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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
Kaidou wo yuku Volume 38 Ohotsuku Kaidou.
In the previous article, we visit Nikolaido, Kanda Myojin, and the Kanda Jimbocho antiquarian bookstore district, and walk in the footsteps of Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, and others who lived and worked in this town. In this artilce, the journey takes us to the northeastern seashore of Hokkaido to inquire about the mysterious “Okhotskers,” a tribe of marine fishermen.
The start of this trip will be divided into two parts. The first part of the trip will start from the Hokkaido Kaitakushi Memorial Museum in Sapporo to Abashiri, where we will stay at the Abashiri Kanko Hotel and visit the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Folklore, Lake Notoro, Ubarauchi with its coral grass, Lake Saroma, Moyoro Shell Mound, and Abashiri City Museum of History. The second part of the tour will take a 6-hour express train from Sapporo to Wakkanai, arriving in Minami Wakkanai with the Sarobetsu wilderness in sight. After visiting a bar and enjoying shabu shabu (water octopus), the group will tour Cape Nukai, Cape Nosappu, and Cape Koe, and then pass through the Soya Hills to Cape Soya, the northernmost cape, to see the monument to Rinzo Mamiya, and to think about Sakhalin and Tartary, 40 km to the north of the country. Traveling south along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk to Sarufutsu Village, Hamatombetsu, and Edasai Town, we will visit the excavation site of the Menashidomari Ruins, the Omusaro Ruins Park in Monbetsu City, and the Okhotsk Drift Ice Science Center before heading to Abashiri, then Koshimizu, Shari Town, and finally the Shiretoko Peninsula, the final destination of this journey.
The Okhotsk trip begins with a discussion of the Jomon period.
The Jomon Period is the period of Japanese prehistory, a period that lasted roughly from 14,000 BC to 300 BC. The name Jomon was given to this period because of the large number of distinctive earthenware vessels (Jomon pottery) that were excavated, including the following.
These earthenware vessels with intricate rope-like lines were used for storing food and for cooking, and are also called ka-en-doki (flaming earthenware) because of the appearance of flames rising up around the mouth of the pot. This period is also famous for the production of female figures called “Shakogu-dogu” (clay figurines).
Taro Okamoto is a well-known Japanese contemporary artist, sculptor, painter, designer, and writer,
He focused on these moving, three-dimensional forms of the Jomon period and created many works of art based on them: the medal design for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the Tower of the Sun for the 1970 Osaka World’s Expo.
More recently, dynamic works such as “Myth of Tomorrow,” a huge mural (30 meters long and 5.5 meters high) on display in the connecting passageway (in Mark City) between the reconstructed Shibuya Station on the JR Line and the Keio Inokashira Line are still in place.
The Jomon period was primarily a hunter-gatherer society that lived a hunting and gathering lifestyle, and farming and the formation of cities did not take place until the Yayoi period, which is said to have been introduced from southern China through Korea in later periods. People of the Jomon period adapted their lives to the natural environment, and the transference that remains today are wooden pit dwellings and shell middens (kaizuka). The Jomon are still being reevaluated today as a culture with a different perspective.
The Ainu culture is the culture that retained a strong Jomon culture and was further influenced by the northern Sakhalin and Kamchatka peninsulas. The Ainu culture has recently received renewed attention with the creation of Upopoi (symbolic spaces for ethnic coexistence) in Hokkaido.
The Okhotsk coast of Hokkaido is the site of the Moyoro Site, a trace of the northern “Okhotsk culture” that influenced the Ainu culture.
The Moyoro Site is the site of a settlement that flourished in the late Jomon Period (approximately 4,000 to 2,300 years ago), and was discovered in the 1970s by a local amateur archaeologist named Kimioe Yonemura, who conducted excavations and discovered many artifacts and remains. The site has a story that overlaps with that of Schliemann, who discovered the ruins of Troy.
Yonemura worked at a barbershop in Ogawamachi, Kanda, Tokyo.” As noted in “On the Road to Kanda: The Kanda Neighborhood“, Kanda was a town of secondhand books, and Yonemura spent his spare time browsing through books and reading archaeological books, and when the newsletters of the Archaeological Institute of Japan and the Anthropological Association of Japan announced meetings for research on shell mounds and ruins, he attended at all costs. In the process, he became acquainted with Dr. Ryuzo Torii of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tokyo, a major figure in anthropology and archaeology in Japan, who allowed him access to the Anthropology Department, where he received various lessons in archaeological knowledge.
In the midst of all this, Yonemura came across a book written by Torii entitled “Chishima Ainu” at a used bookstore in Kanda, and became interested in the Ainu culture described in the book.
He was nineteen years old when he arrived in Hakodate, spent two years there, and at the age of twenty-one, headed for Abashiri, which was then in the outback (it took him two nights and three days to get there from Hakodate). The next morning, while walking toward the mouth of the Abashiri River, he found a 20- to 30-meter-high sand dune at the mouth of the river, with a steep section toward the river, and a shell mound layer exposed all along the section.
Among them were pieces of earthenware and stone tools, which were quite different from the Jomon pottery he had seen so far. Yonemura was so overwhelmed by the strangeness of the site that he decided to settle in Abashiri and moved here, remodeling a barbershop in front of the station and opening a barbershop with the sign “Barbershop,” while continuing his excavation work.
He opened a barbershop with the sign “Barber Shop” after renovating the barbershop in front of the station. The excavation site where he left his artifacts later became the Moyoro Shell Mound Museum and the Abashiri Municipal Museum of Abashiri Culture.
Because of its size and well-preserved condition, the Moyoro site has become something that still attracts attention in Japan and abroad. In the center of the site, there are circular pit buildings, ditch-like remains, and shell mounds, and these remains provide information about the housing, lifestyle, and dietary habits of the time.
Various artifacts, including earthenware, stoneware, and wooden vessels, have also been excavated from this site. Of these, the most noteworthy is the “Moyoro-style earthenware,” which is unique to the late Jomon period. This pottery has a distinctive shape with detailed patterns and decorations, and was so named because it was first discovered at the Moyoro site.
The Moyoro Site is an important archaeological site that contributes to understanding the culture and society of the late Jomon Period. The area surrounding the site has been developed as an archaeological landscape centered on the Moyoro Site and is a popular tourist destination. There, an archaeological park and exhibition facilities have been established so that the general public can experience the culture of the Jomon period.
The next trip will take us to Kumano in Wakayama Prefecture. In this article, I will introduce the Kumano Kodo and describe the Koza Kaido, a trip from Shikusanmi, Susami Town, Wakayama Prefecture, to Koza along the Koza River, passing by Shizuku no Taki Falls, Masago, Ichimaiwa, Myojin no Kawashujuku, Submarine Bridge, and Kawachi Shrine.
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