Japan’s Extreme Fascination With the Stone Age
In 1981, a self-taught Japanese archaeologist named Shinichi Fujimura discovered 40,000-year-old stone age artifacts. They established human presence in Japan for at least that long. It was a spectacular find that launched Fujimura’s career, gained him national and international fame, and made him a popular figure in Japan. Archaeology is a particularly popular subject the Land of the Rising Sun. The Japanese people revel in their country’s uniqueness, and exhibit greater fascination with their pre-history than any other people do about theirs.
New archaeological finds are frequently announced in bold headlines on the front pages of leading newspapers. Bookshops there have entire sections devoted to Stone Age Japan. In that environment, Fujimura became a celebrity, and his findings were incorporated into school textbooks. After his first discovery, Fujimura worked on over a hundred archaeological projects around Japan. Amazingly, the spectacular luck with which he began his career continued without cease or letup. Fujimura continued to find older and older artifacts, that steadily pushed Japan’s human pre-history further back. Few paused to consider whether such luck was too good to be true, and whether his discoveries might be fake.
