Gender and family: classical ageThe Jo ̄mon and Yayoi periods
The archaeologist Tsude Hiroshi argued that the average height of men had been 8 percent
greater than that of women since the time of homo erectus and continued to be so throughout the
Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun (Tumulus) periods. According to Tsude, the greater physical strength
of males and the ability of females to give birth and nurse children, played an important role in
producing gendered labor divisions.^5
But while it is true that Jōmon men were in charge of hunting and fishing while women were
in charge of gathering plants, collecting shellfish, weaving, and making earthenware; archaeo-
logical evidence of ritual objects and ornaments excavated with human bones indicates that
Jōmon Japan was not a male- dominated society. Unlike contemporary society, gendered labor
divisions in the Jōmon period were not tied to gender discrimination. Moreover, when rice agri-
culture was introduced to Japan, women initially played a major role in cultivation. Illustrations
on bell- shaped bronze vessels from the Yayoi period suggest that women took the role of thresh-
ing grain while men were hunting and fishing.^6
According to Nishino Yukiko, a special characteristic of premodern Japanese agriculture was
the absence of pastoral farming to obtain meat. On the Eurasian continent, agriculture and pas-
toral farming advanced along with gendered labor divisions and enhanced the development of
personal ownership.^7 Overall, these developments furthered male domination and helped to
establish a patriarchal system. But Japanese society did not follow the same path. This difference
is important to remember when examining family in classical Japan.
From the postwar period to the 1980s, archeologists maintained that Yayoi society was organ-
ized into “unilateral descent groups,” which consisted of a household collective (extended family
unit) living in a cluster of pit dwellings.^8 By hypothesizing that multiple dwellings excavated
from the site had been in use during the same historical time, these scholars established the unit
group theory (tan’i shūdan setsu) arguing that the inhabitants who lived in the dwelling were
related by blood. Scholarship today, however, questions this theory because it is impossible to
prove that these dwellings coexisted at the same time.^9
Mounded tomb burials and the kinship structure
Kobayashi Yukio, the premier archeologist of the early and mid- twentieth century, argued that
one of the reasons why burial mounds were built was the “emergence of hereditary chieftain
rights,” and that Kofun period society was patrilineal. His views influenced the way in which
scholars determined the gender of the deceased in mounded tombs, and at one time it was thought
that all those buried were male.^10
During the 1980s, however, bones excavated from burial mounds were reexamined, reveal-
ing that the deceased included females.^11 Furthermore, evidence shows that some of these buried
women had borne children. This discovery challenged the previous view, based on the descrip-
tion of Himiko in Gishi wajin den, that female chieftains were virgin priestesses.^12 It is, however,
important to note that during the mid- Tumulus period, the number of burial mounds interring
female chieftains decreased. Seike Akira claims that this demonstrates that military leaders were
becoming more desirable.^13
In the 1990s, archaeologists attempted to reconstruct kinship relations by examining genetic
characteristics detected from Kofun- era skeletons. Noting that there was a transformation of
burial styles—from interring bones of siblings in the same graves to burying bones of spouses in
the same graves—archaeologists argued for a change in succession pattern around this time, from
bilateral to patrilineal.^14 Some archaeologists, however, challenged this view, arguing that there