The Court Moves to Fujiwara-kyō

In 694, Empress Jitō moved the court from Asuka to Fujiwara-kyō. The new capital organized streets and residential blocks around a central palace, bringing the sovereign’s residence, major ceremonies and offices into one planned urban setting.

The project had begun under Emperor Tenmu, Jitō’s late husband. Earlier Asuka courts had moved among palace sites. Tenmu’s government was developing a more extensive administration, and planning a city required both a royal center and places for officials to live and work.

The Nihon Shoki records steps under Jitō before the move: inspections in 690; consecration of the city ground and standards for allocating residential land in 691; and inspection of roads, a palace-ground rite and reports to major shrines in 692. These actions connected measurement and construction with rank, residence and ritual authorization. The court’s occupation in 694 was the culmination of preparation, rather than the entire building process taking place in that year.

Within the palace, the Daigokuden served major royal ceremonies, while the Chōdōin provided courts for official business. Other offices and the royal residence occupied the same enclosure. Outside it, the street grid arranged access and residential land. Construction and continuing use depended on workers, transport, materials and supplies, as well as a plan.

Fujiwara-kyō became the capital for Jitō, Monmu and Genmei. The Taihō code of 701 was completed during its period of use, giving criminal and administrative rules to the wider government. Those rules and the city developed through related decisions, without the move itself proving uniform administration everywhere.

The court transferred to Heijō-kyō in 710. Fujiwara had served for sixteen years. Excavated buildings, streets and documents preserve the operation of that capital; later reconstructions make selected features visible, rather than reproducing every building or resident of the former city.

Why a Court Needed a Planned Capital

The royal courts of Asuka had occupied successive palace sites. Residence, ritual and official work could be distributed among different places, while government depended on elite households and resources drawn from provinces. A larger planned capital would give the growing administration a more integrated setting, with space for offices, ceremonies, storage and the people supplying them.

Emperor Tenmu supported preparation of a new city. His reign also initiated work on codes and reorganized ranks. These projects required related but distinct decisions: classifying officials did not build their workplaces, and a plan for avenues did not arrange the collection of food or labor. Construction continued under his widow Jitō after his death in 686. She formally acceded in 690; the Asuka Kiyomihara administrative code had been distributed in 689, followed by household registration in 690.

Fujiwara-kyō placed its palace near the city’s center in the Yamato basin. Straight streets and residential blocks drew on continental ways of planning a capital, but the central palace differed from the northern placement in the later capitals of Heijō and Heian. The builders also worked within a landscape already containing routes, settlements, watercourses and graves. Imported principles had to be fitted to occupied ground.

Written chronology and excavation answer different questions. The Nihon Shoki, completed in 720, dates named inspections, rites and allocations. Buried roads, drains, foundations and documents reveal work that its brief entries do not describe. Neither a modern reconstructed boundary nor a single population estimate can stand for a fully occupied city at one moment. The palace-centered scheme is secure; the extent and sequence of settlement require evidence area by area.

Surveying, Consecrating, and Allocating Space

Preparations under Jitō proceeded through recorded acts. In 690 Prince Takechi, Tenmu’s son and a senior royal official, inspected the palace site; Jitō also visited it. In 691 the court consecrated the new city’s ground and specified residential allocations. The right minister was to receive four chō of land, with smaller grants for other ranks and household categories. Classification of residents thus accompanied the division of terrain.

In 692 Jitō inspected roads. A ground-consecration rite was held for the palace, and offerings announced the new palace to deities at Ise, Yamato, Sumiyoshi and Kii. These were separate acts within preparation, rather than a ceremony that substituted for building. In 693 the chronicle records an order to the capital-building officials to collect human remains uncovered by digging. The work cut into an existing landscape; the entry does not say how every grave or displaced household was handled.

Timber and tiles had to reach the building site before monumental halls could be assembled. A Manyōshū poem describes timber from Mount Tanakami in Ōmi floated down the Uji and Kizu rivers to a landing at Izumi. Its onward route to Fujiwara remains uncertain. Excavated tiles point to production at multiple workshops, while an inscribed tile naming Ōsato district connects the project with a region far beyond Yamato. Such evidence identifies supply connections without furnishing a complete roll of workers or costs.

Excavation also separates stages hidden by the move date. A canal crossed the palace area during construction, while roads of the city grid still passed through it; it was filled before the palace buildings were complete. Research on the Chōdōin grounds distinguishes material transport, erection of major structures, preparation of the courtyard and ceremonial use. Drainage and surfaces were altered as work advanced. Survey, delivery, building and occupation therefore left different physical traces.

The Nihon Shoki places Jitō’s move to Fujiwara Palace in the twelfth month of 694 in its own calendar. An attendance of officials and grants followed. Occupation made it the working royal capital without completing every residential lot or fixing all offices permanently. The enclosed palace brought the royal residence, Daigokuden ceremonial hall, Chōdōin courts and surrounding offices into one center connected to the street grid.

A Government Made Visible in a Grid

Fujiwara-kyō remained the royal center until 710. Jitō’s successors Monmu and Genmei used it, so transfer of the throne did not require another immediate change of capital. Ceremonies, audiences and administrative business now shared a planned setting, while officials’ residential land connected rank to the city outside the palace enclosure.

The residential rules were standards for allocation, rather than a census of completed compounds. Excavation has also identified plots smaller than those listed in the chronicle. A regular grid could contain houses of different sizes and areas occupied at different densities. It did not give every inhabitant the residence, resources or access of a senior courtier.

Supplying the occupied capital created recurring work beyond initial construction. Provincial officials and producing households furnished goods, while carriers and workers brought them to the center. Wooden shipment tags record origins, products, quantities and sometimes dates and senders. A re-reading of one Fujiwara Palace tag identified five to of white rice and an eleventh-month delivery. This is a particular consignment recorded on wood, not evidence that every household’s obligations were identical or that a complete annual account survives.

The Taihō code was completed in 701 under Monmu. Its criminal and administrative provisions were distinct from the earlier Asuka Kiyomihara code and from the act of moving the court. Excavated palace offices show rebuilding associated with changes in the administrative organization. The capital was a place where government continued to be rearranged after occupation, while collection and enforcement outside it still depended on provincial officials and local circumstances.

The achievement was practical as well as visible: an administration could continue working through successive reigns in an extensive urban setting. That setting depended on food, materials, repairs and labor drawn from a wider region. The surviving records do not supply a full budget or every worker’s conditions. Particular tags and construction sequences make these obligations concrete without turning the plan into proof of uniform control.

A Palace-Centered Experiment with a Long Afterlife

In 710 the court moved to Heijō-kyō. The successor capital continued the use of a street grid and a distinct palace enclosure, but placed its palace on the northern side. Fujiwara’s arrangement supplied experience in building and operating a capital rather than a template that every later city reproduced. Later capitals also needed to connect offices, ceremonies, residences and supply routes through their own plans.

Its sixteen years of court occupation should not be read simply as a failed promise of permanence. Fujiwara served three sovereigns while codes and office organization developed. Relocation changed the setting of government; it did not mean that urban administration had to be invented again. Nor does the later move prove that abandonment was the intended endpoint of the 694 project.

Ritual and allocation were part of that project’s political work. Consecration and reports to major deities authorized occupation of the ground, while ranked residential grants expressed distinctions among those living around the palace. Their connection is visible in the sequence of named decisions, not only in the geometry of a modern site plan.

Archaeology has expanded the understood extent of the city and made its supply and office work visible through more than monumental foundations. At the same time, a road, gutter or tag must be dated and interpreted in its own context. Superimposed features record change; combining them into one picture can imply that structures of different phases all stood together. Marked foundations and reconstructed features present selected parts of the former capital, while the distribution and fullness of occupation remain subjects of investigation.