This sketchy portrait represents a woman of the Jomon culture, which occupied Japan in prehistoric times until 300 BC. The people seem to have subsisted as hunter-gatherers with a particularly fondness for fish and other seafood, the abundance of which allowed them to settle down in permanent villages. They even had time to make pottery with elaborate patterns and weave cloth made from the bark of the mulberry tree. In the end, however, their culture ended up subsumed by that of the Yayoi people, the latter most probably evolving into modern ethnic Japanese.
I was actually a little unsure how dark-skinned I should make the Jomon woman in this sketch. Apparently, DNA extracted from one 3,800-year-old Jomon female specimen showed she had “moderately dark” skin and thin “curly” or “frizzy” hair, both characteristics seldom associated with modern Japanese, but then the sculpted reconstruction they did of her made her look more like a standard Japanese woman in terms of complexion and hair texture. This depiction is therefore based more on how the woman’s probable appearance was described in the text of these reports.