Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Classical antiquity
田中古墳群
DatedEst. 250–650 CE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Tanaka kofun cluster (田中古墳群, Tanaka Kofungun) is a group of burial mounds at Tanaka in Azukawa-chō, Takashima, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. It lies on the western part of the Takashima plain, at the eastern end of the Taizanjino plateau.
About 70 mounds have been identified around the principal mound, Tanaka Ōzuka. Construction of the group began in the second half of the 5th century, was most intense in the middle of the 6th century, and continued into the 7th century.
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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
田中古墳群
It is a large round mound, or possibly a scallop-shaped one, with a diameter of about 58 metres and a height of about 10 metres.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
The mounds are round or square. Most have a diameter of about 10-20 metres and a height of about 1-4 metres.
Tanaka Ōzuka Kofun (also called Ōzuka or Ushizuka) is the principal mound of the group. It is a large round mound, or possibly a scallop-shaped one, with a diameter of about 58 metres and a height of about 10 metres. It has two tiers, its surface is covered with fukiishi (cobbles), and it was ringed with haniwa. The burial facility is not clear but is presumed to be a clay chamber or a wooden coffin set directly in the mound.
DatingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
The date of Tanaka Ōzuka is estimated from its shape and its haniwa to the second half of the 5th century, which makes it the first chieftain's tomb built south of the Azukawa river. Haniwa fragments of 3 to 5 centimetres, collected in recent years around the mound and thought to have fallen naturally from it, were reported by the Takashima City Board of Education at the Takashima Ancient History Forum of 2008. They belong to Type IV in the haniwa chronology, which corresponds to roughly the second half of the 5th century.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
The first full excavation in the group took place in 2007 at Mound 36. This is a round mound 24 metres in diameter and 4 metres high. It contained a horizontal-entry stone chamber of the Ishiya type, a form shared with mounds in Kyushu. The chamber is 7.9 metres long overall, and its walls were painted with red pigment. Many grave goods were recovered, including horse fittings and pottery, and the mound is estimated to date from about the second half of the 6th century. The remains have since been backfilled.
InterpretationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
In 1905 the Imperial Household Ministry (now the Imperial Household Agency) took Tanaka Ōzuka to be the tomb of Hikoushi no Ō, father of Emperor Keitai, and purchased it together with surrounding mounds treated as satellite tombs. A front part was then added, in imitation of the keyhole-shaped imperial tombs, giving the mound its present scallop shape. It remains designated by the Agency as a reference site for an imperial tomb, so it has not been investigated and its details are unknown.
According to the Nihon Shoki, Hikoushi no Ō kept a villa in the district called Mio no betsugyō and died while Keitai was young. One theory places his tomb at Kamo Inariyama Kofun in Kamo, Takashima (a keyhole-shaped mound of the first half of the 6th century). However, no other chieftain's tomb of the second half of the 5th century exists to match Keitai's birth, put at about 450, so Tanaka Ōzuka is regarded as the strong candidate.
Two explanations have been offered for why a chieftain's tomb was not built as a keyhole-shaped mound. One points to the centralising policy of Emperor Yūryaku in the second half of the 5th century, which restrained regional powers. The other holds that it was the first large mound built with outside support. As to the group that built the cluster, one view treats the area south of the Azukawa as land newly opened by an external power, since mounds had been built continuously north of the river from the Early Kofun period. Another sees it as a branch of the local power north of the river.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Japanese): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
Kofun are the great burial mounds of ancient Japan, built mainly between the middle of the third century and the early seventh century CE. Besides the keyhole-shaped form, there are plain round mounds, double-rectangle mounds and square mounds.
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
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 978 CE
（記事執筆に使用した文献） 史跡説明板 「田中王塚古墳」『日本歴史地名大系 25 滋賀県の地名』平凡社、1991年。ISBN 4582490255。 水谷千秋『継体天皇と朝鮮半島の謎（文春新書925）』文藝春秋、2013年。ISBN 978-4166609253。
Source
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.
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
- 35°20′25″ N, 136°00′24″ EFor a GPS or map app: 35.34017, 136.00669
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.
Inariyama Kofun250–650 CE- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)打下古墳250–650 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)北牧野古墳群250–650 CE
Nakatsuka Kofun4000–1200 BCE
Jōnozuka Kofun
Nishizuka Kofun4000–1200 BCE- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)向山1号墳250–650 CE
Jūzen-no-mori Kofun250–650 CE
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q17211784wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "田中古墳群 (高島市)" (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): 田中古墳群 (高島市)CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q17211784CC0