The Nara state

Abstract

This chapter will be devoted to the remarkable century that began with the civil war of 672 ( jinshin no ran ) and ended with the removal of the capital from Nara in 784. In these years the occupants of the throne, while attempting to rule directly in the Chinese manner, gradually shifted their attention from military preparation to (1) the development of religious rites and institutions, both Shinto and Buddhist, that would enhance the sacral side of their authority; (2) the building of T'ang-style capitals that would sanctify and legitimize their rule over the emerging Japanese state; and (3) the establishment of a bureaucratic system (like the one in T'ang China) that would increase state control over all lands and peoples. The Ise Grand Shrine where the ancestral kami of the Imperial clan is worshiped, as well as the Tōdai-ji where the universal Buddha continues to be honored as the central object of worship, stand as lasting monuments to the religious activity of emperors and empresses who ruled first from Fujiwara and then Nara. The remains of political centers throughout the country have come down to us as concrete evidence of ambitious capital-building projects centered on Nara, thereby justifying the practice of referring to the years between 710 and 784 as the Nara period. Finally, what we know of the Taihō administrative code (modeled after Chinese codes) indicates that the formulation and implementation of law were basic to the rise of Nara's bureaucratic state, leading a number of scholars to characterize the period as the time of a “penal and administrative legal” ( ritsuryō ) order.