stone coffin was taken to the top of the mound and the body was placed inside. After a burial ceremony, the coffin was lowered into the chamber, situated near the top of the mound. The chamber was closed with ceiling stones and covered with dirt. In a cave style chamber, a door on the side was connected to a passage that led to the outside of the mound. Both door and passage were constructed of stone.
Mound of Emperor Nintoku, the largest tomb mound in Japan. Surrounded by three moats, the mound has three terraces on which were placed lines of haniwa. Drawing based on a model at the Osaka Prefectural Chitatsu Asuka Museum.
Seventh-century Ishibutai special historical site at Asuka village near Nara. Ishibutai is the largest stone crypt in Japan. One of the boulders composing the ceiling is estimated to weigh around 75 tons. The stone crypt was presumably covered with a mound. It is not known when the upper portion of the mound was removed.
Imperial tomb mounds, such as the Unebi Mound in Nara Prefecture, burial place of the legendary first emperor Jimmu, are well-tended and are marked by a torii-type (Shinto gate) entrance.
Tombs were usually aligned with the cardinal directions, and the inside of the rock chamber was sometimes decorated with paintings of servants, consorts, or mythical birds and animals associated with basic principles of Chinese and Korean cosmology.
Size and Shape
Tomb mounds come in different shapes and sizes. The most basic are circular, square, and keyhole shapes. There were other types as well, such as a square or round head with a rectangular stem. Most circular and square mounds are under 60 meters in diameter, whereas keyhole mounds sometimes exceeded 400 meters in length. The sides of a mound were terraced and haniwa figures were placed in lines on the terraces. Some smaller mounds had only two terraces, whereas large mounds had as many as five terraces, including a flat area on the top of the mound. The largest mound, Nintokuryō-kofun, referred to above, was 486 meters long and 30 meters high. This is only about one-fifth as high as the Egyptian pyramid Khufu, but the ground surface covered is about five times as great. Mounds were often surrounded by one or more moats, some of which still survive.
The slopes of tomb mounds were usually covered with stones or grass between the haniwa-lined terraces.
Ainu Buildings
Until recently, the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan, lived in small, seasonal settlements (kotan), located in food-gathering areas. For example, in spring they lived along the seashore where they collected fish and seaweed; in summer they lived in the mountains where they hunted animals and collected wild vegetables and berries; and in winter they lived in valleys protected from wind and snow.
Early photograph by Kinoshita Seizō, showing an Ainu couple in traditional costume in front of their house.
Traditional Dwellings
The simplest type of dwelling was a kashi. It consisted of a tripod whose sides were covered with branches and woven mats. It was large enough to provide shelter from the rain for a family of four or five. When more room was needed, a beam was placed between two sets of tripods and the sides enclosed to create a kucha, which housed up to 10 people.
A chise, a larger house with a roof set on walls, allowed enough space to stand up, make a fire, and do other kinds of indoor work. Upon entering a chise from the semu (entrance and storage area), one found a large room with small windows and an earth floor, in the middle of which was a square fire pit with mats on both sides. On one side of the room was a raised area on which were placed articles such as lacquer boxes and sacred objects made of shaved wood (inaw). Hanging from the smoke-blackened rafters were bows and arrows. Traditionally, chise were constructed on a riverbank so the sacred objects could face upstream where the gods were believed to reside. A chise lasted around 10 years or longer, depending upon how well it was constructed and maintained.
A traditional Ainu house with entrance/storage room attached to a larger room. The house shown here is based on a model at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka.
The chise house shown in the drawing on this page has walls and roof consisting of bundles of reeds or bamboo grass attached to poles tied horizontally to the main frame. Smoke holes are left at the top. The ridge is covered with a cap weighted down with wooden poles that are tied to the rafters. To the left of the main building are two toilets, one for males and one for females. To the right of the building is a cage where a bear cub was raised until it was large enough to be killed in the most important of the Ainu ceremonies. The slain bear was eaten in a ritual feast and its skull adorned and honored. To the right of the bear cage is a small, elevated storehouse, reminiscent of Jōmon kura. In the foreground is a garden, behind which is a drying rack. Vegetables were supplemented by salmon and wild meat such as deer.
Winter houses, called toi-chise, "house of dirt," were built by erecting a roof over a pit and covering it with earth to retain the heat. This type of house was observed in Sakhalin as late as 1946. Dwellings in spring and summer villages were built with less substantial materials, such as poles covered with reeds or grass.
Decline of Traditional Culture
The traditional way of life of the Ainu continued until around the end of the Edo Period (1868). In 1899, the government enacted the Hokkaido Ainu Preservation Law, encouraging the Ainu to live in permanent villages and to cultivate the land. There was little land available, however, as Japanese (Wa-jin) had been immigrating to Hokkaido since the fifteenth century. Laws prohibiting traditional customs and food-gathering practices led to the decline of traditional culture and language, as well as to a lower standard of living than for the Japanese population as a whole.
In the twentieth century, the Hokkaido prefectural government established housing programs for the Ainu, but the houses were so small and poorly built that the Ainu preferred to live in traditional style houses next to the government buildings. In 1997, the Diet passed a new law advocating research on Ainu culture and supporting the preservation of Ainu language, customs, and traditions. It remains to be seen if this law will improve the situation of the Ainu. Ainu leaders are attempting to revitalize traditional culture by teaching the Ainu language and traditional customs to young people. There are only a few elders, however, who possess this kind of knowledge, so the task is daunting and the outcome is uncertain.
There are around 24 reconstructed chise in Hokkaido, and three more in other areas. However, none are actually used as living quarters at present. The way of life of contemporary Ainu is not that much different from that of the larger population, into which they have, for the most part, been assimilated.
Construction of a Poro-chise Building
Poro-chise (large house) building under
