the old stuff…

“Toward the end of the year 645, Emperor Kõtoku abandoned the Asuka region to occupy the newly built of Nagara Toyosaki at Naniwa. Archaeological evidence of this first effort at planned urban construction was inconclusive until after 1952, when excavations revealed that an imperial palace and public office compound of considerable size were indeed erected. Without doubt the inspiration was Chinese, and, while the outer dimensions of the city cannot be determined, the existence of a full-fledged Official Compound (Chõdõin) with an audience hall and office buildings is now archaeologically verified.
    After nine years, the capital at Naniwa was given up. Presumably the pull of religious bodies and influential families entrenched in the Asuka region proved too strong. Under Emperor Saimei two successive locations in Asuka were adopted and evacuated. Emperor Tenchi, who succeeded, erected his capital in 667 at õtsu on Lake Biwa, even farther than Naniwa from Asuka. Four years later this establishment was destroyed by fire, and shortly thereafter a war of imperial succession broke out. Emporer Temmu, who fought his way to the throne in 672, retuned to the Asuka region, building on one of the sites used by Saimei. This was the first capital of the Kiyomihara, best remembered as the location of the first major effort at codification of laws and institutions. Excavations of the site reveal a Ch’ang-an style plan with a division of the city into left and right halves.
    But Kiyomihara was cramped, and Temmu planned a larger city somewhat farther out onto the plain. The resulting city of Fujiwara was not entered until 694, after Temmu’s death. Fujiwara was obviously better situated, having more room for residential expansion and being surrounded by a more extensive agricultural region. We know a good deal about Fujiwara through references in the official histories. Some thought was given to the justification of the site in terms of Chinese principles of geomancy. The city faced south and was divided into left and right halves. Seven avenues ran north and south, twelve ran east and west. The squares created by the intersection of these streets demarcated wards (bo) of which sixteen at the north center were reserved for the palace enclosure. Fujiwara attracted twenty four temples into its confines, and a passage in the Nihonshoki claims that the common residencies in the city numbered 1,505 “columns of smoke,” that is, 1,505 houses as counted by the smoke coming from their roofs.
    Three Emperors reigned from Fujiwara, but the city soon proved to be too small, and so Heijõ was planned. This time a clean break was made with the vested interests of Asuka. Set in the middle of the Yamato Plain, well placed to communicate by water with the port of Naniwa and by road with the provinces to the east and west, Heijõ was the boldest effort so far to create a lasting capital city. Begun in 708, Heijõ had external measurements of approximately two-and-two-thirds miles by three miles. A later addition attached a mile-square bulge to the eastern side of the city, pushing its limits to the gates of the great Tõdaji temple complex.
    Heijõ-kyõ has disappeared except for recent archaeological excavations of the office compound, but it still lives as Japan’s “first permanent capital” through many surviving temples, some of which retain their original buildings from the eighth century. By the time Heijõ was built there was a conscious effort to avoid the necessity of constant movement from one location to another. Every effort was made to give the city permanence and to draw to it the appurtenances of stable political power. The families of rank were assigned plots of land and induced to build residencies in the city. The institutions that served in Asuka as family temples for the noble lineages were also transferred, though some left their headquarters  behind and two refused to move. All told, Heijõ attracted forty-eight temples. Members of the aristocracy, priests, artisans and service personnel eventually swelled the population to an estimated 200,00 at its zenith. For seventy years Heijõ was the active center off Japan, its sinified specifications reflecting the many features of T’ang civilization that the Japanese sought to emulate.
    Yet even in Heijõ the ties between the imperial buearcracy and the foundations of political power were unstable. Between 741 and 746 Emperor Shõmu made five hasty shifts in the location of the capital. Leaving Heijõ in 741 because of an armed uprising by Fujiwara-no-Hirotsugu, he first established the capital Kuni in the hill country to the east. But Kuni was soon abandoned for political reasons, and Shõmu was again on the move. Twice Naniwa was adopted as capital, and each time pricipal buildings were dismantled and hauled to the site. After much uncertainty and disruption of the court, Heijõ was reentered. It was Shõmu who put the final touches to the political balance of power in Nara by drawing the Buddhist establishment further into the government as a balance to court factionalism. His attraction to the Kegon doctrine and his adoption of the Kokubunji system of officially supported provincial temples was a significant step in the ffort to use Buddhism to buttress the imperial reign- a reaction no doubt to the uncertainty of reliance on court families whose interests were in competition with those of the imperial family.
    This reliance on the Buddhist priesthood created problems of its own and led to the abandonment of Heijõ in 784 following the near seizure of the throne by the priest Dõkyõ between 766 and 770. Under Emperor Kammu the capital was removed first to Nagaoka, a site northeast of the present city of Osaka. There the arduous task of transferring government facilities and rebuilding official residencies was begun. But political intrigues, the murder of the Fujiwara official in charge of construction, and the counter pulls of court interests delayed the construction of the city, and work was stopped in 791. Yet another site was now proposed, namely the one presently occupied by Kyoto, and the plans for Heian-kyõ laid out. Construction of the city that was at least to become Japan’s enduring capital took several years and drew upon the fiscal and manpower resources of all the country’s provinces. The emperor left Nagaoka for Heian in 794 despite the fact that the new Great Audience Hall (daigokuden) would not be finished in time for the New Year’s ceremony of 795. Facilities for the ceremony were complete by 796, but the government’s official Office of Construction was not disbanded until 805.”

Hall, J.W Kyoto as Historical Background, in Hall, J.W. & Mass, J.P. (ed) (1974) Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History. Stanford University Press. PP5-7.

“While it took the court a century and a half to settle its Heian base, it is significant that, once having decided on a plan for the imperial capital, the Japanese planners used roughly the same overall design from beginning to end. Japanese historians routinely claim that this design came from Ch’ang-an. But historic Ch’ang-an was different enough from either Heijõ or Heian that one must assume the Japanese either had another model to follow or used an idealized version. Among the planners of Naniwa were men who had presumably visited T’ang Ch’ang-an. Yet somehow the result was quite different, not only in size but in the placement of buildings and the arrangements of function within the walls. Nor did the Japanese appear to seek out more exact models at a later date, for once the Japanese Version of the capital city plan was adopted, it was reproduced thereafter with little change other than a progressive increase in size. There was but one major exception to this uniformity of plan: while the early Japanese capitals made liberal provision for the building of temples within their confines, Heian-Kyõ excluded all but two temples from its plan. The reason for this was, of course, strictly political.
    In contrast to whatever continental model might have inspired them, the Japanese made one noteworthy change. From the outset they never adopted the large outer wall that could serve as a military defense. The reasons for this are not known, but we presum it was due to a lack of need. Warfare in Japan had not begun to involve sieges by masses of troops, and there were no foreign enemies against which to defend the city.”

Hall, J.W Kyoto as Historical Background, in Hall, J.W. & Mass, J.P. (ed) (1974) Medieval Japan: Essays in Institutional History. Stanford University Press. PP11-12.