The grid was a potent and immediate expression of top-down urban planning, but the several sites of state authority that punctuated the cityscape were the most powerful reminders that Heian-kyo was first and foremost the base of a centralized imperial government. Whereas the state may not have had the money or the political will to complete an urban grid it did not need, all evidence suggests that the critical venues of statecraft, practical and performative, were initially finished.
Many, however, were short-lived. The reasons behind their respective disappearances are various, but all relate in some way to a growing gulf separating the idealized capital model from the real-world needs of the state. Frankly, from the time of Heian-kyo’s establishment, the Japanese state itself had already become a profoundly privatized operation. While emperors, ministers, and other officials derived their authority from their positions within the system, the individual organs of that system were increasingly controlled by these same people in ways indicative of private enterprises. The details of this breakdown, discussed at length in previous scholarship, need not detain us here.18 Nevertheless, it is critical to point out that it was because of this trend toward the private control of state institutions that so many of Heian-kyo’s most important monuments to state authority began to dissolve almost as soon as they were created.
As mentioned, the Eastern and Western Markets were among the first facilities transferred from Nagaoka-kyo to Heian-kyo. They were also among the first to disappear. The Western Market declined particularly fast. Business was so bad there that in 835 the imperial court took steps to revive the market by designating several commodities over which its traders could enjoy a monopoly.19 Protests from the vendors of the thriving Eastern Market, however, led to the cancellation of the policy a mere five years later. By 842, the Western Market was clearly on the verge of irrelevance. A document from that year describes: “[p]easants moving east to trade their goods. The stalls [in the Western Market] are already empty and the official gates are not being kept up.”20
Official state-to-state relations with continental countries were already in decline by the time of Heian-kyo’s establishment. The once powerful Tang dynasty had become a mere shadow of its former self and was leaning inexorably toward eventual collapse in 907. Only two official Japanese embassies visited the Tang court during the Heian period. None traveled in the other direction. The last envoy from the Korean kingdom of Silla arrived in 779. Vigorous trade relations with the Kingdom of Parhae (Bohai), located in what is now northeastern China, resulted in dozens of missions to Heian-kyo until 926, just prior to that kingdom’s fall.21 Besides the several factors that inhibited more robust diplomatic activity, the official movement of people between Japan and the continent was always lopsided: far more Japanese traveled abroad than Chinese or Koreans visited Japan. As a result, the several urban
Facilities built to either impress foreign dignitaries or accommodate them might have seemed lavish and inordinately expensive to maintain. Perhaps for this reason, they were among the first of Heian-kyo’s early infrastructure to disappear. Among them was the great Rajo Gate, Suzaku Road, and the twin Korokan compounds. While the first two were ostensibly just as useful to the emperor and high aristocracy as to foreign visitors, there is little evidence to suggest either was used with any regularity.
The Rajo Gate was destroyed by high winds in 816 but was quickly rebuilt at state expense. Following a similar calamity in 980, the state was more reluctant to make outlays, instead leaving reconstruction to a provincial governor seeking court favors in return. When that plan fell through, the gate was never rebuilt. Its foundation stones were eventually dragged away for use by Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027) in the construction of his private temple of Hojoji.22
Perhaps because it was a space rather than a material object, Su-zaku Road’s disintegration is less well documented. The few textual records that mention change suggest the impractically wide road was made more narrow through the introduction of crop cultivation and cattle grazing along its shoulders. A document from 862 orders the dispatch of soldiers to guard a series of gates built along the adjacent eastern blocks in response to a claim that nighttime Suzaku had become “an abyss of thieves.”23 Under such circumstances, the Korokan compounds, which faced Suzaku, were clearly unsustainable. Not only was urban infrastructure dissolving around them, so too were the diplomatic activities for which they were built. Ambassadors from Par-hae were reliable boarders, but their visits were infrequent. A decade or more could pass between missions, during which both complexes might stand completely vacant. Except for passing mention in a document from 1168, we have no other evidence the Korokan structures were maintained after the final Parhae mission departed in 920.24
Saiji, the state-sponsored Buddhist temple to the west of Suzaku, suffered the same fate as its urban surroundings: it all but disappeared from the documentary record by the close of the first millennium. Besides being on the wrong side of town, Saiji declined partly because of its exclusive function as a venue of state-sponsored Buddhism. While it continued to depend entirely on the state for financial backing, its counterpart to the east, Toji, diversified and eventually changed its institutional identity entirely. In 823, Emperor Saga (786-842) permitted
The monk Kukai (774-835) to take over administration of the temple, thereby transforming it from a wholly state-sponsored institution into a headquarter temple of the emerging Shingon sect.25 As Shingon grew in popularity, Toji thrived. Saiji, on the other hand, declined as the state weakened and its noble patrons became increasingly interested in sectarian Buddhism. A fire in 990 destroyed all of Saiji’s structures except for its five-storied pagoda. Several imperial funerals and memorial services followed, but the documentary accounts of each suggests none were particularly grand or of any special public significance. The pagoda might have survived beyond 1233, but the rest of the temple probably did not. Today, there is no trace of Saiji save for a few archeological remains.26
Of all the early state structures, compounds, and urban monuments discussed so far, there was no more poignant a symbol of Heian-kyo’s failure than the disappearance of the Daidairi imperial enclosure. The most immediate factor that contributed to the Daidairi’s eventual decline was fire. Fires were so common in premodern Kyoto that hardly a decade went by without a major conflagration claiming large portions of the wood-built city. Separated from the rest of the urban landscape by a high earthen wall, the structures of the Daidairi were protected but hardly immune. The Chodo-in burned down in 876. Although it was rebuilt immediately on this first occasion, it took fourteen years for construction to be completed after a similar calamity in 1058. It burned down again and for the last time in 1177 when a great fire devastated a third of Sakyo. The Buraku-in was destroyed earlier in 1063.27
Besides the enormous costs and logistical complications involved in rebuilding such large venues of state, a critical factor stymieing their reconstruction was a decisive shift in the conduct of the statutory government. During the Heian period, high government posts and their corresponding offices became increasingly hereditary and thus monopolized by aristocratic families. As privatization progressed, government offices gradually migrated from their original facilities, located within the Daidairi, to the private homes of the aristocracy. As a result, much of the Daidairi was rendered vacant, becoming little more than home to the emperor and the symbolic seat of imperial government.28
The work of emperors likewise became more intimate and personal. Increasingly, sovereigns used the Imperial Palace, the Dairi, to hold court amidst a correspondingly small segment of the ruling elite. But this compound too suffered frequent fire damage. It burned down
Fourteen times between 960 and 1082, and again during the great fire of 1177. On each occasion, the emperor took up temporary residence in compounds located outside the imperial enclosure. At first, the period of residence at these provisional palaces, called sato-dairi, was limited to the time needed to complete repairs on the Dairi.29 The atomization of government, however, which had been progressing from early in the Heian period, had made statecraft portable, and the emperor’s duties were no exception. Gradually, the imperial presence at sato-dairi grew longer and the functionality of the several palaces expanded accordingly.30 Eventually, with the emperor’s almost constant absence, justification for maintaining the original Dairi declined before disappearing completely. A fire that swept through the largely vacant grounds of the greater palace enclosure in 1227 laid waste to the last few structures that remained and erased any residual pretext that the site continued to be the formal seat of imperial government. Although never entirely forgotten, Heian-kyo’s most imposing monument to imperial authority, the Daidairi, was gone. The land on which it stood was eventually transformed into an inextricable part of the expanding urban landscape.
World History
