Jomon pottery is built up from the bottom, using coils upon coils of clay made from soil gathered from the volcanic ash layer, which is mixed with water and sand and then left sitting for six months to a year before being handled.

The main tools used to model the vessels are bamboo spatulas and ramie cords. Hundreds of patterns can be created by impressing the cord onto the clay in different ways, such as winding them around thin bamboo, Murakami says. Shells and stones are then used to polish the interior and surface. Finally, the pots are fired by an outdoor bonfire, a process that typically lasts from dawn to dusk.

Jomon pottery is thought to have served multiple functions, including storing food and cooking. Murakami says he believes the elaborate ornamentation featured in the earthenware reflected their ceremonial nature.

“These were made to celebrate life and rebirth, and may have been an embodiment of the prayers people offered to the animals and plants they killed and consumed,” he says.

Numerous interpretations have been made regarding the motifs used in Jomon artifacts. Naoyuki Oshima, a visiting professor at the Sapporo Medical University and former chairman of the Hokkaido Archaeological Association, has proposed that all Jomon relics featured designs symbolizing regeneration and rebirth, including the moon, water, the womb and snakes.

Moreover, Oshima argues that methods used in traditional archaeology are inadequate in grasping the mind of the Jomon people and, to do so, one had to branch out to other fields such as cultural anthropology, religion, folklore and even brain science.

“Archaeologists, for example, say pit houses were real homes inhabited by families, which is based on the presumption that the concept of marriage existed back then,” Oshima says. “But I began to question these premises. Archaeologists base their thinking on the law of contradiction that encompasses ideas such as rationality, economic efficiency, dichotomy, hierarchy, ancestor worship and animism. But would a civilization based on values like manners and morale survive 13,000 years? I believe the people of Jomon had a fundamentally different way of thinking and understanding the world around them.”

Oshima focused on an idea posited by French scholar Lucien Levy-Bruhl called the concept of participation. The “primitive” mind, Levy-Bruhl argued, was not an inferior version of our “civilized” mind but operated in a distinct mode of thought that didn’t address contradictions and didn’t differentiate the supernatural from reality.

Based on that concept, Oshima argues that Jomon pit houses, shell mounds and stone circles were all designed from the image of the womb and functioned as symbols of regeneration. These places could be characterized by the word “topophilia,” he says, a term that refers to the love or emotional connections to certain physical locations. The people of Jomon would visit these sites to pray and celebrate life and rebirth, he says, akin to modern-day institutions such as the Grand Shrines of Ise in Mie Prefecture.

“There were only an estimated 260,000 people at the peak of the population,” Oshima says. “We should assume that in such a sparsely populated hunter-gatherer society, people interacted and communicated in a very different manner from what we are accustomed to.”

Oshima, 69, admits that his theories may be radically different from those adopted by mainstream academia. But the difficulty in penetrating the Jomon mind may be what attracts so many to the mystery-laden era.

Filmmaker Nobutaka Yamaoka released a documentary last year titled “Hooked on the Jomon,” in which he interviewed experts on the period from various fields, including archaeologist and renowned Jomon scholar Tatsuo Kobayashi, graphic designer Taku Sato and Murakami’s father, the ceramic artist Ifurai.

“I had no interest in the period until I heard that Jomon people buried their dead children beneath the entrance to their homes,” he says. “The custom was so drastically different from ours that I became curious about who these people were.”

Yamaoka, 54, spent five years visiting museums and archaeological sites dotting the nation and talking to academics, artists and other fans of the culture. The more he learned, however, the more questions he harbored.

“And that’s the beauty of it,” he says. “Rather than analyzing and trying to understand the period based on our own standards, accepting what we don’t know and the fact that people may have lived in a completely different world 5,000 years ago is, in a sense, liberating.”

In this regard, Yamaoka says the way in which the Jomon Period is portrayed in museums, books and archaeological sites may be doing a disservice to the era’s potential as a cultural draw.

“Despite the florid designs featured in Jomon pottery, jewelry and other artifacts, reproductions of pit houses, for example, come off as being very discreet and low-key,” he says. “I think it would be beneficial, in terms of breaking the stereotype and arousing interest in the period, if we portray the culture in a more vivid, colorful light,” he says.

That’s what Akihide Mochizuki has been doing with Jomonzine, a free magazine he launched in 2015. Each issue features a cover girl imitating a dogu figurine pose, and includes travelogues, comic strips, Q&As and even serial fiction — all related in one way or another to the prehistoric period.

“There appears to have been no significant social hierarchy during the Jomon Period, and that may be one reason the era lasted for more than 10,000 years,” the 47-year-old says. “In that sense, I thought it would be interesting and not too far-fetched to feature Jomon culture in the context of modern popular culture.”

What’s more, interest in the ancient society appears to be growing.

There have been dogu-inspired origami, cookies, candies, notebooks and neckties sold. Approximately 350,000 people visited the Tokyo National Museum last year when it hosted a Jomon exhibition, far exceeding its initial goal of 100,000. Yamaoka’s documentary also coincided with the exhibition, giving it a much broader run than he expected.

And on Thursday, the government decided to recommend 17 Jomon sites in northern Japan as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage candidate for 2021.

“The perception of Jomon being a primitive, obsolete period is changing,” Mochizuki says. “Many people are beginning to think Jomon is cool.”

Meanwhile, Oshima and Maeda’s second Jomon exhibition held in a gallery in Tokyo successfully wrapped up on Dec. 1.

“Tattoos tend to be discussed in the context of yakuza and the style developed in the Edo period and onward,” Oshima says. “What we’re trying to express, however, is that it existed long before in various parts of the world in the form of tribal tattoos.”

And Oshima’s Jomon-inspired designs appears to have struck a chord with Japanese descendants living overseas.

“I’ve received requests for Jomon tattoos from American Nikkei who are keen on getting my designs inked to celebrate their ancient ancestry,” he says.