300 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
The Yamato State
At the time of the Qin Unification, 221 B.C.E., Japan’s southern regions
had had wet-rice agriculture less than a century and a half; the population
growth that accompanies intensive agriculture was only beginning; the emer-
gence of any social formation we would call a state was still several hundred
years off. The Japanese could not yet write down the stories of their tempera-
mental deities, Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, or Susanoo, the god of storms,
because no one had invented a script for their language.Map 8.1 Japan.