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Ελληνικά01 · Fukuoka · planning a harvest
The rice field beneath the city
The flooded fields of Itazuke
Growing rice in flooded fields required levelling the soil, conducting water and organising labour among several people.
Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.
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
In Itazuke, rice paddies, dwellings, tombs, granaries and a ditch appeared around the settlement. The flooded plots required levelling terrain, conducting water, coordinating calendars and storing part of the harvest for the following year.
The technology arrived through contacts with the Korean peninsula, but was adapted by local communities. Rice did not abruptly replace fishing, gathering or millet; it created an additional system that changed labour, landscape and forms of inequality.
The Itazuke fields retain edges and channels that turned small height differences into water control. Work began before sowing: clearing, levelling and repairing dikes required agreements between households.
Long datations shift the start of wet rice in northern Kyūshū towards the X–VIII centuries BCE. This revision is not a single date for all Japan; the system advanced eastward over centuries.
Evidence and interpretation
Documented fact: Fukuoka's archaeological guide records rice paddies, houses, tombs, granaries and ditch at Itazuke. Interpretation and caution: calling it the absolute first rice paddy depends on chronology and definition; the regional transition was gradual. Documented expansion: The Fukuoka guide and research by the National Museum of Japanese History document initial rice paddies, ditched village and radiocarbon chronology. Expanded interpretation and caution: The date close to 900 BCE corresponds to the long chronology and should not be automatically applied to all regions or all Yayoi traits.
Catalogue facts
- Narrative date
- From the initial Yayoi phase, around the X–VIII centuries BCE according to the long chronology
- Location
- Itazuke, Fukuoka, Kyushu
- Material
- Earth, wood, water, rice, stone and pottery
- Context
- Settlement with wet rice paddies and ditch
- Curatorial reading
- The documented fact and its interpretation appear separately in the evidence block.
- Water management
- Plots, dikes and channels required repeated levelling and maintenance.
- Mixed economy
- Rice, other crops, fishing and gathering coexisted.
- Chronology
- Radiocarbon dating has advanced the start several centuries relative to the conventional scheme of c. 300 BCE.
- Documentary coverage
- 2 museum, heritage, primary corpus or research sources for this stop.
A closer look
About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .
Harvesting one seed head at a time
The Itazuke archaeological guide describes the gathering of spikelets with small stone knives, followed by husking via mortar and hand. Many agricultural tools were made of hard oak wood. These operations allow tracking the harvest after the paddy: cutting, transporting and preparing grain required distinct instruments, not a single universal tool. Diet was not reduced to rice alone. Animal and fish capture and fruit gathering continued; the guide additionally proposes food exchanges with coastal and mountain communities.
- Heritage · Fukuoka City Board of Education · Itazuke SiteAccess recorded: .
Sources and references
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