Heian-kyo: The Founding of Kyoto as Japan's Capital (794)

Heian-kyo, the city now called Kyoto, was founded in 794 when Emperor Kanmu moved Japan’s capital there from Nagaoka. Planned on the grid model of the Tang Chinese capital, it remained the seat of the imperial court for more than a thousand years. Its founding marks the start of the Heian period (794–1185), the age of aristocratic court culture that produced Japan’s classical literature.

Background: leaving Nara

For most of the eighth century the Japanese court had been based at Heijo-kyo, modern Nara. There the great Buddhist monasteries, above all Todai-ji, had become rich and politically influential. In the 760s the monk Dokyo, favourite of Empress Shotoku, rose so high that he was suspected of aiming at the throne; the courtier Wake no Kiyomaro helped block him in 769.

Emperor Kanmu came to the throne in 781. His father, Emperor Konin, belonged to a branch of the imperial line descended from Emperor Tenji, rather than the line of Emperor Tenmu that had ruled throughout the Nara period, and his mother came from a family of Korean (Baekje) descent. Kanmu wanted to build a new political order, free from the old court factions and the Nara clergy, with his own capital as its symbol.

The failure of Nagaoka-kyo

In 784 Kanmu moved the court to Nagaoka, south-west of the present Kyoto, with good river access to the Inland Sea. Building was directed by his trusted official Fujiwara no Tanetsugu.

In 785 Tanetsugu was assassinated. Kanmu’s younger brother and crown prince, Prince Sawara, was accused of involvement and sent into exile; he refused food and died on the way. In the years that followed, Kanmu’s mother, empress and other relatives died, the new crown prince fell seriously ill, and floods struck the area. Diviners blamed the angry spirit of Sawara, who was later given the posthumous title of emperor in an attempt to appease him.

In 793, reportedly on the advice of Wake no Kiyomaro, Kanmu decided to abandon Nagaoka for a site a few kilometres to the north-east, in the Kadono district, much of it land associated with the Hata clan, descendants of immigrants from the Korean peninsula.

Building the new capital

The new site was chosen for its geography. It lay in a basin enclosed by mountains on three sides and was served by the Kamo and Katsura rivers, a position that matched Chinese ideas of a favourable location. Kanmu moved there in the tenth month of 794, and the following month the city was officially named Heian-kyo, “capital of peace and tranquillity”. The province was renamed Yamashiro, written with characters meaning “mountain castle”.

Like earlier capitals, Heian-kyo copied the plan of Chang’an, the Tang capital. It formed a rectangle of roughly 4.5 kilometres east to west by about 5.2 kilometres north to south. At the northern centre lay the Greater Palace enclosure, the Daidairi, with the government offices and the emperor’s residence. From its southern gate ran Suzaku Avenue, about 80 metres wide, to the great Rashomon gate at the southern edge. A chessboard of streets divided the city into blocks.

Suzaku Avenue split the capital into an eastern Left Capital (Sakyo) and a western Right Capital (Ukyo), named from the viewpoint of the emperor looking south. Unlike Chang’an, Heian-kyo had no full outer wall, only a low earthen bank and moat in places.

Two official markets, the East Market and the West Market, supplied the population, and each block was divided into plots allotted according to rank: senior nobles received large estates near the palace, while lesser officials and commoners lived on small plots further south. Building the city required timber, tiles and labour on a vast scale, and the government created a special office to manage the work, which continued for years after the court arrived.

The temples and the monasteries

Kanmu deliberately limited Buddhist building inside the city. Only two official temples were allowed, To-ji (the Eastern Temple) and Sai-ji (the Western Temple), flanking the Rashomon gate. The Nara monasteries were not allowed to move with the court.

Instead, Kanmu favoured new forms of Buddhism. The monk Saicho, who had founded a hermitage on Mount Hiei north-east of the city in 788, travelled to Tang China in 804 and returned to establish the Tendai school, centred on the monastery that became Enryaku-ji. Kukai, who sailed on the same embassy, founded the Shingon school; in 823 he was given To-ji, which still stands on its original site. Mount Hiei, guarding the north-east, the direction considered unlucky in geomancy, was regarded as a protector of the capital.

Kanmu’s two great works

Alongside his capital, Kanmu waged campaigns against the Emishi, the peoples of north-eastern Honshu who resisted the court’s control. His general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, appointed sei-i taishogun in 797, won major successes, and the Emishi leader Aterui surrendered in 802.

These projects were costly. In 805 Kanmu held a famous debate at court in which the official Fujiwara no Otsugu argued that the people were suffering from the burden of war and building. Kanmu agreed to halt both. He died the following year, and parts of the city, especially in the west, were never fully built up.

Key people

• Emperor Kanmu (737–806; reigned 781–806): founder of Nagaoka-kyo and Heian-kyo and a forceful reforming ruler.
• Fujiwara no Tanetsugu (737–785): official in charge of building Nagaoka, whose assassination doomed that capital.
• Prince Sawara (c. 750–785): Kanmu’s brother, whose death was later blamed for misfortunes at court.
• Wake no Kiyomaro (733–799): courtier who advised the move to Heian-kyo and supervised work there.
• Saicho (767–822): monk on Mount Hiei and founder of Japanese Tendai Buddhism.

The Heian period and court culture

Over the following centuries the city and its court developed a distinctive Japanese culture. Official missions to Tang China ended after 838 and were formally abandoned in 894. Kana syllabaries allowed Japanese to be written more easily, and court women wrote the masterpieces of the age, including Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book and Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, written in the early eleventh century.

The first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, the Kokin wakashu, was compiled around 905, and poetry became an essential skill at court; love affairs, promotions and rivalries were all conducted partly through verse. Aesthetic refinement, attention to the seasons and a sensitivity to the passing of things, later summed up in the phrase mono no aware, became defining ideals of the aristocracy.

Politics came to be dominated by the Fujiwara family, who ruled as regents for child emperors, reaching their peak under Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1028). Their method was marriage: by placing daughters as imperial consorts, Fujiwara leaders became grandfathers of emperors and governed in their name. From the late eleventh century retired emperors challenged this system by ruling from their own households, and provincial warrior families such as the Taira and Minamoto grew in strength. The population of the city is uncertain; estimates for its height range around 100,000 or more.

The western half, low-lying and marshy, declined early, and the city’s centre shifted east towards the Kamo River. Rashomon fell into ruin by the tenth century, giving rise to the dark tales later used in Akutagawa’s story and Kurosawa’s film of the same name.

Later history

Heian-kyo remained the imperial capital even when real power moved elsewhere. Taira no Kiyomori briefly took the court to Fukuhara, near modern Kobe, in 1180, but it returned within months. From 1185 the Kamakura shogunate ruled from eastern Japan, and later the Tokugawa shoguns governed from Edo, but the emperor stayed in Kyoto. The Onin War of 1467–1477 destroyed much of the city, which was rebuilt under Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late sixteenth century.

In 1869 Emperor Meiji moved to Tokyo, ending Kyoto’s role as the seat of the court. In 1895, for the 1,100th anniversary of the founding, the city built the Heian Shrine, with a reduced-scale reconstruction of the palace’s state hall, and dedicated it to Kanmu.

In the Second World War Kyoto was largely spared from bombing. It was at one stage on the list of possible targets for the atomic bomb, but the US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, had it removed because of its cultural importance. As a result, more historic buildings survive in Kyoto than in any other major Japanese city.

Timeline

• 781: Kanmu becomes emperor.
• 784: The capital moves from Nara to Nagaoka-kyo.
• 785: Fujiwara no Tanetsugu is assassinated; Prince Sawara dies in exile.
• 793: Kanmu decides to build a new capital.
• 794, 10th month: The court moves; the next month the city is named Heian-kyo.
• 805: The debate on “war and building” halts Kanmu’s great projects.
• 823: Kukai receives To-ji.
• 1180: Brief move of the court to Fukuhara.
• 1467–1477: The Onin War devastates the city.
• 1869: Emperor Meiji moves to Tokyo.

Why it matters

The move to Heian-kyo gave Japan its longest-lasting capital and the setting for its classical civilisation. Kyoto’s street grid, temples and festivals still carry the imprint of Kanmu’s plan, and its 17 historic monuments are listed together by UNESCO. Few political decisions in Japanese history have shaped the country’s culture so lastingly.