The capital moves to Heijō-kyō (Nara)

Since 694 the court had resided at Fujiwara-kyō, the first Japanese city planned on a square grid, but its buildings were still unfinished when a new move was decided — mainly, it is thought, to carry out the wishes of Genmei’s late son, Emperor Monmu. In an edict that the Shoku Nihongi dates to 11 March 708 the empress declared that ‘the land of Heijō accords with the diagram of the four beasts, three mountains stand guard over it, and the tortoise shell and the milfoil agree: a capital should be built there’. On 13 April 710, says the chronicle, ‘the capital was first moved to Heijō’, and the Minister of the Left Isonokami no Maro was left in charge of the old one. Historians believe that at the time only the inner palace, the Great Hall of State and some government offices were ready.

Heijō-kyō followed the plan of Chang’an, although it had no city walls; some Japanese scholars think that placing the palace at the northern edge of the city followed Northern Wei Luoyang rather than Chang’an. The city measured about 4.3 km from east to west and 4.7 km from north to south; the Suzaku avenue, some 74 m wide, led north to the palace. The four great temples of Fujiwara-kyō — Daian-ji, Yakushi-ji, Gangō-ji and Kōfuku-ji — moved to the new capital, and estimates of its population at its height range from 50,000 to 100,000.

Except for 740–745, when Emperor Shōmu moved the court between Kuni-kyō, Shigaraki and Naniwa, Heijō-kyō remained the capital until 784. The palace site yielded its first inscribed wooden tablets (mokkan) in 1961, and the mansion of Prince Nagaya alone produced more than 30,000 of them; since 1998 the palace site has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara’.