Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group

The “Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group” is a tomb group of the king’s clan and the clan’s affiliates that ruled the ancient Japanese archipelago. The tombs were constructed between the late 4th century and the late 5th century, which was the peak of the Kofun period. It is located on a plateau overlooking the bay which was the maritime gateway to the continent, in the southern part of the Osaka Plain which was one of the important political cultural centers. The property includes many tombs with plans in the shape of a keyhole, a feature unique in the world; among these tombs several measure as much as 500 meters in mound length. They form a group, along with a large number of smaller tombs. The kofun in four plan types: keyhole shape, scallop shape, round and square. They are the standardized kofun shapes, which served as models for local kofun constructed across the archipelago. In contrast to the type of burial mound commonly found in many parts of the world, which is an earth or piled-stone mound forming a simple covering over a coffin or a burial chamber, kofun are architectural achievements with geometrically elaborate designs created as a stage for funerary rituals, decorated with haniwa clay figures.

Value of the Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group

The Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group bears outstanding witness to the history of the people of the Japanese archipelago, characterized by the expression of power through the formation of mounded tombs, which was a phenomenon that occurred as a response to the political turmoil in East Asia before Japanese society entered into a new phase of history with an established centralized state.

Testimony of the Kofun period’s culture
The Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group is exceptional testimony to the Kofun period’s culture, in which the socio-political structure of the time was demonstrated by the shape and the size of kofun built as a collective entity.

The property illustrates that there once existed a highly sophisticated funerary system that suggested social class differences. The most fully and clearly demonstrated hierarchical structure of the property became the reference for kofun groups of the archipelago, situating this group at the top of their hierarchy.

Architectural achievement of earthen monuments
The Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group is an outstanding example of kofun, a type of burial mound original to the Japanese archipelago. It illustrates a unique historical stage of the archipelago - the period of formation and development of an ancient kingly power that emerged in response to the political turmoil in East Asia - in which ancestral tombs were created as monuments most clearly demonstrating the power of the different groups and societies.

The densely concentrated mounded tombs in the Mozu-Furuichi area are contemporaneous, yet varied; they come in four standardized plan types - keyhole shape, scallop shape, round and square - and in an extremely wide range in scale from 20 meters to nearly 500 meters in mound length. Moreover, a kofun is a not a simple earth or piled-stone mound covering over a coffin or a burial chamber, which is often the case for burial mounds found in many other parts of the world. It is an exceptional architectural achievement that was designed as a stage for funerary rituals, decorated with paving stones and clay objects, and built with highly elaborate and geometry-based architectural planning and technology.