JOMON AND YAYOI PERIODS 275
pings but much larger in size. These were probably ceremonial items
buried in village agricultural rites.
Yayoi culture was profoundly affected by changes on the Asian
continent: the establishment in 206 B.C. of the Former Han dynasty,
China's first stable and enduring empire, and the Chinese invasion of
Korea less than a century later. In 109-108 B.C., armies of the Han
emperor Wu-ti invaded the Wiman Choson kingdom, centered in the
present P'yongyang region, and established four military garrisons in
northern Korea.
24
The administrative center was the capital of
the
Lo-
lang colony, located in the vicinity of the old Choson capital. Archaeo-
logical remains of Lo-lang dating from the Former Han, Later Han,
and Wei dynasties have been found across the Taedong River from
P'yongyang. These remains, including grave sites and remnants of the
earth ramparts that once surrounded the city,
2
* indicate that the in-
habitants of Lo-lang - many of whom were Chinese immigrants or
their descendants - wrote with Chinese characters, built Chinese-style
roofed buildings, and used implements made of iron. In short, the
urban culture of China had been transmitted to northwestern Korea.
Through Lo-lang and another outpost established later at Tai-fang
near present-day Seoul, the Chinese established contacts with the
Yayoi people. The first description of Japan in written history appears
in the Han
shu,
a Chinese history completed by Pan Ku in about A.D.
82.
According to this account, the "Wa" people living on islands in the
ocean near Lo-lang "are divided into one hundred countries. Each
year envoys from the Wa bring tribute [to Lo-lang]."
26
More details
about the Wa can be found in the Wei chih, compiled in the third
century.
27
This account, which will be examined in detail later in this
chapter, includes a lengthy description of
a
Chinese delegation's visit
to Wa. The report of this and other missions are substantiated by
archaeological findings at northern Kyushu sites, several of which
correspond to the Wa "countries" cited in the
Wei
chih.
Northern Kyushu sites of the middle Yayoi period contained
bronzes of Chinese manufacture, transmitted through Lo-lang.
28
It
24 Lee, A New History of Korea, pp. 19-20.
25 Sekino Tadashi, Heijo fukin ni okeru Rakuro jidai no funbo, Chosen Sotoku-fu koseki chosa
tokubetsu hokoku 1 (Seoul: Chosen Sotoku-fu, 1919); Sekino Tadashi, Rakuro jidai no iseki,
Chosen
Sotoku-fu koseki chosa
tokubetsu hokoku
4 (2 vols.) (Seoul: Chosen Sotoku-fu, 1927).
26 Pan Ku, Han
shu
(Peking: Chung-hua Shu-chu, 1964), vol. 28B, p. 1658.
27 Ch'en Shou yu, San-kuo
chih
(Peking: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1959), vol. 30, pp. 854-58, trans.
Ryusaku Tsunoda and L. Carrington Goodrich, Japan in
the Chinese Dynastic Histories
(South
Pasadena,
Calif.:
P. D. and lone Perkins, 1951), pp. 8-20.
28 Komai Kazuchika, Rakuro
gunchi
shi (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku bungakubu kokogaku kenkyu-
shitsu, 1965).
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