Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Roman Bowl in Ancient Japan?! December 10, 2014

Thanks to Ed for this story!

This blog has long pioneered wrong place objects, artifacts that turn up thousands of miles from where archaeologists would have expected to find them. So how about a round of applause for this beautiful blue glass bowl that was removed from a tomb in the Nara prefecture in Japan has Persian traces and very possibly Roman origins.

The bowl was unearthed from mound 126 one of 590 graves on Ochioka Hill. The grave is fifth century and an excellent website – the best of its kind Beach has seen – gives an exact record of all the objects removed from that tomb. Here is the description of the object.

Glass bowl placed on top of glass dish was retrieved from the right side of the head of the deceased. Made from alkali glass, the glass bowl has a light yellow green color with a thickness of 1.5 mm and is extremely light in weight. The base of the bowl has two layers of circular motifs inscribed and five layers of motifs around its waist. The glass dish is also made from alkali glass and appears deep blue in color. It is thought that images such as birds, trees, people, horses and flower petals were drawn inside the dish. While it is possible that something has been drawn on the outside of the dish, the details are unknown.

Since this was written further examinations have confirmed that the glass is identical with that found from the first century BC to fourth century AD in the eastern Roman Empire. It was evidently traded east and some of the designs mentioned above are apparently Persian, think of them as fingerprints in its long trip east. The time lag between, say, Roman Syria and Japan is understandable. After all, this bowl will likely have had many owners before it arrived in Nippon. Here a comparison with earlier Roman glass beads found in nearbye fifth century Japanese tomb is worth making. There is almost exactly the same time lag there.

So did Romans appear in Japan or Japanese traders in the Mediterranean. It is unlikely, or if it ever happened it was a one-off historically irrelevant experience. What we have here is evidence of the hand-to-hand trade across Euro-Asia. What Beach can’t understand is why there is nothing Japanese in the Roman Empire, or perhaps there is…. drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

30 Dec 2014: Bruce has some valuable thoughts on this bowl. ‘This is just after the period Buddhism was making strong inroads into East Asia. In the 7th century CE Chinese monks were traveling to the east coast of India and Sri Lanka to visit Buddhist shrines and schools via Chinese shipping. The overland route was long and dangerous. This part of the subcontinent is the same region that earlier Roman seaborne trade was concentrated in antiquity. Roman glass, especially beads, are quite common artifacts from the period of Roman – Indian trade. Before the period of direct regular Chinese-Indian seaborne travel, the Buddhist Javanese kingdoms were major carriers from the Indian Ocean to East Asia. Chinese Buddhist scholars would come to Java study with regional Buddhist scholars and learn the Indian languages they would need before proceeding. (At this time Chinese shipping rarely proceeded west of the Malay Peninsula due to opposition from the Indianized kingdoms around the Malacca Straights.) As Roman glass was coveted in both India and the Malay Archipelago, the above bowl would be a prestige item, most likely a gift from Roman or in-between traders to a local ruler in South India or Sri Lanka. My guess is it made it further down the line as Japan came under stronger influences from both the Chinese states and Buddhist proselytizers from around the region. Of course, it could have went overland to China, but the trip via sail from India was roughly 70 days, with glass items packed securely in jars full of straw, via long established routes and with the reliable monsoon winds The overland route would have involved pack animals and human porters, braving bandits and hostile local rulers, taking around a year or more through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. Not exactly the best route to transport fragile items. In support of the ocean route, Roman glass beads and Indian beads from the same period and earlier, turn up from the Philippines to the Spice Islands and eastward into the Pacific to southeast Micronesia and Fiji. They’re considered an heirloom item and sign of wealth and prestige in parts of the region to this day. Did the Romans take them there? Of course not. Beads are an easily transportable item that went down the line from trade. The Philippines and the Spice Islands were within the sphere of influence of the Indonesian traders and states. Indigenous traders would have taken them further afield. The bowl is different animal. It’s a highly prized item that was obviously well taken care of for and may have been exchanged multiple times for two or three centuries before ending up buried with the elite individual in Japan. I can suggest the logical route and possible motives, but with an item like this who knows? It’s a minor miracle that it survived to be discovered. In my last email I mentioned the widespread dispersal of Roman (and medieval Venetian) glass beads in insular S.E. Asia and Western Oceania. The Portuguese and the Dutch when setting up their trading empires in the area noticed the value put on such beads by the locals. So much so, they began counterfeiting the beads resulting in mass deflation, as the beads had been used for high status ritual exchange in the region. (The Dutch and the English did the same thing with fake Wampum in Colonial N. America, with the same results.) The locals in insular S.E. Asia and adjoining areas of W. Oceania then began to value only the beads with a pre-European provenance, using the counterfeits for lesser exchanges and ornamentation. The Jesuits and Portuguese were in Japan by the mid 16th century, when they were expelled the Dutch were the only European traders allowed in. Therefore we have the two main sources of counterfeit Roman beads in the early colonial period trading in Japan. This alone makes the appearance “Roman” beads in Japan suspect. Unless the Roman beads were found in-situ in a pre-colonial dig, it makes this one hard to buy.’