Nomi Burial Mounds / Teraiyama Burial Mounds / Wadayama

Sixty-Two Tombs on Five Hills: The Nomi Kofun Group

Five low hills rise from the flat farmland of Nomi City, in Ishikawa Prefecture, and every one of them is crowned with ancient burial mounds. Together they hold sixty-two identified tombs: two keyhole-shaped mounds, three squared keyhole mounds, three plain square tombs, thirty-nine round mounds, and fifteen whose original form can no longer be read. Archaeologists group them under a single name, the Nomi Kofun Group, because they belong to one unbroken story.

That story is what makes the site unusual. Most tomb clusters in Japan were built within a single phase and then abandoned. Here, burial continued on the same five hills from the closing years of the Yayoi period into the late sixth century. A visitor walking between the hills is, in effect, walking along three centuries of change.

The hills stand at the southern edge of the alluvial fan built up by the Tedori River, Ishikawa's largest waterway. Each one is an isolated rise of roughly twenty meters above the surrounding plain, separated from the others by a short stretch of level ground. From west to east they are called Teraiyama, Matsujiyama, Wadayama, Akitsuneyama, and Nishiyama, and each hill carries its own cluster of tombs.

Three Centuries of Tomb Building

The sequence begins on the westernmost hill, Teraiyama. There, two pit graves cut into a low enclosure yielded an iron sword and iron arrowheads. The style of these graves points back to the very end of the Yayoi period, before the great mounded tombs of the Kofun era had taken hold. Teraiyama records the moment just before the tradition began.

Tomb building then moved to the central hills. On Wadayama and Matsujiyama, mound construction started in the first half of the Kofun period and carried on, without a long break, into the late sixth century. Of the thirty-four mounds still standing on these two hills, nine have been excavated. The grave goods recovered from Wadayama tombs 1 and 2 — bell-rimmed mirrors, bell-shaped bracelets, and horse fittings — were of such quality that they passed into national ownership and are now kept at the Kyoto National Museum.

The most dramatic chapter belongs to Akitsuneyama. In 1984, during a field survey for a local history project, a member of the Ishikawa Archaeological Research Association recognized that the hill carried a keyhole-shaped tomb of exceptional size. It was the first keyhole mound longer than one hundred meters ever confirmed in Ishikawa. A second, square tomb was identified on the same hill soon after.

The final phase returns to a smaller scale. On Nishiyama, the easternmost hill, thirteen round mounds were raised in the second half of the Kofun period, each measuring fifteen to twenty meters across. Some contain corridor-style stone burial chambers built of cut and stacked stone, a construction method that had reached the region by that time. Set the hills side by side and the shift is plain to see: from squared and keyhole forms toward simple round mounds, and from earthen burial pits toward stone chambers entered from the side.

Why the Site Is Protected

National recognition came in stages. The Wadayama and Matsujiyama clusters were designated a National Historic Site in 1975. Akitsuneyama followed in 1999, after a decade of survey work confirmed the size of its great mound. In 2013 the Agency for Cultural Affairs combined the two existing designations, added the Teraiyama and Nishiyama clusters, and renamed the whole protected area the Nomi Kofun Group.

The reasoning behind the 2013 decision rests on continuity. Few places in Japan let researchers trace the Kofun period as a connected sequence on a single landscape: the changing shape of the mounds, the arrival of the corridor stone chamber, and the slow turnover in the objects buried with the dead. Taken as one body of evidence, the five clusters are treated as a heritage site with genuine internal unity, rather than five separate cemeteries that happen to lie close together. The protected area covers roughly 134,900 square meters.

What to Look For on the Hills

Akitsuneyama Tomb No. 1 is the centerpiece. It is the largest keyhole-shaped tomb in the Hokuriku region, and its scale becomes clear only when you climb it. The commonly cited length is about 140 meters, with a round rear mound roughly 108 meters across and close to 19 meters high. Researchers have not fully agreed on whether the mound was raised in two tiers or three, since the lowest level may have been a base platform rather than part of the mound proper; depending on that reading, the figure shifts to about 120 meters. The restoration work followed the tiers that the survey data could fix with confidence and left the lowest level for future study.

The mound was finished with fukiishi, facing stones laid over its slopes, though only across limited areas rather than the whole surface. Analysis of those stones identified twenty-seven rock types, most of them carried from riverbeds downstream in present-day Hakusan City. No haniwa, the fired clay cylinders that ring many tombs of this era, were found here. The burial chamber has never been excavated, so what lies inside remains unknown. The tomb is thought to date from the late fourth century.

Akitsuneyama Tomb No. 2 sits just to the west. Early reports described it as a squared keyhole mound, but a survey in 2001 found a ditch where a constriction had been assumed, and the tomb was reclassified as a square mound, about 32 meters along its east-west sides. It is the only mound in the entire group to have produced haniwa: roughly three hundred fragments of cylinder and morning-glory types. Its burial facility was a clay-encased wooden coffin, and the objects placed with the dead included steatite beads, a comb, two iron swords, and two iron knives with curled handles, the first of their kind recorded in Ishikawa. A display room built over the burial facility lets visitors see how the chamber was arranged. Tomb No. 2 is dated to around the middle of the fifth century.

Because the trees on the summit were cleared during park work, the view from the top of Akitsuneyama is open and wide. On a clear day it takes in the Sea of Japan, the full sweep of the Tedori River fan, and the city of Komatsu to the south.

Planning a Visit

The Akitsuneyama tombs sit within a maintained historic park. The mounds of tombs 1 and 2 have been reshaped to their estimated original profiles and planted with grass, a section of the facing stones on Tomb No. 1 has been restored, and the burial facility of Tomb No. 2 is sheltered and open to view. Paths lead up both mounds, and there is no charge to walk the park.

For the wider story, start at the Nomi Furusato Museum, which opened in 2020 at the foot of Wadayama. Its galleries display about three hundred items recovered from the Nomi Kofun Group, among them an inscribed sue ware vessel regarded as one of the oldest examples of writing on pottery found in Japan. Themed rooms use models, video, and hands-on exhibits to set the tombs within twenty thousand years of local history. Admission is 300 yen for adults, and the museum offers free rental bicycles, a practical way to link the scattered hills.

The museum keeps regular hours of 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30, and closes on Mondays, the third Tuesday of each month, and over the New Year period. The Wadayama and Matsujiyama clusters near the museum are maintained for visitors; the Nishiyama cluster has been surveyed but is not laid out as a park, so it is best appreciated from the museum's exhibits.

By rail, take the IR Ishikawa Railway from Kanazawa Station to Nomi-Negari Station, a ride of about thirty minutes, then transfer to a community Nomi Bus for roughly fifteen minutes; the museum is a two-minute walk from the stop. Drivers can reach the area in about twenty minutes from the Nomi-Negari smart interchange on the Hokuriku Expressway.

Around Nomi City

Nomi is one of the homes of Kutani ware, the brightly painted porcelain that has been produced in this part of Ishikawa for centuries. Kilns, galleries, and a pottery village in the city give a sense of the craft, and the Nomi City Museum of History and Folklore stands only a short walk from the Nomi Furusato Museum. Komatsu, the next city to the south, adds the Ishikawa Aviation Plaza, an aircraft museum that pairs well with a family trip. Together they make the kofun an easy half-day within a fuller itinerary.