Japan, a small island nation in eastern Asia, may have been culturally isolated. However, very early contact with China and the Korean Peninsula enriched Japanese traditional techniques with foreign influences, creating the conditions for a unique identity.

The development of Japanese art with the incorporation of imported materials and ideas into all kinds of artifacts from the 4th millennium BC. to 600 AD, is the subject of an interesting periodical exhibition that will be held at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion from June 2 under the title “Relics of beauty. Archaeological Treasures of Japan.

The 61 works that make up the main part of the exhibition come from the permanent collections of the National Museum of Tokyo and other important cultural institutions of the country and are presented on Greek soil for the first time. Some of these finds are actually registered in the lists of the Japanese state as items of important cultural heritage (important cultural property).

“Cretans, like the Japanese, are people of the sea,” says Stella Mandalaki, director of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum and curator of the exhibition. “In the case of both peoples, the sea unites, not separates. It creates conditions for extraversion, makes commercial transactions possible, facilitates the exchange of ideas, knowledge and technologies. The sea fascinates, satisfies curiosity. This may also justify the preference of the Japanese side for the exhibition venue.”

The exhibition is organized chronologically and consists of 3 separate sections.

The narrative begins in the Jōmon period (11,000 BC – 400 BC), which is identified in the rest of the world with the Neolithic period, and presents the findings of a society whose survival was based on food gathering, fishing, and hunting. The era got its name from the rope way of decorating ceramics. Of particular interest in this section are dogu, anthropomorphic clay figurines with a conventional facial expression, the use of which was mainly ceremonial. Many of them have accentuated breasts and have an indication of pregnancy. “They semantically correspond to the figures of the Minoan culture in the “upper sanctuaries”, because they serve similar purposes. Both of them express the universal desire for good health, harvest, and also for easy childbirth,” Ms. Mandalaki explains, explaining, however, that dogu cannot be compared with the corresponding Cycladic dogs, because the latter were found mainly in graves, and not in the graves. in the sanctuaries. Therefore, their archaeological environment is different.

Moving on to the Yayoi period (4th century BC – first half of the 3rd century AD), we find that the development of rice cultivation leads to the creation of a hierarchical society and brings a number of important changes to people’s daily lives. Pottery no longer attaches importance to the decoration of vessels, utensils have a purely utilitarian, storage role. New materials such as copper and iron are imported, while metalworking is enriched with new technologies from mainland China and the Korean Peninsula. “Among the decorations, weapons, ceramics and bronze vessels of this period, there is also a very modest exhibit that I highlight, the so-called oracle bone, dating from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD,” says Ms. Mandalaki. “This is a piece of deer bone from a sea cave, and it shows a person’s need to predict the future for things very close to him, such as his survival. His find is very important, as it confirms the written evidence, which spoke of such divination items that people used to predict wars, diseases, rich crops or fish. How was it done? Depending on the cracks that the bone received when it burned, they also judged their fate.”

The Kofun period (2nd half of the 3rd century to the 7th century AD) is the time of the formation of the ancient Japanese state. Here we find burial mounds of monumental size, a keyhole “kofun”, intended for the burial of rulers. We distinguish “haniwa”, “signs” of the tomb, clay figurines indicating the position and authority of the deceased. There are clay images of houses, animals, soldiers, and even ships, which are probably associated with religious beliefs, as well as with the Japanese idea, which is so familiar to us that the passage of the dead to the underworld is carried out by sea. “And here there is a similarity in perception not only with the Minoans, but also with the later cultures of Crete,” notes Ms. Mandalaki. Another point of convergence can be called ritual vessels in human form, jewels, denoting in both cases the social status of their owner, as well as all kinds of gifts – helmets, breastplates, mirrors – that we find in the graves of both on Cretan soil and in the Japanese archipelago. “There are so many correspondences that inevitably give rise to familiarity with a culture far from us.”

*Exhibition “Relics of beauty. Archaeological Treasures of Japan” is a response to the exhibition “Journey to the Land of the Immortals – 4000 Years of Greek Treasures”, which was presented in Japanese museums in 2016-2017 to promote Greek culture in the Land of the Rising Sun. . Until 24 September, www.heraklionmuseum.gr