Located among a number of sites related to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) in the city's east, Mimizuka is arguably the oldest international war memorial in Japan. Hideyoshi constructed it in 1597 as both memorial and war prize to entomb thousands of bodily remains of enemy dead brought to Japan during the Imjin Wars (1592–1598), Hideyoshi's failed invasions of the Korean Peninsula. Across the Edo and modern periods, the political significance of Mimizuka underwent continuous evolution, rendering it a compelling exemplar of the long-term importance of war memorials.  

Mimizuka was one of many structures Hideyoshi built when he transformed Kyoto after the chaos that destroyed much of it during the Warring States period of the 15th and 16th centuries (Berry 1994). Like Oda Nobunaga before him and the Tokugawa shoguns that followed, Hideyoshi revived Kyoto as an imperial-military capital by drawing on established imperial norms and institutions and making it into a symbol of his military might. The site of the first major castle of the period, a fortified palace Nobunaga built for Ashikaga Yoshiaki, as well as Hideyoshi’s castle-like Jurakudai palace and the Tokugawa’s Nijo Castle, Kyoto also influenced the development of new urban centers, the so-called “castle towns” (Stavros, 2014, chap. 7).

Among many changes to Kyoto, Hideyoshi rebuilt and revived imperial institutions, compelled domain warlords to build around his Jurakudai castle-palace, and built the first and only earthen wall around the city (Berry, 1982; Stavros 2014, chap. 7). Hideyoshi and his heir Hideyori developed a district to the city’s east, just north of Kiyomori’s Rokuhara. This area, much of which still exists today, was devoted to Hideyoshi, the Toyotomi clan, and Hideyoshi’s invasion of the Korean Peninsula in the 1590s. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu, who overthrew Hideyoshi's heir and the Toyotomi clan to found the Tokugawa shogunate (roughly 1603–1868), established Nijō Castle as the Tokugawa's center of power in the capital. However, as the political center shifted to Edo (modern-day Tokyo), and with the Emperor and aristocracy barred from political involvement, Kyoto essentially became the capital in name only. 

Hideyoshi's eastern district  

The first of several buildings Hideyoshi built in the district north of Shichijō Street in the city's east was Hōkōji (1595), a Buddhist temple for Hideyoshi's family and — with both the largest building and largest Buddha statue in the land — a dramatic symbol of his power. 

Two years later in 1597, Hideyoshi constructed Mimizuka (耳塚, literally "Ear Mound"), a mound and Gorintō five-layered stone monument to memorialize those killed by Hideyoshi's armies in the Imjin Wars, in front of Hōkōji's main gate. At least 100,000 remains of Korean and Chinese dead used to count the number of people each army killed are said to have been buried here. These were primarily noses, however, not ears as Mimizuka's name suggests (Nakao 2000). Public parades that brought these remains to Kyoto, and its prominent location in front of Hideyoshi’s famed Hōkōji indicate that Mimizuka was not simply a memorial but also a war prize used to illustrate the global reach of Hideyoshi’s military power (Geum 1998; Kim 1998). 

After Hideyoshi’s death, the construction of his mausoleum and, to the west, a shrine (Toyokuni Shrine) to deify him completed a tetrad of Hideyoshi-related sites in the area (see illustration below) (Milne forthcoming). It enjoyed only a brief life, however. In 1615, Tokugawa Ieyasu used an inscription on Hōkōji’s new bell — which he claimed to be traitorous and insulting — as a pretext to attack Hideyoshi’s young heir and bring an end to the Toyotomi clan. Toyokuni Shrine was pulled down and his mausoleum fell into disrepair. 

Mimizuka's "afterlife"

Mimizuka and Hōkōji, however, continued to be popular sightseeing spots and took on new political uses. In order to publicly demonstrate the subservience of neighboring states, Tokugawa shoguns used the site to parade envoys from Joseon Korea and the Netherlands (Nakao 2000; Nishino 2004). By the early eighteenth century, however, Korean envoys began to push back against these visits, resulting in Mimizuka being concealed from the eyes of envoys and Hōkōji removed from itineraries.

Hideyoshi’s legacy was reevaluated at the beginning of the Meiji period. In 1868, the emperor lauded Hideyoshi for unifying the country, serving the emperor and nation, and for exhibiting the emperor’s strength abroad through the Korea campaigns (Takagi 2008). The same year, the emperor issued an edict to rebuild Toyokuni Shrine, which in 1880 was constructed not on its original location but immediately east of Mimizuka on Hōkōji’s land. Soon after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), which newspapers likened favorably to Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea, a huge series of festivals celebrated the 300-year anniversary of Hideyoshi’s death (Takagi 2008). In preparation, Hideyoshi’s mausoleum was rebuilt, and a stone sign installed in front of Mimizuka that praised Hideyoshi — and his construction of the memorial — as a site of international reconciliation and Red Cross-like humanitarianism for memorializing enemy war dead.

It became increasingly difficult to celebrate Mimizuka, however, following Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 and the massive protests against Japanese colonial rule that took off there in March 1919. Between 1920 and 1922, Mary Crozier, the wife of a distinguished US general, petitioned the Governor General of Korea, Saitō Makoto, to remove the Mimizuka mound (Geum 1998; Milne forthcoming). In 1939, Lee Gyedang, a Korean who visited Kyoto, protested in the local newspaper against the mound and its popularity as a tourist spot. While these campaigns were ultimately unsuccessful in their primary goal of moving or demolishing Mimizuka, Crozier prompted Kyoto Prefecture to make efforts to limit its exhibition to foreign visitors (Milne forthcoming; Nakao 2000). 

Mimizuka gained international attention again from the 1970s following research by Japanese Koreans and others, and the erection of official signboards that were critical of Hideyoshi’s invasion. From the 1990s, there were at least two further unsuccessful efforts to send the soil from Mimizuka to South Korea, revealing how contentious the site remains (Milne forthcoming).  

Follow the links to find further information from the Modern Kyoto Research Digital Archive site on Mimizuka and Hōkōji's emergence as Meiji-period attractions for foreign tourists.

Nijō Castle

Perhaps the most well-known military-related site in Kyoto today, Nijō Castle was the Tokugawa shogunate’s stronghold in the capital. Unvisited by Tokugawa shoguns for over a 200 year period from 1634, however, Nijō Castle was more a symbol of their unchallenged power to the elite of Kyoto and regional clan leaders than an actual fortress and functioning castle-palace. 

The Tokugawa shogunate essentially began and ended at Nijō Castle. Following conflict centered in Kyoto to replace the Tokugawa with a government led by the emperor, the 15th Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, officially resigned and turned over power to the emperor here in 1867. As Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg have explored (2019, p. 56), Nijō Castle's political role changed rapidly through the modern period. First, it was headquarters of the national government (the Dajō-kan 太政官), then was taken over by the Army in 1873, became the Emperor's residence in Kyoto in 1884, then was bestowed to Kyoto City in 1939. It was even briefly requisitioned by the Occupation, which used the area in front of the castle as a runway.