Heijo-kyo (710): Nara Becomes Japan's Imperial Capital

Heijo-kyo was the capital of Japan founded in 710, on the site of today’s city of Nara. Laid out on a grid modelled on the Tang Chinese capital Chang’an, it housed the imperial court and government for most of the next seventy-four years, a span known as the Nara period. It was the setting in which Japan’s first histories were written, the great Buddhist temples were built and the centralised state of the law codes took shape.

Background: building a Chinese-style state

In the 7th century the Yamato rulers set out to transform their loose alliance of clans into a centralised monarchy on the Chinese model. The Taika Reform of 645 began this process, and defeat by Tang and Silla at the Battle of Baekgang in 663 gave it urgency. The Taiho Code of 701 set out a full system of penal and administrative law.

Earlier rulers had moved their palaces with each reign. In 694 Empress Jito established Fujiwara-kyo, the first capital on a Chinese grid plan, south of modern Nara. Within a few years, however, the court decided to build a larger capital further north. Japanese envoys to the Tang had recently seen Chang’an, and Fujiwara-kyo, with its palace at the centre rather than the north, seemed out of step with the Chinese model.

The move of 710

In 708 Empress Genmei issued an edict announcing a new capital in the northern Nara Basin, a site said to be favoured by the surrounding hills. Construction proceeded quickly, and in the third month of 710 the court moved to Heijo-kyo, although many buildings were still unfinished. The powerful minister Fujiwara no Fuhito, who had helped draft the Taiho Code, is generally seen as a driving force behind the project.

Major temples followed the court. Yakushiji and Daianji were moved or rebuilt in the new city, Fuhito founded Kofukuji as the Fujiwara family temple in 710, and Gangoji moved there in 718.

The city plan

Heijo-kyo was a rectangle of about 4.3 kilometres from east to west and 4.8 kilometres from north to south, with an extension to the east known as the Outer Capital. A grid of wide avenues divided it into blocks. The central Suzaku Avenue, about 74 metres wide, ran from the Rajomon gate in the south to the Suzaku Gate of the palace in the north, dividing the city into a Left Capital and a Right Capital.

The palace, Heijo-kyu, occupied about one square kilometre at the northern edge. It held the imperial residence, the Imperial Audience Halls where ceremonies were held, and the ministries of state. Excavations have revealed that the main audience hall was moved and rebuilt during the century.

Most ordinary residents lived in small timber houses on plots allotted according to rank, while senior nobles occupied large walled compounds near the palace. Officials walked or rode to work at dawn, and the palace gates opened and closed to the sound of drums.

Estimates of the population vary widely, but most historians suggest roughly 50,000 to 100,000 people. Government markets operated in the east and west of the city, and the bronze Wado Kaichin coins, first minted in 708, circulated there.

Life and culture in the Nara period

The Nara period was a time of intense cultural activity. The Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720), Japan’s oldest surviving histories, were completed in these years, followed later by the great poetry collection the Man’yoshu. Japan continued to send missions to Tang China, bringing back books, art and Buddhist teachings.

Politics were often violent. In 729 Prince Nagaya, a grandson of Emperor Tenmu and a leading minister, was accused of black magic and forced to take his life, an episode widely seen as engineered by Fuhito’s sons. A smallpox epidemic in 735-737, which killed perhaps a quarter to a third of the population, also killed all four of those Fujiwara brothers.

The government of the Nara period rested on the law codes. The Yoro Code, compiled in 718 under Fuhito’s direction, was put into force in 757. Land was in principle owned by the state and allotted to farmers by census, but in 743 a new law allowed permanent private ownership of newly cleared land, a step that later helped great temples and aristocratic families build up private estates.

Excavations in the late 1980s uncovered the mansion of Prince Nagaya just south-east of the palace, together with tens of thousands of wooden tablets recording the deliveries of food, the payment of servants and the running of a great household. They give a rare view of how a Nara aristocrat lived.

Shaken by disasters and rebellion, Emperor Shomu left Heijo-kyo in 740 and moved between Kuni-kyo, Naniwa-kyo and Shigaraki before returning in 745. He then ordered the building of the vast Todaiji temple, whose Great Buddha was dedicated in 752. After Shomu’s death in 756, his widow Empress Komyo gave his personal treasures to Todaiji. They were kept in the Shosoin, a wooden storehouse that survives today with thousands of objects, including items from Tang China, Persia and Central Asia that reached Japan along the trade routes of Asia.

Key people

Empress Genmei (r. 707-715) ordered the new capital and moved the court there. Fujiwara no Fuhito (659-720), the leading minister, shaped both the law codes and the city. Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749) made Nara a Buddhist capital with Todaiji. Prince Nagaya (684-729) was the most prominent victim of court rivalry. Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806) finally moved the capital away.

The end of the Nara capital

By the late 8th century the great Buddhist monasteries of Nara had become very powerful, and in the 760s the monk Dokyo gained enormous influence over the retired and reigning Empress Koken (Shotoku). In 784 Emperor Kanmu moved the court to Nagaoka-kyo and in 794 to Heian-kyo, modern Kyoto, which would remain the imperial capital for more than a thousand years. Many historians see the wish to escape the Nara temples as one reason for the move.

The temples stayed behind, and Nara survived as a religious centre. The palace site, however, turned to fields. Only in the 19th and 20th centuries did scholars and local activists identify and protect it. Since 1959 archaeologists have excavated it continuously, recovering hundreds of thousands of mokkan, inscribed wooden tags and notes that reveal the daily workings of government. The Suzaku Gate was reconstructed in 1998 and the First Imperial Audience Hall in 2010, the 1,300th anniversary of the capital.

Timeline

• 694: The court moves to Fujiwara-kyo, the first grid-plan capital.
• 701: The Taiho Code is promulgated.
• 708: Empress Genmei announces the building of a new capital at Nara.
• 710, 3rd month: The court moves to Heijo-kyo.
• 712 and 720: The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are completed.
• 729: Prince Nagaya is forced to commit suicide.
• 735-737: A smallpox epidemic devastates Japan.
• 740-745: Emperor Shomu moves the court between other capitals.
• 752: The Great Buddha of Todaiji is dedicated.
• 784: Emperor Kanmu moves the capital to Nagaoka-kyo, ending the Nara period.

Why it matters

Heijo-kyo was the first long-lasting capital of a unified Japanese state, and it gave its name to a formative period of Japanese history. Its Chinese-style plan, government and Buddhist monuments show how deeply Japan drew on Tang civilisation while shaping its own institutions. The temples it left behind and the palace site uncovered by archaeologists make Nara one of the richest historic landscapes in East Asia.