Brute Norse Podcast Ep. 23: Japan's Barbarian Past
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In this episode Eirik recounts his Japonic yuletide odyssey of 2018. He takes a comparative, Scandifuturist look at the prehistory of Japan through the Jōmon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods.
It's the story of how hunter-gatherer master potters met their demise at the hands of militant, kami-fearing, rice-farming, mound building, Iron Age settlers from the Asian mainland. Strolling backwards with a voyeur's gaze from the streets of Tokyo to the valleys of Gifu, as Japan is staged as a fellow barbarian periphery beyond the ghost of the Roman Empire, to question Classical and Post-Enlightenment assumptions about how humanity ought to cope with the terror of the past, handing out wedgies to the Western canon and national mythologies as we go.
Suggested reading for this episode:
- Imamura, Keiji (2003). Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia. Routledge: London
- Kolstø, Janemil (2007). Rethinking Yasukuni: From Secular Politics to Religious Sacrifice. Master of Arts Thesis. AHKR, University of Bergen: Bergen
- Hardacre, Helen (2017). Shinto: A History. Oxford University Press: New York
