Japanese History · Chronicle III of XI
奈良 · The First Capital
Japan's first capital, its founding chronicles and the Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji.
The New CapitalPolitical
The court builds a permanent capital at Heijō-kyō, modern Nara, laid out on a grand grid modelled on Tang Chang'an.
Earlier rulers had moved the court on each accession; now Japan had a fixed city of broad avenues, palaces and monasteries. For eight decades Nara was the heart of a Buddhist civilization, drawing scholars, artists and monks from across Asia and marking Japan's arrival as a cultured imperial state.
The Founding ChroniclesCultural
Japan's oldest books, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, set down the myths, gods and imperial genealogies of the realm.
Compiled in 712 and 720, these chronicles traced the imperial line from the sun-goddess Amaterasu down to the reigning house, weaving Shintō myth and Chinese-style history together. They gave the throne a divine charter and remain the founding texts of Japanese identity and the Shintō faith.
Emperor ShōmuReligious
The devout Emperor Shōmu orders a network of state Buddhist temples, the kokubunji, across the land.
Amid plague and rebellion, Shōmu turned to Buddhism to protect the realm, decreeing an official monastery and convent in each province. The faith became an arm of the state, its clergy powerful and its great temples richly endowed — a policy that culminated in the Great Buddha of Nara.
The Great BuddhaReligious
The colossal bronze Buddha of Tōdai-ji is consecrated in a dazzling ceremony drawing monks from across Asia.
Rising some sixteen metres and cast from hundreds of tonnes of bronze, the Daibutsu was the greatest artistic feat of the age, nearly bankrupting the treasury. At its "eye-opening" ceremony an Indian monk painted in the pupils, and gifts sent from as far as Persia survive still in the Shōsōin treasure house.
The PoetsCultural
The Man'yōshū gathers over four thousand poems, from emperors to frontier guards, in the earliest treasury of Japanese verse.
Its name means "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves." Written in Chinese characters used for their sound to render Japanese, the anthology preserves voices of every rank in a fresh, direct tone. It stands as a monument to a native literary culture already confident in its own language.
Monks and PowerPolitical
The monk Dōkyō rises to dominate the court and reaches for the throne itself before being cast out on the empress's death.
Favoured by Empress Kōken, Dōkyō gathered such power that an oracle was said to name him the next sovereign. The threat of a monk-emperor so alarmed the nobles that after Kōken died he was banished — and the episode hardened a resolve to move the capital away from Nara's overmighty monasteries.
Leaving NaraPolitical
Emperor Kanmu abandons Nara, seeking a capital free of its entrenched temples and clans.
To escape the political weight of the Nara monasteries, Kanmu first built a capital at Nagaoka, then abandoned it after ill omens and a murder. His search would end a decade later in a new city to the north, Heian-kyō, opening one of the most brilliant ages of Japanese history.
