In the early Kofun period, it was not uncommon to find burial mounds (kofun) with two separate stone chambers. In one of these chambers, archaeologists often discover human remains adorned with numerous shell bracelets—made from gohoura and imogai shells—worn on the right arm.
These shell bracelets were decorative ornaments worn by women. A person buried with many of them on her right arm from childhood was likely a female ritual specialist—one who was exempt from ordinary labor. She would have served as a priestess.
In the other chamber of the same tomb lies a male ruler, a military leader.
In other words, these tombs enshrine both a "queen who oversaw sacred rituals" and a "king who led in warfare."
In later Kofun tombs, we begin to see instances where a man and woman are buried together in the same chamber, possibly as a married couple. However, in the earlier period, the pairings seem more often to be siblings—a sister and a brother, or vice versa.
This structure is known as the Hime-hiko system: a form of leadership where sacred duties were performed by a female figure and political or military leadership was carried out by a male counterpart.
The women enshrined in such tombs could rightly be called miko, but they were not ordinary priestesses—they were queens, occupying the highest rank among female spiritual leaders.
Naturally, there must have been other miko who served beneath them. Let us now turn our attention to the lives and roles of these women.