Shapes of Japanese Tombs

The gorintō (五輪塔), or “five-ring pagoda,” is one of the oldest and most symbolically complete of Japanese tomb forms. Its shape is tiered, composed of five geometrical sections — a cube, sphere, pyramid, crescent, and jewel — each representing one of the five Buddhist elements: earth, water, fire, wind, and void. The structure is often carved from a single piece of stone or assembled from stacked blocks, tapering elegantly toward the top. In older cemeteries, especially those connected to Zen or Shingon temples, you see weathered gorintō leaning slightly, covered with moss, their edges softened by centuries of rain. They feel less like monuments and more like small cosmological models — compressed versions of the world’s structure, returning steadily to nature.

Another enduring form is the hōkyōintō (宝篋印塔), an older Buddhist reliquary derived from Indian stupas. It stands taller and more slender than the gorintō, with a square or octagonal base, a column-like body, and a stone roof shaped like an inverted lotus. Its name comes from the Hōkyōin darani kyō, a sutra that promises salvation to those who venerate the pagoda. These stones were once associated with aristocratic graves and memorials for priests; in older temple grounds they appear as quiet towers among pines, slightly formal and refined, suggesting the calm aspiration toward enlightenment rather than the earthy realism of later grave markers.

The hōtō (宝塔), or “treasure pagoda,” is simpler but stately — consisting of a cylindrical body topped by a rounded dome and finial. It expresses the early medieval wish to preserve the body within the cosmic order of the Buddha. Hōtō were often used for important monks or warriors in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods; their heavy cylindrical mass contrasts beautifully with the surrounding wild grasses or bamboo. The shape recalls both the stability of the world and the curve of the sky, giving the sense that the stone holds both earth and heaven within its short height.

By the Edo period, the dominant form became the hakaishi, the rectangular upright gravestone that still defines most Japanese cemeteries today. These stones are tall, slightly tapering blocks of granite, with family names inscribed vertically on the front and Buddhist posthumous names (kaimyō) carved on the sides. Their design is restrained, echoing the Zen preference for straight lines and balance. In older cemeteries they often stand in uneven rows, weathered and tilting, with small offerings of flowers, cups of water, or incense before them. These are the stones most familiar to modern eyes — not monumental, but intimate, standing like silent members of the family still attending the living.

Beside these principal types, older cemeteries also contain natural fieldstones and uninscribed boulders, sometimes marking anonymous graves or older, forgotten burials. These rough stones — only slightly shaped or not at all — express the deepest simplicity of Japanese funerary feeling: a return to the landscape itself. They merge gradually with soil and moss, often mistaken for natural rocks until one notices the faint alignment or the traces of offerings nearby. Such stones are perhaps closest to Taneda Santōka’s sensibility — uncarved, unpretending, half in the world of the living, half in the silence of the mountain.