Archaeology of No Theory -How to understand Japanese archaeology?



Japanese
(This paper was presented at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference '96 by Leo Aoi HOSOYA [George Pitt-Rivers Laboratory, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge])

Nowadays more archaeologists in Britain than before seem to be interested in Japanese archaeology. I really appreciate for the trend because it is nice to have more people to discuss a common topic with.

So, I hope to be understood that I never mean to be offensive with the Figure 1, and say this picture symbolises what I often feel to hear Western archaeologists' discussing what is Japanese archaeology.

When one Western archaeologist is interested in Japanese archaeology and tries to get the information, what he/she can access cannot help being limited. Because, firstly, far from many Japanese works are published in English, and moreover, they can be partial because, at a start, only a limited number of Japanese archaeologists regularly write in English.
Secondly, even if one can read Japanese, he/she will still find difficulty to grasp a whole picture of what is going on in Japan because there are not many collective writings on any certain topic, for a reason to be shown later.

Now they are all practical limitations which are often talked about, but I think there is a more elemental problem. It is that Japanese archaeologists, either in writing or a speech, practically never clearly explain what is Japanese archaeology by words. The 'explanation' can be equalised to 'theory'. Namely, no Western kind of theory or interpretative discussion exists in Japan and it confuses Western archaeologists, who get used to understand data through such a comprehensive theorisation. For example, talking on the symbolised picture (Fig.1), when Western archaeologists grasp some data from Japan, they would present their hypothesis on them, like "Japanese archaeology should be a rhino, because it has a rhino-like horn", expecting Japanese archaeologists' arguing back like "No, what you see is not a horn but a tusk, so it's more elephant-like", and if things go like that, through this discussion Western archaeologists would get clearer vision of Japanese archaeology immediately. However, in reality, this kind of discussion never happens, because no matter partial or incorrect hypothesis is presented by other archaeologists, Japanese archaeologists normally keep silence to it. What they usually do is just showing data without an explanatory or interpretative sentence on them, and when others reach an incorrect conclusion because of the limited view, they will just get angry in their mind; "They don't understand at all", and that's it. So some Western archaeologists even never realise their view is partial because they never be explicitly opposed.

This gap between the two sides is caused by the fact that, although in Western world theoretical communication is taken for granted and automatically expected, such a concept is never shared by Japanese archaeologists' tradition, as Richard Pearson incisively discussed in his article;


"...Despite these modern techniques at the disposal of Japanese archaeologists, their lack of epistemological explicitness and interpretative analysis often frustrate Western archaeologists who attempt to understand Japanese concepts, problems, and methodology. A common Japanese method is to accumulate large bodies of detailed empirical data and assess them by way of comprehensive generalizations. This procedure puts the foreign archaeologists at a disadvantage not only because such empirical generalizations are difficult to relate to the more theoretically and anthropologically oriented archaeology in the West, but also because it demands a level of detailed familiarity with the data that is almost impossible to achieve by a foreigner. ..


This is different from the Western notion of comprehension of working from the individual elements towards a large whole." (Richard Pearson 'Introduction' from "Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory" 1986)


So, some Western and Japanese archaeologists who realise this problem sometimes start saying that Western kind of theory should be introduced into Japanese archaeology, then international communication would be more possible, but I do not think this is a real solution.
Because the character of Japanese archaeology is not a simple 'theory-less' archaeology in Western term, but a product of completely different cultural structure. And I suppose it very important for theoretical archaeologists to understand this 'another' structure, to make our -I'm talking here as a theoretical archaeologist in spite of my nationality- our theoretical discussion broaden towards data from another kind of society instead of confining it in 'theoretical' world. It is the reason I present a paper titled "Archaeology of No Theory" at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference.

Now to explain this 'another' structure, I would like to see it mainly from the following two points; (1) The historical background (2) The present situation concerning the excavation system and the mass-media. Firstly I will discuss the first point; the historical background.

The practical start of Japanese archaeology as academy is supposed to be in the late 19th century, when an American biologist Edward Morse (1838-1925) came to Japan and held the first systematic excavation of a Neolithic shell midden. And the result showed for the first time that there was a prehistoric culture in Japan.

However, at the time, common concept of the history in Japan was based on two literature titled "Kojiki" and "Nihon-Shoki", which are the oldest books in Japan written in 712 and 720AD, and explained the origin of Japanese is the gods who came down from a sort of heaven and the descendent of the first god is the Emperor. So actually this historical concept was politically very useful to maintain the Emperor-centrism, so even after the new archaeological discovery, the Government never allowed to change the historical concept. And the newly found prehistoric culture was explained as a culture of barbarian who had nothing to do with 'real' Japanese, and they were chased out when the 'real' Japanese as the gods appeared to the country. What is interesting was this idea that superior people conquered barbarian actually matched to the concept of Social Darwinism, which was shared by Western scholars like Edward Morse, thus no critical view was presented from those foreign scholars either at the time.

In the beginning of the 20th century, Typological methods on pottery, which was originated by Montelius, was introduced by some Japanese archaeologists who studied abroad. This method enabled archaeology for the first time to study a historical sequence independently on its own data. Accordingly, a critical view towards the existing legendary concept of the history from some archaeologist started to be presented. The prime point of the critics was to argue a continuous cultural sequence from so-called 'barbarian' culture to so-called 'Japanese' culture based on chronological ordering of pottery type, rather than the legendary model of the barbarians' extinction. However, although this first critics implied remarkable directional change of Japanese archaeology, those typologists had to have a hard time for some decades since then, because not only there was persistent objection from old-type archaeologists who called themselves "Common-sense archaeologists", but also the Government kept putting a pressure on the new concept. The pressure became extremely severe during the Second World War for the fascism, and under this hard pressure, the Typological methods lost its critical implication and fell into mechanical work to make a pottery list.

After Japan was defeated in the War and democracy was introduced, all academy was freed from the Emperor-centrism in the end, and archaeology also started introducing new historical concepts, especially Marxism.

However, what was characteristic in the Japanese case was, in this post-war development, somehow Japanese archaeologists did not choose to start making free discussion on historical interpretations, but instead went to reject any kind of theoretical interpretation on archaeological data. Because, for Japanese archaeologists, theoretical interpretation has always meant manipulation of data to make them match to the pre-fixed concept of the legendary history, so post-war archaeologists' strong objection towards the old legendary history directly became a phobia of making theoretical hypothesis itself. On the other hand, typology, which is a practical analysis of data, has always been a sort of a crusader to fight with the 'un-scientific' concept. In a due course, the typology-based practical study was considered only one sensible and trustworthy way to go for the post-war archaeologists. So, even with the introduction of Marxist's concept, what was emphasised was only its materialistic way to reconstruct history.

       Fundamentally Japanese culture has a traditional tendency to praise action much higher than oral discussion, as an old saying "Action without words ( )" has been regarded as an ideal human attitude, so the historical background of archaeology melted into the basic cultural tendency to form the hard empiricistic policy which exists on the base of the present Japanese archaeology.

The words by a Japanese archaeologist Ichiro Yawata, though it was written in 1938, represents the policy living today very well;


"The first and the last purpose of archaeology is to chronologically reconstruct certain ancient culture. All artefacts are source of the information and the material. No distinction or qualification should be made on any pottery, lithic tools or bone tools. Research cannot be perfect with lack of any one." [translated by Hosoya] (Ichiro Yawata 'Issues on usage of prehistoric artefacts [ ]' Hidabito 6-1 1938)



Especially the part "No distinction or qualification should be made on any kind of data" is vital, because I reckon it is the very difference of the Japanese concept from the Western concept.

As the Richard Pearson's discussion which was previously quoted says, Western notion of archaeological research or comprehension of data is to connect individual elements towards a coherent whole, which in a due course is accompanied by reduction of exceptional ones. However, in this Japanese policy, any kind of reduction is rejected because it is always equalised to an 'unfair' manipulation. Then the research as a product of the policy becomes accumulation of all empirical data, and in the Japanese concept, this 'Having everything' itself becomes a synonym of 'comprehension'. Therefore Japanese archaeology is not a simple 'theory-less' archaeology which is 'on the way' of developing theoretical views, but working on a completely different philosophy. This should be kept on mind when using Japanese data, otherwise one never realises the data he/she sees have not gone through any kind of purpose-oriented reduction or qualification, so can be incredibly one-sided.

In addition to the existence of this characteristic policy, what's going on in Japanese archaeology in present days is also under again characteristic political and cultural situation, and it also influences the nature of the data. This is my second point; The present situation.

These decades in Japan, the word 'excavation' is almost a synonym of a rescue excavation, as more than enough mentioned in Japanese archaeologists' conference papers or articles. According to Akira Teshigawara's "Proceedings of Japanese Archaeology" (1995; p.229), because of the rapid increase of constructions for the economic growth of Japan, the number of rescue excavations increased as remarkably as from 3400 to 8500 for 10 years between 1980 and 1990. In this situation, research or academic excavations had to be very un-welcomed, because they are supposed to be not in urgent and not worth to spend time, money or people. As the result, not only the number of academic excavations never increases, but also most of archaeologists need to get a job in administrative bodies rather than academic institutions. According to "Archaeology Handbook" published in 1983, at the time the Japan Society of Archaeology, which is a representative group for archaeologists, had 1850 members, and among them, 1500, almost 5/6th members belonged to administrative bodies, and the situation has not much changed today.

In this background, namely most of excavations are administrative ones and most of archaeologists are administrative ones, the main direction of Japanese archaeology cannot help following administrative policy of the Cultural Property Protection rather than academic criteria.

(Fig.2) Excavation system
as Cultural Property Protection
Purpose of
Excavation
Recording everything from sites
for various future use
Excavation
report
Objective catalogue of
all artefacts
Budget Distributed according to physical
scale of sites and amount of
artefacts
Interdisciplinary
approach
Introduction of scientific tech-
nique is sometimes welcome
Here the Figure2 shows how the policy works on the excavation system. In administrative term, all rescue excavations are done not to do academic research but to 'record' everything from archaeological sites, because sites are common cultural property which should be shared by everyone in a shape of the record. So, excavation reports as well are required to be an objective catalogue of all artefacts for future use of any kind of scholars, and even how many pages to be spent for each artefact is regulated, so, as the result, huge number of similar-looking reports are produced every year.

In this situation, it is very difficult to grasp an unique cultural implication which each site must have, and for the difficulty for a systematic purpose-oriented access to them, even Japanese archaeologists can hardly be confident if they know all relevant data to proceed any discussion on certain topic. This should be another reason why interpretative discussion never be popular in Japan. Moreover, some reports are not even accessible for everyone under administrative control, which makes the situation more difficult.

In addition to this fact, there is another problem to be aware of. Although this 'recording everything' policy superficially seems to match the basic philosophy of Japanese archaeology; "No distinction or qualification should be made on any kind of data", in fact implicit selection of data is going on beneath the system. Namely, 'archaeological data' in administrative term only indicates artefacts, so does not include other possible data such as plant remains or faunal remains since they are not considered as "Cultural Property" to be able to be shared by majority. Thus, even if excavators are interested in that kind of research or a site itself has a character to require such a study, it is always quite difficult to get money for it. And, only one effective way to get money is to manage to use a very advanced scientific facility or technique for those 'extra' research, because the administrative body always welcomes excavation reports look more scientific and objective, and then money is given more easily. For example, talking of archaeobotany, it is why palynology or phytolith analysis is more popular than macrofossil analysis, because of their more scientific appearance. Therefore, those interdisciplinary research is sometimes not done on real academic importance but on political negotiation, so it again can be a cause of partial data.

This implicit selection or emphasis of certain data on non-academic criteria is caused from another direction as well, which is relationship with mass-media.

One of characteristic nature of Japanese people is their fanatical interest in the origin of Japanese culture and its uniqueness. Therefore, whenever an unique and remarkable archaeological site, such as a huge complete Neolithic village or so, is discovered and broadcasted via newspapers, it immediately becomes a sightseeing spot as popular as the Disney Land. For example, a discovery of a huge second-century village site called Yoshi-no-gari several years ago became a big hot newspaper topic as a possible candidate for the legendary queendom Yama-taikoku, and the site ended up to have 8 million visitors within 5 years.

This national interest in archaeological discovery is of course basically a good thing, but it has a problematic aspect as well.

Since a topic-making archaeological site can make a big sightseeing spot, city councils of the place have become very interested in how attractive a site they have, and in some cases it even becomes pressure on archaeologists to make it attractive. One problematic result of this is interestingly pointed out in a newspaper article about "Growing towers" (25 July 1996, Asahi shinbun '
'). The towers mentioned here is a look-out tower which all huge prehistoric villages in Japan posses, and always becomes the best attraction for visitors. And it says there is a recent tendency that estimation of the height of those towers becomes higher and higher like a kind of competition, without solid archaeological evidences. It is what the word "Growing Towers" in the title means, and at least partly it is a result of the city councils' pressure to make 'their' sites more attractive.

What makes this pressure more serious for archaeologists is, sometimes even the amount of excavation budget is influenced by how big a newspaper topic a site makes. Since both administrative and archaeological policy in Japan rejects any qualification of sites from academic criteria as I have explained, so in regulation (Fig.2) budget has to be distributed equally according to the physical scale of each site. However in reality, such a non-selective budgeting ends up as short of money for all the sites because too many excavations are going on, so some criteria is needed to decide which site to be paid more. And since academic criteria is rejected at a start, what works there is a newspaper. Namely, once one site becomes a big cover page topic, it immediately arouses people's interest and many visitors start coming, then everybody starts saying "This site is very important.", which becomes pressure on the administrative body and they pay more money for the site.

Actually that happened on a site I myself was working on last year. The excavation was at first rather poorly budgeted one as a non-special annual research, but one day we found exceptionally large building and well for the era (AD 2C), which were sensational enough to make a big cover page topic of two of best-selling newspapers; Asahi and Mainichi. Then everything started changing rapidly like a magic. The previously miserable low-budgeted site was transformed to a popular sightseeing spot, and hundreds of visitors, TV clues and magazine reporters started coming. To our surprise, some people were even caught at midnight trying to steal remnant of a wooden post, so we had to hire a guard man. Anyway in the end, we got a lot of money.

As the experience of mine practically shows, the relationship to the mass-media can seriously concern financial problems, thus archaeologists cannot help being more keen on 'topic-making' data. Talking of archaeobotanical research, prehistoric plant remains has much more possibility to be a cover page topic than ones from historical ages, since it can concern the sensational problem of the origin of cultivation, and as the result, only prehistoric archaeobotanical research tends to be advanced.

This problem concerning mass-media should also result in an unexpected partiality of data for foreign archaeologists.


In this paper I looked through the structure of Japanese archaeology as 'Archaeology of No Theory' from plural points and showed archaeology and its data are nothing but a product of the history, the politics and the culture of a country.

This paper is of course not to discourage Western or theoretical archaeologists including myself to study on Japanese data. Surely Japanese study by those people will contribute not only to introduce a new idea into Japanese archaeology but also bring a new aspect into international theoretical discussion itself. However, if the Japanese data are used and interpreted simply through Western notion without consideration of what the data are, the research will go nowhere.

So, I hope my this paper become some help towards constructive discussion on Japanese archaeology by theoretical archaeologists in near future.


[Referred books]
Pearson, R.J., Barnes, G.L. and Hutterer, K.L.(ed.)
1986 Windows on the Japanese Past: Studies in Archaeology and Prehistory
(Centre of Japanese Studies, University of Michigan)

Akira Teshigawara
1995 Proceedings of Japanese Archaeology
(Nihon Koukogaku no Ayumi ) (Meicho shuppan )

1993 Archaeology Handbook (Koukogaku Handbook)


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Last updated 17. Apr.1997 / NIIRO Izumi, FUJII Hiroyuki