Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Umeyama Kofun
Also known asHinokuma no Sakaai no Misasagi · Mausoleum of Emperor Kinmei
DatedEst. 250–650 CE
Photo Saigen Jiro · CC0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
Umeyama Kofun is a keyhole-shaped burial mound in Asuka village, Takaichi district, Nara Prefecture, Japan, of the Kofun period. With a total length of about 140 m, it is the largest kofun in Asuka village.
The Imperial Household Agency designates it as Hinokuma no Sakaai no Misasagi, the tomb of the 29th emperor, Kinmei, but the person actually buried in it is not certain. The mound has not been excavated.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Umeyama Kofun
The mound is a keyhole-shaped mound with its front part facing west and its main axis running exactly east to west.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
The mound is a keyhole-shaped mound with its front part facing west and its main axis running exactly east to west. Its total length is about 140 m and the diameter of the round rear part is 72 m. The mound is known for the very large quantity of cobbles covering its surface (fukiishi).
The mound is now surrounded by a water-filled moat. This was largely rebuilt during the Bunkyū-era restoration and was originally paddy fields. One view holds that the mound was remodelled from a double-circle mound into a keyhole-shaped mound during that restoration.
This kofun, the Hirata Iwaya Kofun, the Oni no Manaita and Setchin Kofun and the Noguchi Ōhaka tomb (the joint tomb of Emperors Tenmu and Jitō) were built on the south side of the same hill, using its topography, and the four tombs stand in a row from east to west.
DatingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
The mound is thought to have been built in the late Kofun period. Because no excavation has been carried out, it is difficult to estimate the date of construction more precisely.
InterpretationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
The Imperial Household Agency treats the mound as the tomb of Emperor Kinmei. It is recorded that Kitashihime was reburied in this mausoleum in the second month of the 20th year of Empress Suiko, 612. However, many scholars regard Mise Maruyama Kofun, the largest kofun in Nara Prefecture, which lies about 800 m to the north-west, as the tomb of Kinmei. It has also been suggested that the person buried in Umeyama Kofun was Soga no Iname.
FindsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Stone figures known as the monkey stones (Saruishi) are placed at the adjacent tomb of Princess Kibi. They were dug up in the Edo period from a field (small place name Ikeda) just south of Umeyama Kofun and left beside the mound, and were moved to their present location in the early Meiji period.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
On 24 April 2015 the kofun was certified as a component cultural property of a Japan Heritage story.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Japanese kofun tumuli
Kofun are the great burial mounds of ancient Japan, built mainly between the middle of the third century and the early seventh century CE. The period takes its name from them. The most distinctive form is the keyhole-shaped mound (zempō-kōen-fun), with one square end and one round end seen from above, but there are also plain round mounds, double-rectangle mounds and square mounds. Orientation is not fixed: in the Mozu group at Sakai, some round parts face north and others east.
The largest is Daisenryō kofun at Sakai in Osaka, the biggest kofun in Japan, thought to have been built over some twenty years in the middle of the fifth century. By common acceptance it is the tomb of Emperor Nintoku, and the Imperial Household Agency treats it as such, but this cannot be confirmed because the mound has not been excavated. It stands in the Mozu group, which once had more than a hundred tombs of which fewer than half remain; the group and the neighbouring Furuichi cluster were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019. The mounds were built on a plateau overlooking Osaka Bay, near the ancient coastline.
Dating rests on mound shape, pottery and grave goods. Haniwa, which means "clay circle", are terracotta cylinders and figures of houses, animals and people that were arranged in rings and rows around and on top of the mounds. Smaller kofun are very numerous and sit in groups in every region of Japan.
When visiting, look for the moat that surrounds the larger mounds, for the stepped outline of terraces, and for reconstructed haniwa in museums and parks beside the tombs.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Kofun, Wikipedia: Daisen Kofun, Wikipedia: Haniwa, Wikipedia: Mozu Tombs · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
6 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 250–650 CEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic mounds in Japan; this site has not been dated itself. Japanese kofun burial mounds were mainly constructed between the middle of the 3rd century and the early 7th century AD.Source for this date
Where it stands
Japan
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 34°28′07″ N, 135°48′03″ EFor a GPS or map app: 34.46872, 135.80078
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
,_funkyu.jpg){kind=link}
,_zenkei-1.jpg){kind=link}
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q11538452wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
- Umeyama Kofun, zenkei-2.jpgSaigen JiroCC0
- 欽明天皇陵 - panoramio.jpgz tanukiCC BY 3.0
- Kanazuka Kofun (Asuka), funkyu.jpgSaigen JiroCC0
- Umeyama Kofun, zenkei.jpgSaigen JiroCC0
- Umeyama Kofun, haisho.jpgSaigen JiroCC0
- UmeyamaKohun-01.jpgVanishingDuckCC BY-SA 3.0
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "梅山古墳" (Japanese), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 梅山古墳CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q11538452CC0