Reexamination of Japanese Dolmen Culture based on Relevance to Korea

Abstract

Dolmens in Japan are concentrated in the northwestern region of Kyushu which is closest to the Korean Peninsula, which make themselves as important materials for understanding the relationship between Korea and Japan in ancient times as their geopolitical locations. There are different views about the spread of dolmen between Korea and Japan. In other words, the view that the aboriginal people of Japan only accepted the dolmen culture is strong in Japanese academic circles while Korean academic circles see the cultural elements such as the migration of residents from the southern region of the Korean peninsula, farming, residential style, and dolmen have a close connection. Japanese academic circles have not been enthusiastic about analyzing the relevance of the persons buried in dolmens in Japan to Korea. This is not unrelated to the climate of avoiding the study on the genealogy of Korean and Japanese people as a reaction of nationalism in the Japanese academic circles after the Second World War. This study intended to bring attention to the importance of Japanese dolmen culture in ancient Japanese society by highlighting Korean cultural elements that had been overlooked and revealing how the dolmen culture became naturalized in Japan based on the analysis on the background in which the dolmens were spread, the phases through which they were spread, and the properties of dolmens in detail in different views, away from the existing two-dimensional view. In short, the dolmens in Japan are the cultural elements that the immigrants from the southern region of Korea spread with rice farming while settling down in Kyushu and are considered to have had an enormous impact on the rise of the Yayoi culture, which is the basis for the growth of the ancient societies of Japan.