In our July 2023 Japan quest we visited 6 of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites, 5 of them on Hokkaido. All sites visited by rental car.

As our first goal in Hokkaido was Shiretoko National Park, we “elegantly” missed the first possible Jomon Site, the Kiusu Earthwork Burial Circles. We could have visited it on the way back west, but as our route was along the southern shore of Hokkaido, we headed for Kitakogane Site as our first site.

The first thing we noticed was the huge, but totally empty parking lot. Either somebody though this site would attract a lot of people - or we arrived “out of season”.  Entering the site (free of charge), we found a lush green area with some small replica buildings and several shell mounds. These mounds believed to be garbage at first, but really was burial mounds. Due to type of shells, they found out that the climate was warmer at the time and that they mostly caught fish in nets. There was also a holy place at the settlement. In addition, we found a small museum on site. As this was our first Jomon Site Museum and we found it rather informative and attractive. On display it was mostly everyday items like tools, pottery, hairpins, and combs but also pearls and figurines.

Next in line was the double site, the Irie Site, and the Takasago Burial Site. The Irie site had a slightly different approach by not showing a full replica building, but only the pits for the building and the base structure on top. In addition, there were constructions showing a cross section of a shell mound showing all the layers of a mound. Very neat!
The “twin site”, the Takasago Burial Site was less interesting as it was a few barely visible burial mounds and some shell mounds. A museum is also located between these sites, but it was very much like the first museum.

After circling the bay of Uchiura, two more sites came up. The first is the Offune Site. This site had the approach of both first sites by showing residential pits with basic structures on top but also full replicas. There was a small museum, but little on display.

Then, our last Jomon visit on Hokkaido was the Kakinoshima site which is part of the Hakodate Jomon Culture Centre and a café. There were a bunch of schoolkids there, but somehow it seemed that without the kids it would be kind of empty. Just outside the museum there was a large tv-screen showing an informative story about the Jomon Prehistoric Site history in English. The archaeological site itself was big but had very little to show! There were information panels to give you an idea of what had been there, but nothing really to see except for a few pit holes. But the museum was the best so far, with plenty of nice pieces such as clay tablets imprinted with children’s footprints that were used as burial goods (unique for this site).

All the sites at Hokkaido had free entrance, WHS plaque, information panels/leaflets in English, and a museum on site.

After entering Honshu by Shinkansen from Hakodate we had to do one more Jomon Prehistoric Site visit to compare it with the Hokkaido sites, so we went for the Sannai-Maruyama Site near Aomori. This site we could read was one of the greatest. As we now were travelling by public transport, we took the bus from the train station to Jomon Jiyukan. This site consists of a large museum and here we had to pay an entrance fee. This museum had a lot more to show than the previous ones and there was even a room where we could watch archaeologists work through a window - although it wasn’t much happening at the moment. Outside the site was bigger, there were a lot more and varying replicas and this iconic structure – a large three level platform – that dominated.

We took the bus back to the railway station and the train to out next goal – Hirosaki which was our base for visiting Shirakami-Sanchi.

### Randi & Svein Elias