Komuroyama belongs to the dense scatter of tombs on the Furuichi side of the Mozu-Furuichi group, in the part of southern Osaka where Habikino, Fujiidera and Matsubara run into one another. It is a modest mound in a district where the large tombs get all the attention, and most visitors pass it with a glance. That is probably the best way to understand the whole group: not as a set of monuments but as a landscape, where hills of earth, ponds, railway lines and houses all share the same plain.
The interesting question is why the kings of the Yamato state chose the Kawachi plain. It lay at the end of the river system that flowed down from the Nara basin, where the royal court had its earlier seats, and close to the coast of Osaka Bay, where ships from Korea and China arrived. A tomb on the plain, visible from the sea road, advertised the power of the dynasty to every foreign envoy who landed. It is a plausible guess that the great mounds were meant to be read from the water, and that the Furuichi group grew up as a second cluster further inland.
The riding from here has two different faces. To the north and west is the Osaka plain, where the roads are dense and slow. To the south and east, the Kongo range rises and the roads to the Kii Peninsula open out, and the ride list leads that way, to Kumano Hongu Taisha, a pilgrimage shrine deep in the mountains south of here. Take spare layers, and set off at dawn.
Fuel is easy in the lowlands, and stations in Habikino and Matsubara are on the main roads. Once you are climbing into the Kii mountains, they become less frequent, so fill up at the last big town. Convenience stores sell hot canned coffee in cold weather and iced drinks in summer, and the vending machines are everywhere.
If you have a spare half hour, wander the lanes near the tomb at dusk and watch the commuters on the trains to Osaka, with the old mound in the background.