Rolling them bones in Heian Japan

YESTERDAY I wrote that there’s no telling what might turn up when people start rummaging around in a storeroom in Japan. There’s also no telling what they’ll dig up from an archaeological site.

Here’s an example: While shoveling around in the Okuzono ruins in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, recently, researchers uncovered a die made of rock dating from the late Heian period (11th to the 12th centuries) and about 50 small stones that had been processed for use in sugoroku, go, and hajiki.

Sugoroku is a board game that was brought over from China and has two variations to the rules. One is almost identical to backgammon, and the other is similar to Snakes and Ladders. Hajiki is a Japanese form of marbles, and everyone knows what go is.

The ruins are about 500 meters southwest of the Daizaifu Tenman-gu, a well-known Shinto shrine that had already been around for a couple of centuries before they started shooting the local version of craps nearby. The city’s Committee on Education (which is responsible for archaeological matters) said it was possible the location was a former worksite for people who made games and game equipment. They think the items might have been presented in dedication to the shrine or sold to important people who visited there.

Each side of the die is about 1.1 centimeters across. The opposing sides of modern dice add up to seven, but the arrangement of the numbers on this die is different: on the opposite side of the 6 is a 4, for example.

The stones are of different materials and colors and range in size from 0.8 to 2.0 centimeters.

The part of this story that interests me is not that the Japanese used dice. They, along with the rest of the world, have played dice games for millennia. The part that intrigues me is that the archaeologists think they might have been sold at a religious institution—and no one is particularly surprised.

What the heck–many Shinto shrines in Japan have long held festivals for offering home-brewed sake to the divinities. Now it turns out they also countenanced dice games too, some of which surely involved friendly wagers on the side!

Matsuri da! (83): The iron chefs live!

LONG-TIME FRIENDS know that the Japanese can transform almost any behavior into an act of reverence at a Shinto festival, and here’s yet another example: Slicing and serving sushi.

The Sushikiri Festival (literally sushi-cutting) is held every 5 May at the Shimoniikawa Shinto shrine in Moriyama, Shiga, in supplication for a good harvest, health, and protection from disaster. It is now a national intangible cultural folk treasure.

Rather than professional sushi chefs, the slicing is done by two young men clad in traditional haori (half-coat) and hakama (divided skirt), as you can see in the photo. They use 20-centimeter-long metal chopsticks to hold the fish with their left hands while they carefully cut the fish with exaggerated motions using a 40-centimeter-long knife held in their right hands. (It is unusual to see metal chopsticks in Japan; most are wooden. The metal variety are more frequently seen in Korea.)

The fish on the menu every year is the funa, of which there are several varieties, none of which has a familiar English name (though many of them end in “carp”). The sushi is first cut for and served to the head priest of the shrine and the chairman of the local citizens’ association. In fact, they’re sitting in formal Japanese style directly across from the two men, though they’re not shown in the photo. (Try the second photo here to see them.) The fish is later distributed to the parishioners who’ve come to participate.

And this funa is not just the run-of-the-mill sushi; this treat has been fermented for three or four years before it’s served. The process originally came from China and has been used in Japan for about 1,000 years. The fermentation creates an odor that many people find unappetizing, but the dish has become a noted product of Shiga. (You can read more about it here and here. Those with a scientific turn of mind might find this to be of interest.)
　
The official story is that the festival, formally known as the Omi-no-Kenketo Festival (the sushi cutting is just one part of it) originated when funazushi was given to a divinity who drifted ashore to the banks of Lake Biwa on a raft 1,300 years ago.

But there are other stories too. Shimoniikawa is one of the six shrines in the country with Toyokiirihiko-no-Mikoto, the eldest son of the Sujin Tenno (emperor), as the enshrined deity. Some versions have it that the food was originally served to Toyokiirihiko, which would make the event closer to 2,000 years old.

Suijin is supposed to have been the 10th Tenno, but no one is sure that he actually existed. His reign years are given as 97 BC to 30 BC, which Japanese historians think is implausibly early. (His recorded life span of 119 years is just as implausible.) Accounts in the Nihon Shoki ascribe some of the same exploits to both the legendary first emperor Jimmu and to Suijin, which lead some to believe that the deeds of a Sujin who might have existed were attributed to Jimmu.

Incidentally, the Shimoniikawa shrine was in the news in March this year when it was confirmed that a Buddhist temple bell found in the storage area for the shrine’s mikoshi in May 2007 is the oldest example of a bell with both Japanese and Korean designs discovered in the country.

Cast in 1419, it is the sixth bell of this type to have ever turned up in Japan. Shown in the second photo, it is 40.6 centimeters tall, 23.9 centimeters wide, and weighs 11.2 kilograms. Reports say that it was used in the “Buddhist temple hall”, which suggests the shrine was once a joint Shinto-Buddhist facility of the kind that no longer exist, though that wasn’t explicitly stated. The Japanese decorations are the dragon heads at the top of the bell, while the Korean motifs are the plant and flower designs on the rest of the bell.

And that just goes to show: There’s no telling what you’re liable to stumble over when you start poking around in a storeroom in Japan!

17th century Japanese village found in Cambodia

IT’S A SHAME this report is so short, because it would be fascinating to hear more details.

Here’s how the two-paragraph story on the Indian news site Kerala begins:

A site of a Japanese village dating back to the 17th century has been found in the outskirts of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, a Japanese archaeologist said Wednesday.

They add:

Based on on-site research, excavations and historical documents, Japanese people came to Cambodia aboard ships between 1601 and 1635, he said. “There were about 100 Japanese living in the village during that period of time, and most of them were engaged in religious affairs and trading…”

And that’s about it. But that raises the inevitable questions: Who were they? Why did they leave Japan? How did they wind up in Cambodia? What religious affairs did they conduct? Who did they trade with? What happened to them?

Alas, that’s all I could find.

The report is based on an address in Cambodia by Sugiyama Hiroshi, the chief research fellow at the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties. I couldn’t find a report on their website, either in English or Japanese.

Let’s hope someone releases more information soon.

In Japan, the past is a stone’s throw away

WITH THE INTEREST JAPANESE have in their own history and the amount of resources they’ve devoted to archaeology, it’s a bit surprising just how frequently important new discoveries of ancient sites still occur. Reports of these discoveries appear in newspapers almost on a weekly basis.

Another one was announced in Kyushu on the 8th—the Education Committee of Nakagawa-machi, Fukuoka, found the complete site of a fortified military camp that dates from the 15th and 16th centuries, which roughly corresponds to what is called the Warring States Period, or sengoku jidai in Japanese. The discovery of a complete campsite from this era is rare in Japan, and it was the first one discovered in Kyushu.

The 15,000 square-meter site was located on the top of a 56-meter hill surrounded by a river on three sides. Foundations for watchtowers were found in the middle of the camp, which was enclosed by a double wall at its highest point. It had a moat that was four meters wide and two meters deep, and which also had two fortified embankments

Four flat areas were found on the hillside, which are thought to have been the locations of soldiers’ quarters, and the sites of five buildings were identified. The Education Committee had already found the site of another castle and a forge in the same area, so they believe the region was at one time a center for quartering troops and producing weaponry.

Historians think the encampment was used by the Otomo warrior family (which, at the peak of their strength, controlled a third of Kyushu) and the Ouchi warrior family. (They were based in Yamaguchi at the southern tip of Honshu, just across from Kyushu, and are thought to have descended from a Korean immigrant from the Baekche state in the 7th century.)

When people overseas think of today’s Japan, the Super Futuro Techno Megalopolis of Tokyo is probably the first place that comes to mind, but as this report shows (from page 34 of my local newspaper) for most Japanese in the rest of the country, centuries-old history—older than European settlements in North America–is an everyday affair, just down the street or a short drive away.

Note: The Education Committees in local municipal and prefectural governments in Japan are responsible for handling archaeological matters.