Funakiyama Tomb Group

Four Centuries of Burial on a Gifu Ridge

Rising from the northern edge of the Nōbi Plain in Gifu Prefecture, the Funakiyama ridge is a slender, isolated hill: roughly 2 kilometres long, 600 metres wide, and topping out at 115 metres. Beneath its mixed cover of cedar, oak and undergrowth lie around 290 burial mounds. They were built, occupied, and reopened for further interments across more than four centuries, from the mid-3rd to the late 7th. In February 2019, 111 of these tombs and the surrounding ridge, a designated area of 155,420 square metres, were registered as a National Historic Site of Japan.

What sets Funakiyama apart is not simply the number of tombs. It is the sheer length of time a single hill was used as a cemetery, and the way successive generations chose new locations on the same ridge, moving from the main spine to side ridges and switching from earthen mounds to corridor-type stone chambers, while keeping faith with the original sacred ground.

Four Layers of the Kofun Period

The earliest burials at Funakiyama belong to the closing phase of the Yayoi period: small square-moat tombs (hōkei-shūkōbo) dug into the western part of the ridge. By the early Kofun period in the 4th century, builders had begun raising freestanding keyhole-shaped mounds, including the largest tomb on the ridge, Tomb 5, alongside square-front round-back tombs unusual for the region.

A pause followed in the early middle Kofun period. Then, from the late 5th century into the 6th and 7th, construction surged again. This time the builders chose the side ridges and slopes, packing them with corridor-style stone chambers that allowed a single tomb to receive multiple interments over generations. The latest of these date to the close of the 7th century, after which the cemetery fell silent.

Researchers have catalogued the mounds into supergroups labelled A through S. The mix is striking: three Yayoi square-moat or pit graves, twenty early Kofun mounds, three middle Kofun mounds, and more than two hundred late Kofun examples. Keyhole tombs, square-front round-back tombs, round mounds and square mounds are all represented, and the corridor chambers themselves show several distinct architectural lineages.

Why It Was Designated a National Historic Site

Funakiyama is the largest cluster of burial mounds in the Tōkai region built on a single isolated hill. When the national Council for Cultural Affairs reviewed the case in November 2018, the value cited went beyond size: this is a rare site where four centuries of changing tomb forms, burial customs and clan hierarchies can be read from one continuous landscape. The Council recommended designation, and the formal listing followed on 26 February 2019.

The grave goods recovered from the ridge support that reading. Excavations between 1993 and 1996 examined 162 mounds on the Motosu City side and recovered an extraordinary range of objects: bronze mirrors, decorated longswords, horse trappings, glass and stone beads, iron arrowheads, and ceramics in both haji and sue traditions. In October 2017, 687 of these items were designated Important Cultural Properties of Gifu Prefecture; a further 8,093 are city-level cultural properties.

Two finds carry particular weight. Tomb 98, an early keyhole mound on the eastern slope, produced a rectangular-plate leather-laced cuirass: only the 17th example known nationally. Tomb 19, one of three "red-painted tombs," yielded two gan-gi-dama (literally "sawtoothed beads"), glass ornaments believed to have crossed from the Chinese mainland, along with 23 dragonfly-pattern glass beads, the largest single haul of such beads found in Gifu.

What to Look For on the Ridge

Tomb 5 dominates the western part of the ridge. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, this keyhole-shaped mound measures 65 metres in length — modest by the scale of the great central-Japanese tumuli, but unusually large for a remote Tōkai site of the late 4th century. Its position on the main spine suggests it belonged to the chief of the local polity at the time. Other sources record the figure as 60 metres, so the dimension is best treated as approximate.

Tomb 24 carries a different kind of story. In July 1967, after several days of heavy rain, a landslide on the side of the mound exposed grave goods that had lain undisturbed for sixteen centuries: five bronze mirrors, iron swords, bronze arrowheads, and tubular jasper beads. The objects are now in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

The "red-painted tombs" — Tombs 272, 19 and 274 — are the most striking late-period chambers on the ridge. Their slab walls were coated with iron-oxide pigment (bengara), still visible today as a deep ochre hue. Tomb 272, with its reconstructed entry passage and stone coffin, is the centrepiece of the Sekisai Kofun no Yakata exhibit; it is opened to visitors only during scheduled openings, typically held twice a year in spring and autumn.

For visitors who want to compare a chamber up close at any time, a faithful full-scale reconstruction of Tomb 154, a 6th-century round mound from the H supergroup, stands at the entrance to the on-site museum. The chert sarcophagus, the side entrance, and the stacked-stone walls are reproduced at actual scale.

Visiting Today

The natural starting point is the Kofun to Kaki no Yakata, the "Tombs and Persimmons Museum," located inside the Fuyū-gaki no Sato park complex at the south-eastern foot of the ridge. The museum holds the bulk of the excavated finds: bronze mirrors, the cuirass from Tomb 98, the glass beads from Tomb 19, alongside displays on the persimmon cultivation that gives the surrounding district its name.

From the museum, a network of walking paths climbs the ridge. Some of the more accessible mounds are signed and cleared; many others remain inside their forest cover, where they look at first glance like ordinary terrain. Volunteer guides know which subtle bumps in the soil are 1,500-year-old tombs and which are not. The accessible portion of the ridge can be walked in about an hour at a leisurely pace.

The grounds are open year-round. Access to the Sekisai Kofun no Yakata enclosure, where the red-painted Tomb 272 has been conserved, is restricted to scheduled opening days announced on the city's website. Tomb interiors elsewhere on the ridge are not generally entered; chambers visible at the surface should be viewed from outside the protective fencing.

Around the Ridge

The hill sits at the centre of Itonuki, the district where the Fuyū sweet persimmon variety was developed in the late 19th century. The Roadside Station Fuyū-gaki no Sato Itonuki, a short walk from the museum, sells the late-autumn harvest fresh and dried, alongside local rice and vegetables.

A few hundred metres east of the ridge, the temple Miroku-ji preserves Tomb 81 within its temple grounds, a scallop-shaped mound that yielded fragments of cylindrical haniwa. Further afield, the single-track Tarumi Railway threads north through Motosu City toward the headwaters of the Neo River, a slow, scenic line that comes into its own in cherry-blossom season.