The Kofun era and early state formationautonomous, and in this sense, Southall’s segmentary state model and Tambiah’s galactic polity
model are applicable to the society of the sixth and early seventh centuries.
As the foregoing discussion indicates, the more than three hundred years of Kofun- era history is
characterized by a process through which the central polity gained control over other regions.
Yamato dominion evolved geometrically, from a point (in the Early Kofun era) to a line (some-
time in Middle Kofun times) to a space or sphere (in the Late Kofun period).^33 In the fourth
century, the presence of the central polity in local regions was represented by a single keyhole-
shaped tomb. In the fifth century, a series of keyhole- shaped tumuli along the coastal region of
the Inland Sea symbolized the control by the central polity over regions along the Inland Sea. In
the sixth century, the central polity successfully established miyake in various regions, which
enabled it to control these regions directly.
Notes
1 Takesue Jun’ichi, “Sōko no kanri shutai,” and “Yayoi kangō shūraku to toshi.”
2 Tsude Hiroshi, Nihon Nōkō shakai no seiritsu katei; Terasawa Kaoru, “Shūraku kara toshi e.”
3 Wada Seigo, “Mukō shi Itsukahara kofun no sokuryō chōsa yori”; Hōjō Yoshitaka, “Funkyū ni hyōji
sareta zenpō-kōen-fun no teishiki to sono hyōka” and “The Study of Keyhole Shaped Tombs and Jap-
anese Archaeology.”
4 Kobayashi Yukio, Kofun jidai no kenkyū. Chapter 3 has been translated into English by Walter Edwards
as “Treatise on Duplicate Mirrors.”
5 For a summary of the debate in Japanese, see Matsugi Takehiko, “Kokka keisei”; Hōjō Yoshitaka,
“Kokka”; Sasaki Ken’ichi, “Kodai kokka ron no genjō.” In English, see Tanaka Migaku et al.,
“Archaeology.”
6 Yoshida Akira, Nihon kodai kokka seiritsu- shi ron; Hara Hidesaburō, “Nihon rettō niokeru mikai to
bunmei.”
7 Yoshida, Nihon kodai kokka seiritsu- shi ron, 23–31.
8 Yoshida, Nihon kodai shakai kōsei-shi ron.
9 Yoshida, Nihon kodai kokka seiritsu- shi ron.
10 Tsude Hiroshi, “Kofun jidai shuchō keifu no keizoku to danzetsu.” Also published in English as “Chiefly
Lineages in Kofun Period Japan: Political Relations between Centre and Region.”
11 Hara Hidesaburō, “Nihon kodai kokka kenkyū no rironteki zentei.”
12 Hara, “Nihon rettō niokeru mikai to bunmei”; Hara Hidesaburō, “Ajiateki seisan yōshiki hihan josetsu:
‘shokeitai’ no rikai ni motozuku kisoteki shogainen no saikentō.”
13 Hara, “Nihon kodai kokka kenkyū no rironteki zentei,” 17.
14 Tsude Hiroshi, “Nihon kodai no kokka keiseiron josetsu”; translated into English by Walter Edwards
as “Early State Formation in Japan.” Iwanaga Shōzō, “Nihon ni okeru kaikyū shakai keisei ni kansuru
gakusetsu- shi-teki kentō josetsu”; Niiro Izumi, “6࣭7 seiki no henkaku to shakai no dōkō”; Suzuki
Yasutami, “Rekishigaku to minzokugaku (bunka jinruigaku).”
15 Henry Claessen and Peter Skalnik, The Early States and The Study of the Early State.
16 Aidan Southall, “The Segmentary State in Africa and Asia.”
17 See, for example, Shiraishi Taichirō, “Sōron.”
18 Sasaki Kōmei, “Shuchōsei kara kuni e”; Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Culture, Thought, and Social Action;
Wada Seigo, “Kofun jidai ha kokka dankai ka?”; Fukunaga Shin’ya, “Kofun no shutsugen to chūō
seiken no girei kanri”; Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth Century Bali.
19 Hirose Kazuo, Zenpō-kōen-fun kokka.
20 See, for example, Hōjō Yoshitaka et al., Kofun jidai zō wo minaosu.
21 Tambiah, Culture, Thought, and Social Action. The quoted passages appear on pages 261, and 260–261.
22 A reasonable introduction to Early Kofun era history in English is Gina L. Barnes, State Formation in
Japan: Emergence of a 4th-Century Ruling Elite. This work depends heavily upon a framework presented
by Terasawa Kaoru in Ōken tanjō. Terasawa’s framework is, however, not well- accepted among Jap-
anese archaeologists. A serious problem of Barnes’ book is that she virtually ignores the theoretical
contributions to the state formation debate of other Japanese scholars presented here.