Kofun period
An era of Japanese history, conventionally dated from about 300 to 538 CE and named for the large burial mounds built for powerful elites.
Kofun: A Japanese monumental burial mound, often built for an elite and sometimes shaped like a keyhole. These tombs gave the period its name and preserve evidence of elite power.
Daisen Kofun: A vast keyhole-shaped burial mound in Sakai, traditionally identified as the tomb of Emperor Nintoku. Its immense scale illustrates the labor and authority required for elite monument building.
Yayoi period: A Japanese historical period associated with wet-rice agriculture, metalworking, and major social change. The Kofun era followed Yayoi communities and their increasingly complex political networks.
Yamato kingdom: The early Japanese kingdom centered in the Yamato region that developed into the imperial state. Its growing reach is reflected in the distribution and scale of elite burial mounds.
Keyhole-shaped kofun: A burial mound combining a circular rear section with a rectangular front section. This distinctive tomb plan became a signature form of major Kofun-period burials.
Kofun grave goods: Objects deposited in Japanese burial mounds, including weapons, armor, mirrors, and pottery. Their materials and arrangement help reconstruct status, exchange, and funerary practice.
Wa (Japan): An ancient Chinese name for the people and polities of the Japanese archipelago. Chinese accounts of Wa offer outside evidence for political relationships near the period’s beginning.
Soga clan: A powerful aristocratic clan that rose to prominence in Japan during the sixth and seventh centuries. Its ascent belongs to the political world emerging as the Kofun era gave way to the Asuka period.
Haniwa: Hollow terracotta figures and cylinders placed on or around Japanese burial mounds. Their placement around tombs reveals how burial monuments were marked and furnished.
Horses in ancient Japan: The introduction and spread of horses in Japan during the ancient period. Horse equipment in tombs marks new forms of mobility and mounted warfare.