The Many Faces of Queen Himiko:Interactions of Gender, Archaeology and Popular Culture

by

Colleen Morgan

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Anthropologyof the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

Departmental Honors

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2004

The Many Faces of Queen Himiko:Interactions of Gender, Archaeology and Popular Culture

Approved by:

______________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Gender and Positionality 9

3. Perceptions of Gender in the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kohun Eras 24

4. Contested Identity 37

5. Conclusion 51

Bibliography 56

1

Chapter One: Introduction

That you raise your voice,cuckoo, seeking the fragrance of the flowering orange—is it from nostalgiafor that “someone long ago”? The Tale of the Heike1

In archaeology, the “someone long ago” often remains unnamed. We

judge life patterns from half of a spoon someone used once, or by faint

architectural impressions left in the ground. Even in the most forgiving

situations, time can prove to be an insurmountable barrier in ascertaining motive,

identity, and the experiences of the individual. Historical documents can give us

specific verbiage to work with, but can be too narrow in scope. When there are

only words on the page, some of the personal, emotive qualities of research can

be lost. Even when combined, neither of these approaches to understanding the

past offers the full range of potential interpretations.

I raise my voice to offer a collection of evidence, attitudes, and

approaches regarding an individual once living in a historical moment. This

specific “someone long ago” is Queen Himiko2 and she held dominion over

1 The Tale of the Heike, or the Heike monogatari, is about the rise and fall of the house ofTaira and was written in the 12th century. This particular passage is from The ImperialLady Becomes a Nun, which is about Lady Kenreimon’in’s departure from theShangyang Palace. It is called an “old poem” in the passage, and she quickly scribbles iton her inkstone case.

2

twenty-two countries on the archipelago now known as Japan. She is often

considered a historical side note, mentioned in passing—which is how I heard of

her the first time. Who was this woman, so appended to early Japanese

civilization?

While researching Queen Himiko, I encountered her in many ways. The

initial pass was fascinating, as web results offered fashionable shoes, cartoons,

news articles contesting the location of her realm—this was not the expected

discourse surrounding a woman over 1,500 years dead. Queen Himiko was very

much alive in Japanese popular culture, and wars were still being waged over

her realm. A discourse involving not only her historical positioning but also her

modern persona seemed necessary to fully understand her impact on culture.

In this interpretation of Queen Himiko’s historical and contemporary

relevance, I utilize several resources. The first mention of Queen Himiko is

within the historical document where she is the prominent player, the Wajinden

portion of the Wei Chih, which chronicles the impressions of Chinese

ambassadors of the Wa, their name for the people populating Japan. I also

examine the archaeological evidence for her kingdom, and give an overview of

interpretations of gender in the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kohun eras. After providing

this broad overview, I analyze the specific references to gender in the Wei Chih.

These references elucidate the interactions of gender and power shown in

Queen Himiko’s reign. Finally, I examine the role Queen Himiko plays in

constructing modern day gender perceptions through the lens of popular culture.

2 Himiko is also referred to as Pimiko or Pimiha.

3

Using a postmodern feminist stance, I bring these disparate threads into a more

eclectic view of Himiko, which is not segmented by the traditional, and

problematic dichotomies of history/modern, popular/culture, or man/woman. In

providing this more holistic view, I hope to bring together the disciplines of

archaeology, Asian studies, and gender studies. Through Himiko the individual, I

endeavor to show the chronological depth that combined studies of archaeology

and history can bring to gender studies. In archaeology, gender and feminist

theory remains a distinct sub-discipline, which has yet to influence archaeological

research in Japan. Expanding the references available in a sub-discipline keeps

the dialogue alive and at the forefront of the greater discipline. Asian studies

remains a contested ground, due to charges of Orientalism (Chow 1993; Said

1979). Yet a gendered approach to archaeology framed within feminist theory

can effectively deal with Orientalism, given that the researcher provides a full

disclosure of positionality.

History of the Problem

Queen Himiko’s identity, the nature of her reign, and the location of her

realm have been in dispute since the beginning of recorded history in Japan.

The following discussion summarizes the various discourses that have taken

shape over time regarding the validity of Chen Shou’s3 account in the Wei Chih,

from an analysis of Chen Shou’s possible motivations in writing the original

3 Western names have been reproduced with the given name followed by the familyname. Chinese and Japanese names have maintained the traditional order of family nameproceeding the given name.

4

document in 280 C.E., through periods of historical and archaeological

controversy, to final saturation in Japanese popular culture and growing

disinterest in academia.

William W. Farris (1998) offers a politicized view of the Wei Chih in his

Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of

Ancient Japan. He outlines Chen Shou’s background and motivations in writing

the Wei Chih, paying close attention to the amount of space Shou devoted to

each topic. Farris describes the arguments made by Japanese historians

regarding the legitimacy of Himiko’s paramountcy and the location of Yamatai,

the name of her kingdom as given in the Wei Chih. The debate began as early

as 720 C.E., when The Chronicles of Japan were written by a committee of

courtiers endorsing an unbroken line of emperors descending from Ameratsu, the

sun goddess who gave birth to Jimmu4, the official first emperor of Japan (Farris

1998:15). From then on, scholarly debate on the issue is divided into five

periods, with the first period starting with The Chronicles of Japan, and the last

starting post-WWII and ending in 1971 (Farris 1998:15).

The Wajinden portion of the Wei Chih has been in dispute almost since

the time of its inception. The Wajinden, or, “Account of the Wa,” was a

subsection located in the portion of the Wei Chih that describes Wei dynasty

encounters with foreigners. Chen Shou, the author of the document, was born in

233 C.E. in the southern Chinese country of Shu (Farris 1998:10). Chen was

4 Jimmu is also referred to as Jinmu. Jinmu is now either equated with Sujin (officiallythe 10th emperor) or Ojin (officially the 15th emperor), and early, intervening emperors arethought to be fictitious (Barnes 11:1999).

5

born in a time of civil war, which had divided the Middle Kingdom into three rival

states. When the Jin dynasty defeated then incorporated Shu, Chen survived by

finding a patron, Zhang Hua, who recommended him to the new court as an

official historian. He wrote books on geography, zoology, and botany, and kept

in contact with his patron, who oversaw Jin’s defenses in the area around Beijing,

and who knew about routes to Korea and other northeastern hinterlands (Farris

1998:11). The Jin unified China in 280 C.E., and Chen completed The History of

the Three Kingdoms,5 which chronicled the history of each kingdom separately.

The History of the Wei Dynasty, or, the Wei Chih, dealt with the interactions of

the Wei kingdom with the “Eastern Barbarians,” who in addition to the Wa,

included the Xian-bi, Manchurians, and Koreans. Of all these groups, the most

space was devoted to the Wa, perhaps indicating a special relationship between

the Wa and the Wei dynasty (Farris 1998:11).

The authors of the first known history of Japan, the Nihon shoki, or, The

Chronicles of Japan, reference the Wajinden three times in their text.

Commissioned on behest of the imperial house, The Chronicles of Japan was

completed in 720 C.E. It directly emphasized the “dynasty’s divine origins and

unbroken lineage” (Farris 1998:15). Queen Himiko was conflated with Empress

Jingu,6 and Yamatai with Yamato, the plains around Osaka. It is at this juncture

5 The kingdoms of Jin, Shu, and Wei.6 Jingu is also referred to as Jingo. Empress Jingu is counted in the official line ofEmperors, as the empress regent between the fourteenth and fifteenth male emperors, yetstill in a direct line from Jimmu, the official first emperor. Empress Jingu is said to haveconducted an assault on the Silla kingdom in Korea. Silla historical sources documentsthis attack as occurring in 346 C.E., while the Nihon Shoki states that it was in 200 C.E.(Kidder 1959:135)

6

in the record that scholars would point to as the transition from mythology to a

more factual history (Farris 1998:18). Debate would continue a thousand years

later, in the eighteenth century, with Arai Hakuseki, who discounted the Wei Chih

as unreliable because of the disparity in the distances that Chen Shou used. He

placed Yamatai at Kinai or Kyushu but like early chroniclers, he equated Himiko

with Jingu. In the 1770s and 1780s, Motoori Norinaga, a student of the National

Learning school, argued that an unnamed southern king at war with Empress

Jingu had tricked the Wei emissaries into thinking that he represented

Jingu/Himiko. The emissaries had only gotten as far as Kyushu, which an

analysis of the route described in the Wei Chih provided by Motoori proved.

With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the new political ideology that made

the emperor sacrosanct also inhibited in-depth analysis of the protohistory of

Japan. Despite this official mandate, in 1878 Naka Michiyo disputed the

chronology of The Chronicles of Japan, maintaining that the founding Emperor,

Jimmu, was actually enthroned 600 years later than previously maintained. This

pushed the chronology up to the point where Empress Jingu would have ruled in

the fourth century, leaving no room for an overlap with Queen Himiko (Farris

1998:17). The argument was stoked by the solidifying of archaeology as a

discipline in Japan in the 1910s, when finds from all over the archipelago were

debated, particularly the bronze mirrors mentioned specifically in the Wajinden.

Marxism influenced the debates in the early 1930s, when the class structure of

the Wa and the position of women in politics was studied (Farris 1998:20). From

1935-1945, censorship destroyed many attempts to study history and other

7

fields, and books about Yamatai and the Wa had whole passages marked out for

fear of impeaching the ultimate authority of the emperor.

Archaeology in Japan found new freedom after the war, and intensive

study of the past was soon underway. The sites of Toro, and later Yoshinogari

Itazuke, and Karako were uncovered, furthering knowledge of what was now

called the Yayoi era, stretching from roughly 400 B.C.E. to 300 C.E. Articles and

books analyzing the Wei Chih became widely available, and the question moved

from academia into the public realm. Queen Himiko was portrayed in the media

in various ways, and academics began to move away from research on Yamatai

in reaction to this over saturation. As it stands today, study on the Wei Chih is

out of vogue in Japan, and yet materials in English are becoming more widely

available. William Wayne Farris, Joan Piggott, and Charles T. Keally have all

addressed Queen Himiko directly, while Gina Barnes, Mizoguchi Koji, and

Imamura Keiji have published more indirectly on the Yayoi culture. Still, research

tends to be centered on Himiko as she reflects possible Yayoi practice, with little

work done on her modern influence or on questions regarding individual agency.

Given the sheer quantity of references she is afforded in popular culture, ignoring

modern treatments of an obviously contested figure in history creates an

incomplete picture, one constructed by an arguably elite position dictating

meaning from the confines of academia.

My own examination of Queen Himiko is comprised of three chapters.

Chapter two focuses on previous works in Japanese archaeology and on gender

positionality. I draw from not only the works of archaeologists and historians, but

8

also that of poets and Japanese feminist scholars to create a more holistic

approach to the study of Queen Himiko. In the third chapter I trace the study

of gender through the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kohun eras, with an emphasis on the

dominant norms of gender and gender roles, as well as the perceived overall

gender of each of these eras. Queen Himiko proves to be a curious figure of

resistance in a time (the Yayoi era) that is normally viewed as gendered male,

which follows after the feminized “ancient past” of the Jomon (Mizoguchi 2002).

Finally, in the forth chapter I attempt to explore Queen Himiko as she may have

actually been, and as she is imagined today. Overall, I hope to show how an

integrated approach to the past life of an individual can lead not only to a more

meaningful understanding of the past, but also to increased engagement of

academia with the public and consequently to the better understanding regarding

the collective construction of history.

9

Chapter Two: Gender and Positionality

“(Femininity)—is not a natural essence whose truth we madly pursue; the

refinement of the code, its precision, indifferent to any extended copy of an

organic type, (…) have as their effect—or justification—to absorb and

eliminate all feminine reality in the subtle diffraction of the signifier: signified

but not represented, Woman is an idea, not a nature; as such, she is restored

to the classifying function and to the truth of her pure difference (Barthes

1970:91).”

In discussing the “written”, theatrical faces of Japanese Noh, Kabuki, and

Bunraku male actors performing women’s roles, Barthes (1970) provides an apt

observation of the enacted nature of gender, and the classifications which result

from the scripting of roles. Barthes was careful to note that he was not actually

analyzing Japan as it is, but as he imagines it to be, through his system of

symbols. Archaeology, to a certain extent, runs a parallel course of deciphering

asynchronous, detached, symbolic systems. Like Barthes, we do not know the

language, we cannot speak to the biologically female humans of Yayoi-era Japan

and ask them about their experiences. As Shanks and Tilley (1987) have noted,

our archaeological interpretations will be as we have experienced them,

imagined them, and the question of gender adds, I argue, a much needed

10

dimension.

While women have participated in archaeology since almost the inception

of the field, a disproportionate amount of the data and theories have been

produced by white, Western men. In turn, they created an ancient world

according to the topography of their own experiences, which served to reproduce

gender inequity as women were erased from the pasts created by men. As

modern society has changed, men and women’s roles have changed, and this is

reflected in the participation and tenor of archaeological interpretations.

Feminism and post-processualism both contributed to a broadening of

interpretation in the 1980s. Conkey and Spector’s 1984 article, “Archaeology

and the Study of Gender,” critiqued androcentrism in archaeology and advocated

for a gendered perspective, providing a new framework for interpreting the past.

Twenty years later, feminist archaeology is a distinct sub-discipline within

archaeology, and there has been an increasing number of gendered analyses, a

number of which are not feminist. Anthropology departments in many

universities are enjoying a super-majority of female majors, and an increasing

diversity of viewpoints are emerging. In my self-reflexive, gendered, eclectic

approach, I can be safely classified as a feminist postmodernist. But what does

this mean in relation to Queen Himiko?

When I first began to research Queen Himiko, it is safe to say that I was

following the second-wave feminist agenda of “finding” women in history. I had

only heard of male Japanese emperors and did not know about the active,

conscious, masculinization (Westernization) of the Meiji emperor dating from

11

1871 (Fujitani 1999:174). As I progressed in my research and knowledge of

theory, Queen Himiko’s brother loomed large in my thinking. As her connection

to the outside world, he mediated between the divine and the mundane, yet he

was not given a name in the Wei Chih. Was he the one who was actually

marginalized by Chen Shou’s writing?

In this composition, I use the words ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ ‘he’ and ‘she,’ and

‘gender.’ Increasingly, gender theory is stepping away from the binary that these

words imply, and is moving toward theories of ‘difference’ and ‘performance’ in

identity formation (Gilchrist 1999:8). This is analogous with what can be gleaned

from the Yayoi archaeological record, as well as the Chinese historical

documents. Still, the Wei Chih was written in archaic Chinese, which uses

distinct pictographs for ‘man’ (男) and ‘woman,’ (女) and the translation retains

this distinction. The Japanese language borrowed and modified the Chinese

writing system to better fit their phonetics, but the characters for ‘man’ and

‘woman’ remained unchanged. There is also a sex-independent character for

‘person,’ (人) which was also used. In that there was the capacity to speak and

write using a gender-neutral, third person, singular personal pronoun (unlike in

English, with the exception of the as-yet unpopular ‘sie’ and ‘hir’), ambiguity,

when it is present, remains intact. All caveats aside, I have chosen to assume

that when Chen Shou uses the ‘man’ or ‘woman’ characters instead of the

gender-neutral alternative, he is writing about people with the outward biological

traits that we identify as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in present times. Whether or not our

currently perceived gender roles carried over to Yayoi-era Japan is an entirely

12

different question.

Even if I accepted the simple label of ‘postmodern feminist,’ there are

downfalls in this seemingly enlightened position. As a “feminist working in the

‘first world’ where relatively stable material conditions prevail, criticism of the

oppression of women can adopt a more flamboyantly defiant tone” (Chow

1993:66). Thus, there is a danger of transforming my subjects into objects,

“depicting women as either passive or active, both sides of which are reductionist

and one-dimensional” (Caplan 1991:321). An application of this Western

feminism, even as broadly defined as “a movement to end sexism, sexist

exploitation, and oppression” (hooks 1984:2) could be forcing an Orientalist

worldview onto a conveniently feminized East (Said 1978). A self-reflexive

approach could alleviate some of that, but I felt like I needed a multiplicity of

voices to speak through this work.

One of the introductory texts I read regarding Japanese archaeology was

Charles T. Keally’s special report on the Japanese archaeologist, “god hand”

Fujimura, who had planted archaeological evidence at various sites, extending

the occupation of Japan by several hundred thousand years (Keally, 2000). I

was quick to interpret this falsification of history as motivated by nationalism and

cultural insecurity. I was unable to read the Japanese reports myself and thus

Fujimura was turned into a “native as silent object,” as described by Rey Chow.

Intention is easily mapped onto action when the “native” is shown as a product of

postcolonial modernity. As Chow (1993:31) states in her critique of Orientalism:

“the symptomatic way non-white peoples are constructed in postcoloniality,

and because “symptom” is conventionally regarded in a secondary, derivative

13

sense, many critics of colonialism attempt to write about these peoples in

such a way as to wrest them away from their status as symptom or object.

The result is a certain inevitable subjectivizing, and here the anti-imperialist

project runs a parallel course with the type of feminist project that seeks to

restore the truth to women’s distorted and violated identities by theorizing

female subjectivity.”

My zeal for correcting “problems,” whether they be in nationalistic agendas in

Japanese archaeology, or in portrayals of women, was misguided. This outlook

was further influenced by J. Edward Kidder’s work on the Fujinoki tomb and its

contents (Kidder, 1987). In asserting the identity of the occupant of the Fujinoki

tomb as being that of Emperor Sushun, Kidder implied that the Japanese were

unwilling to accept this finding because of feelings of Japanese nationalism. The

Fujinoki grave goods were heavily Korean in influence, and the insistence of a

sharp separation between Japan and Korea even as early as the Kohun era is

insisted upon by Japanese nationalists, citing the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, the

official historical texts. ‘Where were all the progressive scholars in Japan?’, I

wondered.

Gina L. Barnes is perhaps the preeminent Western archaeologist working

in Japan. Her early books follow a heavily processual approach that I was to

learn later was typical of archaeology conducted in Japan (Mizoguchi 2002). The

vast amount of data she collected regarding the formation of the Japanese nation

state is collected in her dissertation, and posits very little about the day to day life

of the Yayoi era settlement occupants. In her later books she extends this

14

interpretation of Japanese nation-building, and maintains her focus on nations

rather than individuals. Barnes generalizes the Yayoi population almost into

oblivion; ceramics and tools evolve independently of their users and empty-

sounding villages dot the terrain. Her terse treatment of Queen Himiko merely

addresses possible evidence for elite stratification, and she calls her inability to

determine settlement hierarchy because of site size a “blessing in disguise”

(Barnes 1988:201). Barnes has little interest in individual finds or houses

outside of their fit into a larger typology. My interest in Ruth Tringham’s (1991)

approach in seeking “Households With Faces” brings my analysis down to a

more personal level. Tringham reaches beyond broad generalizations often

encountered in writings about prehistory and tries to deal more intimately with

ancient people. Yet even the question of the faces of Yayoi and Kohun era

peoples is deeply political. Did they look “Japanese?” Or did they look

“Korean?” Were they “Ainu” faces until they were replaced with “Korean” faces?

Did the “Ainu” and “Korean” faces come together to create “Japanese” faces?

What did Queen Himiko look like?

I initially encountered the problem of politicized faces when I gave a brief

talk on Japanese archaeology before a class of Asian Studies students. Much

was extrapolated from my badly drawn diagrams of migration from Africa,

through China, and onto the Japanese archipelago. Students readily accepted

the African origins of Homo sapiens, accepted the trans-China migration, but did

the Japanese come from Korea or South East Asia? Was I going to try to prove

Korean origins of the Japanese? Was I going to dig up the imperial kohun

15

myself, open the sarcophagii, and immediately perform DNA analysis, for some

sort of “aha” or “gotcha?” The power of archaeology and theories of origins

suddenly became very clear. I was greeted with enthusiastic questions, and was

afraid that what I said was not going to be challenged outright. I had the deeply

uncomfortable sensation of being treated as an expert, when I had not sorted out

issues of identity and intention beforehand. Further, it was clear to me that these

issues held significant implications regarding nationalism and identity amongst

contemporary Japanese.

Rey Chow’s dual criticism of feminist theory and postcolonial studies,

combined with the apparent pitfalls of putting faces on a politicized prehistoric

people brought my research to a standstill at times. Would I be able to produce

anything of value as a Western researcher working on East Asia? The “silent

objects” suddenly spoke up. Mizoguchi Koji’s (1997, 2000a, 2000b) articles on

Yayoi burial practices, children, and site protection and his subsequent book on

the archaeological history of Japan finally broke through the simple cataloging of

objects into post-processual analysis. Notably, Mizoguchi builds on post-

processual approaches such as the archaeology of the individual and agency,

using a methodology utilizing the topography of the individual (Mizoguchi

2002:22). He traces the temporal organization of social life through daily,

seasonal, and lifetime cycles and tries to determine patterns in these social

cycles. Rather than the topography reducing the complexity of the individual’s

choices, it instead defines the range of choices and formalizes categories so that

a coherent path can be made. For example, he maps out the villages and the

16

paddies of Yayoi villages as reflecting a division between self and the other. His

examination of the Jomon to Yayoi cultural transformation utilizes material culture

and changing technology as influencing overlays of personality and defining the

Yayoi self (Mizoguchi 2002:120).

Reading the work of a Japanese archaeologist concerned with identity—

defined through spatial utilization—was extraordinary. Mizoguchi’s concern with

the individual experience of a person living in each of the eras he outlines

extends his work from being a mere summary of sites and artifacts into a text that

is imminently accessible. However, Mizoguchi does not see himself in a special

position regarding interpretation of Japanese archaeological data; indeed, he

counts his own identity as a possible disadvantage (Mizoguchi 2002:6). He

addresses the problem of self-identity much as I am doing here. The question of

the Japanese and Japanese-ness is a constant theme, as some other

archaeologists have identified Jomon artifacts as essentially Japanese, and claim

that the Japanese “have always been” in the archipelago of Japan (Mizoguchi

2002:7). He challenges the idea that the Japanese have had an unchanging

monoculture throughout time and examines the cultural misconceptions that have

essentialized the Japanese, such as the idea of the Japanese as cultural

borrowers, constantly “stealing” from other cultures and refining the ideas for

their own purposes. Further, he addresses the misconception of Western

Cartesian duality-influenced split of mind and body (Mizoguchi 2002:12-13). Until

recently, the Japanese self has been seen as a different kind of split, that of soto

and uchi or of omote and ura, most commonly translated as outside and inside

17

selves—an exterior façade and an inner truth (Doi 1985:11). Mizoguchi avoids

mapping Western or contemporary Japanese concepts onto prehistoric people

and instead uses the metaphor of a person walking through a landscape in order

to illustrate his ideas about self-image and identity versus the outside world.

That basic boundary is permeable, but identifiable, and forms the basic level of

understanding for Mizoguchi’s methodology.

While there are only a handful of archaeologists focusing on Japan writing

in English, there is a large amount of material published in Japanese about

archaeology in Japan. This is an interesting reversal on the traditional problem

of archaeologists digging in non-English speaking countries, then publishing

strictly in English. While the issue is slowly being addressed in other sectors of

archaeology, the majority of materials regarding archaeology in Japan are still

inaccessible for Western researchers. For this reason, much of the research in

Japan is not used for more generalized theory; its specifics are never mined for

examples by Western researchers. The language barrier has created theoretical

isolation on both sides of the ocean. As an archaeologist interested in Japan, I

must master Japanese so that I may not only read all of the materials available

regarding Japanese archaeology, but also so I may publish in Japanese. While I

occasionally fear that I will never reach this level, the example of Koji Mizoguchi

comes to mind again. He went to Cambridge without any confidence in his

English, and ended up publishing a fantastic book about Japanese archaeology

in English. Junko Habu, a professor at Berkeley, also publishes and teaches in

English. Her focus is on Jomon-era societies and the analysis of shell middens.

18

If the field has Koji Mizoguchi and Junko Habu working and publishing in

English, is there a need for a Western archaeologist examining Japan as well?

Would I be another Charles Keally, a sort of monitor of Japanese archaeology,

making sure that the standards are “up” to those in the West? What constructive

role could I play in the field? My initial inclination is to act as a mediator, letting

the information transmit through me. Yet that is just the role that Gina Barnes

played, letting information flow without much interpretation. I turn to the work of

Koji Mizoguchi once again. He writes (2002:25):

“more and more archaeologists are coming to accept that archaeological

knowledge has been or is being subjected to ideological manipulation or

drawn upon in the naturalization and perpetuation of various modes of

inequality, exploitation, and suffering in the world. Because of this, the

archaeological knowledge we produce should ideally be made to contribute to

making the world a better place to live.”

Rather than being a mediator or an Orientalist, would being an archaeological

advocate be an option? The first hitch is pointed out by Louis Binford and the

other classical processualists in the field: archaeology has traditionally been tied

to hard materialism, ecology, technology, and social, political and economic

organization (Kus 2000:157). Processual archaeologists consider the realm of

ideas as “epiphenomena,” intangible, and not easily accessed through

archaeological data. This has changed somewhat in recent years with the post-

processual work of Ian Hodder and the new focus on putting people back into the

equation and demonstrating that they possessed agency (Hodder 2002:25). My

chosen sub-field, feminist archaeology, has turned to entirely new methods for

19

determining agency and authenticity of experience (Spector 1991). Yet again

there is the question of the true identity of the individual clashing with the gaze of

the researcher. Would my Western ideas create an idealized Yayoi female,

create a visage of Queen Himiko pleasing to my particular brand of feminism?

Dorinne Kondo interprets modern Japanese workplaces while building on

feminist scholarship on power and fulfillment. She too builds on the issue of her

own identity as a Japanese American studying in Japan and being seen as a

cultural outlier in both Japan and America. Like Doi and Mizoguchi, she discards

Western ideas of self and individualism, stating that Western feminism “still

remains solidly within a linguistic and historical legacy of individualism” (Kondo

1990:33). Instead she “replaces the binary” and uses a relationally-defined self

as a base of study. Her analysis of the women and their relationships with one

another shows them working inside a patriarchy, yet still finding fulfillment. In

doing so, some of the feminist critique involves merely examining existing

conditions and reporting the thoughts of the women in those conditions.

Archaeologists do not have the luxury of being privy to the thoughts of prehistoric

women. Gender in archaeology has followed the trends of feminist theory, with

the first wave examining androcentric bias, the second correcting ills of

constructing the past and inserting women into the archaeological picture, and

the third being that of broader and somewhat more ambivalent theoretical issues,

including eschewing the universal womanhood themes of the past and

recognizing that gender and sex is experienced differently across space and

time. This collapse of formalism and historical interjections has been beneficial

20

to those of us studying areas with non-Western intellectual histories. Now we are

able to branch out from the social constructionist view and examine other

aspects of gender, such as the existence of a third gender in many cultures. Still,

little work has been done on gender and the archaeological record in Japan.

Mizoguchi and Barnes address the sex of individuals only so far as to mention

burial practices and skeletal remains, which is not always a solid indicator of the

gender that the deceased identified with. Additionally, archaeologists in the past

have not bothered to sex the skeletons themselves, but instead determined the

sex of the deceased by the cultural artifacts that the skeleton was buried with,

cribbing an established typology instead of looking for outliers in the

archaeological record (Gilchrist 1999:69).

In my search for a meaningful perception of gender that could be

illustrative in a study of Queen Himiko, I found Susan Kus’ (2000:158) “no

apologies” passage in Ideas Are Like Burgeoning Grains of a Young Rice Stalk

to be particularly enlightening:

“No apologies need be offered for later archaeological wanderings into other

diverse and dispersed domains; it is a continuation of the important, enriching

tradition of “archaeologist-as-eclectic,” a tradition we most often

enthusiastically confess to in the classroom.”

Works of indigenous Japanese feminists add a tenor and depth that is often

missing in explorations of identity in archaeology. Prominent feminist Ueno

Chizuko’s work on the creation of modern household patriarchy by the Meiji

government in 1878 reveals the dynamic nature of gender roles, and how

21

conscious change at the governmental level can regiment previously fluid

relationships (Ueno 1996:213). Ueno also calls for a greater concentration on

the history of “ordinary” women, village women- who were previously ignored by

historians intent on dynastic successions and samurai warriors (Ueno

1987:S75). Asano Tamanoi Mariko critiques the work of Western anthropologists

on Japanese women, noting critical differences between work done on Western

women and Japanese women (Asano 1990:18). Japanese women, long the

object of a one-sided Western gaze, are now taking action not only in their own

language, but are making the effort to publish in the English-language journals,

reclaiming their voices in their own language, as well as in the language of their

objectifiers.

Moving beyond prose, I found the works of modern Japanese feminist

poets deeply enriching and vital to my methodological “patchwork quilt” (Kus

2000:170). Post-war poet Ishigaki Rin deconstructed feminine stereotypes while

celebrating the history of women’s work with a few simple lines in her poem, “In

Front of Me, the Pot, and Ricepot and Burning Flames” (Morton 1997:82):

The mysterious irony that made cookingThe task of womenWas not ill-fortune I believeBecause of it learning and worldly statusMay lag behind but (…)In front of these beloved objects (the pot, ricepot, etc)Just like we cook meat and potatoesWith a deep loveLet us study politics and economics and literature

I was moved to recognize the depth of women’s experiences in the past and

present, and to question my study of Queen Himiko. In focusing on her,

am I distorting the experience of women in history? Not every woman had the

22

“One-thousand servants” or a “palace surrounded by towers” as described in the

Wei Chih. Yet a focus on the shifting perceptions of one person did provide

certain insights that might be more widely applicable.

In the afterword of Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945, an

exploration of the mutability of gendered experience, Jane Caplan (1991:321)

addresses the quandary presented by addressing women as either passive or

active by stating that this problem:

“…could be reworked if the individual subject were deconstructed; in other

words, the ostensible coherence and unity of the subject or agent would be

unraveled and revealed as something that is actually plural, internally

contradictory, and overdetermined by mutal influences beyond its control and

consciousness.”

In focusing on a single woman in Japanese history, I can reveal the plurality of

her experience in history, examine the contradictions in perceptions about her,

and even perhaps enlighten modern readers as to the difficulties and joys in

studying Himiko, and her individual moment in time.

“Here individual is no closure, theater, outstripping, victory; it is simply difference,

refracted, without privilege, from body to body (Barthes 1970:98).”

While Barthes is speaking about the Japan of his own construction, his

critique of the Western emphasis on individuality seems apt. The

archaeologically-imagined Japan was populated with individuals including Queen

Himiko, but these individuals operated within a societal framework in which

23

individualism was only one aspect, perhaps quite differently conceived than that

of the maximizing Western individual. And while “(Femininity)—is not a natural

essence whose truth we madly pursue,” the examination of questions of sex and

gender can only add to the understood past, contributing “pieces to the mosaic

that resonate with a patterning produced in cooperation rather than cooptation”

(Kus 2000:170).

24

Chapter Three: Perceptions of Gender in the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kohun7

Eras

With the death of Queen Himiko around 250 C.E., and the authoring of the

Wei Chih, or ‘History of the Kingdom of Wei’ by Chen Shou around 280 C.E., the

archipelago of Japan moved from prehistory to history. The Wei Chih is the first

extant document associated with Japan, as Japanese official histories do not

appear until 700 C.E. with the Nihon shoki and the Kojiki, both of which were

primarily concerned with the establishment of an unbroken royal lineage. As is

the case in most official histories, the defining dates of these eras were

appointed long after all participants in the era were gone. While these specific

dates may be arbitrary, especially from the perspective of the people living at the

time, they provide convenient benchmarks for examining and contrasting

common practices and life ways through time. The history/prehistory division

imposed by the start of recorded history also fits appropriately between the Yayoi

and the Kohun eras; the Queen that was most associated with the Yayoi era was

buried in a Kohun-style tomb. In this chapter I attempt to provide a gendered

historical context for Queen Himiko through a broad overview of the major

historical eras of Japan (Table 1).

7 Kohun is also referred to as Kofun.

25

In the case of Japan, the separation of the archipelago from the mainland

and being clearly bounded by the sea helped to create a modern sense of

cohesion within the modern world, a feeling that the current residents have

“always been there” (Mizoguchi 2002:10). This perception of personal historical

progression and feelings of investment in cultural evolution has aided the

embodiment of archaeological history. As arbitrary as the era divisions may

seem, the modern perception of a “Kohun self” being different from a “Jomon

self” promotes the idea that there is an authentic and significant relationship

between the individual and state formation.

These divisions have also been linked to the “topography of post-World War II

Japanese identities in which the Japanese have made sense of the world” with

assigning particular characteristics of personality and even gender to each era

(Mizoguchi 2002:29). I hope to examine the gender characteristics currently

perceived as inherent in each era, setting the stage for interpretation of Queen

Himiko as an actor within the Yayoi era.

Emerging out of the Paleolithic occupation of Japan, the Jomon era began

roughly 10,000 years ago. As the name Jomon, or “patterns of plaited cord”

(jousekimon) indicates, the Jomon period is defined by an extensive record of

uniquely decorated pottery. The chronology of this particular pottery was

Prehistoric Jomon Yayoi Kohun

30,000 B.P 12,000 B.P. 400 B.C.E 250 C.E.

Hunter-Gatherer Groups SegmentarySociety

Chiefdom State

Table 1. The era names and corresponding classifications, with the prehistory/historydivision shown between Yayoi and Kohun.

26

accurately established even before radiocarbon dating was available. This

pottery is also notable as some of the oldest in the world, dating back to 16,520

B.P.8 The Jomon period is seen as the Japanese prehistory, an idyllic time, ruled

by shamanism and the domestic sphere. The Jomon period is generally divided

into six periods, marked by slowly increasing “scheduling,” or fixity in their use of

task-specfic seasonal settlements (Mizoguchi 2002:76). A complex exchange

network, likened to that of the Hopewell ‘interaction sphere’ of North America has

been documented, with exchange goods such as jade, obsidian, shellfish, and

walnuts found at sites hundreds of miles from their original sources (Barnes

1993:80). Chipped stone tools akin to ‘hoes’ have been found dating from the

Middle Jomon, 5,000-4,000 B.P. and there are indications in preserved pollen,

seed, and grains that some varieties of herbs and millet were cultivated at that

time (Barnes 1993:91). The Jomon had an extensive material culture, which has

led some to characterize the era as

one of “affluent foragers” who

exploited marine resources as well

as forest products (Barnes 1993:80).

In addtion to their complex ceramic

vessels, the Jomon created detailed

figurines which have been found in a variety of contexts. As seen in Figure 1,

these early representations of humans, first on rocks, then as clay figurines, are

8 “The oldest date obtained from Odai Yamamoto I, where potsherds are associated withfinal Paleolithic/Incipient Jomon lithic assemblage, is 13,780+/-170 B.P. Its calibrateddate is 16,520 B.P. (Mizoguchi 2002:77)”

Figure 1. Figurines of the Jomon Period(Kidder 1959:73).

27

predominantly female. This view of the Jomon as an idyllic, feminized past is

reflected in popular culture with movies such as

Princess Mononoke, where the main character,

San (Figure 2), is modeled after a Jomon figurine

and is seen as a relic of a naturalistic past

(Miyazaki 1997). The Jomon era is also seen as

essentially unchanging, requiring an infusion of

people from the mainland in order to change. As

Mizoguchi notes, “despite its furiously detailed

pottery-based typo-chronology, the period has

never quite been historicized” (Mizoguchi

2002:31). In this way, it becomes the “timeless past” before Japaneseness came

to be. This hazy, inaccessible feeling attached to the Jomon era was reinforced

by the national mythos until 1945. Until this time, the basic lessons of the Kojiki

and the Nihon Shoki were taught to the general public (Brownlee 1997). School

children were obliged to memorize, in archaic Japanese, the Sun Goddess

Amateratsu’s declaration:

This Reed-plain-1500-autumns-fair-rice-ear Land is the region which my

descendants shall be lords of. Do thou, my August Grandchild, proceed thither

and govern it. Go! And may prosperity attend thy dynasty, and may it, like

Heaven and Earth, endure for ever.

The transfer from Gods to humans commenced with Amateratsu’s grandchild,

Emperor Jinmu, in 660 B.C.E.; events previous to that time were unimportant or

nonexistant (Brownlee 1997:5). While this mythos was commonly taught and

Figure 2. San from PrincessMononoke (Miyazaki 1997).

28

used by the Meiji restoration to reinforce the emperor’s power in 1868, modern

archaeology in Japan is said to have started when Professor Edward S. Morse

examined a Neolithic shell mound in 1879 (Kidder 1959:22). Still, all of this had

the effect of making the Jomon occupy a dehistoricized discursive space, before

the modern problems of emperors and war emerged.

Beyond the overall gendering of the Jomon era as more naturalistic and

female, archaeologists and historians have extended this modern notion of

naturalized gender to encompass social groups of men and women. In the 1975

Maehara Excavation Project report, the men are shown constructing and firing

pots (Figure 3), an activity

often constructed cross-

culturally as a feminine

activity. Perhaps because

the pots are seen as

technologically sophisticated

and intricately decorated, the

author of the report assumed

that pottery production was a

higher ranking, and therefore, male-dominated activity (Wright 1991). Women

are shown later in the report (Figure 4) in a household context, completing more

mundane tasks such as weaving a basket and grinding/processing food. The

two drawings of these differentiated tasks are distinct from one another and

denote a clear separation in tasks and a perceived separation in associated

Figure 3. Jomon men constructing pottery (MaeharaExcavation Project Report 1975).

29

contexts. The men are shown next to a fire, without the moorings of buildings or

any background features to tie them to any other people. The women have a

structure behind them, firmly associating them with the domestic sphere. Is this

modern depiction of

division supported by the

archaeological record?

Accompanying the

predominantly female clay

figurines are other objects

which seem to indicate a

constructed gender

division between the male

and female sexes. A ceramic tablet from Otaru, Hokkaido, has representations

of male and female organs on opposite sides. Phallic stone rods, some

exceeding one meter in length, have been found dating from the middle Jomon.

These stone clubs were often incorporated into the stone setting of the hearth,

perhaps suggesting a transformative power between “raw” and “cooked”

(Mizoguchi 2002:109). This incorporation of male and female sex organs in

artifacts and of the phallus in a place ethnographically connected to female labor

might represent a lack of gender-based hierarchy, but further examination of the

dual representations reveals that often the female organ is traced by a light

outline, or represented only in mock penetration, while the penis is always well

defined (Mizoguchi 2002:108). The ceramic female figures have been

Figure 4. Jomon women in the domestic context (MaeharaExcavation Project Report 1975).

30

interpreted as eventually becoming the human-shaped bone containers for

secondary burial, perhaps linking the concepts of death and fertility (Imamura

1996:97). While the clay containers are often intact, Jomon bone preservation is

rare outside of shell middens. Thus, it is difficult to assess whether or not there

was differential treatment in burial contexts along the lines of gender, and by

extension, a possible gendered hierarchy in labor. Although the human remains

leave no explicit trace of sex or gender-based differentiation in terms of burial

practices, the number of both male and female burials with rich material culture

items increased by the end of the Jomon period. This suggests a corresponding

increase in situation-dependent hierarchical positional differences, but not along

gendered or sexed lines (Mizoguchi 2002:111). In contrast to the perception of

the Jomon as living in a hazy, feminized past, or as having strict divisions along

perceived gender lines, the archaeological record seems to suggest while there

was a symbolic power emphasizing sex, and apparent gendering of life moments

such as death, it was a much more complex picture than modern interpretations

suggest.

In contrast with the modern perception of the Jomon as a feminized,

unchanging people, the Yayoi (400 B.C.E. to 250 C.E) are seen as dynamic

and masculine. Rather than being associated with pottery chronologies, often

the new bronze technology, particularly in the production of swords is

emphasized. Where the Jomon are inaccessible through an impenetrable veil of

perceived difference, the Yayoi evince nostalgic ties for the modern Japanese

(Mizoguchi 2002:117). Toro, the Yayoi site excavated in 1947, had deep

31

nationalistic meaning for post-WWII Japan. A student working on the site

remarked that, “when our shovels peeled off the surface of the Shizuoka plain

and found underneath the life of our distant ancestors of 2,000 years ago—their

very breath preserved intact—it cast forth an intensely bright light for a society

that had fallen into a state of utter bewilderment” (Edwards 1991:2). This

investment in the Yayoi as a kind of cultural anchor has led to sites such as the

Yoshinogari site in Kyushu being preserved not only archaeologically, but

reconstructed for exploration by tourists. Details of the lives of individuals living

in the Yayoi era are accessible by the Japanese in that the landscape of recent

memory, rice paddies, proliferated during this period. Tools that were used just

fifty years ago have corresponding representatives in the archaeological record

dating from the beginning of rice agriculture in Japan (Mizoguchi 2002:116).

Eclipsing all of the other perceptions of the Yayoi is its conflation with the

mythological components of the Yamato state. The historical Yamato state was

formed in the mid-fifth century, when its kings consolidated their holdings in

Japan and once again opened communications with China. In order to increase

their legitimacy, the concept of bansai ikkei, or unbroken dynastic continuity was

formed. The kings that would become emperors in the eigth century wanted to

reinforce the idea that they had ruled since the beginning of time and were

descended from gods (Kiley 1973:27). The studies of the Yayoi have tended to

search for the roots of the Yamato, and the hunt for the location of Yamato’s

capital, Yamatai, has become a kind of Atlantis to Japanese researchers.

This feeling of “Japaneseness” evoked by Yayoi era causes the period to

32

often be seen as a “first chapter” in the history of the Japanese (Mizoguchi

2002:117). The emergence of metallurgy, warfare, fixed hierarchization, and

politics have contributed to the gendering of this era as masculine, primarily in

opposition to the feminine Jomon era. In this way it actually mirrors the national

mythos—that the untouchable goddess has given birth to the fallible human man.

The pots and shell middens of the Jomon give way to the bronze bells and

swords of the Yayoi. All of this has very little to do with the actual experience

of gender during the Yayoi era.

The Yayoi period is generally marked by the onset of rice agriculture in

Japan. Until this point, agriculture in the archipelago was characterized by the

dry, swidden cultivation of ten varieties of plants. By the middle Yayoi period, 27

new kinds of plants were introduced to the original ten. Farming of rice still

requires intensive labor, including the transplanting of rice seedlings to wet fields.

These methods were originally thought to have come over with a new wave of

immigration from Korea. The rice that is cultivated in Japan is of the short-

grained variety, which is thought to have grown cold-weather resistant through

being cultivated in progressively colder climes as people moved it north and into

the peninsula of Korea. While the rice and the technology of cultivating it

certainly came from the mainland, there is no evidence that there was a

wholesale replacement of the Jomon population by these immigrants (Imamura

1996:151). With the rice cultivation came a new set of collaborative roles. Along

with the new cultivation and the life patterns that stemmed from it, came a

population boom and an emergent social stratification. Jar and mound burials

33

that date from this time have shell bracelets and glass beads accompanying

some of the burials, possibly indicating a new elite class. At the Yoshinogari site,

there is a clear difference between the gohora shell-bracelets, found with burials

of men, and the imogai bracelets found with the burials of women (Hudson &

Barnes 1991:225). There are a number of juvenile remains found with bracelets,

indicating ascribed status amongst the elite. The bracelets also exhibit the

importance of maritime trade for the Yayoi, in that examples of bracelets from the

southern Japanese island of Ryukyu have been found in Shikoku and Shimane

on the main island of Honshu, and even at Usu on the far northern island of

Hokkaido. The archaeological evidence seems to indicate an awareness of

gender differences, but one that is not necessarily exclusively linked to elite

status.

Unlike the typical Yayoi burial using large jars, Queen Himiko was buried

in “a great mound, more than one hundred paces in diameter,” and “over a

hundred male and female attendants followed her to the grave” (Tsunoda

1958:6). Was it the first of the kohun, the often keyhole-shaped tombs that

defined the Kohun era (250 C.E. to 550 C.E)? The swords, spearheads, and

bronze bells that were associated with the Yayoi era, and that had become

enlarged for ritual purposes, disappeared after the introduction of the kohun

(Mizoguchi 2002:204). The name “Kohun” literally means “old tomb” and

investigations of remains from this time shift from the more generalized

excavation of villages and paddies, to a direct focus on the mounds and their

contents. The directed nature of these ongoing excavations leads to an

34

emphasis on the elites and the stratification of society during the Kohun era.

There are an estimated 10,000 mound tombs in Japan, and they range from five

meters to a staggering 1582 meters in diameter, comprable to the Great Pyramid

of Giza, which is only 920 meters in diameter (Keally 2002). The topographic

domination of the kohun contributes to an increased focus on the individual9

within the tomb, rather than the community who built the tomb.

While most of the smaller mounds have been cleared for modern

development, many of the largest of these tombs still dominate the landscape, as

they are considered the emperor’s ancestors and excavation of them is

forbidden. This attitude was evident in the modern excavation of the Fujinoki

tomb in the Nara prefecture in 1985. The initial excavations were performed as a

cultural resource management project, as the land was going to be developed.

The Fujinoki tomb was lacking the defining square component of the keyhole,

and was not catalogued in the official register of royal tomb locations. The

interior of the tomb yielded a great number of grave goods, including horse

trappings, ceramics, and a Chinese house-shaped sarcophagus. When the

sarcophagus was later opened, it revealed two skeletons, one of a young man in

his twenties, and another of an elderly woman, specific age range unknown

(Kidder 1989:419). Due to what was seen as the Korean nature of the grave

goods, the public was hesitant to accept the theory that this was the imperial

tomb of Emperor Sushun, reburied near his son’s palace along with his wife,

Otomo no Koteko, who died some years later (Kidder 1989:457). The excavation

9 While they are usually assumed to hold one person, two or more people have beenfound in several of the accidentally excavated tombs (Kidder 1987).

35

of the tomb received massive media coverage and the delay between the initial

excavations and the opening of the sarcophagus gave ample time for postulating

the identity of the occupant. But what did it mean for these people to be buried in

this keyhole-shaped tomb?

The elites of the Yayoi period drew their status from trade and trade goods,

indicating a relationship with a perceived Other (Mizoguchi 2002:205). Their

burials were dug with the burial ceremony being performed so that the

participants interring the body could see the graves of the previously interred

(Mizoguchi 2002:143). In the Kohun era, the large tombs were specifically

associated with family members of previous status. Their placement eclipses

group burials in favor of a single burial, or a small group of large-scale burials of

related people. Yet there is not just a single mound, or a few in a small area, but

they stretch almost to the northern tip of Honshu. The first large mound burial

noted in history was used to bury a woman. The few that have been excavated

have contained women as part of a grouping more often than not. The official

histories of Japan, the Nihon shoki and the Kojiki, make note of several female

empresses along with emperors. While this was to shift in later years, this

apparently egalitarian view of gender found in the Yayoi era was also found in

the Kohun era.

Views of gender and Japanese identity can be particularly difficult to

ascertain by the Western researcher. Gender bias is difficult to demonstrate, as

the Japanese language is often devoid of pronouns and can be very gender non-

specific. The strictly positivistic approaches employed by Japanese

36

archaeologists until recently concentrate on questions that they felt could be

answered absolutely by the archaeological evidence (Mizoguchi 2002). The

divisions of the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kohun eras further confuses questions of

identity. This approach tends to not only compartmentalize a historical

continuum, but also isolates Japan and adds to the perception of non-interaction

with neighboring cultures. Until recently, archaeology performed in Japan has

played on the modern idea of cultural borrowing and improvement, but also

espoused a seemingly incompatible vision of ethnic and cultural uniqueness.

In the space provided, a thorough examination of the Jomon, Yayoi, and

Kohun eras is impossible. The brief summaries of gender as it possibly was and

how it is perceived today is merely setting the scene for Queen Himiko. Her

communication with the Wei Chinese, her death, and the mound built

subsequently to bury her in provide a coda to the Yayoi era and a prelude to the

Kohun era. The shift from the ageless feminine past into a more immediate,

masculinized historical present introduces a problem in examining a female ruler.

The Chinese systems of Confucianism and Buddhism were already imposing a

less egalitarian system of gendered relationships. The amount of queens and

then empresses decreased gradually, and comprised only eight of the 125 terms

of rule, with the last being Go-Sakuramachi who reigned from 1762-1771. After

outlawing female Empresses altogether in 1948, Japan is likely to change the

imperial law as of December, 2003. Leadership of the country is not always a

perfect indicator of the level of personal freedom enjoyed by the general

37

population, and bringing the question of female leadership in the affirmative into

public debate increases gender dialogue.

38

Chapter Four: Contested Identity

In my focus on Queen Himiko, I attempt to understand her as both a

characterization of modern ideas about gender as well as to recontextualize her

as a figure in Yayoi era Japan. The Yayoi era is now seen as masculine, despite

the fact that she is the only leader forthcoming from that time. The appropriation

of her visage for modern usage is not only an attempt to reach for a personal

connection with a particular past, but also perhaps is an attempt to challenge and

displace the modern, masculine Emperor mythos. In recontextualizing Himiko, I

hope to avoid any overt subjectivizing of her as an inactive “Other”, or as a

natural, emotional product of an “ecofeminist” agenda (Meskell 1999:71).

Examining the text of the Wei Chih in detail for gender-related commentary,

albeit through a Confucian lens, lends insight where the archaeological record

has been ambiguous. Moreover, since most archaeologists in Japan have yet to

address gender in their interpretations of the past, it remains to be seen what can

be learned from the archaeological record. Other authors’ perspectives are

explored, as well as current manifestations of Himiko in Japanese popular

culture. Finally, I hope to interpret her as an active individual in an “individual

bod(y) located in a particular time and place” (Hodder 2000:25).

Historical documents such as the Wei Chih provide a more intensive study

39

of the Japanese in terms of the level of detailed observations that can be used to

examine views on gender in the late Yayoi period. The Wei Chih, or ‘History of

the Kingdom of Wei’, was compiled in the latter part of the third century C.E. and

chronicles the founding of the Wei Dynasty from its beginning in 220 C.E. until its

end in 265 C.E (Edwards 1996:53). This compilation assembled by Chen Shou

includes descriptions of diplomatic missions to the Wa people, who are now

generally considered to have inhabited the archipelago now known as Japan.

The passage pertaining to the Wa is now called the Wajinden, and is only 2,000

characters — 61 lines — long (Edwards 1996:53). While the history as observed

by Wei Chinese ambassadors to outside countries was undoubtedly politicized,

and served to bolster the legitimacy of the established monarchy, the main

purpose of the document was to better inform the monarchy about the outlying

kingdoms. Keeping the biases of the Wei Chinese in mind, the Wajinden portion

of the Wei Chih10 can be used in conjunction with archaeology to better

contextualize and interpret the archaeological evidence.

Perceived Gender Difference in Wa Society

As a whole, the Wajinden describes observed differences between men

and women (represented by different pictograms) in very basic, visual terms.

Gendered bodies are noted in that “men, great and small, all tattoo their faces

and decorate their bodies with designs” and women “wear their hair in loops”

10 This version of the Wei Chih, while originally compiled by Chen Shou, was officiallyprinted in 1000-1002 C.E. The version in use here was translated by Tsunoda andGoodrich in Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories and was based on the Po na pen erh-shih-ssu shih edition of 1190-1194.

40

(Tsunoda 1951:10). Men’s clothing is “fastened around the body with little

sewing,” while women’s clothing is “like an unlined coverlet and is worn by

slipping the head through an opening in the center” (Tsunoda 1951:10-11).

Aside from references to Queen Himiko and other political leaders, the Wajinden

mentions gender primarily with concern to appearance. Activities that are

typically gendered in historical sources such as cultivation, spinning, weaving,

and even descriptions of weapons are mentioned without specific gender

attribution. Perhaps apropos to their assigned purpose, more characters are

dedicated to describing class structures and political systems.

Superficial observations of gender in the Wei Chih are not as instructive

as descriptions of ritual and household roles. While the ambassadors were

careful to note differences in hair, skin, and clothing, less gendered task

differentiation is apparent in everyday actions. The scribe could have assumed

that task differentiation with cultural parallels to the Wei Chinese were assigned

by gender, but it is not apparent in the translation. The population is counted by

household, assuming an average number of people living in each house. The

dwellings are further described in that the “houses have rooms; father and

mother, elder and younger, sleep separately” (Tsunoda 1951:8). That the

households were defined as separate entities within the larger settlement, and

that within the household there was another division between members of the

family could have reflected the regional organization of social groups. Yet further

on in the text it is stated that “there is no distinction between father and son or

between men and women” (Tsunoda 1951:12). This is where the Confucian bias

41

of the author shows most clearly in the Wajinden, as this observation seems to

be contradicted immediately following in the passages regarding “men of

importance”. “Men of importance” are noted to have four or five wives, while

lesser men have two or three. While there may not have been an overt

difference in comportment, power in Wa society was determined by number of

wives. The value of the household as a primary social group was emphasized by

the punishments meted out to law violators. A light offender “loses his wife and

children by confiscation” while heavier offences were punished by the

“(extermination) of the members of his household and also his kinsmen”

(Tsunoda 1951:12).

A parallel to the importance of the household was the court of Queen

Himiko, where it is mentioned that while she was not married and had a younger

brother who assisted her in rule, she also had one thousand women as

attendants. This overabundance of women “wives” could have been the ultimate

expression of her power. Typical “men of importance” had four or five wives,

while she had one thousand. The count of one thousand could also be an

expression by the historian meaning “countless” instead of an exact count. It is

also mentioned that she was rarely seen, and had one man (usually assumed to

be her brother) serve as a medium of communication with the outside world.

This lack of contact with anyone beyond her court, and with the opposite gender

in particular, is mentioned as part of a ritual denial earlier in the Wajinden.

Likewise, when envoys went on voyages across the sea, the Wa would:

“…select a man who does not arrange his hair, does not rid himself of fleas, lets

42

his clothing [get as] dirty as it will, does not eat meat, and does not approach

women. This man behaves like a mourner and is known as the fortune

keeper. When the voyage turns out propitious, they all lavish on him slaves

and other valuables. In case there is disease or mishap, they kill him, saying

that he was not scrupulous in his duties” (Tsunoda 1951:11).

The selected man kept the fortune of other members of the society by this ritual

lack, his purity and self-denial assuring the success of others. Queen Himiko

“though mature in age, remained unmarried”. She was at once at the apex of

society, with her multitude of females as power currency, but also kept the

fortune of the country by her ritual self-denial in remaining unmarried and

isolated. This perceived purity combined with a mention in the Wajinden of

Himiko engaging in “magic and sorcery, bewitching the people” has resulted in

her often being portrayed as an early miko, or Shinto priestess, and enhancing

her value in modern Japanese popular culture as a mysterious figure from the

past.

The Nature of Himiko’s Reign

Aside from her enchantment of the people, Himiko, as portrayed in the

Wajinden, was a highly capable leader who reestablished trade relations with

China and ruled twenty-two countries after a period of war. In The Emergence of

Japanese Kingship, Joan Piggott (1997) devotes an entire chapter to examining

Himiko’s role as the paramount of her confederate polity using archaeological

evidence as well as local lore and mythology. In sending an envoy to meet with

the Wei Emperor, she was maintained a monopoly not only on resources such as

43

iron-forging and tool design, but also on the official recognition of power in the

archipelago. In exchange for her tribute consisting of four male slaves, six

female slaves, and two lengths of designed cloth, she received the title of “Queen

of Wa Friendly to Wei,” a gold seal, lengths of cloth, gold, gems, two swords, and

one-hundred bronze mirrors. The ambassadors in charge of the envoy received

appointments at the Wei court. Thenceforth, Himiko sent an envoy every two

years and was rewarded reciprocally each time (Tsunoda 1951:14). This

established pattern would form the basis for the archipelago’s foreign relations

that would remain in place for over 1,000 years, until the years of the Ashikaga

shoguns of the Muromachi period in the last half of the 14th century C.E. (Kazui,

Videen 1982:286).

The mirrors mentioned in the tribute were given with the mandate to

“exhibit them to your countrymen in order to demonstrate that our country thinks

so much of you as to bestow such exquisite gifts upon you” (Tsunoda 1951:15).

The question of the mirrors has captured the interest of archaeologists in Japan,

and many have been found associated with mound burials. As reported in The

Japan Times, March 29th, 2000, an excavation of the Hokenoyama tomb in Nara

Prefecture yielded a “gamontai shinjukyo” mirror which Kunihiko Kawakami from

the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara cited as a possible link to Yamatai,

Himiko’s kingdom. Further, such mirrors are found periodically at Yayoi sites,

adding to their potency as a political symbol, and generating more interest in the

location of Yamatai.

With Himiko’s political efficacy well established, Piggott then addresses

44

another, perhaps less apparent aspect of the Wajinden—Himiko’s shared

political role with her brother. While her brother is never named, he was her

conduit to the outside world. He “serve(s) her food and drink and act(s) as a

medium of communication,” and was guarded by further contact by “towers and

stockades, with armed guards in a state of constant vigilance” (Tsunoda

1951:13). Mizoguchi Koji interprets this as a divine chiefship, where the elite

mediate the relationship between the divine and the mundane, creating an “elite

discursive space” between themselves and other people (Mizoguchi 2002:213).

Proximity to the divine is no longer shared, adding to the decline of meaning

content of the communal. While it could be seen as a relationship of concentric

circles, Piggott emphasizes the dual nature of the leadership, as outlined by

gender historian Takamure Itsue in her theory of himehikosei, or dual-gender

paired chieftaincies (Piggott 1997:39). Other such pairs are found in Japanese

history and legend, including a female chieftain named Atahime who is portrayed

as “casting a spell to ensure an enemy’s defeat before joining her male partner to

lead an attack” as well as prominent dual-gender pairs of deities in mythology

(Piggott 1997:39). This suggests a “social paradigm of gender complementarity”

embodying an ideal based on the Chinese male and female principles yin and

yang (Piggott 1997:49). Instead of concentric circles with mediated levels

between divine and mundane, or a dual-gendered, two-dimensional equivalency,

the relationship of Himiko and her brother suggests the modern Japanese

concept of tatemae and honne. Takeo Doi defines the words: “Tatemae refers to

conventions created by people on the basis of consensus, (…) honne refers to

45

the fact that the individuals who belong to the group, even while they consent to

the tatemae, each have their own motives and opinions that are distinct from it,

and they hold these in its background” (Doi, 1985:36-37). Dorinne Kondo

expounds on these boundaries of social surface and “real feeling” as related to

soto (i.e.outside) and uchi, inside as being on a spectrum, rather than in a

dualistic relationship (Kondo 1990:31). With respect to Himiko’s shared political

role with her brother, Himiko was the honne, the “inside” aspect, while her

brother was the tatemae, the “outside” aspect. Yet, as Kondo states, “using

these terms invokes a complex series of gradations along a scale of detachment

and engagement, distance and intimacy, formality and informality” which is

expressed as a tension-filled, mutable arena instead of formalized duality, or a

simple overlay of concentric circles (Kondo 1990:31). This complex relationship

defies the simple duality of the visually-based observations made by the

emissaries to the Wa in the Wei Chih. An understanding of the dual-gender roles

in early Japanese leadership adds insight into possible social arrangements of

the time, but seems too simplistic. Kondo’s use of honne and tatemae as points

on a mutable, graduated scale involving many aspects of interaction, rather than

just a male and female, inside and outside duality seems to be a more accurate

interpretation of the roles enacted by Queen Himiko and her brother.

Modern Gendered Interpretations

William Farris (1998) offers another perspective on Himiko’s reign, with a

stronger emphasis on the politics of historical analysis. Everything about

Himiko’s reign has been called into question, including the location of her

46

kingdom, and even the actual existence of her paramountcy. While she

appeared to be part of a dual-gendered chieftainship, her role has been deeply

emphasized over her brother’s, tipping the relationship of the inside/outside ruler

on its head. The idea of a presumably young, unmarried, shamaness ruling

protohistoric Japan has captured the imagination of the Japanese, especially

during the post-World War II era when the search for a national identity surged

(Edwards 1991:2). This reinterpretation of identity can be found in the

popularization of Yayoi era archaeology as well as in Japanese popular culture.

In 1947, ground was broken on the Toro site in the first major post-World

War II excavation. The site was discovered in 1943 during the frantic

construction of a factory to make airplane propellers, but wartime concerns

postponed action, and the initial site report was lost during incendiary bombing

attacks on Shizuoka, the city closest to the site. The excavation endured food

shortages and insufficient tools, yet the work continued, revealing excellent wood

preservation and evidence of an extensive network of rice paddies, confirming

the hereto unproven assertion that rice domestication came to the archipelago

during the Yayoi era. Radio and newspaper accounts of the excavation

emphasized the student volunteers, “silently suffering meager provisions of food

while toiling under the fierce sun” (Edwards 1991:8-11). Their effort paid off

when a budget of 8 million yen was pledged for the next year, and a special

exhibit of the finds was shown at the Tokyo National Museum—the first ever

devoted to a single archaeological site (Edwards 1991:11). The cultivation of rice

at Toro also supported a greater concentration on Marxist theory in Japanese

47

archaeology, aimed at “revealing the historical roots of Japanese imperialism and

its ills” (Mizoguchi 2002:39). A national identity in opposition to the dominance of

the emperor was readily fueled by the nostalgic images of an early rice-growing

culture. The wooden tools found at Toro were very similar to tools still being

used for rice cultivation, giving a sense of continuity and pride to the Japanese.

This initial interest in revealing the evils of imperialism turned quickly to

nationalism, as the early rice cultivation of Japan was compared favorably to the

then scant information about early cultivation in China and India (Edwards

1991:19). More recently, archaeological sites and attractions have become a

valuable part of the economies of rural prefectures. One of the premiere

examples of the popularization of Yayoi is the Yoshinogari site in Northern

Kyushu. During the final stage of the three-year long excavation, the site was the

subject of scores of books, ongoing news and television coverage, and magazine

articles (Hudson & Barnes 1991:211). While Toro was a small, Late Yayoi

agricultural village, Late Yayoi Yoshinogari was a “complex, wealthy settlement

with social ranking” (Hudson & Barnes 1991:212). The site’s occupation span,

along with its evidence of social complexity opened it to speculation as a possible

location of Yamatai.

The Wajinden portion of the Wei Chih opens with a set of directions to

Yamatai, via a few other islands. This portion of the document is excruciatingly

vague and has led to intense speculation as to the exact location of Yamatai

(Edwards 1996:54). A map published in the 1990s listed nearly 150 published

theories (Hudson & Barnes 1991:233). While Yoshinogari was indeed large,

48

well-preserved, and had evidence of the kind of

class stratification that would support a Queen, it

was eventually ruled out as a candidate for the

location of Yamatai. This does not stop the

prefecture from advertising it as a village existing

contemporaneously with Queen Himiko. Indeed, the

mascot associated with the site is “Himika,” a super-deformed character version

of Himiko (Figure 5). After the initial excavation was completed, Yoshinogari was

turned into an extensive theme park with reproductions of buildings as well as

barbecue pits, a Frisbee golf course, and a playground with miniature Yayoi

buildings to play on. The souvenir shop features Himika on a variety of

merchandise. Minor excavations are ongoing, and are also included in the list of

attractions.

Apart from direct

appropriation by Yayoi-era

attraction, Himiko has been used

as a form of cultural short-hand.

Her life has been dramatized in

novels, television shows, movies,

and more recently, comic books

and video games. Himiko-den, or “Legend of Himiko” (Figure 6), was a popular

video game that was turned into an animated series for Japanese television. In

the animation, Himiko is born in the past and transported to the future after a

Figure 5. Himika, themascot.

Figure 6. Himiko, the star of Himiko-den.

49

magical accident and is left only with a mirror pendant as a clue to her identity.

When she is a teenager, she follows her archaeologist foster father to a site

where she is transported back to her original era along with a male friend. She,

along with a group of six other women, saves the kingdom of Yamatai from a

more technologically advanced country threatening to take over. Ironically, the

video game is actually a dating simulation game. The male friend of Himiko can

choose to advance a relationship with any one of the women in the game and

that woman also becomes the queen of Yamatai.

Outside of her presence as a teenaged girl, or as a smiling figure on a

souvenir shirt, her name alone has been co-opted and marketed. A prominent

company in Japan selling women’s shoes and accessories has named their

product line after her, adding a certain mystical fire to their product. The brand

concept, as translated from the Himiko Company website, reads as follows:

“(Himiko is a) brand which promotes a caring lifestyle to trend-seeking individuals

with independent hearts. From the sneakers to the pumps, it is the commodity

with a basic, casual personality” (Himiko.co.jp). This personality branding shows

a shift in marketing that attempts to sell an image/lifestyle over the more material

qualities of their products (Klein 1999:4). Wearing Himiko brand shoes connects

the wearer to the mystical past, where a young woman ruled, and might be seen

as a form of “resistance consumption” in Japan’s “uniformed society” (McVeigh

2000:157).

The use of Himiko as a symbol for the ancient, yet accessible past,

infused with nostalgia and a sense of mystery, mirrors an aspect of John

50

Traphagan’s ethnographic research regarding Japanese women’s roles as

cultural caretakers. The “ritual behavior associated with (…) ancestor veneration

in Japan is often organized around what can be understood as a total life-care

system” in which women play a central part (Traphagan 2003:127). This

perceived role may also contribute to the phenomenon of archaeological

excavations in Japan being staffed by men, but undertaken by a female volunteer

work force (Traphagan 2003). Himiko, in her role as a cultural caretaker, a

conduit for the past, also tells us about present perceptions of gender.

Overall, I believe that the questions of identity and gender constituted in

modern reconstructions of the past are important to consider while performing

archaeology of any kind. As Shanks and Tilley (1987) have noted, it is well

known that archaeology is involved in the constitution of society by creating its

own discursive space in which the way people understand the world is shaped,

challenged, and reproduced. Ideally, this involvement should contribute to not

only a more sophisticated view of the past, but also to a better constructed and

understood future. Interpreting the Wei Chih provides a snapshot of possible

gender attributed work, appearance, and power during the reign of Queen

Himiko, albeit through the cultural lens of the Wei ambassadors. This snapshot

can increase the sophistication of our understanding of the relationships between

power and gender. Instead of interpreting Himiko as a historical aberration, we

can more easily see our modern bias of a one-ruler system and explore more

possibilities, such as dual-gender rule. Finally, addressing Himiko as she is seen

in the modern world elucidates the problem of gender in archaeological

51

interpretation. The ways in which she is co-opted reveal ways in which the public

and commercial world uses historical figures and archaeology to attain modern

objectives. Observing the areas in which academic resources are used to build

modern identity allows us to address harmful biases and discrepancies. Lending

greater sophistication to our knowledge of identity in history and in prehistory

allows us to provide an alternate perspective to one produced by the media.

52

Chapter 5: Conclusion

When Himiko died, a great mound was raised, more than a hundred paces in

diameter. Over a hundred male and female attendants followed her to the

grave. Then a king was placed on the throne, but the people would not obey

him. Assassination and murder followed; more than one thousand were thus

slain. A relative of Himiko named Iyo, a girl of thirteen, was [then] made

queen and order was restored. (Tsunoda 1951:16)

The Wei Chih gives us a brief encapsulation of the life of Queen Himiko.

We see her rise to power, her diplomatic strategies, a glance at how she lived,

then her great mounded grave. From this synopsis of one person’s life, much

has been extrapolated about the time period, the overall living habits and

customs of a people that the author was not intimately familiar with. This is not

so different from the spoons or architectural impressions archaeologists rely on

for interpretation. Finding Yamatai and discovering Queen Himiko’s burial

mound would be ideal for constructing a more complete picture of her life

experience, and perhaps more important, the experiences of the people who

allowed her to rule them. As we are reminded from the passage about Queen

Himiko’s death, the people do not always choose to obey their leaders. The

intersections of power and gender during the late Yayoi period called for female

53

representation in government. Iyo’s life remains relatively opaque in this regard.

It is not said if she was involved in a dual-gender leadership, only that she was a

relative of Himiko, and order was restored after she was made queen.

The coda on Himiko’s life—that her young female relative took over her

role—provides an appropriate beginning to her legacy. Since her death,

academics have encountered her and examined her in many ways. She has

been a symbol of nationalism, of resistance against imperialism, of the ancient,

yet accessible past, and above all, a symbol of difference. The question of her

gender seems to be at the heart of most studies of her, whether it is

acknowledged or not. The fact that she was female has motivated scholars to

look at the social conditions that would allow a female to rule, to posit theories on

dual-gender leadership, to discredit her as a charlatan, where these questions

may have remained unasked if she was male. Modern perceptions of gender in

Japan and in the West have made her reign different, rather than the norm, as

Iyo’s ascendancy would point out. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be gleaned

from the study of an ancient queen would be to broaden the base of questioning

we subject historical leaders to. Himiko has raised many unique avenues of

investigation that would have gone unexplored but for the fact of her gender.

Rather than limit our questioning the nature of her rule, we should expand our

questioning of all people in history.

Beyond this historical revisionism, “studies of women in the past (…)

possess shock value, and are catalysts for the consciousness-raising which

leads to a re-evaluation of social attitudes” (Glichrist 1998:53). Raising the

54

awareness of Himiko helps to deconstruct dominate perceptions of the history of

Japan. In discussing my thesis with students of Asian studies, Gender studies,

Anthropology, and Archaeology, I have had the chance to encourage discussion

about studying women in the past, and current social attitudes. Orientalist

attitudes are still pervasive at the undergraduate level, adding to the resistance

normally encountered by students interested in gender. Few of the Asian studies

students who focused on Japanese history had any interest or understanding of

women in protohistoric Japan. Despite their lack of knowledge, there is always

interest in my work, and a willingness to learn more. This excitement is also

found in Japan, where Himiko is the subject of public scrutiny in her many

incarnations in media. That the academic community has moved away from

examining her, especially in her modern context as a form of cultural shorthand.

This lack of attention would be more forgivable if there was a corresponding

increase in studies on gender in the archaeological record in Japan. Rather than

stepping back from an issue that has interest in the wider public sphere,

academics in general and archaeologists in particular should be ready to inform

the public in that arena.

Stealing a page from bell hooks, I believe that ‘archaeology is for

everyone.’ A greater interest in women in the archaeological record combats

patriarchical paradigms in academia. Bringing this knowledge to a greater

audience is not only a public service, but vital to the continuation of archaeology

as a field. Archaeology is coming into its own on the internet, with several syllabi

and similar resources available to casual researchers. There are mailing lists

55

and journal databases, but much of the viral potential of the medium remains

untapped. In traditional academic representations, that is, black text on white

paper, a certain separation between individual papers/ideas is maintained, and

this separation can only be breeched in quotations made in other, separate

papers. Conventional academic presentations such as essays and articles are

units rigidly distinct from one another, and can only be presented in lists or

catalogues to be cross-referenced. New approaches enabled by new

technologies have yet to be explored. For example, the online, collectively

constructed encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org maintains a cohesive, constantly

updated, and deeply cross-referenced resource owned by no one entity. A quick

glance yields an entry on Oxyrhynchus, a site in Egypt known for an extensive

collection of papyrus texts. If I believe there is content that is incorrect or

missing, I can edit the entry myself, making history truly participatory. Another

collective construction is the Open Directory Project, where links are sorted and

listed with appropriate descriptions, then ultimately used by the larger,

proprietary Google directory.

Beyond the impersonal data presented with a touch of the false notion of

objectivity available at the Open Directory Project or even explicitly constructed in

the Wikipedia, the popularization of web logs, or blogs, creates the opportunity

for direct and visible interdisciplinary dialogue. Transparency of process is not

only instructive but inspiring. When President George W. Bush announced his

support of a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, I was lucky

enough to be on the Feminist Anthropology e-mail list, where a response

56

statement was introduced, edited, commented upon, and then released to the

media in a few short days. This sort of semi-public accessibility greatly reduces

the opacity separating undergraduates from higher theory and practice.

An internet search in Japanese for Himiko still yields shoes. New

methods of participation in the internet allow me to correct the spelling errors in

the Himiko entry in the Wikipedia, list sites for her category in the Open Directory

Project, and even update a web log about the different sources and influences I

have found in my search. I have the opportunity to make my work available for

greater consumption, which may lead to greater participation in the gender

dialogue. Men and women are redefining their roles in academia and the world,

and archaeology can provide a powerful point of entry that can be built on and

opened to discussion and debate.

57

References Cited

Barnes, Gina1988. Protohistoric Yamato. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

1993. The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London.

Barthes, Roland1982. Empire of Signs. Hill and Wang, New York.

Buckley, Sandra (editor)1997. Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Chow, Rey1993. Writinng Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Conkey, Margaret W. and Janet D. Spector1984 Archaeology and the Study of Gender. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7:1-38.

Conkey, Margaret W. and Joan Gero1997. Programme to Practice: Gender and Feminism in Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:411-437.

Edwards, Walter1991. Buried Discourse: The Toro Archaeological Site and Japanese National Identity in the Early Postwar Period. Journal of Japanese Studies 17:1-23.

1996. In Pursuit of Himiko. Post War Archaeology and the Location of Yamatai. Monumenta Nipponica 51:53-79.

Farris, William Wayne1998 Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.

Fujitani, Takashi1996. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Gilchrist, Roberta1999. Gender and Archaeology. Routledge, London.

58

Hodder, Ian2000. Agency and Individuals in Long-term Processes. In Agency in

Archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John Robb pp. 21-33.Routledge, London.

hooks, bell1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press, Cambridge,

Hudson, Mark and Gina L. Barnes1991. Yoshinogari. A Yayoi Settlement in Northern Kyushu. Monumenta Nipponica 46:211-235.

Japan Times.1998. Nara tomb discovery may stir debate over site of Queen Himiko’s realm. May 20.

Keally, Charles T.2001. Japanese Scandals- This Time It’s Archaeology <http://www.ancienteastasia.org/special/japanarchscandal.htm> Ancient East Asia Website

2002. Kohun Culture <http://www.t-net.ne.jp/~keally/kofun.html>

Kidder, Jonathan Edward1959. Japan. Frederick A. Praeger, New York.

1987. The Fujinoki Tomb and Its Grave-Goods. Monumenta Nipponica 42(1): 57-87.

Klein, Naomi1999. No Logo. Picador USA, New York.

Maehara Site Preliminary Report1975. Koganei Maehara Iseki Chosadan. Mitaka Kokusai Kirisutokyo Daigaku, Kokogaku Kenkyu Senta.

McVeigh, Brian J.2002. Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling and Self-Presentation in Japan. Berg, New York.

Miyazaki, Hayao1997. Princess Mononoke. Miramax Home Entertainment, Burbank.

1998. Interview. Mononoke o yomikaku.

59

Mizoguchi, Koji1997. Memory and Ancestral Image in Preshistoric Mortuary Practices: A case of jar burial number 6 at location D, the cemetery site of Kuriyama, Amagi City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. Bulletin of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Japan.

2000a. The Child as a Node of the Past, Present, and Future. Children and Material Culture, ed. Joanna Sofaer Derevenski pp. 141-150. Routledge,London.

2000b. The Protection of the Site: Discursive Formation and Self-Identification in Contemporary Society. International Jounral of Heritage Studies 6:323- 330.

2002. An Archaeological History of Japan, 30,000 B.C. to A.D. 700. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

2002b. Time and Genealogical Consciousness in the Mortuary Practices of the Yayoi Period, Japan. Journal of East Asian Archaeology 3(3-4):173-197.

Morton, Leith1997. Feminist Strategies in Contemporary Japanese Women’s Poetry. The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 31:73-108.

Piggott, Joan R.1997. The Emergence of Japanese Kingship. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Said, Edward W.1979. Orientalism. Random House, New York.

Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley1987. Re-Constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Spector, Janet D.1991. What This Awl Means. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey pp. 93-131. Blackwell Publishers, Malden.

Tamanoi, Mariko A.1989. Women’s Voices: Their Critique of the Anthropology of Japan. Annual

Review of Anthropology 19:17-37.

Traphagan, John W.2003. Older Women as Caregivers and Ancestral Protection in Rural Japan. Ethnology 42:127-139.

60

Tringham, Ruth E.1990. Households with Faces. In Engendering Archaeology, edited by Joan M. Gero and Margaret W. Conkey pp. 93-131. Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA.

Tsunoda, Ryusaku and L Carrington Goodrich1951. Japan in the Chinese Dynastic Histories. P.D. and I. Perkins, South Pasadena, California.

Tsunoda, Ryusaku, William Theodore De Bary and Donald Keene1958. Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume 1. Columbia University Press,

New York.

Zhenping, Wang1994. Speaking with a Forked Tongue: Diplomatic Correspondence between China and Japan, 238-608 A.D. Journal of the American Oriental Society 114:23-32.