Focus on Tenri City: Kofun Select Guide [Book Review]

Local governments across the country are racking their brains to come up with ideas for return gifts for furusato nozei (hometown tax).
It is easy to just order food, but if you look into other genres, there are many interesting things.
I tried searching for "kofun" (ancient burial mounds) and found so many.

It is a 1/400 scale cushion of the Imashirozuka Kofun, said to be the true mausoleum of Emperor Keitai! I already own a regular kofun cushion, but this realistic shape is also nice.

I was looking for what kind of things are in Nara Prefecture, which has a high density of kofun, and I found something interesting.

This kind of local kofun feature book is also great!
General books on kofun tend to have little information on small-scale ruins, so I make it a point to pick up region-specific kofun books whenever I find them.

With that said, this time I will write down my thoughts on "Tenri no Kofun 100", which is published by Tenri City, Nara Prefecture, and is also available as a hometown tax return gift.

Book Overview

This book is not a professional report like an excavation survey report, but is positioned as a visual resource that is fun for kofun fans to read. The full-color aerial photographs alone are worth seeing. There are even places where there are more kofun than houses...

About the Content

"Tenri no Kofun 100" is, as the name suggests, a book that introduces about 100 kofun (and a few non-kofun ruins) in Tenri City, Nara Prefecture. 100 sounds like a lot, but since things like XX Kofun clusters or YY group tombs are counted as 1, the actual number of tombs introduced might be close to a thousand. The density of kofun in Tenri City is astonishing.

By the way, if you look at the "Tenri City Cultural Property Ruins Distribution Map", also published by the local government, you can see that a significant part of Tenri City is an area where ancient cultural heritage is buried. As expected of Nara.
There are almost no ruins in my own living area, so I am moved to see that there are places where such dense areas are scattered about. A person from Nara once said, "wherever you dig for civil engineering work, ruins come out", and it turns out that is not an exaggeration.

By the way, when I wondered how many meters the ground rose for kofun to be buried underground, it seems that in most cases the hills disappeared because people in later generations took the burial mound parts for civil engineering work.
Sengoku warlords turned them into forts, or local residents built temples on them. Well, it cannot be helped.
However, even in places that look like nothing is left at first glance, when construction begins, ruins and buried haniwa (terracotta clay figures) rows appear underground, and these are then investigated as newly discovered kofun.

By the way, if ruins are found when construction begins, it is necessary to temporarily stop construction and conduct an excavation survey. The burden of survey costs varies by local government. In Tenri City, it seems like they are constantly conducting surveys.

Come to think of it, the Tenrikyo Main Sanctuary is in the center of Tenri City, but I realized for the first time that the type site for Haji pottery = Furu Ruins spreads out around it.
So Furu-style pottery was unearthed here!? It must have been a comfortable place to live since long ago.

Famous Kofun and Ruins in Tenri City

Looking at it again, the kofun in Tenri City are a lineup of famous ones. Giant kofun line up from north to south, forming the O-Yamato Kofun Group together with Nara City to the north and Sakurai City to the south.

• Kurozuka Kofun: 33 triangular-rimmed bronze mirrors with divine beast designs were unearthed in a rather haphazard manner. While these mirrors have long been considered candidates for the 100 bronze mirrors of Himiko, the number found at this tomb and the careless way they were handled have sparked a debate questioning if they are truly the ones.

• Shibuya Mukoyama Kofun: A massive burial mound with a length of 300 meters, ranking 8th in the country. The Imperial Household Agency identifies it as the mausoleum of Emperor Keiko (father of Yamato Takeru), but archaeologically, it is positioned as the tomb of a great king of the early Yamato sovereignty.

• |Yamanobe-no-Michi: The oldest road recorded in Japanese history and the oldest existing road in Japan. It remains clearly defined from north to south, having preserved its form almost unchanged from ancient times to the present day, making it a valuable asset for considering the history of Japanese roads.

Just taking a casual stroll seems interesting, as the area is packed with lands associated with historical stories.

Summary

A recommended book for those who want to take a close look at the rich historical heritage of Tenri City.
You can feel the breath of ancient times in every visible hill and the shape of the straight roads.