Tombs

When making our plans for February break, my friends and I decided that we should try to get back a full day before school began again so that we would have time to relax and finish any homework that needed doing before school started up again, and thus planned to come back on Sunday evening, as Monday was a national holiday. Our plan was, however, foiled when we learned that we had an all-day field trip planned for our Japanese Antiquity class on Monday. I was a little annoyed by this, but I got on the train to Tenri at 9am anyway. Tenri is a rather small town that is most famous for the ancient ‘keyhole tombs’ that are rather plentiful in the areas surrounding it. Many of these tombs are designated as those of members of the royal family of Japan by the Imperial Household agency, and thus may not be excavated or even stood upon. Other, smaller, tombs however have fewer restrictions on them. They are called ‘keyhole’ tombs because from above they look like an old-fashioned keyhole, with a rounded mound connected to a trapezoidal flat section. The first one that we went to see was rather small and had no plants on it, though we were told by our professor that during the summer it is covered in bamboo. Because at one time the entire rounded portion was covered in pottery (haniwa, actually) you can still find little pieces of red clay ceramic in the area. The piece that I found was only about 1x.5 inches, but it’s still cool to have. After this one we went to another tomb that I didn’t really get a feel for the overall appearance of, due to the cover of bamboo and trees. We walked up a bit before reaching a sort of stone altar with a small opening into the side of the hill behind it. When our professor told us to head in I was a bit sceptical, but after a rather undignified backwards crawl into the tomb I saw that it was actually pretty big inside. It was about a 10ft long by 6ft –ish wide room with a large sarcophagus made of a single slab of stone taking up about half of it on the far end. Various members of our group tried climbing in, and each one fit including one of the over-6ft-tall guys with room to spare. I am claustrophobic, however, and thus did not volunteer. After this we had lunch, then headed to another part of Tenri to see a tomb that had been excavated several years ago, and in which they found a ton of brass mirrors. There was a playground at the foot of it, where several of us took advantage of. The weather was so amazing that it was hard to stay away from it. For the first time in months I was outside and wishing that I didn’t have my coat with me. Our final stop was one of the restricted tombs, said to hold the remains of the 10th emperor. We couldn’t go in, but we did walk around it. It was pretty big, with a shrine sort of set-up in front and a wall all the way around it. We got home later than expected, and I had a hard time finishing my homework by a decent hour, but it was an unexpectedly fun day.
-There is an ongoing debate about the location of a country called ‘Yamatai’ by ancient Chinese chronicles. In the record, the Chinese mention establishing contact ‘Himiko’ the queen of this region that was supposedly the most powerful in Japan at the time. The problem is that there is no such name in the Imperial family genealogy, and no region called ‘Yamatai’. The problem of finding out who Himiko was had a lot of publicity during the bubble economy, which the city of Tenri capitalized on by hinting, due to the number and richness of the tombs discovered within the region, that Yamatai was near Tenri. There are several areas in Japan that make similar claims.
-My professor is a lot more personable than I had originally thought.
-One is never too old for play structures, though one might be too big.
-There is no Tenri Hello Kitty, which is unfortunate: I really wanted a Himiko Hello Kitty.