while it is believed that raised-floor structures were, at least for some of them, storage houses. Fragments of salmon bones show reveal that they were smoked and dried in order to be preserved; careful inspection of the shell middens show that the activity of harvesting shellfish only happened during a short period whithin a year, and the scale of the shell middens by the Middle Jomon indicates that they were not processed sorely for immediate, local consumption, but to be preserved and possibly traded. Nuts too could be stored in great quantities
Moreover, some of the storage pits that were located in wet soils may have served simultaneously to remove the toxic tannic acids from the nuts - although that theory was refuted by Imamura, due to the presence in similar pits of nuts that either didn't require any treatment or, in the contrary, demanded procedures more complex than being simply left in water. Those latter procedures can last up to a month and are labor intensive, yet that didn't stop the Jomon people from heavily relying on nuts as staple food. As for the sweet chesnuts, which don't require processing to be edable by people, it seems that their trees were, to a certain extent, cultivated, in the sense that the growth of selected trees was priviledged around settlements
Which leads us to the next question which is still debated to this day: did Jomon people practise agriculture. For a long time, it was believed that Jomon populations were "strictly" hunters-gatherers. But as we've just seen, it wasn't the fact as they seem to have selected the trees they wanted to see grow around their settlements. It should therefore come as no surprise that additional evidence proves that they did cultivate plants, like barnyard millet; but can we talk about "agriculture" here? Some scholars are of the opinion that such a complex culture can not have been sustained by hunter-gatherers activities alone. Also, a form of incipient agriculture could help explain the great increase of population of the Middle Jomon; on the other hand, there is no element that allows us to think that any plant possibly cultivated had become a staple food. Recent analyses have revealed that baynard millet didn't play such a role, at least not at sites having been covered so far by this research [5]. Even the great abundance of chipped stone axes, on which Fujiwara based his assumption of Jomon agriculture during the Middle Jomon is not proof enough: evidence of many other plants, in particular plant roots, have been recovered. Chipped stone axes would have been useful to unearth them. However, while it is believed that those plant roots have played a substential role in the Jomon diet, none of them could have been a staple food. It is possible that plant cultivation was only one of the many skills the Jomon people developed to exploit the resources available around them
It is not the only surprise that has come recently regarding the exploitation of natural resources by Jomon. Early on, lacquered artefacts dating from the Final Jomon were found: this discovery led scholars to guess that the technics associated with lacquer were imported from China. Only, among more recent finds are lacquered items dating back to the Early Jomon; also, we know that one of the elements of lacquer, a red pigment, was used as early as the Incipient Jomon. These elements have put a new light on things: it is now believed that lacquer may well have been discovered by the Jomon people
All these elements reveal that the populations of Japan during the Jomon period had been accumulating a great kowledge of their environment, and that they were able to organize based on a very precise yearly schedule their various occupations
[1] Habu, Junko, "Ancient Jomon of Japan", p. 63
[2] Idem, chapter 3
[3] Imamura, Kenji, "Prehistoric Japan" (see bibliography)
[4] Some scholars support Yamagouchi Sugao's view that the Yoriitomon subperiod is in fact the last of the Incipient Jomon; however, all of the sources I've reviewed so far and which discuss the Yoriitomon (for instance Keally and Imamura), place it at the onset of the Initial Jomon [5] Habu, Junko, "Ancient Jomon of Japan", p. 72