Kanayama Megaliths on spring equinox, March 21, 2024 at 08:19am by Ms. Chika
The vernal equinox arrived at the Kanayama Megaliths, and so did a number of visitors in spite of the snowfall the night before. At 09:38, they were able to view the oval spotlight with the exact shape as the ancient template stone.
The spring equinox setting sun was captured by Kazuo Sugisaka on March 20, 2024 at 16:46.
We thank Ms Chika and Mr. Sugisaka for sharing their photos with us.
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Slit megalith at foot of Mt. Senge
This is a report by S. Tokuda on another slit megalith on Mt. Senge. On October 1st of this year 2022, S. Tokuda and K. Sugisaka headed to Mt. Senge for observation photography. The megalith of this report #3 is located at the foot of Mt. Senge, not at the top as the megalith in the previous report. It is located on the line connecting the upper two slit stones and Mt. Kasagi. See previous post. In other words, the equinox sun setting behind Mt. Kasagi also shines into the slit of this megalith. Height 3.7m, width 4.7m, depth 4.8m, average slit spacing 20m.
The photo below shows what the slit megalith looks like; photo taken in the spring of 2021.
This year, 2022, we took this photo at sunset, as the sun was sinking toward Mt. Kasagi.
As we gaze at this scene, we may think: The Jomon people may have also watched the sun setting on Mt. Kasagi like this.
As announced previously, this survey has so far found similar megalithic groups in 16 locations along an east-west line of about 48 km from Nakatsugawa City to Seki City. The point of this investigation is the alignment of megaliths that advances east-west in a band of width approximately 100m (latitude 4s = 88m). I am pondering the mystery of the “Jomon compass.”
Editors Note: Ms. Tokuda is making a reference to the unusual Jomon indigenous way of defining a compass by carefully measuring a reference east-west line. A line perpendicular to this line will determine the north-south direction without having to take recourse to sighting the north pole star, a difficult task in mountainous terrain.
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2022 October 5 Megaliths of 浅間山 Mt Senge Report #2
This Iwakage post is a free translation from the Japanese-language blog of the Kanayama Megaliths. The Kanayama blog is written by Ms Shiho Tokuda. The photo credits are given in the original blog. The photos were taken mostly by Ms Tokuda and some older photos are shown taken possibly by Mr. Y. Kobayashi and Mr. K. Sugisaka.
The summer time of 山に入る “entering the mountain” is now over. On the 29th, six days after the autumnal equinox (September 23rd in Japan), we resumed the survey of the megaliths of Mt. Senge (浅間山 Sengeyama) in 中津川市 Nakatsugawa City. See Fig. 1.
At 11:05, with Mt. Kasagi in the west, we started climbing the mountain and aimed for the target megalith. Arrived around 11:40. It was a 35-minute climb, but the trail at the top was completely covered with ferns and there weren’t many people. The first thing that greets you when you climb the mountain trail is this Slit Megalith.
There is a vertical slit in the middle of the 5.5m high boulder. We named the right A stone and the left A’ stone (Fig. 2). On Mt. Senge is a line of megaliths for about 50m in the east-west direction. Looking at this from the back side (east side), the observer will see the light of the sun of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes that sets at Mt. Kasagi shining into this slit. This photo (Fig. 3) shows this megalith from the north side.
Behind this stone, megaliths are aligned in the easterly direction, as seen here (Fig. 4).
Fig 5 shows the megaliths (A’ and A stones) viewed from the reverse side.
Report #3 follows.
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Iwaya-Iwakage of Kanayama Megaliths 