Heian Japan: A Court Built on the Tang Model

In 784, Emperor Kanmu ordered the imperial capital moved from Nara to Nagaoka-kyo, but flooding, epidemics, and a political assassination forced the court to abandon the new site after barely a decade. In 794 Kanmu tried again, moving the capital permanently to Heian-kyo ("the capital of peace and tranquility"), the city known today as Kyoto, giving its name to the Heian period (794-1185). Its urban grid was directly modeled on the Tang Chinese capital of Chang'an, and at the outset of the period the ritsuryo system, a Chinese-inspired administrative and legal code adopted through the Taiho Code (701) and the Yoro Code (718), was still nominally in force. Kanmu also bestowed on his general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro the title "sei-i taishogun," the direct terminological ancestor of the later title of shogun. Around this time the great embassies Japan had long sent to Tang China were gradually abandoned, the last sailing in 838 and the practice formally suspended in 894 on the recommendation of the scholar Sugawara no Michizane; Heian-kyo nonetheless remained, with interruptions, Japan's imperial capital until the capital was moved to Tokyo in 1868-1869.