XX.—The Dolmens and Burial Mounds in Japan

William Gowland

doi:10.1017/S0261340900014454

XX.—The Dolmens and Burial Mounds in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012

William Gowland

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The Papers which I have the honour of laying before the Society contain a summary of my explorations and investigations of the dolmens of Japan during a long residence in that country.

We have but little exact knowledge of the mode in which the Japanese disposed of the bodies of their famous dead in the very earliest times. The somewhat vague statements of their ancient traditional records would seem to point to burial or mere deposition on the summits of natural hills as their earliest practice, but the most ancient remains yet discovered have not been found in such localities, but on the lower grounds bordering the plains, and on the plains themselves.

Type: Research Article
Information: Archaeologia , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , 1897 , pp. 439 - 524

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900014454 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1897

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References

^{page 440 note a} Mayers, “On the Stone Figures at Chinese Tombs,” a paper read before the North China Branch of the Asiatic Society, 12th March, 1878.

^{page 442 note a} I follow the practice of most continental authors in this use of the word “dolmen.” The following writings of some distinguished archaeologists, in which the word is used in the above sense, may be cited:

G. de Mortillet, Matériaux pour l'histoire primitive et naturelle d l'homnie, xiii. 412 et seq.

Morgan, J. de, Mission Scientifique en Perse, 1896, p. 56et seq.Google Scholar

Prof. Joly, N., Man before Metals, 1883, p. 147.Google Scholar

Prof. Morse, E. S., “Dolmens in Japan,” communicated to the Boston Society of Natural History, 1879.Google Scholar

And Dönitz, Herr, Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft, 1887, p. 114et seq.Google Scholar

^{page 451 note a} Table I. Nos. 5, 50, 51, 79, 107, 111, and 120.

^{page 453 note a} In a dolmen at Ashikaga (Sliimotsuke) opened by Prof. Tsuboi, access to the chamber had been effectually prevented by filling it up to the roof with small round stones.

^{page 457 note a} The other typical examples of dolmens with terraced mounds which I have examined are the following, all with only one terrace:

At Ōkamedani (Yamashiro) (Table I. No. 116), mound 74 feet long diameter, 20 feet high. No moat.

At Tsuma-machi (Hyūga) (Table I. No. 18), mound 126 feet long diameter, 20 feet high. Moat 35 feet broad.

At Habikiyama (Kawachi), mound 210 feet long diameter, 196 feet short diameter, 25 feet high. Moat 48 feet broad.

^{page 458 note a} Other names by which they are popularly known are:

Hyōtan-yama = Hill resembling a bottle gourd.

Samisen-dzuka = Mound of the shape of a Japanese lute.

Cha-usu-yama = Hill of the shape of a mill for grinding tea.

^{page 460 note a} The approximate dates of the deaths of these emperors, according to Japanese records, are as follows:

Ōjin 310 A.D.

Nintoku 399 A.D.

Richū 405 A.D.

^{page 462 note a} A Japanese treatise on burial-mounds and tombs, published 1853.

^{page 460 note b} Several examples of dolmens in large double mounds intermediate in size between those just described occur in other provinces; of these the most important I have examined are the burial mound attributed to the Emperor Keitai (died 531 A.D.) at Otā (Settsu), one near Imaichi (Izumo) which will be considered later, and another near Ōmuro (Kōzuke) (Table I. No. 81). The last had been previously visited by Sir E. M. Satow, who gave an account of it in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, viii. 313.

^{page 463 note a} Table I. Nos. 20, 21, 37, 38, 39. 114, 117, 119, 127, and 128.

^{page 468 note a} For apertures in terra-cotta sarcophagi, see fig. 15.

^{page 469 note a} I only know of three dolmens with a similar shelf in other provinces, viz.:

At Yamanouchi, province of Chikugo.

At Asada, province of Chikugo.

At Handa, province of Awa (Island of Shikoku).

^{page 471 note a} On the sites of several ruined dolmens of the same group, I found remains of three similar sarcophagi and in the chamber of a dolmen about two miles distant fragments of another. I also discovered the feet and parts of the covers of two in rock-hewn tombs near Kokubu (Kawachi).

^{page 472 note a} For others see Table II. Nos. 18 and 19.

^{page 473 note a} Cremation in Japan only dates from the establishment of Buddhism in the country (sixth and seventh centuries, A.D.), and the first of the imperial line whose body was burned before burial is said to have been the Empress Jitō (d. 702), but this is rather doubtful. However, in 840 A.D., the body of the Emperor Junna was undoubtedly cremated, and it is worthy of note in connection with the rites as then followed, that the cremation did not take place near the tomb but about three miles distant, and that two mounds, both of which I visited, were erected to his memory, one to mark the site of the cremation and the other the spot where the ashes were buried.

^{page 474 note a} In an allée couverte in Shimotsuke explored by Professor Tsuboi, a most indefatigable archæologist, the remains of fourteen bodies were found, probably a chief with the members of his family or retainers, the skulls and other bones being in a fragmentary condition and all intermingled. This case may be regarded as an exceptional one, as the testimony of the metallic remains found in dolmens, where the bones have been destroyed, is all in favour of the view, that not more than one or two persons were buried in each.

^{page 474 note b} In two rock hewn tombs in Buzen, very early in the dolmen period, the skull lay towards the entrance (south) and the feet towards the back.

^{page 475 note a} See Evans's Ancient Bronze Implements, 262 et seq.

^{page 475 note b} From a paper by MrKanda, T. (formerly Governor of the Hyōgo Prefecture) on “Ancient Bronze Swords,” Bulletin of the Tōkyō Anthropological Society, April, 1886, p. 39.Google Scholar

^{page 476 note a} British Museum.

^{page 476 note b} British Museum.

^{page 476 note c} From a paper “On Ancient Bronze Arrowheads,” by Kanda. Op. cit. ii. 124.

^{page 476 note d} An analysis of the powder showed that it consisted of ferric oxide and contained no vermilion, although that substance was found in small quantities adhering to some of the beads and inside one of the covered pots.

^{page 478 note a} The origin of this ornament has been and is a subject of hot controversy among Japanese archæologists and the most abstruse theories regarding it have been propounded, but it would seem not altogether improbable that it arose in remote times simply as an imitation of the claws of wild animals, which were then strung together as necklaces, and was gradually substituted for them.

^{page 483 note a} The whole of the remains which I obtained from this dolmen are in the British Museum.

^{page 483 note a} The curator of the Imperial Museum, Tōkyō, where these swords are kept, had been unable to ascertain with certainty whether the mound contained a dolmen or not, but from the perfect condition of several objects of delicate workmanship which were found with them, I think they were undoubtedly taken from a dolmen chamber.

^{page 483 note b} In the British Museum.

^{page 483 note c} A sword with precisely the same kind of pommel was found in a dolmen near Ueda, in the far distant province Shinano. Similar ring pommels are seen on ancient Danish swords. Worsaae, Danish Arts, p. 151, fig. 187.

^{page 485 note a} Spear-heads are of uncommon occurrence in dolmen remains, probably because spears were the -weapons of the ordinary fighting men, and not of the chiefs who alone were entitled to sepulture in dolmens.

^{page 485 note b} British Museum. From the Shiba dolmen.

^{page 486 note a} Along with this armour there were found, amongst other objects, fifty-two beads of blue glass, eleven cylindrical beads of green jasper, and a covered dish all identical with those I obtained from the dolmen at Shiba (Kawachi).

^{page 487 note a} British Museum.

^{page 489 note a} An illustration of one of these horses is given in fig. 42.

^{page 490 note a} In Korea, at the present day, similar thick and heavy rings of solid silver, with their ends merely buttjointed and not soldered, are extensively worn as finger rings.

^{page 490 note b} Copper also appears to have been a valuable metal, although less so than the foregoing, as it is so often used, as we have already seen, merely for covering iron objects many of which would have been better fitted for their uses and more easily constructed if they had been made entirely of it.

^{page 491 note a} Similar mirrors, some undoubtedly of Japanese workmanship, have also been found in other dolmens.

^{page 492 note a} The exclusive employment of earthen vessels according to Schrader (Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Nations, 367), was long retained in Greece and Italy in matters of ritual and the nonuse of metal vessels for sepulchral offerings may be similarly explained. I may add that even at the present day on important occasions the health of the Mikado is drunk in saucers of unglazed earthen ware.

^{page 493 note a} According to Japanese recorde, Jimmu was the first of the Imperial line. (Died 585 B.C. ?)

^{page 498 note a} British Museum.

^{page 498 note b} Ilios, p. 384, fig. 356.

^{page 498 note c} British Museum.

^{page 499 note a} British Museum.

^{page 499 note b} British Museum.

^{page 499 note c} Imperial Museum, Tokyō.

^{page 500 note a} In a paper entitled “On the Stone Figures at Chinese Tombs, &c,” by Mayers, read before the North China Branch of the Asiatic Society, 12th March, 1878, the following examples of these practices in China are given:

678 B.C. Human beings were first slain at the grave of the deceased sovereign Wu Kung.

621 „ At the death of the Emperor Muh Kung 177 were slain.

210 „ At the death of the Emperor She Hwang-ti, concubines who had borne no children and others were put to death.

No other later instances are given, but it is recorded that at the tomb of Holi K'ü-ping (117 B.C.) stone figures of men and horses were arrayed.

^{page 501 note a} In the province of Yamato after these sacrifices had ceased there was for some time a pretence of immolating victims. They were shut up in the chamber of the mound with the dead, bat an opening was left through which they might escape. These persons termed ombo were, however, considered to be dead and had to live in districts specially set apart for them.

The custodians of burial-mounds formed another grade of men who were similarly compelled to live apart from the ordinary people. They were termed shiku. Both these grades usually carried on farming operations and were not regarded as being so low in the social scale as the eta.

^{page 503 note a} According to the curator of the Imperial Museum, Tōkyō, the date of this kind of armour is about the fourth century of our era.

^{page 504 note c} In the Shaku Nihongi (written in the thirteenth century) it is stated that there were then many other figures of men and animals on this mound.

^{page 505 note a} There is no evidence of a copper age in Japan, but contemporaneous with the early iron age and up to the sixth or seventh centuries of our era we find copper in more extensive use than bronze as a decorative metal.

^{page 506 note a} Growland, , “The Dolmens and Antiquities of Korea,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. Pl. xvi. p. 330Google Scholar.

^{page 507 note a} Translation by Aston, W. G., Supplement to Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society (London, 1896), II. 218et seqGoogle Scholar

^{page 508 note a} San Ryō Shi, a Japanese treatise on burial mounds.

^{page 508 note b} Some of these swords may perhaps even have been imported at first, but they are so numerous and so widely distributed that most must have been made in the country, and this view is strongly supported by the fact that in the west provinces there are vast deposits of magnetic iron sand, an ore easily reducible in the most primitive furnaces

^{page 515 note a} The dolmens of this group (28–35) are all constructed of weathered boulders mixed with broken blocks of granite. The largest stones are those of the roof.

^{page 516 note a} The walls of the dolmens of these groups (41–80) are all built of rude unhewn stones, except where specified, often of large size. The roofs are megalithic in all, stones measuring from 9 feet by 7 feet to 14 feet by 9 feet being common.

The roof stones of many are bare, standing out above the earth of the mound. In a few cases the entire dolmen is exposed.

^{page 519 note a} 111 to 114 were reported to me by Dr. E. Naumann, late Director of the Geological Survey of Japan.

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XX.—The Dolmens and Burial Mounds in Japan

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