30
Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019)
Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence>
the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy
Mark J. Hudson
Eurasia3angle Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, DE
hudson@shh.mpg.de
ABSTRACT – This essay argues that the primary socio-economic formations of premodern Japan
were formed in the Bronze Age via processes of ancient globalization across Eurasia. Multi-crop
cereal agriculture combining rice, millet, wheat and barley with a minor contribution from domes-
ticated animals spread from Bronze Age Korea to Japan at the beginning of the 1
st
millennium
BC. This agricultural system gradually expanded through the archipelago while engendering new
economic niches centred on trade, raiding and specialized fishing. From the 5
th
century AD the
horse became widely used for warfare, transport and overseas trade. While alluvial rice farming
provided staple finance for the early state, it is argued here that the concept of the ‘maritime mode
of production’ better explains economic processes in the nonstate spaces of Japan until the early
17
th
century. Despite this diversity in socio-economic formations, the post-Bronze Age globalization
of food in Japan appears to have been delayed compared to many other regions of Eurasia and to
have been less impacted by elite consumption. Further research is required to confirm this sugges-
tion, and the essay outlines several areas where archaeological research could contribute to debates
over the ‘Great Divergence’ and the economic development of the modern world.
IZVLE∞EK – V prispevku razpravljamo o tem, da so se prvotne dru∫beno-ekonomske oblike predmo-
derne Japonske oblikovale v ≠asu bronaste dobe, in sicer s procesi starodobne globalizacije v Evra-
ziji. Poljedelstvo s ∏tevilnimi vrstami ∫it, ki vklju≠ujejo ri∫, proso, p∏enico in je≠men, in z manj∏im
dele∫em udoma≠enih ∫ivali se je ∏irilo iz bronastodobne Koreje na Japonsko na za≠etku 1. tiso≠let-
ja pr. n. ∏t. Tak∏en poljedelski sistem se je postopoma ∏iril ≠ez celotno oto≠je, kar je povzro≠ilo nove
ekonomske ni∏e, osredoto≠ene na trgovanje, roparske napade in specializiran ribolov. Od 5. stoletja
n. ∏t. se je raz∏irila uporaba konjev pri vojskovanju, transportu in ≠ezmorskem trgovanju. Medtem
ko je pridelava ri∫a na naplavinah nudila stabilno financiranje za prve dr∫ave, v ≠lanku razpravlja-
mo o tem, da lahko ekonomske procese za obmo≠ja na Japonskem, ki so bila izven teh dr∫av, do za-
≠etka 17. stoletja bolje razlo∫imo s konceptom ‘morskega na≠ina proizvodnje’. Kljub tak∏ni razno-
likosti v dru∫beno-ekonomskih oblikah se zdi, da se je po-bronastodobna globalizacija v prehrani na
Japonskem v primerjavi z drugimi regijami v Evraziji zgodila z zamikom in je bila pod manj∏im vpli-
vom porabe elit. To bo treba potrditi z dodatnimi raziskavami, na kar opozorimo tudi v prispevku
in okvirno predstavimo, na kak∏en na≠in bi lahko arheolo∏ke raziskave prispevale k razpravam o
‘velikem razhajanju’ in ekonomskemu razvoju modernega sveta.
KEY WORDS – agriculture; globalisation; mode of production; Great Divergence; Bronze Age; Japan
KLJU∞NE BESEDE – poljedelstvo; globalizacija; na≠in proizvodnje; veliko razhajanje; bronasta doba;
Japonska
K prazgodovini velikega razhajanja>
izvor japonske predmoderne ekonomije v bronasti dobi
DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.2

Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy
31
beans (Glycine max) and barnyard millet (Echino-
chloa esculenta) (Nakayama 2010; Crawford 2011;
Obata 2016). Millet farming reached southern Ko-
rea from northeast China by around 3500 BC (Lee
2011; 2017). Jōmon populations must have been
aware of this, because one of the earliest Korean
sites with evidence of millet is Tongsamdong, a site
on the south coast of the peninsula long-known for
remains relating to Neolithic interaction between
Korea and Japan (Sample 1974; Bausch 2017).
However, the Neolithic millet agriculture found on
the Korean peninsula was not adopted in Japan, and
it was not until the beginning of the 1
st
millennium
BC when a new complex of mixed cereal agriculture
spread from Bronze Age Korea to Kyushu, giving
rise to the cultures of the Yayoi period (c. 900 BC –
AD 250). This agricultural complex included rice
(Oryza sativa), both broomcorn (Panicum milia-
ceum) and foxtail (Setaria italica) millet as well as
wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum
vulgare) (Nakayama 2010; Nasu, Momohara 2016).
The first millennium BC agricultural expansion to
Japan built on preceding Neolithic networks across
the Korea Strait (Bausch 2017), but involved new
Bronze Age globalizations. While it was earlier as-
sumed that agriculture reached Japan from the
Yangzi basin of southern China (e.g., Egami 1964),
in fact it was a combination of southern and north-
ern Chinese farming systems, as well as West Asian
crops (notably wheat and barley), which spread to
the Japanese Islands (Stevens, Fuller 2017). The
mixed nature of Japanese agriculture is clear even
from mythological texts produced by the Yamato
state. The Nihon Shoki (AD 720) describes how Uke-
mochi no kami, the goddess of food, transmitted a
range of important foodstuffs after her death: “On
the crown of her head there had been produced the
ox and the horse; on the top of her forehead there
had been produced millet; over her eyebrows there
had been produced the silkworm; within her eyes
there had been produced panic [broomcorn millet];
in her belly there had been produced rice; in her ge-
nitals there had been produced wheat, large beans
and small beans.” (Aston 1972.I. 32–33).
Moreover, the Yamato state issued a number of of-
ficial directives between 715 and 840 encouraging
the cultivation of crops other than rice (Tab. 1).
Despite this, there is still a pervasive emphasis on
rice in many archaeological writings on Japan, ulti-
mately reflecting the way the ancient state used rice
to define Japanese ethnic identity (Batten 2003).
Introduction
The premodern economy of the Japanese archipel-
ago has received considerable attention from eco-
nomic historians who have attempted to explain
why Japan was the first Asian country to industri-
alize. Many such historians have concluded that pre-
modern Japan was characterized by relatively high
living standards and economic growth until the so-
called ‘Great Divergence’ of the early modern era
(Hanley 1983; Pomeranz 2000). Recently, Jean-Pa-
scal Bassino et al. (2019) found that even during the
19
th
century living standards and productivity in
Japan remained high as compared to the rest of Asia.
Despite its unquestioned importance in understand-
ing the origins of industrialization, however, compa-
rative research on premodern Japanese economic
history has tended to emphasize shared similarities
with Europe, such as markets, institutions, and the
rise of capitalism. This research also relies heavily
on documentary records produced by state bureau-
cracies. As a result, differences in premodern socio-
economic formations between Japan and the rest of
Eurasia – especially those formations which receive
little attention in state records and are primarily
known from archaeology-remain less well under-
stood. Historians of Japan have long used archaeo-
logical findings in their work (e.g., Farris 1998;
Wakita 2001). However, recent years have seen sig-
nificant changes in our understanding of many as-
pects of the archaeology of early Japan, and these
changes necessitate a re-evaluation of several as-
pects of economic history.
This essay argues that feudal or peasant modes of
production were not the only game in town in pre-
modern Japan. In a preliminary attempt to develop
a ‘prehistory’ of the Great Divergence, I discuss the
roots and evolution of socio-economic formations in
Japan from c. 900 BC to AD 1640 from a primarily
archaeological perspective using Scott’s (2017) ideas
about post-Bronze Age resistance to alluvial states
and Johan Ling et al.’s (2018) concept of the ‘mari-
time mode of production’. The essay summarises
current understandings of the relevant issues but
also identifies areas where future research is re-
quired.
Bronze Age agriculture
The Neolithic Jōmon cultures of the Japanese Islands
had combined hunter-gathering with the manage-
ment and cultivation of several native plants, inclu-
ding adzuki (Vigna angularis var. angularis), soy-

Mark J. Hudson
32
Shin’ichiro Fujio (2013) defined
the Yayoi as a culture which se-
lected irrigated paddy-field rice
cultivation as its basis of produc-
tion and which engaged in ‘Ya-
yoi rituals’ to maintain that pro-
duction base. This interpretation
leads Fujio to conclude that less
than half of the Japanese archipe-
lago fits his own definition. Al-
though he presents this as a cri-
tique of a simplistic association
between rice and the Yayoi, Fu-
jio is unable to develop an alter-
native framework which takes
full account of social and econo-
mic diversity in Bronze Age Japan, leading him to
follow Tsuyoshi Fujimoto (1988) in positing the exi-
stence of ‘blurred’ or ‘fuzzy’ cultural zones surround-
ing the Yayoi. Areas of ancient Japan with wet rice
cultivation are assumed to be the norm and are
termed the ‘central culture’ zone by both Fujimoto
(1988) and Fujio (2013).
The spread of agriculture from north Kyushu across
the Japanese archipelago was not especially rapid.
Some readers will note that this statement contra-
dicts my earlier evaluations of a fast expansion (Hud-
son 1990; 1999), and a short explanation is in order.
Firstly, recent radiocarbon dating puts the beginning
of the Yayoi period some five centuries earlier than
previously assumed (Fujio 2011). According to cur-
rent chronologies, therefore, the Yayoi period lasts
some 1200 years, a time span which is almost as long
as the 1500 years of the following Kofun through
early modern eras (Kawamura 2018). Latest esti-
mates plot the spread of Yayoi culture as follows:
north Kyushu by the end of the 10
th
century BC, Shi-
koku and the central Inland Sea in the 8
th
century,
the Kinai (Osaka-Kyoto) region in the 7
th
, the Tōkai
and Hokuriku in the 6
th
, and the Chōbu, Kantō and
southern Tōhoku in the 3
rd
century BC (Segawa
2017.19). Rice paddy fields were constructed in Ao-
mori in the northern Tōhoku in the 4
th
century BC
but rice growing in this region was quickly aban-
doned, only to return centuries later. Agriculture did
not reach the Ryukyu Islands in the south until the
10
th
century AD (Takamiya et al. 2016). In Hokka-
ido, barley is known from sites of the Iron Age
Okhotsk culture (Leipe et al. 2017). In the 9
th
cen-
tury, the cultivation of barley, wheat and broomcorn
and foxtail millet has been confirmed from the Sap-
poro area (Crawford, Yoshizaki 1986). The medie-
val period saw a further expansion of crops from
Honshu into Hokkaido (Yamamoto 1996), but a full-
scale transition to agriculture across Hokkaido did
not occur until the settler colonial period of the late
19
th
century. In some regions of Japan, agriculture
seems to have spread as a package with the Bronze
Age Yayoi culture. In other areas it is possible that
local hunter-gatherers took up farming themselves
(Fujio 2011), although the evidence for the latter is
largely circumstantial.
The speed of agricultural colonization is, of course,
relative. Compared to Japan, for example, the spread
of farming across Britain and Ireland seems to have
been extremely fast (Bocquet-Appel et al. 2012;
Shennan 2018), perhaps taking only some 300 ra-
diocarbon years (Whittle et al. 2011) despite a larg-
er surface area (c. 312 773km
2
for Britain and Ire-
land compared to c. 283 542km
2
for Honshu, Kyu-
shu and Shikoku). On the ground, settlement by far-
mers would have depended on local geographic con-
ditions and, in the case of Japan, the actual areas
suitable for early farming would have been extreme-
ly limited due to the mountainous topography. It
has been suggested that the rapid Neolithic coloni-
zation of Britain was aided by a series of separate
migrations from the continent (Whittle et al. 2011).
Such a scenario also seems likely for Yayoi Japan,
although further research is required on specific
routes. Another point is that the speed of an initial
agricultural colonization needs to be balanced against
evidence for later abandonment and re-introduc-
tions. In Britain, it has been proposed that cereal
farming was abandoned in many areas after five
centuries, only to be re-introduced in the Bronze
Age (Stevens, Fuller 2012). With the exception of
the northern Tōhoku region mentioned above, this
possibility has yet to be seriously considered by Ja-
panese archaeologists, who define Yayoi farming on
Year Decree
715 Each adult male shall additionally sow barley and millet
722 For warding off famine, plant late-ripening millet, buckwheat, barley and
wheat
723 Sow and harvest barley and wheat
766 Plant barley and wheat
767 Expand the cultivation of mulberry
820 Plant barley and wheat
839 Sow buckwheat and millet
840 Cultivate dry fields. For support in bad years, plant two kinds of millet
(kibi ∂broomcorn] and takakibi ∂sorghum]), barnyard grass, barley, large
and small beans, and even sesame
Tab. 1. “Measures for the Increased Production of Miscellaneous
Grains” issued by the Japanese state 715–840 (adapted from Kimura
2018).

Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy
33
the basis of its irreversibility (Fujio 2013). As com-
pared to Neolithic Britain, however, the late arrival
of farming in Japan probably gave it greater flexi-
bility and resilience (cf. Fuller, Lucas 2017).
Domesticated animals played a relatively minor part
in the initial Bronze Age expansion of agriculture to
Japan. The pig was the main such animal associated
with the introduction of cereal agriculture in the Ya-
yoi period, but the status of pigs in Bronze Age Japan
has been controversial (Hongo 2017). Some pigs
were probably introduced from Korea at this time,
but extensive inter-breeding with wild boar proba-
bly occurred. Pigs are also known in the Iron Age
Okhotsk culture in Hokkaido (Hudson 2004). Dome-
sticated chickens first appear in the Middle Yayoi
(c. 400 BC–AD 100), but are rare until the Middle
Ages. In Yayoi Japan, only some 13 chicken bones
(NISP) have been discovered from seven sites (Eda
2018). Chickens are archaeologically more common
by the early modern Tokugawa period and comprise
22% of avifauna excavated from Tokugawa sites (Ni-
imi 2008). However, this figure is significantly lower
than at European sites from the same time period
(Tab. 2).
Horses were introduced to Japan in the late 4
th
or
5
th
centuries (Sasaki 2018). Cattle bones also appear
from the 5
th
century, becoming more widespread
from the 6
th
(Hongo 2017). According to the Nihon
Shoki, an envoy from the Korean state of Paekche
presented a camel, a donkey and two goats to the
Japanese court in 599. Another camel was given by
the state of Koguryo ˘ in 618, but none of these ani-
mals became common in Japan until much later, and
camels were never integrated into the Japanese land-
scape. Goats were, however, common in Okinawa
and the islands of northwest Kyushu from the me-
dieval period (Thiede 1998; Toizumi 2018).
Archaeological evidence is crucial to understanding
the role of domesticated animals in ancient Japan,
since historical texts sometimes borrow Chinese
expressions about animals. An entry in the Nihon
Shoki, for example, describes a prosperous nation
as one where “a measure of rice was sold for one
piece of silver, and horses and kine covered the
moors”, but the translator of this text takes “the
whole passage to be a flight of the author’s fancy,
stimulated by his recollections of Chinese litera-
ture” (Aston 1972.I.391). One example where texts
and archaeology match well is the domestic cat. Cats
are first mentioned in the diary of the late 9
th
-cen-
tury emperor Uda, and the first archaeological evi-
dence for this animal in Japan dates to the 10
th
cen-
tury at the Kannonji site in Tokushima (Yamane
2008). Cats were initially associated with the aristo-
cracy, and from the Kamakura period (1185–1333)
were used by shrines and temples to keep rats from
damaging sutras and other documents (Yamane
2008.86).
A scarcity of domesticated animals has been pro-
posed as a distinctive feature of the premodern Ja-
panese economy, most vociferously by the environ-
mental archaeologist Yoshinori Yasuda (2006).
While Yasuda’s writings have been widely critiqued
for their nationalistic interpretations of the Japanese
past (Reitan 2017), there is a need for further em-
pirical research on at least five issues to determine
just how distinctive patterns of domesticated ani-
mal usage in premodern Japan really were: (1) his-
torical differences between domesticated animal uti-
lization in Japan and neighbouring areas such as Ko-
Tab. 2. Percentage of Gallus domesticus as a total of all avian fauna from early modern Japan and
Europe. Unidentified avian fauna were removed from the totals before calculating the percentages.
Site\location Period
% G. gallus Chicken sample
Source
domesticus size (NISP)
Japan Tokugawa (1603–1868) 22.1 1605 Niimi 2008
Savvatiev Monastery,
14–16 th
centuries 46.66 7 Zinoviev 2019
Tver oblast, Russia
Gdansk, Poland 16–18 th centuries 45 190 Makowiecki, Gotfredsen 2002
Middle Volga,
16–17 th
centuries 50.97 236 Galimova et al. 2013
Russia (3 sites)
St. Anne’s Square,
17 th
-early 20
th
centuries 56.25 18 Fothergill 2017
Belfast, N. Ireland
Santa Clara-a-Velha
17 th
century π63 1462 Moreno-Garcia, Detry 2010
Convent, Coimbra, Portugal
Stafford Castle, UK 19 th
century 70.77 491 Thomas 2011

Mark J. Hudson
34
rea; (2) actual numbers of domesticated animals in
Japan; (3) the extent to which wild animals and
birds were eaten as an alternative to domesticates;
(4) the role of commercialization and capitalism in
promoting meat consumption; and (5) the influence
of elite political controls over diet. All of these issues
require evidence from zooarchaeology, which some-
times does not match that from the historical record
(Albarella 1999).
From the Neolithic period, domesticated animals
were widely adopted across Eurasia but actual pat-
terns of utilization were variable and were influ-
enced by regional ecological and historical condi-
tions (Manning et al. 2013; Balasse et al. 2017;
Zeder 2017). The animals that were domesticated
in West Asia in the 8
th
millennium BC spread to Eu-
rope north of the Mediterranean through a series of
cultural and biological adaptations including dairy-
ing and an increased reliance on cattle at the ex-
pense of ovicaprids (Ethier et al. 2017). Pigs were
also domesticated in China but spread more slowly
to Northeast Asia, including Korea, the Russian Far
East and Japan (Kuzmin 1997). Some Japanese his-
torians such as Nakazawa (2009) see a major diffe-
rence between domestic animal exploitation in Ja-
pan and that in China and Korea, yet Korea remains
poorly understood in this respect. European histo-
rians tend to emphasize low levels of domestic ani-
mal usage across East Asia as a whole. Eric Jones
(2003) argued that the European accumulation of
capital in the form of livestock was one cause of
what he called The European Miracle. Kenneth Po-
meranz (2000.32–35) claims that the scarcity of do-
mestic animals in many parts of Asia had little ef-
fect on economic development, but further research
is needed to support this argument for the ancient
and medieval periods.
The consumption of animals in premodern Japan
must be understood in relation to questions of poli-
tical control by the emperor and social elites, as well
as complex histories of social taboos. It has been
argued that at least until the 9
th
century – when Bud-
dhist ideas gained greater influence amongst the
aristocracy – abstinence from killing animals and
eating meat served as a type of magico-ritual means
of avoiding disasters (Harada 1993; Nakazawa
2009). Prohibitions against the use of certain resour-
ces were also a way by which elites could control
their subjects. The late 13
th
century Azuma Kagami
contains prohibitions against burning moorland to
hunt animals and against using oil cakes to poison
rivers to catch fish (Taniguchi 2014). Various social
taboos were also associated with fish. According to
the mid-18
th
century Efu fūzokushi, “tuna, sweet
potato, pumpkin, and such are exceedingly low
class foods, and even commoners are ashamed to
eat them openly” (Sakurai 2017.680).
The presence of good pastureland in many areas of
eastern Japan meant that horses were more com-
monly raised there than in the west of the country.
This difference extended to animals used in agricul-
tural work, with cattle being more common in most
of western Japan, whereas horses were more fre-
quently used in east Japan as well as in southern
Kyushu and southern Shikoku (Kōno 2009). In the
ancient period, horses were raised on official gov-
ernment ranches, but also in nonstate spaces by
groups such as the Emishi of the northern Tōhoku
(Matsumoto 2018).
The barbarian niche and the maritime mode
of production
Even in Europe, premodern history has for the most
part adopted a land-based perspective (Rüdiger
2017) and – notwithstanding the influential critiques
of Amino (2012) and others – this remains true for
Japan. In this context, the term ‘land-based’ may be
less useful that the concept of ‘nonstate spaces’ de-
veloped by James Scott (2009; 2017). Although the
term ‘feudalism’ is rarely used in more recent Japa-
nese historiography, there is still an assumption that
the economy centred around aristocratic landlords
who obtained a surplus from dependent peasants.
Chris Wickham (2005.304), an historian of medie-
val Europe, has proposed a ‘peasant mode of pro-
duction’ for “societies in which peasants are most-
ly independent producers, and the local rich and
powerful are dominant only over a minority of the
peasantry, or are partly direct producers them-
selves”. However, this concept seems difficult to ap-
ply to Japan. In an alternative approach, which would
appear to be more relevant to the Japanese context,
Ling et al. (2018) have proposed a ‘maritime mode of
production’ which combined agricultural production
with new maritime, warrior and trading dynamics.
Although Ling and colleagues illustrate this model
with Bronze and Viking Age examples from Scandi-
navia, they suggest that the maritime mode of pro-
duction was more widespread, and briefly note com-
parative examples from Island Southeast Asia, Ocea-
nia, and the Northwest Coast of North America.
As in Europe, land-based power in Japan has often
been contrasted with the opposing, ‘dangerous’ world

Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy
35
of pirates and others who attempted to live in non-
state spaces. In a much-cited work, Shōsuke Murai
(1993) saw medieval pirate/traders as ‘marginal
men’. This framework derives in part from the ‘agra-
rian fundamentalism’ of Confucian thought, which
was perhaps less strict in Japan than in Korea or
China (Amino 2012), yet I believe this opposition
between the land and the sea in Japanese history to
be over-stated. Ling et al.’s (2018) maritime mode of
production emphasizes that maritime raiding and
trading could incorporate an agricultural sector
owned by free farmers and chieftains.
New maritime adaptations had to some extent de-
veloped in Japan from the Late Jōmon period, before
farming had been introduced from Korea, with a
new emphasis on offshore resources such as tuna,
marlin and sharks (Toizumi 2008). However, the ar-
rival of agriculture and immigrant populations in
the Yayoi transformed post-Jōmon economies in the
archipelago, opening up new opportunities which –
following the logic of Scott (2017) – might be termed
the ‘barbarian niche’ (Hudson in press). In Hokka-
ido, Epi-Jōmon groups focused on sea bottom fish,
especially Pleuronectinae and Japanese halibut (Pa-
ralichthys olivaceus), as well as swordfish (Segawa
2017). All of these were difficult and dangerous spe-
cies to fish, and it can be assumed that opportunities
for trade were a major stimulus. From Hokkaido
down to Kyushu, abalone also became a very com-
mon trade item, a pattern that continued into the
Tokugawa period. The long-distance connections be-
tween maritime-oriented populations along the coast
of the Sea of Japan is shown by various categories
of archaeological evidence including shell beads and
rock art (Hudson, Barnes 1991; Segawa 2017). Cer-
tain Japanese rock and tomb art motifs from this pe-
riod mirror Indo-European mythological themes con-
nected to ships, horses and the sun (Segawa 2017;
cf. Kristiansen 2012), and it has yet to be explained
how such influences might have reached the archi-
pelago.
The post-Jōmon ‘barbarian niche’ did not only in-
volve maritime resources. As noted above, horses
were also important in many ‘peripheral’ (meaning
peripheral to the Yamato state) regions of Japan.
The early 8
th
century gazetteer, the Hizen no Kuni
Fudoki, mentions that maritime-based peoples in
the Gotō Islands of Nagasaki raised horses and cattle
(Aoki 1997.265). Mountain bandits were also com-
mon in many areas of the archipelago. But it was
the sea-based ‘pirates’ and traders who developed
enormous power across Japan and into the broader
East Asia region (Amino 2012; Carré 2017; Oxen-
boell 2005; in press; Shapinsky 2009; 2014; Smits
2018). Medieval Japan can be characterized by pro-
cesses of political decentralization and economic
commercialization (Yamamura 1990), yet the pi-
rates served to promote ‘connectivity’ (Horden, Pur-
cell 2000) across the region. Forest products, in-
cluding furs and timber, were important items of
commerce with China and Korea, as were slaves
(Nelson 2004; Totman 2014; von Verschuer 2006).
Archaeology is crucial to our understanding of this
trade. A recently published example is Deryugin’s
(2018) suggestion that petroleum for lighting was
traded from northern Japan to the state of Parhae in
northern Korea and the Russian Far East. As early as
668, the Nihon Shoki mentions that “the province
of Koshi [the modern Hokuriku region] presented
to the Emperor burning earth and burning water”,
items that are assumed to be coal and petroleum
(Aston 1972.II.289).
Of course, the sea also supported state power in
early Japan, but its role in this respect seems to have
undergone significant changes over time. Guillaume
Carré (2017) argues that “the Yamato court was not
particularly interested in the sea” between the 8
th
and 12
th
centuries, although he notes that internal
seaways were used to collect taxes. In earlier centu-
ries, however, the sea had been important as a route
to attempted territorial expansion through frequent
attacks on the Korean peninsula, as described in the
Nihon Shoki. The historian Gari Ledyard (1975)
even called the early Japanese state the ‘Thalasso-
cracy of Wa’, although he never published a full argu-
ment in support of this concept.
Food globalization and the economy of premo-
dern Japan
Background remarks
The long-distance exchange of ancient foods has
become an important topic of research in recent ar-
chaeology (Boivin 2017; Boivin et al. 2012; Liu,
Jones 2014). Research on the ancient globalization
of food can provide new perspectives on the ques-
tion of wealth disparities across Eurasia. Many early
travellers from Europe remarked that Asian societies
were characterized by profligate aristocracies who
exploited poor peasants (Jones 2003.5). Further re-
search is needed on how the Japanese Islands articu-
lated with premodern processes of globalization, but
it seems hard to avoid the impression that those
processes were often quite delayed with respect to
the rest of Eurasia. Even rice, that most symbolic of

Mark J. Hudson
36
crops in Japan, reached the archipelago very late. By
comparison, imported rice has been found at a num-
ber of Roman sites in Europe from at least the 1
st
century AD (Reed, Lelekovi≤ 2019), a date that is
not significantly different from many parts of east-
ern Japan. The slow rate of the globalization of food
in early Japan appears to mirror that of other techno-
logies, such as wheeled transport. The oldest wood-
en wheel in Europe, from the Ljubljana marshes,
dates to around 3150 BC. Very sophisticated wood-
working technologies were found in Neolithic and
Bronze Age Japan, but the wheel and wheeled trans-
port were probably not introduced until the middle
of the 1
st
millennium AD. Chariots were never used
in Japan, and the emperor and aristocracy do not
seem to have used wheeled transport for political
display until as late as the 10
th
century (Nakazawa
2009.6).
Several new crops and varieties did have a major
economic impact in premodern Japan. Champa rice
(Oryza sativa indica var. spontanea or perennis),
introduced from south China sometime between
1100 and 1300, not only produced higher yields but
was also more resistant to disease, drought and
flooding (Farris 2006.132). Champa rice also be-
came popular, because its taste made it less attrac-
tive to aristocratic tax demands (Totman 2014.126).
The introduction of the pumpkin and sweet potato
shows the importance of contact with the European
trading nations in the late 16
th
and early 17
th
cen-
turies, a time of considerable agricultural change in
parts of Europe (Grau-Sologestoa, Albarella 2019).
Some plants did not take off widely upon their first
arrival in Japan. Cotton is said to have first been in-
troduced to Japan in 799 by a man from Southeast
Asia. In the following year, the court ordered cotton
to be grown in several provinces but this was not
followed, and cotton was not widely grown until it
was re-introduced from Korea in the 15
th
century
(von Verschuer 2016.26). DNA evidence suggests
that melons (Cucumis melo L.), which appear to
have first reached Japan at the end of the 1
st
mil-
lennium BC, were re-introduced on several occa-
sions thereafter, but underwent intensified artificial
selection for desired traits after around AD 1000
(Tanaka et al. 2016).
One explanation for the apparently slow rate of food
globalization in Japan may relate to different atti-
tudes and ideologies of state control. Von Verschuer
(2016) notes that until the 17
th
century the Japanese
government hardly ever provided peasants with
technical assistance or manuals on agricultural im-
provement, even though the large Chinese litera-
ture on such matters was known in Japan. Von Ver-
schuer’s (2016.13) suggested explanation that “the
Japanese mentality put zeal before technical abili-
ty” begs the question of why the ancient and medie-
val state in Japan was so weak in that respect. A
hypothesis for future consideration is that – from
the perspective of food globalization – Japanese
elites had a relatively low influence over the intro-
duction and spread of new food items. Testing this
hypothesis would provide new perspectives on the
role of the profligate consumption by Asian elites
proposed by Jones (2003) and others.
The role of commercial fisheries
The globalization of food does not just involve the
transfer of exotic items, but the whole process by
which new foodstuffs are incorporated into the broa-
der social and economic structures of a particular
culture. This process may have important knock-on
effects on social change beyond food. As an example,
in this section I briefly consider fish and fisheries.
Japanese elites enjoyed an extensive culture of ban-
quets. The abbot of the Chōrakuji temple in modern
Gunma is said to have attended more than 100 such
banquets in 1565 alone (von Verschuer 2017). Fol-
lowing Buddhist precepts some of these meals were
vegetarian, but Japanese elites were also major con-
sumers of seafood in feasts and banquets. Zooar-
chaeological analyses from the residence of the
Ōuchi family in Yamaguchi has shown that around
AD 1500, as well as ducks, pheasants, sparrows, rab-
bits, otters, martens and badgers, a huge variety of
marine and river resources was consumed, including
scorpion fish (Scorpaenidae), Asian sea bass (Lateo-
labrax sp.), Carangidae mackerels, sweetfish (Pleco-
glossus altivelis), sharks, rays (Myliobatiformes),
pike congers (Muraenesocidae), Serranidae sea bass-
es and groupers, grunts (Haemulidae), surfperch
(Embiotocidae), salmonids, tuna and bonito (Scom-
bridae), sardines, carp, abalone, horned turban shell
(Turbo cornutus) and the Asian rapa whelk (Rapa-
na venosa) (Kitajima 2014). Elite sites of the early
modern Tokugawa period are also marked by a large
diversity of marine remains. For example, the Mi-
nistry of Post and Telecommunications Iikura Annex
site in Tokyo, the location of Tokugawa daimyo re-
sidences of the Yonezawa and Usuki domains, pro-
duced 25 types of fish and 18 types of shellfish (Sa-
kurai 2017).
The medieval expansion of offshore fishing has
been seen as one important factor in the economic

Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy
37
rise of Europe (Jones 2003.75). In Asia, by contrast,
Jones (2003.167–168) argues that the available fi-
sheries were much less rich: “Asians were simply
not provided with as good marine fishing-grounds
as the North Sea and the far side of the Atlantic of-
fered to Europeans.” Japan is noted as an exception
to this generalization, but Jones provides no discus-
sion of the historical role of fisheries in Japan. Based
on contemporary data from the Food and Agricul-
ture Organization of the United Nations, fisheries in
the northwest Pacific accounted for 29% of global
marine capture in 2016; the north Atlantic by con-
trast comprised only 13% (Fig. 1). Although Japan is
most conveniently located to access northwest Pa-
cific fisheries, access from China and Korea would
also have been possible had such an economy deve-
loped in those countries.
Archaeology has played an important role in under-
standing the historical commercialization of fishing
(Pitcher, Lam 2015). Zooarchaeological evidence
shows a rapid increase in offshore catches of herring
and cod in northwest Europe after around AD 1000
(Barrett et al. 2004; Galloway 2017). Long-term
trends in fisheries in Japan are quantitatively less
well understood, but a broad outline is known from
the work of Toizumi (2008) and others (Fig. 2). What
stands out from these trends is the great variety of
fishing adaptations found in Japan over time. Some
of this variation no doubt reflects environmental
factors and, from the medieval period, it is possible
to identify the growing commercialization of fish-
eries, yet the overall diversity is still high.
In Europe, herring from Britain were being traded
to France and Germany by at least the 12
th
century
AD (Barrett 2018.130). The increasing commercia-
lization of fisheries in Europe probably derived from
a range of factors, including Christian fasting regu-
lations, population growth and urbanism, and de-
clining freshwater fish resources (Hoffmann 1996;
2002; Barrett et al. 2004). It is presently unclear to
what extent similar factors affected fisheries in Ja-
pan. Various social taboos surrounding the killing
and eating of animals in Japan might be assumed to
have encouraged fish consumption, but this relation-
ship needs to be investigated using long-term zoo-
archaeological sequences. Jun’ya Sakurai (2017.680)
claims that the fish most preferred by the Japanese
during the medieval period was carp, whereas red
Fig. 1. Global marine fisheries capture in 2016
(based on data in FAO 2018).
Jo ¯mon
• Pottery used to process marine foods
• Salmon exploitation
• Large shell mounds with inshore (e.g., Acanthopagrus
schlegelii & Lateolabrax japonicus) and offshore (e.g.,
Katsuwonus pelamis) fish in addition to shellfish
• Freshwater species exploited, especially in western Japan
Yayoi
• Big decline in shell mounds
• 'Jomon type' offshore fishing continues in NW Kyushu,
Hokkaido and along Pacific coast of Tohoku
• Carp raised in rice paddy fields
Kofun-Heian
• Specialist processing of K. pelamis, abalone and other
resources used for tax payments
• Small-scale shell middens in Kanto region
• Large Corbicula sp. midden at Kaminagahama (Shimane)
Medieval
• Tuna, Scomberomorus niphonius, Coryphaena hippurus
and Pagrus major common at Kamakura and other urban
sites
• Blood clam (Anadara broughtonii) middens around Osa-
ka Bay suggest new netting techniques
• Growing commercial-isation, salmon trade in Hokkaido
Early Modern
• Heavy exploitaion of Tokyo Bay to feed Edo
• Dominance of Pagrus major in Kanto follows medieval
trend, but matched by increased variety of exploited fish
• Decline in Meretrix lusoria and increase in Venerupis phi-
lippinarum and Mactra chinensis possibly linked with ur-
ban pollution 
• Dried herring imported from Hokkaido as fertliser
Fig. 2. Major trends in Japanese fisheries exploita-
tion from the Jōmon to early modern periods. Based
on Toizumi (2008), Habu et al. (2011), Hudson
(1994), Nakajima et al. (2010), Ōnishi (2014), and
other sources.

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Mark J. Hudson
38
sea bream (Pagrus major) became the
most popular fish in the early modern
era. This shift might reflect medieval
over-exploitation of freshwater fish, but
the Japanese fisheries record is charac-
terized by high regional and chronolo-
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needed. By the early modern Tokuga-
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conservation methods had already been
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Figure 3 shows a decline in the number
of shell middens in Japan from the Bronze Age Ya-
yoi period. Figures for the Jōmon to Kofun periods
are taken from Nakao Sakazume (1959). As noted by
Junko Habu et al. (2011), based on more recent data
actual shell midden numbers are likely to be higher,
but the overall trend shown here can be assumed to
reflect long-term changes in the use of marine re-
sources. An important caveat, however, is that many
Jōmon shell mounds are located on higher ground
and have been less disturbed by modern coastal de-
velopment.
Conclusions
The field of Japanese history is entering an exciting
new phase wherein interdisciplinary and revisionist
approaches are beginning to transform traditional
understandings. Recent books by Takuro Segawa
(2017) and Gregor Smits (2018) can be cited as
examples of this trend. This exploratory essay has
argued that Bronze Age globalization established
mixed cereal farming in the Japanese Islands and
also stimulated the formation of new, ‘post-Jōmon’
economies filling what I have called the ‘barbarian
niche’. Continuing globalization over the historic pe-
riod was important, but further research is needed to
explore the role of elite consumption in that pro-
cess. A discussion of historic transformations in Ja-
panese fisheries was used to illustrate this problem.
Fig. 3. Number of shell middens in Honshu, Shikoku and Kyu-
shu from the Jōmon to medern periods. Data from Sakatsume
(1959) and Kenmotsu (2014).
The research leading to these results has received
funding from the European Research Council (ERC)
under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme (grant agreement No.
646612) granted to M. Robbeets. The author thanks
Jean-Pascal Bassino and Junzō Uchiyama for shar-
ing publications and ideas and Miha Budja for his
continued support.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
References
∴ ∴

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