New Realizations at the Archaeological and Funereal Park of Takino Cemetery in Hokkaido (Japan)

For decades, in historical research, archaeological vestiges have been linked with geomancy and cults of the mythical ancestors of a group of population. This particularly verifies in Eastern Asia and especially in China, Korea and Japan. A fundamental problem of Japanese Archaeology is that few of the remnants were realized in stone. One of the most important parts of archaeological sciences is the study of Necropolises or ancient interments. From the 1970s onwards, in the relatively “new” and promising land of Hokkaido, cemeteries were built with the concept of landscape in mind, this is also due to the lavish vegetation features of this northernmost island of Japan. In the case of the Takino cemetery on the plains of Hokkaido, whose construction began in 1982, solemnity and religiousness were incorporated by producing exact stone replicas of famous funerary landmarks from antiquity as such materials were inexistent. This trend included traditional Buddhist funereal monuments like Seokguram grotto and Kamakura sites, but at a certain and exuberant point, under the influence of Isamu Noguchi, reached Stonehenge in England and the Moai from Easter Island in Polynesia (being after all located in a remote isle of the Pacific Ocean). In this article we will outline such process of generation and overall conception, analysing the inclusion and architectural assembly of the different compounds and the recent and extraordinary additions projected and built by the celebrity architect Tadao Ando. We expect in this manner, to facilitate the comprehension of the significance of venerable landscape sublimated through Archaeology for the Nipponese modern civilization.