The Rise of Court Life in Japan and the Coming of the Fujiwara

The Rise of Court Life in Japan and the Coming of the Fujiwara 376

As the Soga gained more and more power over the last decades of the sixth century, they eventually defeated the Mononobe and Nakatomi in a civil war, and the head of the Soga clan, Umako, installed his 39-year-old daughter, Suiko, as empress and declared her 29-year-old nephew
, Shotoku (r. 593–622), her regent and crown prince. The capital was moved inland from Osaka on the coast to the Soga homeland in the Asuka Valley in the central Yamato plain.

Shotoku, whose name means “Wise and Virtuous,” emphasized the importance of the Chinese model of civil administration, and introduced Confucianism to the court. When he built a new palace at Ikaruga, in the central Asuka plain, he constructed a Buddhist temple next to it. Others were built during his administration, and over 1,300 Buddhist monks and nuns were ordained. But Buddhism was in fact practiced only by a small number of the aristocracy around the Asuka capital.

In 645, the Nakatomi, who had been forced to tolerate Buddhism even as they continued to maintain Shinto ritual at court, rebelled, executing the Soga clan. Anyone else who showed resistance to their rule was executed as well. Nakatomi no Kamatari (614–69) was awarded the surname of Fujiwara by Emperor Tenji for his part in crushing the Soga and placing Tenji on the throne. The Fujiwara clan, thus directly descended from the Nakatomi, would become the greatest noble clan of classical Japan, ruling it for 500 years.

In 708, the Fujiwara oversaw the construction of a new capital at Hojeikyo, commonly called Nara after its location in the Nara plain, some 15 miles to the northwest of Asuka (see Map 11.3). It was laid out according to the principles of Chinese city planning as a walled city on the model of Chang-an (see Fig. 11.3), 2.7 miles from east to west and about 3.1 miles from north to south, with a broad avenue running north and south in its center culminating at the Heijo Palace. And although the Nakatomi/Fujiwara clan had despised the Buddhist-leaning Soga the century before, at Nara, they officially accepted Buddhism as the state religion. Magnificent temples and monasteries were constructed, including what would remain, for a thousand years, the largest wooden structure in the world, the Todaiji Temple (Fig. 11.13). It houses a giant bronze, known as the Great Buddha, over 49 feet high and weighing approximately 380 tons. According to ancient records, as many as 2.6 million people were required to aid in its construction, although that number represents approximately half of Japan’s population at the time and is probably a gross exaggeration. The original temple was twice destroyed by warring factions, in 1180 and again in 1567. The current Buddha is in fact a 1691 reconstruction of the original, and the Todaiji Temple is itself a reconstruction of 1709. The restored temple is considerably smaller than the original, approximately two-thirds its size, and now stands 188 feet in width and 156 feet in height.