An early catalyst for a more explicit definition of capital space appeared in the eleventh century with the increased political and military assertiveness of religious institutions. Temples and shrines had long challenged the absolute authority of the state, using spiritual suasion, landed wealth, and private, sometimes kinship-based ties with court families to secure various imperial titles, privileges, and even greater wealth. In the late eleventh century, however, the imp act of sectarian influence became physical. Demanding that the court act in their favor, the monks of Enryakuji, Onjoji, and Kofukuji—to name just the most aggressive—began engaging in mass, sometimes violent protests that included dramatic ritualized marches on the capital.2 Noble diaries convey a profound sense of foreboding as they describe long, menacing processions of rowdy monks and acolytes approaching the city bearing weapons of both secular and sacred efficacy. Religious institutions threatened the capital collaterally as well, engaging in warfare against their sectarian rivals over such issues as land rights, official appointments, and matters of doctrinal validity. There were more than three hundred demonstrations (goso) during the medieval era and no less than thirty-three cases of intersectarian warfare in and around Kyoto during the twelfth century alone.3 In response to such a high level of disruption, it appears the court began attempting to systematically exclude religious actors from the capital through both legal and military means. The diary of Fujiwara no Munetada (1062-1141) describes in great detail the events surrounding several large demonstrations that took place around the turn of the eleventh century. His narrative captures both the general sense of crisis as well as critical details about how the author, an aristocrat and member of the imperial court, envisioned the capital and defined its exclusivity (here and below, locations and space-related terms are indicated in Japanese for their relevance to the discussion ahead):
[T]he sectarians of Kofukuji entered the capital (nyuraku) at about 6 p. m. Even though there is a proscription (seishi) [on entry], they disregarded it. Their route took them past the intersection of [Higashi] Kyogoku and Sanjo, before arriving at [their destination,] the Kangakuin university. . . . Among the more than two thousand, there were some on horseback. Warriors surrounded each formation. The capital (kyochu) is in an uproar.4
In legal terms, the word used here to indicate a proscription on capital entry, seishi, is not particularly strong. It suggests an admonition to respect the customary taboo barring temples from Heian-kyo rather than an absolute prohibition. As we shall see, however, it was not long before the court began deploying stronger language and laws.
Reference to the intersection of Higashikyogoku and Sanjo is significant for what it reveals about the author’s sensitivity to the capital’s formal boundaries. Considering Kofukuji’s location in Nara, a two-day walk to the east, it is probable that the sectarians traveled to Kyoto, at least in the final stage, along the Tokaido Highway. Therefore the head of the long procession would have appeared to city dwellers the moment it emerged from the high pass at Awataguchi along the Higashiyama Hills, about 1.5 kilometers east of the city proper (see Figure 3.11). From there, the sectarians would have proceeded westward down the basin’s gentle eastern slope, passing along the way countless suburban homes, shops, temples, and monuments before crossing the Kamo River at a location approximately parallel to Sanjo Road or, more likely, a bridge near Shijo to the south. Despite the high drama of such an occasion, the author provides no information on the procession’s advance toward the city until it reached the intersection of Higashi-kyogoku and Sanjo. The paucity of geographic detail can be explained, however, by recalling the special significance of Higashikyogoku as the boundary defining Heian-kyo’s eastern edge. The mob’s crossing of Higashikyogoku at Sanjo was the singular act that most disturbed the diarist. Indeed, the greatest threat posed on this occasion came not from the prospect of physical violence, but rather from the sectarians’ possession of a portable shrine (mikoshi). An object of such religious power, placed before the gates of a government institution such as the Kangakuin, could bring official business to a screeching halt indefinitely.5 Outside the city’s formal boundaries, a mikoshi would
Have had far less impact on the court and its institutions, if any at all. Undoubtedly, preventing such disruptions was a key motivation behind the classical proscription against temples in the first place.
The following two entries narrate temple demonstrations that took place in 1095 and 1108 respectively:
1095.10.26: I have heard that the chief abbot [who returned to Enryakuji yesterday] has sided with the “mountain sectarians”
[who are now threatening the capital]. An [imperial] decree has banned them from entering the capital (kyoto). They have come as far as the [Kamo] riverbed. [Minamoto no] Yoshitsuna has been ordered to the riverbed with his troops to defend against entry. . . . Warriors are filling up Kyoto.6
1108.3.30: This evening, the “mountain masses” [of Enryakuji] came to the capital (gekyo). Like a line of stars, they carried torches, wending their way down the mountain. Because imperial police and warriors defended along the [Kamo] riverbed, the sectarians did not enter the city (nyuraku). Nevertheless, Kyoto (kyochu) is in an uproar. [The balance] between Kingly Law and Buddhist Law is destroyed. . . . Troops of the Minamoto and Taira families have been stationed east of Hojoji Temple, near the riverbed.7
The issuance of a direct imperial decree in 1095 suggests that the court no longer relied upon customs or taboos to insulate the city. When that legal deterrent failed, however, warriors were deployed along the Kamo River, a position immediately east of Higashikyogoku. The second passage’s reference to the temple of Hojoji, located on the narrow sliver of land between Higashikyogoku and the riverbed, further underscores the author’s acute consciousness of Heian-kyo’s original boundaries (see Figure 3.11). By the same token, the absence of any mention that the court might have sought to use the considerable military capacity at its disposal to extend the front line of defense, perhaps even to block the several mountain passes leading into the capital basin, shows a marked indifference to insulating anything other than formal capital space.
The discourse of exclusion in these and other accounts from the period seem to reveal a sense of golden-ageism with regard to the capital’s
Physical space. At the time of Munetada’s writing, the western half of the old city had long ago been converted into cultivated land and was no longer a viable part of the urban landscape. At the same time, rapid growth in the east had led to massive residential and commercial expansion well beyond Heian-kyo’s northern and eastern boundaries. Under the circumstances, the attention paid to Higashikyogoku appears either anachronistic or perhaps just out of touch. It can be explained, however, as part of an attempt to translate the capital’s idealized status as the exclusive realm of imperial statecraft into a symbol of sustained state, imperial, and aristocratic potency. To be sure, when it came to asserting the authority of traditional institutions, the capital itself, as both a thing and an idea, would have proven a useful functionary. Invoking the notion that capital space was inviolable would have elicited a host of traditional ideals, rules, taboos, and customs that underscored the supremacy of the imperial state, its institutions, rituals, and officials. The discourse reveals a regressive impulse, a desire to turn back the clock and restore the capital to its “original” state of functional purity, free from the corrupting influences of temples and other kenmon. But of course there was no such thing as a golden age for Kyoto. It, like the institutions it was created to house, was imperfect from the start. Physically mutated and institutionally degenerate, the city was a monument to the constant struggle between public and private interests. In a word, there was a yawning gulf separating the ideal from the real.
This gulf is on clear display in the following imperial decree, issued in 1087, that attempts to interdict an elite practice that was both widespread and long-held. It also, at the same time, blindly ignores the city’s contemporaneous geography:
The Ministers of the Left and the Right hereby convey this imperial decree. Numerous oratories have, in violation of court law, recently been built in the two capitals [Sakyo and Ukyo].
This must not be. In accordance with the earlier decree, the executive officers of Sakyo and Ukyo, along with the imperial police, are ordered to enforce, from now on, the ban on oratories within the capital (kyochu).8
As touched upon in chapter 3, by the time this decree was issued, members of the civil aristocracy had been subverting the customary proscription on temples by building small oratories (jibutsudo) on the
Grounds of their private residences for at least a century.9 Much more modest than their “temple” (-ji or - tera) counterparts, which remained exurban, these private devotional facilities had correspondingly narrow functions. They were used predominantly to accommodate low-key, personal religious observances or family memorial rituals.10 In light of their proliferation and the high status of their owners, attempting to ban oratories in 1087 seems unrealistic. After all, this particular decree was issued by the imperial court to enforce a law being broken with the highest frequency by none other than members of the court itself. Such circumstances, of course, do not necessarily mean the law would be dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, that is precisely what happened when, a few years later, former grand chancellor of state and imperial regent, Fujiwara no Morozane (1042-1101), built an oratory at his residence in honor of his deceased first wife. Either he was in flagrant violation of the decree—which he suggests in his diary was little more than an entreaty to exercise “self restraint”—or, more likely, the decree itself was more symbolic than effectual, meant to reinforce a sense of capital exclusion at a time when incursions were becoming rampant.11
The decree’s reference to “two capitals” is likewise out of touch with real-world circumstances. The impulse to apply laws equally to the entire space of Heian-kyo at a time when more than half the original area had essentially been converted into farmland appears either romantically idealistic or flatly delusional. Again, however, the dissonance can be explained by interpreting the decree as part of a conservative campaign to stanch the growing influence of kenmon and reassert the authority of the statutory state. Attempting to physically exclude outside political actors, to reinstate foundational customs and rules, and to use language that suggests physical integrity rather than breakdown, all point to a desire on the part of the traditional elite to return, against overwhelming odds, to a former glory. For its emblematic representation of the classical past, the capital city was a tool useful for achieving this objective.
It should be added that customs related to capital space were not just about exclusion. Certain things were also considered requisite. These included the presence of the emperor, his imperial palace, and the three sacred imperial regalia.12 When the child emperor Antoku (1178-1185), for example, visited retired emperor Goshirakawa at Hojuji in 1180, Fujiwara no Tsunefusa (1143-1200) expressed dismay that the sovereign would make the journey east of the [Kamo] river
“in possession of the sacred mirror.”'3 Three years later, Antoku would again leave the capital in possession of one of the three sacred regalia, that time as part of the Taira army’s full retreat during the Genpei Wars. Writing in Gukansho, the monk Jien (1155-1225) lamented the emperor’s absence, yet his choice of words suggests the object of his concern was propriety rather than person: “It is understood that a sovereign must be present in the capital.”'4
The final example dates to 1371, when preparations were underway for the enthronement of Emperor Goen’yu (1358-1393). Even during this much later period, when we might expect changes to the city and its politics to have rendered classical customs obsolete, Sanjo Kintada (1324-1384) had this to say about the location of the ceremony (see Figure 5.2):
There is to be an imperial succession ceremony today, held at the Yanagihara Palace, the residence of Hino Tadamitsu. Is there no precedent for the holding of a succession ceremony outside capital boundaries (jogai)? We have been concerned about this for several days, but because there is no appropriate palace within the capital [the ceremony is to go forth at the Yanagihara Palace].'5
Well into the medieval era, there remained a strong sense of what should and should not take place within Kyoto.
World History
