Yayoi Period

• Period: 300 BCE - c. 250 CE
• Japanese: 弥生時代 (Yayoi jidai)

The Yayoi Period is marked by the introduction of rice cultivation and certain other technologies, innovations in societal organization, and behavior, which accompanied an influx of new settlers into the Japanese archipelago.

While theories surrounding horseriders from the Asian mainland, arriving via Korea, once were dominant, recent scholarship has cast doubt upon that argument. A variety of theories are now prominent. Some scholars argue that rice cultivation was first introduced by people from the Asian mainland who first traveled to the Yaeyama Islands from the Jiangnan region of China (i.e. south of the Yangtze River basin) around 500-300 BCE, and who then made their way, via the Kuroshio current, to Kyushu.