Mochizuki　Nice to meet you. My name is Akihide Mochizuki, and I am Chief Editor of the free magazine called Jomonzine.

Miura　Nice to meet you. I am Jun Miura.

──　Mr. Mochizuki has also published a book called Jomon-jin ni Sodan Da, posing as a person from the Jomon period to give people advice.

Miura　Wow. I guess if you are a Jomon person, then you already know everything to be seen in the exhibition.

Mochizuki　Yes. At least, as far as I know.

Were dogu the souvenirs of the Jomon period?

Miura　Oh! This is the dogu (clay figurine) on the Jomon 2021 poster! It’s called “Venus of Tama New Town”. There is white under the eyes – were they originally painted white?

Mochizuki　The side of the face on our right is the original that was found in the ground, while the left side is the restored part. The area under the eyes was painted white.

Miura　Is this where (rock musician) Kenji Ohtsuki got the idea for his own makeup? By the way, is it known as the Venus since it depicts a woman?

Venus of Tama New Town: Dogu (clay figurine), Excavated from Tama New Town Site No. 471. 　Collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education

Mochizuki　We’re not really sure about the figurine’s sex, but it seems like people in the modern day are quick to call things “Venus.” This figurine doesn’t really look like a person; it is deformed and exhibits a strong sense of neutrality. While half of the face on this one has been restored, many other dogu have been found with different parts of their bodies missing.

Miura　This is just a thought, but it seems to me that dogu like this might have been the souvenirs of the Jomon period. It even looks like a souvenir-style design. What do you think?

Mochizuki　Well, not many of these have been dug up, so I don’t think there would have been enough to open a shop. That being said, around a thousand dogu have been found from the Shakado site in Yamanashi Prefecture. Their faces are different, but they essentially have the same design.

Miura　See! That would have been the souvenir factory! You know, Jomon people seem to have had pretty decent lives. Wouldn’t that mean they’d also have the concept of souvenirs?

Mochizuki　Well, it is possible that they carried stones with them when traveling to distant destinations. Jade would have been very valuable, but obsidian arrowheads from Nagano have even been found in Hokkaido.

Jade and amber items excavated in the Tokyo area. Jade was considered valuable by the Jomon people as well. The only place it could be found in Japan is the Itoigawa area of Niigata Prefecture, and from it would travel to Nagano, then on to Yamanashi before coming to Tokyo. It is thought that it would have been transported by a route known as  “Jade Road”.

Well-made pottery and poorly-made pottery

Miura　This exhibit describes well-made and poorly-made pottery, but I’m wondering who makes the distinction between the two? This one here is distorted, so since it captures the wabi-sabi, I would think it’s pretty well-made.

Deep bowl (poorly-made), Excavated from Tama New Town Site No. 245.　Collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education.

Mochizuki　There are various ways to determine if something is well-made or poorly-made, and it’s not just based on technique. That being said, this vessel on the right (see photo above) is pretty poorly-made from a technical perspective as well. The two vessels on the left (see photo below) are essentially the same size and have the same pattern. That is pretty rare. Other than Vessel with flame-like ornamentation, most pottery wasn’t made to look like other pottery.

Deep bowl (well-made), Excavated from Tama New Town Site No. 245. Collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education.

Miura　Does that mean that these were made by the same person?

Mochizuki　It’s possible, yes. A lot of the items the Jomon people made were abstract. Perhaps it was considered taboo to create anything that resembled something real or concrete. But I think there were people who just wanted to create things, and they managed to sneak some concrete ideas into their abstract works. The earliest dogu didn’t have faces or limbs. Perhaps, over time, it started to become more and more okay to portray faces, and bit by bit, their range of expression expanded.

Miura　That change would have taken thousands of years. People must have been very patient back then. You can see something similar in the world of Buddhist statue, where there are various rules on how the Buddhist figures can be depicted. That being said, with statues of the Four Heavenly Kings standing upon demons, artists were essentially free to depict the demons in any way they wanted. That’s why only the demons have any sense of dynamism in any statues made after around the end of the Heian period. I think it’s probably because they were free to make their own decisions as artists.

Spouted vessel and small deep bowl, Excavated from Terakaito Site, Ome. Important Cultural Property. Collection of the Ome City Provincial History Museum.

Mochizuki　We also find beautifully-designed items like this vessel here, which looks exactly like modern earthenware kettles. We don’t know what it would have been used to hold, however.

Miura　That’s really interesting. It’s a nice design. If it was Nambu cast iron, it would be a great souvenir to buy for someone, wouldn’t it?

Did Machida City have “Yuru-kyara”  mascot designer?

Mochizuki　This exhibit has 100 different dogu (clay figurine) unearthed from areas around Tokyo.

Miura　Wow. Even Tokyo has a lot of good artifacts. This leg here, was it originally part of a bigger dogu? And it only has four toes. Does that mean it’s not meant to be part of a person? Maybe an animal?

Mochizuki　Fingers and toes are a bit of a mystery with dogu. Many of those found only have three fingers. And this foot has six toes. That might have been because of the possible taboo I talked about before, about not creating real-looking people.

Miura　It’s harder to make five fingers as well, so maybe they reduced the number because of that. Maybe the Jomon people understood that kind of caricature.

Center: Hollow dogu (known as “Makku”), Excavated from Tabata-higashi Site, Machida. Machida City Designated Tangible Cultural Property. Collection of the Machida City Board of Education.

Mochizuki　This dogu here was found in Machida City, and it’s known as “Makku.”

Miura　This is totally a promotional local mascot “Yuru-kyara“!  There must have been a popular mascot designer in Machida back then.

Mochizuki　Maybe. But the weird thing is that another dogu found in Hokkaido has almost the same design.

Miura　That’s proof! Maybe this popular souvenir from Machida was taken all the way to Hokkaido!

Mochizuki　The opposite is also possible. Also, you can often see the influence of other neighboring areas in dogu and pottery, which gives them a sort of local feel. This exhibition is full of items that have a Kanto area style.

Jomon Venus: Dogu (clay figurine), National Treasure. 　Collection of Chino City, entrusted to the Chino City Togariishi Museum of Jomon Archaeology (On exhibit from Oct. 19,2021 – Nov. 14,2021).

Miura　The Jomon Venus is a designated National Treasure, and it’s in a different display than the 100 Tokyo dogu.

Mochizuki　That’s right. It was excavated in Nagano Prefecture, not Tokyo, that’s why it’s exhibited separately. (Another dogu called “Masked Goddess” will replace the “Jomon Venus” and is planned to go on exhibit from Nov. 16,2021.)

Miura　You know, the distorted designs really makes it worth designation as a National Treasure. I actually bought a piggy bank in Nagano that was shaped like this.

Mochizuki　That would totally help you save money. The Venus is beautiful and really seems complete. This isn’t the kind of design you could succeed at your first try.

Miura　It’s really strange, isn’t it? The face is heart-shaped, and it seems to have some sort of headwear on. If you showed this to the people at Mu (a magazine dedicated to UFOs and other mysteries), they would instantly say it depicts an alien.

A dugout canoe used on the Tokyo coast

Dugout canoe excavated from Nakazato Site in Kita-ku. Length: 5.8 m.  Tokyo Designated Tangible Cultural Property.

Miura　What’s this big thing here? Was this entire thing buried in the soil?

Mochizuki　 It was. This is a dugout canoe, which is made by hollowing out logs of wood.

Miura　 It came out of the ground like this? Wow. How many people could ride in it? It looks like it could be used to hold a few giant AA batteries.

Mochizuki　It couldn’t hold many people, probably four or five people at the most. It would have been much easier to transport things by water.

1/20 scale reproduction of a Jomon village. Modelled on a concentrically developed village (Tama New Town Site No. 107)  in  middle Jomon period.

Miura　This diorama has a person in a boat. Actually, the diorama is pretty big. Would Jomon people have worn the same sorts of clothing that the figures in the diorama are wearing?

Mochizuki　That’s something we don’t know. What we do know is that they made cloth, and they knew how to sew. Also, we get hints of the sort of fashion they might have worn from dogu and earrings and other ornamentation that have been found in digs.

Earring, Important Cultural Property. Excavated from Shimofuda Site, Chofu-shi. Collection of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.

Miura　I see. So, in this exhibit we see a number of earring. It almost feels like a jewelry store in Ginza.

Mochizuki　 I feel this stone rod is something you should really have a look at. It’s really big and phallic, but it’s also strange because of how it was smashed to pieces.

Miura　Were the Jomon people already engaged in phallus worship?

Mochizuki　Many phallic items have been unearthed. This is one of the biggest, but stone normally can’t be shattered like this. It was repeatedly heated and then doused in water to break it apart. That’s why you see the discoloration. But more importantly is why someone wanted to smash it to pieces like this. It’s kind of frightening.

Foreground: Stone rod, Machida City Designated Tangible Cultural Property. Excavated from Tadao Site, Machida-City. Collection of the Machida City Board of Education.

Miura　So, this has been restored using plaster, but the plaster parts are the areas that couldn’t be found, right? How can they put it back together like this without knowing where everything goes?

Mochizuki　Well, they are connected together so we kind of know what it would have looked like, but every time it goes on exhibit it has more parts, so some of it is definitely up to our modern judgement.

Miura　It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle. You should call a puzzle company and get them to make the missing parts. 

Jomon sites surprisingly found right next door

Miura　I’ve been interested in the Jomon period for a long time, but it was never more than an interest. I even went to Kizukuri in Aomori Prefecture, to see the façade on the station building made to look like a Shakoki dogu（Dogu with goggle-shaped eyes). I learned that the dogu the station was modelled on was at Tokyo National Museum. But why would I want to see it there in Tokyo? I want to see it where it was first excavated.

Mochizuki　 I understand that.

Miura　I saw a sign in Kizukuri for a place called Shakochan Onsen – I guess that’s their name for the Dogu with goggle-shaped eyes at Tokyo National Museum, right?

Mochizuki　 The dogu station building in Kizukuri was built for 100 million yen using money from the government’s hometown creation fund. Unexpectedly, everyone loves it, so I think it was an effective use of the money. This exhibition is focused on the Jomon people who lived in what is now Tokyo, and there were many people here at that time, and many artifacts have been excavated. But what makes this exhibition special is the number of items gathered in one place. Surprisingly, the people of Tokyo were well within the Jomon culture.

Miura　Yeah, I’ve seen Shimo-ochiai and the names of other places I know in the exhibits. It really brings it close to home.

Mochizuki　If you look at the map of Buried Cultural Properties, you can find that there are Jomon sites under convenience stores and other places. When you learn that these sites are right next door to the places we live and work, they suddenly feel very close; consequently, you may begin to look at the Jomon period in a different light. Tokyo looked different during the Jomon period, and much of eastern Tokyo was underwater. It would have looked like the submerged Tokyo seen in the animated movie Weathering With You. That was Tokyo during the Jomon period.

Miura　You’re kind of known as the “Jomon person.” Do you think life is easier today or back in the Jomon period?

Mochizuki　The Jomon period might have been better in some ways, but in the end, I don’t think there’s much of a difference. I’m sure there were some days that people would just say, “Nope, I don’t feel like going hunting today.”

Miura　Yeah. Some days we don’t want to go to work, and some days we don’t want to fire clay pottery.

Mochizuki　 I think their difficulties wouldn’t have felt much different to them than ours do to us. They had many restrictions placed on the pottery they made, so in a way, people in the modern day have more freedom. At the same time, they didn’t have to pay taxes, so maybe it was emotionally easier for them. In terms of livelihood, we can’t really go against the vastness of the forests and other parts of nature, so modern people are probably more comfortable because we can go to a convenience store and buy anything we want, then make dinner easily.

Miura　And we have smartphones.

Mochizuki　Have you ever thought about how much smartphones have a very similar texture to obsidian? I think when Steve Jobs made the smartphone he had stone tools in mind. I think it’s really interesting that the most modern of tools look quite a lot like the most ancient of tools.

Miura　You often see characters in science fiction films manipulating data that’s floating in the air, but I think people always feel more comfortable handling something tangible.

Mochizuki　I agree. We want something we can touch.

Miura　Yes, we want something we can touch. Everyone on the train has a smartphone, and it’s kind of like that’s their stone tool. People will be excavating many smartphones in hundreds of years. Maybe those sites will be called “smartphone mounds.”

Mochizuki　 I think Jomon culture was cyclical, both in terms of objects and life, so as a “Jomon person,” I really hope people will recycle their smartphones.