The religious spirit in Japan

The first people to arrive in the Japanese archipelago were perhaps representatives of a culture called the Jomon. They found objects dating from the fifth millennium BC. They may have come from North-East Asia by an isthmus that has now disappeared or is submerged in the sea. They occupied the northern islands of the archipelago and lived in half buried huts. They buried their dead in burial mounds and statuettes by making beautiful and extraordinary grace with clay baked directly on the fire. The semi-nomadic life of Jomon was troubled at the time when Aristotle lived in Greece, and was marked by the arrival of different groups of invaders known as the Yayoi group. They were warriors who drove the Jomon still further north and eventually eliminated them almost completely. Perhaps, the Ainu of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands were their descendants. They ewer very different from Japanese and resembled Caucasians in their characteristics. Their gods and culture were of tropical origin, and were derived perhaps from China or Korea. In the southern islands, they built buildings suitable for a warm climate and began to cultivate rice. Soon, they passed on to the manufacture of iron objects to a different type of housing, weaving and the use of the potter's wheel. Their Japanese descendants were divided into small principalities, and were constantly at war with each other. The country was consolidated into a single state, until the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century AD, and a significant artistic development took place. The aristocratic cemeteries were spread over several acres; they were adorned with decorations of the funeral and were surrounded by statues of clay hollow, and were serving as guards. The practice was already widespread in China and it was possible that Japan had then adopted it. The statues were thirty to fifty centimeters in height. All customs disappeared from the sixth century AD when Buddhism began to spread into the upper classes that gradually gave up their beliefs and their values and copied completely the contributions of Chinese culture.