Archaeologists discovered possibly the oldest use of a Kanji character on a pottery shard in Japan, dating back to the late Yayoi Pottery Culture period (300 BC-AD 300). The fragment was found at Karakami archaeological site in Iki, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan.
A special coin was unearthed at the Shari village in Hokkaido, Japan. It dates back 1200 years and suggests contacts between the Okhotsk culture of northern Hokkaido and Japan’s main island of Honshu as early as the ninth century.
Archaeologists found 8 ancient strips of wood adorned with kanji characters among treasures dedicated to the imperial family by Horyuji temple in Nara Prefecture in 1878.