The planning of machi took priority over roads in the construction of Heian-kyo, but roads were no less important. In addition to facilitating movement around the city, including the elite processions mentioned above, they divided the capital into a rational matrix of formal and informal zones. The names of each indicated their locations and their locations became functions of status (in the discussion that follows, refer to Figure 1.3).
In the broadest terms, there were two distinct types of roads in Heian-kyo: “great roads,” called oji, and “minor roads,” called koji.25 The most important of the great roads, and by far the capital’s widest thoroughfare, was Suzaku. As the formal approach to the Daidairi imperial enclosure, its use was reserved exclusively for the emperor, the highest members of the imperial court, and official emissaries visiting from abroad. As mentioned, Suzaku also divided the capital into the symmetrical left-right administrative zones of Sakyo and Ukyo.
Nijo, meaning something akin to “Second Road,” was the one other “great road” that deserves special mention. It ran east-west along the southern face of the Daidairi, providing another passage to and from the imperial enclosure. At fifty-one meters in width, Nijo was significantly narrower than Suzaku, yet still much wider than all other Heian-kyo roads, which measured, on average, about eighteen meters.26
In addition to Nijo, there were eight other sequentially numbered east-west “great roads” that together divided the city into nine laterally oriented administrative zones, called jo. Some confusion is possible because the east-west great roads and the zones immediately north of each shared the same names. For example, the “ninth zone,” called Kujo, included all the land from Kujo Road, north to Hachijo Road. The “eighth zone,” called Hachijo, included all the land from Hachijo Road, north to Shichijo Road, and so on, up the grid. Because of the similarities in names, there can sometimes be ambiguity in the documentary record about such things as, for example, whether someone lived in Sanjo (the zone) or on Sanjo (the road).
There were also longitudinal “great roads” that divided the capital
Into columnar zones called bo. Sakyo and Ukyo had four bo each that were numbered from inside out, the first being closest to Suzaku and the fourth being closest to the capital’s eastern or western boundaries respectively (see Figure 1.6).
Using these overlapping zone names together with a system for numbering and subdividing machi, it was possible to pinpoint specific locations within the capital grid with extraordinary accuracy. Figure 1.6 illustrates how groups of sixteen machi were numbered boustro-phedonically (as in the route of an ox plow) and how blocks themselves were divided into thirty-two smaller henushi units, each existing within a matrix of row and column coordinates. Using this system, administrators could, for example, signify the single henushi plot indicated with a star in Figure 1.6 as follows:
Original:
Transliteration: Sakyo, Gojo, Shibo, Jugo-machi,
Nishi-ichi-gyo, Kita-ichi-mon
Translation: Left capital, fifth lateral zone, fourth columnar zone (of Sakyo), fifteenth block, first column from the west, first north row
Location in Heian-kyo was determined in absolute terms and each institutionally recognized unit of space had a name indicative of its place within the whole. The addressing system illustrates well the strength of the top-down planning regime and, more important, the capital’s physical and philosophical organization under a strong, centralized polity.
In the classical city, not unlike today, one’s address said something about who they were. While we know of no explicitly codified system, empirical evidence suggests there was a relationship between residential location and status. In general, the further north one lived, the higher one’s status. Some scholars have argued that the northeast in particular, where the highest concentration of development occurred in the succeeding era, was favorable because it was higher, cooler, and drier than the rest of the city. Others have suggested that proximity to the emperor was the most cogent factor. Chapter 3 will explore this topic in depth, but for now it should suffice to say that whatever the guiding principle, the relationship between location and status seems to have been reflected in land prices. A low-ranking official writing in his diary in about the year 1000, for example, lamented that, after a
Long and distinguished career serving the palace, he was only able to afford his maximum allowed residential plot of one-fourth of a machi within the area of Rokujo, well removed from the upscale district north of Nijo where he had worked most of his life.27
World History
