Customer Reviews

Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands

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This book is excellent for those who want a survey of Japanese archaeological literature for the Jomon and Yayoi periods. The author reviews the development of archaeological theories in Japan, as well as among the few Western scholars specializing in Japanese prehistory. If you don't know much about Japanese archaeology, and especially if you don't read Japanese and can't go to the primary sources, this book is a great place to start.

Although the title sounds postmodern, in fact this book is cultural-historical in its emphasis. The author advocates a multidisciplinary approach to the question of Japanese ethnogenesis and supports his opinions with an extensive bibliography.

Particularly interesting to me is the way that (according to the author) Japanese archaeological theory has mirrored the nation's recent political history. Too bad archaeologists so often fail to be reflexive about the history of theory in their OWN countries.

Fans of Japanese archaeology and pre-history may like this book. The book covers the conflicting academic accounts of the early migrations of Yayoi and Jomon peoples in pre-historic Japan. If you are very well-versed in these subjects you may well find much to interest you. There is a great deal of commentary of the different academic interpretations of how the Japanese people have come about from different populations that may have entered Japan from the Korea, China, and from the islands to the south.

Having said that, I got completely bogged down in the middle of the book, which gets mired in excessive details and charts referring to various stone implements unearthed and their relation to Yayoi and Jomon culture. Unless you are extremely interested in these things, you can comfortably skip to the final part of the book which actually contains some of the authors own conclusions once he has surveyed dozens of other academics' theories.

This book is certainly to be recommended to the academic but should be avoided by the casual reader interested in Japan. I have yet to finish the book 6 months after purchasing it.