Qualla: Samuraizuka Kofun

Samuraizuka Kofun: Introduction

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miyuki Meinaka, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1692, a powerful feudal lord named Tokugawa Mitsukuni ordered his men to dig into two enormous earthen mounds on the right bank of the Naka River. Mitsukuni was the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the shogunate that ruled Japan, and he was obsessed with compiling a definitive history of the nation. He had reason to believe these mounds held the answer to a local mystery: a stone stele dated 689 AD, discovered in a shrine in nearby Otawara, listed the names of ancient rulers of the Nasu district stretching back to the fifth century. One name in particular caught his attention -- Ataiide, a Kuni no miyatsuko, or provincial governor, from the Kofun period. Mitsukuni suspected the mounds were his tomb. What his excavators found inside -- bronze mirrors, fragments of iron armor, cylindrical beads, and iron balls -- confirmed that whoever lay buried here had wielded real power. It was arguably the first systematic archaeological dig in Japanese history, three centuries before the discipline formally existed.

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Image: Miyuki Meinaka | CC BY-SA 4.0

Samuraizuka Kofun: Shapes on the Plain

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alexrk2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Samuraizuka Kofun sit on the northern edge of the Kanto Plain, Japan's largest flatland, where the Naka River bends through rice paddies and low hills in Tochigi Prefecture. From the air, their form is unmistakable: the distinctive shape of zenpō-kōhō-fun, the front-square-re...

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Image: Alexrk2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Samuraizuka Kofun: The Lord Who Dug Into History

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miyuki Meinaka, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tokugawa Mitsukuni was not a typical feudal lord. As daimyo of Mito Domain, he devoted decades to compiling the Dai Nihon-shi, a monumental history of Japan that would eventually run to 397 volumes. His excavation of the Samuraizuka mounds in 1692 was driven by that same scholarl...

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Image: Miyuki Meinaka | CC BY-SA 4.0

Samuraizuka Kofun: Artifacts and Echoes

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miyuki Meinaka, CC BY-SA 4.0. The two mounds yielded different collections. Kamisamuraizuka, the larger southern tomb, contained bronze mirrors, armor fragments, cylindrical beads, and iron balls -- a burial assemblage suggesting a warrior-leader connected to trade networks that stretched across the Japanese ...

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Image: Miyuki Meinaka | CC BY-SA 4.0

Samuraizuka Kofun: Guardians of the Mounds

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miyuki Meinaka, CC BY-SA 4.0. Both Samuraizuka Kofun were designated National Historic Sites in 1951, placing them under formal government protection. The mounds remain covered in grass and trees, rising from the flat farmland like green hills that seem too symmetrical to be natural -- because they are not. T...

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Image: Miyuki Meinaka | CC BY-SA 4.0