No Kofun Cluster, Ancient burial mound complex in Ono, Japan.
The No Kofun Cluster is a group of small burial mounds in the Ono neighborhood of Ōno town, Ibi District, Gifu Prefecture, in the northwestern corner of the Nōbi Plain. The mounds stand among rice fields and persimmon orchards within an area of about one square kilometer. Nine mounds, numbered 1 to 9, survive; mounds 1 to 6 have individual names, and mounds 10 to 17 have been detected by ground-penetrating radar.
The No Kofun Cluster was designated a National Historic Site in 1957, when 14 mounds were protected. Grave goods such as haniwa, bronze mirrors, horse fittings and iron swords date the burials to the mid-5th to early 6th century AD. Once over 200 tumuli stood here; most were levelled for farmland, leaving nine mounds, eight of them excavated.
The name No comes from the Ono neighborhood where the mounds lie among rice fields and persimmon orchards. Haniwa clay figures from the Minamiyashiki-nishi mound, dated to the late 5th century, are among the finds; one bronze mirror is kept at the Gotoh Museum in Tokyo.
The site lies in the Ono neighborhood of Ōno town, Ibi District, in the northwestern corner of the Nōbi Plain, among rice fields and orchards. It is about eight minutes by car from Motosu Station on the Tarumi Railway Tarumi Line. Only nine of the mounds remain, so expect low, grassed-over earthworks rather than tall monuments.
Only nine of the mounds survive; the rest were levelled as farmland was expanded. Eight of the nine have been excavated, and one of the bronze mirrors they yielded is now kept at the Gotoh Museum in Tokyo.
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