Skip to content
TRACEKEEPERS
Menu
English

Choose language

Your Tracekeepers account

← Back to the collection

ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE · 01

Itazuke: rice paddies as infrastructure

How Itazuke's rice paddies were built and maintained

The flooded fields needed channels, tools and coordinated labour.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction, created for museographic contextualisation; not a photograph of the original nor does it constitute documentary evidence.

Image of Itazuke: the rice field as infrastructure
DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction, created for museographic contextualisation; not a photograph of the original nor does it constitute documentary evidence.

History and context

Agriculture arrived through contacts and human movements, not through a single migration.

Evidence and interpretation

Synthesis based on Yoshinogari Historical Park; Fukuoka · Itazuke; Izumo Museum · dōtaku. The comparison serves to formulate questions, not to fill gaps in the record with certainties.

Catalogue facts

Civilisation or trajectory
Yayoi and ancient Japan
Scope
Building and Power
Main area
Northern Kyūshū and western Japan.

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .

Two distinct systems of water and earth

On the central plateau of Itazuke, the inner ditch formed an oval contour of about one hundred and eight metres, with approximately six metres of width and three of depth. Another channel followed the edge of the elevation and carried water to the fields. There, devices with crossbeams and wooden stakes were constructed to regulate the flow; the bunds delimited rectangular plots. This difference matters: the ditch surrounding dwellings and storage pits did not necessarily serve the same purpose as the system intended to distribute water across the rice fields.

Location and territory

Physical world map with routes of human evolutionPresent-day world coastline from Natural Earth in an equirectangular projection. The overlaid markers let you explore each milestone.Map base: Natural Earth 1:110m · public domain · present-day reference coastline

REGIONAL AREA

From Kyūshū towards western and eastern Japan with uneven rhythmsFrom Kyūshū towards western and eastern Japan with uneven rhythms. The footprint indicates the orientative centre of the area, not a boundary nor an exact point.

Sources and references

Consult the sources of this cultural synthesis

Did you enjoy this exhibit?

Your opinion helps us improve the museum. You can change it whenever you like.

Loading your rating…