Guardians of Japan's forbidden tombs resist bid to dig up past

OF ALL the monuments of old Japan, there are none so mysterious as the burial mounds of the ancient emperors.

Thickly wooded, surrounded by murky moats, they lie scattered across the Japanese countryside, as central to its history as the pyramids are to ancient Egypt.

Beneath the heaped mounds may be rich treasures - gold-encrusted swords, jade jewels, elaborate crowns and figurines of men and animals sculpted out of clay. There may be sacred mirrors from China and Korea, exquisite wall paintings of tigers and dragons, and the coffined remains of the great god-emperors themselves - or there may be nothing at all.