tombs were called.

According to the Chronicles, incidents so shocking occurred in
connexion with the sacrifice of the personal attendants* of Prince
Yamato at his burial (A.D. 2) that the custom of making such
sacrifices was thenceforth abandoned, clay images being substituted
for human beings. 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. Within the
dolmen, also, clay effigies are often found, which appear to have
been substitutes for retainers of high rank. Had the ancient custom
been effectually abolished in the year A.D. 3, when the Emperor
Suinin is recorded to have issued orders in that sense, a simple and
conclusive means would be at hand for fixing the approximate date of
a dolmen, since all tombs containing clay effigies or encircled by
terracotta haniwa would necessarily be subsequent to that date, and
all tombs containing skeletons other than the occupants of the
sarcophagi would be referable to an earlier era. But although
compulsory sacrifices appear to have ceased from about the first
century of the Christian era, it is certain that voluntary sacrifices
continued through many subsequent ages. This clue is therefore
illusory. 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. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and
ate them." (Chronicles. Aston's translation.)

The substitution of images for living beings, however, appears to
have been a direct outcome of contact with China, for the device was
known there as early as the seventh century before Christ. It would
seem, too, from the researches of a learned Japanese archaeologist
(Professor Miyake), that the resemblance between Japanese and Chinese
burial customs was not limited to this substitution. The dolmen also
existed in China in very early times, but had been replaced by a
chamber of finished masonry not later than the ninth century B.C. In
the Korean peninsula the dolmen with a megalithic roof is