A new style of pottery discovered on a site in a suburb of Tokyo gives the Yayoi period its name.
Around 500 BC rice farming and metallurgy were brought to the Japanese archipelago by immigrants from the Korean peninsula. Over the next 700 years the new agricultural way of life was taken up throughout Kyushu, Shikoku and Honshu. Rituals associated with the agricultural cycle replaced those of the Jomon period.
Rice agriculture supported larger communities who lived in enclosed settlements, with separate cemeteries. Defended hilltop settlements were built as communities, led by strong regional chiefs, began to fight each other.
