Kumamoto Decorated Tumuli Museum

photo by STA3816 · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by STA3816 · CC BY-SA 3.0

A 1992 building by Tadao Andō that imitates a tomb, in front of a real 107 m tumulus.

The route designed by the architect starts from the car park of the shop selling local products and climbs on foot for about ten minutes through a small wood; at the top a flight of steps opens the view over the lawn with the real tumuli, and from the roof a ramp descends to the basement floor. There the painted chambers of the prefecture's tombs are reproduced life-size, next to the grave goods found in them. Outdoors a path among the tumuli leads to a park with terracotta figurines (haniwa).

Kofun are the great burial mounds of Japanese chiefs, built from the 4th to the 7th century; in the ‘decorated’ ones the walls of the chamber, or the sarcophagus, bear circles, triangles, weapons and horses, in relief or painted. The museum explains that in Japan there are 849 of them, of which 212 are in Kumamoto, about a quarter, and 131 in the Kikuchi river basin alone: the red comes from the yellow ochre of Aso, easy to find here. It was founded under the national ‘fudoki no oka’ (archaeological parks) project as a specialist museum, and is a work by Tadao Andō, the Osaka architect and Pritzker Prize winner, completed in 1992 (平成4年) as a landmark of the prefecture's architecture programme, Kumamoto Artpolis. The building imitates a keyhole-shaped tumulus (前方後円墳) and is laid out in point symmetry with the real tumulus nearby, the Iwabaru Futagozuka: 107 m long, 9 high, from the 5th century, at the centre of the group of 13 tumuli of Iwabaru, a National Historic Site. The museum holds about 1,000 items.

ℹ️ Open 9:30–17:15, last entry 16:45; closed on Mondays (the following day if that is a public holiday) and from 25 December to 4 January. Adults 430 yen, university students 260, free up to high-school students and for holders of a disability booklet. Free car park with about 50 spaces around the building, plus that of the neighbouring shop. Without a car: from Sakuramachi (Kumamoto) take the bus for Yamaga Onsen to the Yamaga Bus Center, then a taxi (10 minutes), or the bus for Tamana, getting off at ‘県立装飾古墳館入口’, then 20 minutes on foot; from Shin-Tamana the bus for Yamaga Onsen takes about 40 minutes plus 20 on foot. Lift, accessible toilet, 3 wheelchairs and a pushchair available to borrow; the website invites visitors to photograph the building. ⚠️ Closed from 29/07 to 03/08/2026 after the earthquake, reopened on 04/08 (notice of 03/08); website pages updated up to 14/10/2026. On 21 and 22/11/2026 seven sites with real tombs in the prefecture open to the public, with booking from 13/10 (web) or from 14/10 (telephone, 0968-36-2151); one of them, the Yokoyama tomb, is in the museum.

Sources: kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp · kofunkan.pref.kumamoto.jp

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