Foundational rice-farming, bronze- and iron-using period of Japanese prehistory that followed the Jōmon hunter-gatherer era, introducing wet-rice agriculture and metal tools from the Asian mainland, beginning in northern Kyūshū.
Gave way to the Kofun period around the mid-3rd century AD with the emergence of large keyhole-shaped burial mounds and centralizing regional polities (e.g., Yamato, already/soon a dataset record).
Edited collection with dedicated essays on the Yayoi transition from Jōmon foraging to wet-rice agriculture and metallurgy.