My degree is in the history of China and Japan, so I found this story quite fascinating, especially as so little seems to be known about Japan's earlier history - i.e. before the Heian period.
A research group at the Politecnico di Milano recently analysed
the orientation of ancient Japanese tombs – the so-called Kofun. This
study has never been carried out before, due to the very large number of
monuments and the fact that access to these areas is usually forbidden. For
these reasons, high-res satellite imagery was used. The results show that
these tombs are oriented towards the arc of the rising sun, the Goddess
Amaterasu that the Japanese emperors linked to the mythical origin of their
dynasty.
The Japanese islands are dotted with hundreds of ancient burial mounds, the largest of which are in the typical shape of a keyhole and are called Kofun. Built between the third and the seventh centuries AD, the most imposing are attributed to the semi-legendary first emperors, while the smaller ones probably belong to court officers and to members of the royal family.
Among these, the so-called Daisen Kofun, is one of the largest monuments
ever built on Earth: it measures 486 meters in length and about 36 in height.
It is traditionally attributed to Emperor Nintoku, the sixteenth emperor of
Japan. The Daisen Kofun belongs to a group of tombs recently inscribed in the
UNESCO World Heritage List.
There are no written sources on these tombs, and excavations are rare and limited to the smaller ones, since the largest are considered the tombs of the first semi-legendary emperors and, as such, are strictly protected by law. It is interesting to me how fiercely protected these tombs are by the Japanese authorities and how closely they are still related to Japanese national identity. Although the British Isles are studded with tombs and monuments from ancestors building at the same time, admittedly few on this scale, protection is not quite a zealous (although it has been progressively ramped up since the days of Victorian amateur archaeologists).
Protection of Kofun in Japan also extends to the outside: many monuments are fenced, and
it is forbidden to enter the perimeter. For these reasons, it is impossible
to obtain accurate measurements of size, height and orientation. Furthermore,
their number discourages any on field investigation. It is therefore natural to
study them using high-resolution satellite images, which furnish simple but
very powerful tools for remote sensing investigations.
This is what Norma Baratta, Arianna Picotti and Giulio Magli
of the Politecnico di Milano did, with the aim of deepening the knowledge of
the relationships between these fascinating monuments with the landscape and,
in particular, with the sky. The team measured the orientation of more than 100
Kofuns and came to interesting conclusions.
The results - just published in the scientific journal
Remote Sensing https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/2/377 -
indicate a strong connection of the Kofun entrance corridors with the arc in
the sky where the Sun and the Moon are visible every day of the year, and show
the orientation of the hugest keyhole-shaped Kofuns to the arc of the Sun
rising/shining. In particular, the Daisen Kofun is oriented towards the Sun
rising at the winter solstice.
Orientation of the imperial tombs towards the Sun does not
happen by chance: rather, it is in full agreement with the Japanese imperial
tradition. Indeed, the mythical origin of the dynasty of the Japanese Emperors
considers them as direct descendants of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
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