Proposing the “Cinnabar Road” Rethinking Yayoi-Era Interaction between China and the Japanese Archipelago

 

Proposing the “Cinnabar Road”

Rethinking Yayoi-Era Interaction between China and the Japanese Archipelago

I would like to propose a hypothesis here, which I will provisionally call the “Cinnabar Road.” The term refers to a trade and interaction route through which cinnabar may have been brought from the Chinese mainland to the Japanese Archipelago during the late Yayoi period.

The idea was prompted by an article I happened to come across while searching for studies on ancient interactions between Japan and China: Hidehiko Shimazaki, “The Homeland of Ancient Cinnabar,” Resource Geology 59-1 (2009), pp. 73–76. Until then, I had had very little opportunity to read research by geologists and economic geologists, including scholars specializing in ore deposits. In that sense, this accidental encounter was a fortunate one.

What makes Shimazaki’s study particularly intriguing is his attempt to identify the source of the cinnabar used in the Japanese Archipelago during the late Yayoi period by means of a natural-scientific method, namely sulfur isotope analysis.

According to Shimazaki, cinnabar excavated from several late Yayoi sites on the Japan Sea coast and in northern Kyushu—including Nishitani Tomb No. 3 in Shimane Prefecture, Kamikodani-Monokamitani Tomb No. 1 in Tottori Prefecture, Ofuro-Minami Tomb No. 1 in Kyoto Prefecture, and the Kasuga-Tateishi site in Fukuoka Prefecture—shows sulfur isotope ratios of approximately +7 to +8‰.

These values do not correspond to those of the major cinnabar deposits known in Japan. Nor, moreover, did they correspond to the cinnabar deposits of Hunan and Guizhou provinces in China, which had previously been regarded as likely sources.

A remarkable development occurred in 2007. When Shimazaki and his colleagues conducted field investigations of mercury deposits in the Qinling Mountains of China, they found that the cinnabar from the Seidougou (Qingtonggou) mine and the Gongguan area showed sulfur isotope ratios of approximately +8‰. These values were remarkably close to those of the cinnabar excavated from late Yayoi sites in Japan.

Of course, an isotopic match alone does not allow us to conclude immediately that cinnabar was transported from China to Japan. Other deposits may produce similar isotope ratios, and the processes of mining, ore dressing, processing, and transportation also require careful consideration. Nevertheless, the evidence is highly significant. There are materials that are difficult to explain simply as cinnabar obtained from within Japan, while the cinnabar deposits of the Qinling Mountains have emerged as a plausible candidate for their source.

Equally important, in my view, are the geographical conditions.

According to Shimazaki, traveling northward from the Seidougou–Gongguan area leads toward Chang’an (present-day Xi’an), the capital of the Qin and Han empires, while traveling southward leads to the Han River. The Han River connects with the Yangtze River near present-day Wuhan, opening up the possibility of a waterborne transportation network extending from the Yangtze basin toward the East China Sea and, ultimately, the Japan Sea.

Shimazaki himself, with such a route in mind, discusses the possibility that cinnabar was transported to the Japanese Archipelago during the late Yayoi period as a trade commodity exchanged with political groups along the Japan Sea coast and in northern Kyushu.

Building on this observation, I would like to propose a working hypothesis: the “Cinnabar Road.”

When considering interactions between the Japanese Archipelago and the Chinese mainland during the late Yayoi period, rather than treating them simply as an abstract process of “Chinese culture being transmitted to Japan,” I suggest that we should approach the question from the perspective of concrete material logistics.

In other words, we should ask:

Where was a particular material produced?
Who collected and controlled it?
Which river systems and maritime routes did it pass through?
Which communities received it?
How was it used there?
And what social, ritual, or political significance was assigned to it?

From this perspective, the “Cinnabar Road” should not be understood as a single, linear trade route.

Rather, it may have constituted a wide-ranging interaction network, linking multiple riverine, coastal, and maritime routes:

Cinnabar-producing regions of the Qinling Mountains
↓
Han River system
↓
Yangtze River basin
↓
East China Sea
↓
Japan Sea
↓
Northern Kyushu · San’in · Wakasa · Kinai

What I would like to pursue one step further is the possibility of viewing the “Cinnabar Road” not merely as a route for the movement of a mineral resource, but as a network through which cultural elements also moved.

I have long been interested in the Camellia Forest Culture theory (Shōyōjurin Bunka-ron) proposed by scholars such as Sasuke Nakao. When considering similarities among cultural elements distributed across the broad evergreen-broadleaf forest zone of East and Southeast Asia, I have wondered whether it is sufficient to understand them simply in terms of “cultural diffusion.” It may be more productive to regard them as part of an interaction sphere in which people, goods, technologies, beliefs, and rituals moved together in complex ways.

If this perspective is applied to cinnabar, we can consider the possibility that cinnabar did not travel from China to Japan as an isolated commodity. Rather, the cinnabar itself may have moved together with the ritual, funerary, and symbolic practices that created a demand for it—including practices associated with mortuary rites, ritual authority, and the representation of political status.

There is, of course, no conclusive evidence for such an interpretation at present. But that is precisely why I believe there is value in proposing the “Cinnabar Road” as a working hypothesis.

The important point is not to conclude simply that “Chinese culture was transmitted to Japan.”

Rather, the questions are:

Where was the cinnabar mined?
Who acquired and controlled it?
By what routes was it transported?
Which political groups or communities received it?
Why did they require such quantities of cinnabar?
And what kinds of cultural, religious, and technological information may have moved together with the cinnabar?

These questions should be examined one by one against archaeological, geological, historical, and geographical evidence.

Seen in this light, the “Cinnabar Road” is more than a trade route for cinnabar. It may provide a window onto the movement of people, goods, information, and beliefs in East Asia during the late Yayoi period.

This is a small idea that began with an article I happened to read by chance. Yet if we reconsider Yayoi-era interaction between Japan and China not simply in terms of “cultural transmission,” but from the perspective of the movement of materials, this seemingly small substance—cinnabar—may turn out to point toward a surprisingly large historical process.