One Year On
The outside of the pair of historical museums in Wakata.
It’s been almost exactly one year since my friend and I took a two-week trip to Japan. We stayed in Hiroshima, Osaka, and Tokyo in that order, but amongst that, we took several additional excursions. Probably the most major example was our couple of visits to parts of Kyoto (a mere 15 minutes from Osaka via the famous Shinkansen bullet trains, despite needing to cover a similar distance to that between Geelong and the Melbourne CBD), but the trip I want to talk about today was to take us further beyond that city. This trip was primarily my friend’s – he had already set the timing in stone and knew where he wanted to go, but there was enough room for me to have some input on locations to visit, and I knew for sure that I had to see some of Japan’s most ancient cultural artifacts – those of the Jomon Period.
Jomon, The Old-Old Days
Comprehensive overview of the Jomon period and especially the Torihama shell-mounds where these museums are located.
So, what is the Jomon Period/Jomon Era? Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of it – my friend wasn’t familiar either, but as soon as he heard that it was, in his words, “what Japan was up to while the Egyptian Pyramids were being built”, he was completely on board. See, I’m sure a lot of you have heard of the various Cultural Eras of Japan’s history. We’re currently in the Reiwa Period (started in 2019), immediately following the Heisei and Showa Periods. There are the famous eras familiar to lovers of Japanese historical media, like Edo and Kamakura, and many more beyond that. Jomon is, quite simply, the very first of these Cultural Eras, the historical period defined by the age of the oldest works of art (specifically pottery) found in the country. Jomon is considered to have started around 16,000 years ago – there were people in Japan there before then, of course, but the period of human habitation before that is more simply known as paleolithic Japan, a time where we have no evidence of the creation of more than purely practical tools for survival (though some of these tools are particularly impressive and ahead of their time). There were several different museums of Jomon artifacts, but the one we ended up settling on was located in the small, rural town of…
Wakasa, Fukui Prefecture
A 360-degree look at Wakasa, with a subtle feeling of being watched.
Getting to Wakasa took a bit of time – we first had to take a standard Shinkansen trip from Osaka to Kyoto, but then there was a significant amount of further Shinkansen and regular train travel north to Fukui Prefecture and Mikata Station. In a trip characterised by lots of time in large cities and famous historical sites, Wakasa was something of a breath of fresh air. It’s a lovely, quiet town, a look at a more down-to-Earth side of Japan, surrounded by misty mountains that gave it a calming, slightly dreamlike feel as my friend and I made our way to the Wakasa-Mikata Jomon Museum on foot. I’ve included links to several videos taken on that walk to give you a look at the place, but it was a nice change of pace in a vacation of hustle and bustle. When we got to the museum, we ended up with a rather interesting surprise – it was actually two museums! Or, more specifically, the Jomon Museum was right next to another historical museum, this one focused specifically on the varve (annual sediment layers) of the nearby Lake Suigetsu. The oldest of the displayed varves go back 70,000 years, far beyond even the Jomon period. But first, we went to the Jomon Museum.
The Relics of the Past
A look at some of the Jomon Museum artifacts – there’s a great deal more than this on offer, though.
The staff of the museum were polite and friendly, deftly handling our language barrier as we locked away our belongings and proceeded into the museum. I took some photos and videos, but I won’t be showing everything they had – this place deserves to have as many paying visitors as possible, and I hope you’ll be curious enough to make the trip. The artifacts at the museum are a mixture of geological rocks and sediment layers similar to what’s showcased at the neighbouring varve museum, and archeological/cultural, with multiple fascinating items dating back thousands of years. You can see the remnants on Jomon Era weaponry, such as intact arrowheads and spearheads, along with – amazingly – wooden boats that survived to the modern day, buried beneath the earth. These boats were excavated and left in place, the museum seemingly built around their location so visitors may view them through glass, right where they were dug up. One of the most arresting parts of the exhibit, however, is the pottery section. From the end where I entered it, I saw a vase stated to be thousands of years old. It had been visibly reconstructed – the surviving, artistically patterned pieces were combined with deliberately flat filler to reproduce the original shape and give you an idea of what the original was like. This piece of pottery sat next to another, older one, similarly reconstructed. Then there was another, and another, continuing on down in a line going back another few hundreds or thousands of years each time until we finally reached what my friend called “the star” – a small, unassuming piece dated to about 13,000 years ago. He was right to say it – it’s rather staggering to see something that ancient, created by human hands. This is hardly an exhaustive description of what’s on offer at the archeological museum, so please, try and make your way there.
Lake Suigetsu’s History
Beautiful atmosphere and detailed geology, as well as the equipment used to procure and study the exhibits.
To be clear, while I absolutely recommend the Varve Museum, it is a somewhat drier experience unless you’re REALLY into geology. This isn’t a knock on the place, which is wonderfully designed and presents its exhibits in a beautiful and educational fashion. It’s just a rather natural reaction to seeing buried earth vs ancient tool and artwork that you know were made by the hands of human beings of multiple millennia ago, so very like and unlike yourself. But the varves are still fascinating to look at, themselves going much further back in history, 70,000 years almost certainly being prior to the entry of humans into the landmass of Japan. They preserve subtle hints and critical details about the country back then, such as weather patterns and natural disasters – things that would’ve had a drastic effect on human and animal populations. So you see, these varves aren’t as separated from the people of the past as you might initially think. The connection isn’t as blatant as seeing a 6,000-year-old piece of pottery made directly by a person otherwise lost to the mists of time, but it is there, and it is well worth experiencing.
Museum Merchandise
Here you can see and read a timeline of the Jomon period.
The museum shop is also worth visiting. It’s filled with enough souvenirs and trinkets that your bigger problem might be in finding the room to get everything home, which is why I decided to go light with a couple of books and papers. They’re filled with beautiful photographs of many museum exhibits as well as useful information about them and the history of Wakasa – though, not always in English. As well, the second photograph above shows the approximately 13,000-year-old pottery kept in the museum.
Feline Friends
Everyone’s Konbini Cat friend.
After we exited the Varve museum, blown away by what we had examined, we made our way back through the town to the train station. We went a different way in order to stop by one of the many konbini (convenience stores) across Japan – I can’t recommend their fried chicken enough, believe it or not – and on that way we found out just how many cats run freely around the town. First was the one parked outside the convenience store, which was very friendly to me until my friend exited the place with fried chicken, and it started loudly meowing at him in a very demanding tone – you know the one. I made sure the cat got its chicken, but we continued to encounter cats along the way. Several packs of them and a solo fellow – they tended to keep their distance, not having figured out their own konbini racket.
In The Top 5 Days Of The Trip
If you have any interest in ancient history, I strongly recommend visiting Wakasa’s dual museums. If not, but you’re in Japan and loving it, I would still implore you to visit the town anyway. The atmosphere is lovely, the people are friendly, the scenery is very peaceful – or lively, when the cats show up. I feel that when travelling to another country, it’s important to see more than just the biggest cities and the most obvious tourist-y spots. Modern Wakasa is a slice of rural Japan that will stay with you, just as much as the showcases of its ancient history.
Don’t worry, though, it’s not THAT rural. 4G was still working, even enough to make video calls.
