The Jomon period saw the emergence of one of Japan’s fundamental cultures, in which small village-based societies centered on hunting, fishing, and gathering developed over a period of around ten thousand years.
It was only in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake that we learned that the remains of most Jomon period settlements had remained safe from tsunami damage. Thus, it would seem to be the perfect time to turn the spotlight once more on the Jomon period culture that lies dormant beneath our feet, examining Jomon attitudes to life and death and investigating how people in that era managed to coexist with nature and maintain a strong sense of spirituality.
Through fieldwork carried out primarily in the Tohoku and North Kanto regions, led by the photographer Nao Tsuda, this project focuses on capturing the expressiveness and figurative art visible in Japan’s earliest landscapes and relics, about which we still know so little.
By exploring ways of exhibiting the results in photographs that will give a sense of immediacy to Jomon aesthetics, which could be described as the origin of Japanese culture, we hope this project will contribute to revitalizing Japanese thought, which has nurtured us since ancient times, and help us to consider how we in Japan should live our lives in the future.