Oyu Stone Circles

Two stone circles, Manza and Nonakado, stand on a river terrace in Kazuno, each a double ring of river cobbles carried up from a stream several kilometres away and laid out about four thousand years ago. Between them, on a line, is the midsummer sunset. Around the rings are the postholes of buildings, storage pits and burials, so this was not an isolated monument but the ceremonial centre of a settled landscape.

The sundial-shaped arrangements at the edge of each circle are the famous element — an upright stone at the centre of a radiating pattern of flat ones. They were designated a Special Historic Site in 1956 and inscribed as part of the Jomon Prehistoric Sites in Northern Japan World Heritage listing in 2021. The site is free; the museum beside it charges ¥320 and holds the excavated material.