Qualla: Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster

Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ja:user:Hykw-a4, CC BY-SA 3.0. A cell phone tower almost buried the evidence for good. In March 1999, construction crews clearing trees on a forested hill between the cities of Zushi and Hayama, on Kanagawa Prefecture's Miura Peninsula, exposed fragments of haniwa -- distinctive terracotta figures that the Japanese placed on burial mounds during the Kofun period, roughly 1,700 years ago. Local archaeologists had suspected something lay beneath this hilltop since 1994, when they noticed a telltale shape on topographical maps. But it took the accidental scraping of a bulldozer to confirm what the maps hinted at: two enormous keyhole-shaped tombs, the only ones ever found on the Miura Peninsula, and the largest in all of Kanagawa Prefecture.

Image: ja:user:Hykw-a4 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster: Keyholes in the Hillside

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sakurayama 7, CC BY-SA 4.0. The distinctive kofun form -- called zenpō-kōen-fun in Japanese -- looks from the air like an old-fashioned keyhole: a circular mound joined to a rectangular platform. These were the tombs of the powerful, and their size signaled the authority of whoever lay within. Nagae-Sakuray...

Image: Sakurayama 7 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster: The Second Discovery

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Quercus acuta, CC0. The first tomb's discovery triggered a search. Within months, archaeologists identified a second keyhole-shaped kofun on the same hill, about 500 meters to the west, at an elevation of 101.5 meters, this one facing the coast. Nagae-Sakurayama No. 2 measures 88 meters long, slight...

Image: Quercus acuta | CC0

Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster: A Crossroads, Not a Dead End

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Takuro1202, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Miura Peninsula looks like a geographic cul-de-sac on a modern map, jutting south into Sagami Bay with no obvious through-route. But in the 4th century, when these tombs were built, the peninsula was anything but isolated. Until the Nara period, the ancient Tokaido highway --...

Image: Takuro1202 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nagae-Sakurayama Kofun Cluster: Saved from the Tower

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit のりまき, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cell tower that almost destroyed Kofun No. 1 was never built. Construction was halted immediately after the haniwa fragments surfaced, and both pot-shaped and cylindrical haniwa, along with Haji ware pottery shards, were recovered from the site. In 2002, both tombs were desig...

Image: のりまき | CC BY-SA 3.0