Japan. Japanese Art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga which is modern Japanese cartoons and comics along with a myriad of other types. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BC, to the present-day country. Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new ideas followed by long periods of minimal contact with the outside world. Over time the Japanese developed the ability to absorb, imitate, and finally assimilate those elements of foreign culture that complemented their aesthetic preferences. The earliest complex art in Japan was produced in the 7th and 8th centuries in connection with Buddhism. In the 9th century, as the Japanese began to turn away from China and develop indigenous forms of expression, the secular arts became increasingly important; until the late 15th century, both religious and secular arts flourished. After the Ōnin War, Japan entered a period of political, social, and economic disruption that lasted for over a century. In the state that emerged under the leadership of the Tokugawa shogunate, organized religion played a much less important role in people's lives, and the arts that survived were primarily secular. Painting is the preferred artistic expression in Japan, practiced by amateurs and professionals alike. Until modern times, the Japanese wrote with a brush rather than a pen, and their familiarity with brush techniques has made them particularly sensitive to the values and aesthetics of painting. With the rise of popular culture in the Edo period, a style of woodblock prints became a major form and its techniques were fine-tuned to produce colorful prints. The Japanese, in this period, found sculpture a much less sympathetic medium for artistic expression; most Japanese sculpture is associated with religion, and the medium's use declined with the lessening importance of traditional Buddhism. Japanese ceramics are among the finest in the world and include the earliest known artifacts of their culture. In architecture, Japanese preferences for natural materials and an interaction of interior and exterior space are clearly expressed. The first settlers of Japan were the Jomon people, named for the cord markings that decorated the surfaces of their clay vessels, were nomadic hunter-gatherers who later practiced organized farming and built cities with populations of hundreds if not thousands. They built simple houses of wood and thatch set into shallow earthen pits to provide warmth from the soil. They crafted lavishly decorated pottery storage vessels, clay figurines called dogu, and crystal jewels. During the Early Jomon Period, villages started to be discovered and ordinary everyday objects were found such as ceramic ports purposed for boiling water. The pots that were found during this time had flat bottoms and had elaborate designs made out of materials such as bamboo. In addition, another important find was the early Jomon figurines which might have been used as fertility objects due to the breasts and swelling hips that they exhibited. The Middle Jomon Period, contrasted from the Early Jomon Period in many ways. These people became less nomadic and began to settle in villages. They created tools that were able to process the food that they gathered and hunted which made living easier for them. Through the numerous aesthetically pleasing ceramics that were found during this time period, it is evident that these people had a stable economy and more leisure time to establish beautiful pieces. In addition, the people of the Middle Jomon period differed from their preceding ancestors because they developed vessels according to their function, for example, they produced pots in order to store items. The decorations on these vessels started to become more realistic looking as opposed to the early Jomon ceramics. Overall, the production of works not only increased during this period, but these individuals made them more decorative and naturalistic. During the Late and Final Jomon period, the weather started to get colder, therefore forcing them to move away from the mountains. The main food source during this time was fish, which made them improve their fishing supplies and tools. This advancement was a very important achievement during this time. In addition, the numbers of vessels largely increased which could possibly conclude that each house had their own figurine displayed in them.