「縄文」を終わらせた男 - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

Ryan Kilpatrick “Into the Great Unknown: China's most famed explores and adventurers” that's Shanghai January 2015, pp.20-21

中国史における４人の探検家。秦の徐福*1、漢の張騫*2、唐の玄奘 *3、明の鄭和 *4。
徐福の二度目の航海と〈日本〉定住についての記述；

This time, Xu did find something. It wasn't the spring of eternal life, but it was a vast, fertile, exquiste and promising land somewhere in modern-day Japan.
Perhaps realizing that he had run out of plausible excuses (like sea monsters) for not finding the clearly non-existent potion of immortality, and that if he returned home empty-handed one more the emperor would have his head, Xu Fu did the rational thing and stayed put, setting up his own kingdom instead.
Around the same time that all this went down, Japan's ancient Jomon culture suddenly disappeared and dramatic leaps in farming techniques occurred, improving local inhabitants' quality of life and laying the foundation for ancient Japanese society. Many believe that Xu's arrival was the catalyst for Japan's development – in some parts of Japan, Xu is worshipped as the God of farming, medicine and silk. (p.21)

「縄文」を終わらせた男としての徐福という評価は知らなかった。勿論、弥生時代の始まりが秦滅亡に伴う中国動乱と何らか関係していることはたしかなのだが。
縄文の〈日本〉に渡った中国人といえば、諸星大二郎『孔子暗黒伝』*5なのだが、これは徐福よりも数百年前の話。もっとも諸星さんには『徐福伝説』もある。