Izumikanga Ruins

One Government Office Site, Designated by the State in 2010

Izumikanga Ruins (泉官衙遺跡, Izumi Kanga Iseki) lie at Jikemae and adjoining areas, Izumi, Haramachi Ward, Minamisoma City, Fukushima Prefecture, the site of an ancient government office, designated by the state on 22 February 2010. Its category is that of historic sites.

The managing body is Minamisoma City, which is also recorded as the owner.

The Agency describes it as the site of a government office of the late 7th to the late 10th century, on a river terrace formed by a river flowing east out of the Abukuma hills.

Thought to Be a Temple, Found to Be an Office

What the place was taken to be was reversed by excavation.

The city records that many foundation stones once lay scattered in the rice fields and plots here, and that tiles with unusual patterns and carbonised rice turned up, so that the place was treated as the site of a temple of the Nara and Heian periods and made a prefectural historic site. Its name there is the former temple site of Izumi.

Later excavation, the record continues, showed that it was not a temple but the office that governed a district of ancient Mutsu.

A place taken for a temple from its stones and tiles proved, when dug, to be a district office. The national historic site bears the name of a government office.

At the Bingo provincial seat, the location given in a written source was borne out by excavation: a supposition confirmed.

Here the supposition itself was overturned. The same ground is named a former temple by the prefecture and a government office by the state.

Three Kinds of Building: Government, Tax and Hospitality

The buildings that made up an office have each been found.

The Agency records that excavation confirmed the government compound, the granary compound and the lodging compound.

The city says what was valued was the concrete discovery of each part of a local office: the central hall where government was carried on, the granaries that received tax, and the lodgings where senior officials were entertained and stayed.

A place to govern, stores for tax and a house for guests: all three are present.

The Bingo site was the seat of a province.

This is the office of a district below the province. The city calls it a site that represents Japan, where the whole of a district office has been made clear.

Carbonised Rice and a Recorded Granary Fire

What comes from the ground and what is written in a chronicle stand side by side.

The city records that an official chronicle notes a fire in 774 at the office of this district, in which 25,400 koku of rice paid as tax were burnt, and that this is taken to have been a fire in the granaries.

The city also records that carbonised rice, rice burnt to charcoal, is found here.

The granaries held the rice paid in tax.

At Himeshima, two dating methods are set down side by side.

Here burnt rice in the soil and a fire in a chronicle are set side by side for the same ground.

Visiting

The site lies at Jikemae and adjoining areas, Izumi, Haramachi Ward, Minamisoma City, near the mouth of the river.

According to the city, the area was enlarged in February 2018 to about 11.5 hectares, bringing most of the site under national protection.

The Agency says there is a strong view that this was the office of the district, given its position and contents. The city states it outright. The records differ in how firmly they speak.

The city is developing the site as a historic park for public use, so conditions for visiting may change as work proceeds. Check before travelling.

The ancient district, the city notes, corresponds roughly to present-day Minamisoma and the neighbouring village of Iitate.