c. 300 BCE-250 CE
Yayoi period; kami veneration
In the Yayoi centuries, as wet-rice farming spread through the archipelago, communities bound themselves to the kami of their places: spirits of mountains, groves, rice fields, and ancestors, honoured with offerings at marked ground long before shrine buildings existed. Ritual bronzes, sacred enclosures, and the great keyhole tombs that follow all carry the marks of this worship. There is no founder and no scripture here, only a people's sense that the world is inhabited and that the inhabitants are owed reverence.