misasagi

Updated: May 23, 2025

*By this name all the Imperial tombs were called. The Records speak of a "hedge of men set up round a tumulus," and it would therefore seem that these terracotta figures usually found encircling the principal misasagi, represented that hedge and served originally as pedestals for images.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Neither does the custom itself serve to connect the Yamato with any special race, for it is a wide-spread rite of animistic religion, and it was practised from time immemorial by the Chinese, the Manchu Tatars, and many other nations of northeastern Asia. *They are said to have been buried upright in the precincts of the misasagi. "For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era