[This post pertains to the old layout of this blog. To see the picture in question, see: here.]
In case you’re wondering what that picture is behind the large red letters, “The Ancient Japan Blog,” I thought I’d let you in on the secret.
In the summer of 2006, I was a foreign exchange student to Kyoto. My family and friends there were kind enough to whisk me around the Kansai in the Great Kofun Search. I must have personally visited dozens of these megalithic tombs. I have a good collection of pictures that I eventually hope to upload (don’t laugh, but I’m having trouble figuring out just how to do that).
The kofun (ancient burial mound from the end of the 3rd century to the beginning of the 8th) in the header picture is Nagareyama Kofun ナガレ山古墳. It’s a real tomb that’s been renovated (well, really half-renovated) to give modern sightseers a picture of what these ancient tombs once looked like. Half of the mound has been untouched, leaving it overgrown with grass, trees, and bushes (like almost all kofun across the Japanese archipelago). The other half has had all the foliage cleared away, has been re-tiled (with fukiishi 葺石), and has had the terraces relined with terracotta haniwa. As you can guess, the side in the picture is the renovated side. I have a collection of photos of both sides from different angles (and of objects in the nearby museum) that I would love to post soon.
A quick Google image search (linked to above) brings up one of my favorite pictures of the tomb — it emphasizes the dichotomy beautifully.
The burial chamber is located on the top level (as you can see, it is a three-tiered tomb — meaning it has three “steps”; each “step” is delineated by a row of terracotta haniwa, which, in this this photo, look like a continuous line of brown), at the far left 前方部. It’s a vertical-entrance burial chamber 竪穴式石室. Sometimes, these burial chambers are located at the other end 後円部 of the mound.
Why I am so specific with the type of burial chamber is that there is another major type: the horizontal-entrance burial chamber 横穴式石室, which can be seen heavily after the fifth century. Gina Barnes has posited that this second-mentioned type of burial chamber was imported from the continent, specifically Paekche (which most likely imported it originally from China).[1]
——————————————————-
[1] Barnes, Gina L. “The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan.” London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Page 227.
