Yamato

The name of a former province in Nara Prefecture, Japan, an emergent state of the Kofun period (2nd-5th centuries AD). When the Tang administrative system of China was adopted in the late 7th century AD, Yamato was made into the Ritsuryo state. The old Yamato Province is rich in archaeological remains of the Yayoi, Kofun, and early historical periods. The period is commonly called the Tumulus, or Tomb, period from the presence of large burial mounds (kofun), its most common archaeological feature. It is from the very construction of the tombs themselves, from an examination of the grave goods, as well as from increasingly reliable written sources both domestic and foreign that a picture of the Yamato kingdom has emerged.

(1) The name of an old province located in the present Nara prefecture, Japan. (2) The historians’ name for the ruling lineage, from which the present Imperial family claims its ancestry, and which developed in the Yamato area. (3) An archaic expression for the Japanese and things Japanese. The old Yamato Province is rich in archaeological remains of the Yayoi, Kofun and early historical periods, reflecting important cultural and political developments. There is a reference to a kingdom of Yamato (which Japanese scholars pronounce as ‘Yamatai’) in We/ Chih, written in China in the 3rd century. It seems to describe Japan in the Late Yayoi period, but the geography is somewhat ambiguous. Scholars have not settled the debate as to whether the kingdom was in northern Kyushu or in the Yamato Basin. yams. Among the most ancient cultivated tuberous plants of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, yams remain of great importance in New Guinea and Melanesia, although they have given way to rice in most parts of Southeast Asia. The two main species, Dioscorea alata and D. esculenta, were perhaps first domesticated in northern mainland Southeast Asia, certainly before 3000 bc on linguistic grounds, although archaeological evidence for their cultivation is lacking. Independent yam domestication also took place in parts of tropical Africa and South America.