A special reverence for craft pervades Japanese aesthetics. This may have to do with Japan’s claim of being the world’s oldest pottery producing culture. The world’s earliest ceramics have been identified as being from the Jomon culture which was roughly contemporary with the civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Nile and the Indus Valley.

 The Jomon hunter-gatherers lived on the island now known as Japan about 12,000 years ago. The earliest art objects created in Japan are the pottery vessels known as Jomon koki, or rope design ware and the idols which are called dogu, or clay dolls. Both the vessels and the figures not only show a great variety of form, but also have an extraordinary expressiveness which renders them one of the most remarkable artistic achievements of any Neolithic culture. There is a feeling of mystery about them, as well as a strange beauty which appeals to modern taste because it recalls contemporary expressionist and surrealist art.

 According to archeologists, Jomon pottery is unique in that it represents the only example of vessel making by nonagricultural peoples. In all other parts of the world, vessel making only developed alongside agriculture and hunter-gatherers did not make pottery.

 Jomon potters decorated their clay vessels by marking/pressing into clay with sticks wrapped with cords. These forms are hand built from coils, as no wheel was known at this time. Many are quite large and the scale and design are impressive.

 Some of the most remarkable achievements of the Jomon period are the clay figures representing human beings or animals. Some of these are a high as one foot, while others are as short as two inches. Most of them have small perforations indicating that they might have been suspended, with others obviously intended to be stood up. Their bodies are often covered with linear designs, commonly spirals; their facial expressions are strange, with staring eyes that suggest the magic associated with eyes in many primitive civilizations. In all these figures the human form is highly abstract, and yet, in spite of its distortions, it is clearly recognizable. Most of the figures are female deities with prominent breasts and swelling hips, and in this way they are similar to prehistoric European fertility idols such as the Venus of Willendorf.

Further reading:
Ancient Jomon of Japan (Case Studies in Early Societies) by Junko Habu  ISBN - 0521772133
Jomon Reflections: Forager life and culture in the prehistoric Japanese archipelago by Simon Kaner, ISBN 1842170880
The Arts of Japan: An illustrated history by Hugo Munsterberg, ISBN 0804800421

Web sites of interest:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jomo/hd_jomo.htm
http://www.earlywomenmasters.net/masters/jomon/index.html
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/ksuzuki/jomon/
http://www.jomonjapan.org/