South-east of Osaka, in the low country between the Yamato river and the Nara hills, the earth is full of tombs. These are the kofun, great mounds raised for rulers and nobles between roughly the third and the sixth centuries, and the most famous have a distinctive shape, a keyhole, with a round rear mound and a trapezoid front, surrounded by a moat. The Mozu and Furuichi groups, with forty-nine mounds between them, were listed by UNESCO in 2019, and Hazamiyama, as far as I can tell, belongs with the Furuichi mounds.
The scale of the group is the point. These tombs, some of them over two hundred metres long, are built of earth, faced with stones and ringed with clay cylinders and figures called haniwa, which were arranged on the slopes: houses, horses, warriors, shamans and boats. The ruling class that built them had control of workers and resources on a scale that shows in the landscape, and the largest tomb of all, at Sakai, is about four hundred and eighty metres long. They are some of the biggest burial monuments in the world, but because they are mostly covered in trees, at ground level they look like wooded hills in the middle of suburbs.
That is the strangest thing about visiting, and a rider should know it before setting out. The mounds sit among houses, railway lines and rice fields, and many of them are managed by the Imperial Household Agency, so you cannot walk on them, and sometimes only a fenced path along the moat is open. Ponds around the mounds are full of lotus, herons and carp. The best view of the shape is often from above, in a museum or from a nearby building, and you may feel that you are walking round a forest.
The surrounding streets are narrow and busy, and local drivers tend to be cautious. A motorbike is practical for hopping between mounds, with parking at designated places only. Towns around here, including Kashihara and Matsubara, are large and have fuel, convenience stores and noodle shops on every corner. Spring brings cherry blossom along the moats, and the autumn leaves are lovely, while summer is hot and humid, and the rainy season in June makes everything green.