From the Kamegaoka site in Tsugaru, Aomori, came a single clay figurine. The eyes are narrowed to extreme slits like snow goggles, the chest swells, and the belly bulges as if to suggest pregnancy. Standing 34.5 centimetres, made around 1000 BCE, this “goggle-eyed figurine” is one of the oldest representations of how the Jomon people saw the female body. A small image fired from earth speaks eloquently of the sexual ideas of a society without writing. The sexual culture of prehistory is heard only by listening to the voices of bone, stone, and clay.

Sexuality in Jomon and Yayoi Japan refers to the artefacts, remains, and inferred customs around sex in the prehistoric Japanese archipelago, from about sixteen thousand years ago to the third century CE. Lacking written sources, its sexual culture is reconstructed through archaeological artefacts, anthropological comparison, and retrospective inference from later records. This article covers the Jomon figurines, stone phalli, and burial practice, the change in sexual norms with Yayoi agriculture, and the Yamatai period.

The Jomon period

Figurines

The richest sexual artefacts of the Jomon are the clay figurines, of which over fifteen thousand have been excavated. Almost all are female, marked by emphasised breasts and buttocks, often a bulging belly suggesting pregnancy, and depiction of the vulva. Figurines with male genitals are extremely rare, showing that Jomon human representation was female-centred. Notable examples include the goggle-eyed figurine of the Kamegaoka site (c. 1000 BCE), the Jomon Venus of the Tanabatake site (c. 3000 BCE, National Treasure), and the hollow figurine of Hakodate (c. 2000 BCE, National Treasure). The use is debated, with readings as safe-childbirth prayer, fertility prayer, healing rite, and funerary object; because many are excavated deliberately broken, the reading as a fertility rite of ritual breaking and return to the earth is widely adopted.

Stone phalli

From the middle to late Jomon, polished stone implements representing the male genitals, the sekibo, are widely distributed, ranging from 30 centimetres to over a metre, with a simply rendered glans. Excavated from the centre of village plazas, ritual features, and house entrances, they are inferred to have functioned as a symbol of the male principle paired with the female figurines. They developed most in the late Jomon, with high excavation density around the central highlands of Aomori, Akita, Niigata, and Nagano.

Burial and sex

Jomon burials placed men and women side by side with limited difference in grave goods; no burial practice showing marked social inequality between the sexes is confirmed. Analysis of skeletal remains from Jomon settlements suggests harsh reproductive conditions: early marriage, low age at childbirth, and high maternal mortality. The form of marriage cannot be specified directly from artefacts, so retrospective inference from later custom predominates.

The Yayoi period

Agriculture and changing norms

In the Yayoi period, wet-rice agriculture was introduced from the continent, and the archipelago shifted rapidly to an agricultural society. Ownership, accumulation, and inheritance of land arose, and with them a patrilineal sense of lineage and new marriage and sexual norms began to form. The female-centred figurine culture of the Jomon declined rapidly; weapons, farming tools, and chief images became the centre of artefacts, shifting the weight of social symbolism from the female to the male principle, a change repeatedly thematised in archaeology and anthropology as marking the formation of patriliny. Yet traces of female-led ritual continue from the middle Yayoi, as at the Yoshinogari and Karako-Kagi sites, suggesting the presence of priestesses alongside chiefs.

Yamatai and Himiko

The Records of Wei (late third century) recorded the state of Wa in the second and third centuries from the Chinese side. It describes the queen Himiko of Yamatai as one who “served the way of spirits and could bewitch the people,” and notes that she had no husband though already advanced in age and that a younger brother assisted her in governing. Himiko’s celibacy, shamanic role, and assistance by a male kinsman have been discussed as the typical image of the late-Yayoi female chief, a source of the line of female ritual authority running on to later traditions of priestess and shrine institutions.

Marriage custom of the Wa

The Records of Wei also notes of Wa marriage that “great men all have four or five wives, lesser men two or three,” suggesting polygyny among upper-class men. The origin of the male-visiting form of marriage that connects to later Heian visiting marriage may go back to this late-Yayoi society of Wa.

Connection to the Kofun period

From the late third century, the Kofun period was the era of strong kingship symbolised by the great keyhole tombs. Tomb burials yield features suggesting royal family structure, such as joint burial of king and consort and the early burial of children. The genealogies and founding myths compiled in the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720) function as written records of this Kofun-period royal family structure, a bridge between prehistoric sexual culture and the historical era.

See also

• Sexuality in Buddhism and Shinto
• Sexuality in Heian Japan
• History of sexuality in East Asia