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Yayoi (弥生時代) is an era in Japan from 300 BC to A.D. 250. It is named after the section of Tokyo where archaeological investigations uncovered its trace. The Yayoi period is marked either by the start of the practice of growing rice in a paddy field or a new Yayoi style earthenware.

Following the Jomon period, the Yayoi flourished between about 300 BC and A.D. 250 from southern Kyushu to northern Honshu. Modern discoveries suggest that it started early as 900 BC. Because of the seemingly abrupt and dramatic cultural change especially as it was considered a half millennium as shorter, it was once generally assumed that the Yayoi culture did not develop directly from the Jomon, but that the Yayoi were a people who migrated from the Asian mainland. A recent discoveries like evidences of farming rice on a dry clop of land that predates a paddy field and the fact that the genetic makeup of Japanese rice is similar to that of sticky rice that came from Laos made the following theory mostly obsolete.

As Korea is the most accessible location, a theory publicized in early Meiji period in Japan argued that these immigrants were Korean most likely of the Goguryeo or the Baekje. This theory is confounded by the fact that there is no obvious similarity between the modern Korean and ancient Japanese languages and that it is unlikely that an upward of 4 million people which is needed to fill the population gap between Jomon and Yayoi period, could have migrated in such a short time. On the other hand, grammatical structures are similar between the 2 languages, and some aspects of Japanese language closely resemble that of the Goguryeo. Historians such as Jared DiamondDiamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, and biogeographer. As of June 2004, he is professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was formerly professor of physiology at the UCLA Scho have theorized that the Yayoi may have been related to the Goguryeo or the Baekje, tribes that were eventually incorporated into the medieval Korean state[1]. Information on the Goguryeo language is limited, but analysis by Christopher BeckwithChristopher I. Beckwith is a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He received his Ph. degree from Indiana University in 1977. He specializes in Asian language studies, and regularly teaches about Tibetan and and others appears to support a connection to ancient Japanese.[2]

The current theory is that the Yayoi culture did emerge out of the Jomon culture with only a limited immigration from Baekje upon its extinction. The practice of farming rice that was once believed to be passed on from China trespassing the Korean peninsula is instead recognized to have been passed from southern China by the way of Okinawa and passed onto southern Korea.

The earliest Yayoi people, themselves using chipped stone tools, appear to have started from northern Kyushu and intermixed with the Jomon. Although the potteryPottery is a form of ceramics technology, where wet clays are shaped and then dried or fired to harden them. The term is generally used only for relatively easily constructed utensils such as pots, cups, bowls, etc. and for decorative items but not for co of the Yayoi was more technologically advanced--produced on a potter's wheel--it was more simply decorated than Jomon ware. The Yayoi made bronzeBronze is the traditional name for a broad range of alloys of copper, usually with zinc and tin but not limited to those metals. First used during the Bronze Age, to which it gave its name, bronze made tools, weapons and armor that were either harder or m ceremonial nonfunctional bells, mirrors, and weapons and, by the 1st century1st century BC 1st century 2nd century other centuries) The 1st century was that century which lasted from 1 to 99. Events Beginning of Christianity Spread of the Roman Empire Masoretes adds vowel pointings to the text of the Tanakh Pompeii and Herculaneu A.D., iron agricultural tools and weapons. As the population increased and society became more complex, they wove cloth, lived in permanent farming villages, constructed buildings of wood and stone, accumulated wealth through landownership and the storage of grain, and developed distinct social classes. Their irrigated, wet-rice culture was similar to that of central and south China, requiring heavy inputs of human labor, which led to the development and eventual growth of a highly sedentary, agrarian society. Unlike China, which had to undertake massive public works and water-control projects, leading to a highly centralized government, Japan had abundant water. In Japan, then, local political and social developments were relatively more important than the activities of the central authority and a stratified society.

The earliest written records about Japan are from Chinese sources from this period. Wa 倭 (the Japanese pronunciation of an early Chinese name for Japan) was first mentioned in A.D. 257. Early Chinese historians described Wa as a land of hundreds of scattered tribal communities, not the unified land with a 700-year tradition as laid out in the Nihongi, which puts the foundation of Japan at 660 BC. 3rd century Chinese sources reported that the Wa people lived on raw vegetables, rice, and fish served on bamboo and wooden trays, had vassal-master relations, collected taxes, had provincial granaries and markets, clapped their hands in worship (something still done in Shinto shrine s), had violent succession struggles, built earthen grave mounds, and observed mourning. Himiko, a female ruler of an early political federation known as Yamatai , flourished during the 3rd century. While Himiko reigned as spiritual leader, her younger brother carried out affairs of state, which included diplomatic relations with the court of the Chinese Kingdom of Wei (A.D. 220- 265).