5380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
lance points, knives, and other implements of flint or of obsidian. 
The quantity of stone implements varies greatly. In some shell heaps 
they are exceedingly numerous, in others one wonders at their scarcity. 
Most of the rough tools and weapons are made from the vol- 
canic rock of the neighboring region; others are fashioned from 
serpentine, granite, gneiss, or other stone. Nephrite is very rarely 
used. Generally speaking the discoveries of stone weapons of fine 
workmanship become more frequent as we go north, because the 
stone age prevailed there long after the more civilized southwest 
had passed into the iron age. Evidently, however, stone clubs were 
used in that more civilized region too, for to the first Japanese em- 
peror—supposed to have lived about the seventh century B. C.—is 
attributed in the oldest legends a song in which he says that he had 
struck down his enemies with his knobbed stone sword. There are 
Fic. 1—Stone weapons. Above a fragment of a stone club (or a commando staff?), 
which might be restored like the specimen beneath it. Below a beautifully polished 
pierced double axe. 
many specimens of stone clubs, up to 80 cm. and over in length. 
Some of them are of a distinctly phallic shape. 
As has already been stated, the roughly shaped tools form the great 
majority of the finds. The beautifully polished stone axes occasion- 
ally found often taper so little toward the handle that they appear 
almost rectangular and not trapezoidal in shape. They also occur 
with one beveled edge like the knife of a plane. Sometimes double 
axes are found with bored or unbored shaft. (Fig. 1.) Grindstones 
and the familiar stones with many small pit-like hollows are not com- 
mon. Net sinkers and whirls are numerous, as is natural from the 
location of the shell heaps near the sea. The best examples of the 
pottery of the stone age are also found in northern Japan. It is here, 
too, where we find most frequently the highly characteristic statuettes 
of clay. Some of these are of a soft-baked gray clay mixed with ani- 
mal hair; others are of a better red or black clay. The softness of 
