Jyomon people and hunting

In the past articles, Mr.Kato mentioned that Jyomon people were maritime people. However, in the latest article in No.47, he also pointed out Jyomon people’s major proficiency: hunting.

The notable features of Jyomon hunters are as follows;

1 Breeding Japanese hounds

2 Developing Instinctive five senses

3 The root cause of discrimination

1 Breeding Japanese hounds

During the Jyomon period and the Yayoi period, the following types of dogs were accompanied by hunting, Hokkaido, Akita, Shiba, Kai, Kishu, and Tosa dogs.

Mr. Kato heard that these so-called Jyomon dogs have been highly valuated among dog breeders around the world. Each of those dogs has relatively small body with a pinned tail and it is quick in move, agile, faithful, and clever as a general analysis.

2 Developing instinctive five senses

Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari warns that, in the modern civilization, it is dangerous for humans to lose the five senses that they originally had in the hunting era and the original five senses enhance humans’ risk management ability. He seemed to encourage us to return to the origin once again to get us prepared for unexpected events.

Recently, world-famous journalist Christopher Ryan has also pointed out the importance of returning to the origin, saying that “civilization brings misery” -CIVILIZED TO DEATH- This may release the message : for us to survival under VULCA world, we must look at the prehistoric eras. Also, Dr. Stephen Hawkings, a world-famous physicist whom Mr. Kato wrote about in his article “Why Jyomon now?” a few years ago, recently issued the following warning to humankind through the BBC broadcast: human beings will be destroyed in 100 years.

Given those warnings and indications, hunting itself implies plenty of practices to train our five senses for us to survive under harsh natural environment.

3 The root cause of discrimination

Tracing the genealogy of Japanese hunting people, in the Jyomon period of 14,000, we have found life styles of the Ainu people, the indigenous tribes originally living in Hokkaido region, from Hokkaido to the Tohoku region and even to the Kanto area. The research found that more than 60% of the DNA of Ainu people are considered to be come from those of Jyomon.

However in Nara era, Jyomon people’s life was exposed to some persecution. From 8^th century to Edo period, people from North, almost identically to Ainu people, had been rocked into the north regions in Japan. Later on, due to the introduction of Buddhism, carnival diet had been prohibited and those who had a tradition of hunting had been persecuted. Now in the modern society, it is pity to find some traits of such discrimination among our society.

To sum up, among several features of Jyomon era, hunting had encouraged to breed dogs, enhanced our five or even six senses as positive side while it caused ,as a negative side, a sort of social class that still lasts over a thousand year.

As to Jyomondo you can find in the following video.

What is Jyomondo?