This week, we looked at the Nara period, where Japanese rulers began to settle in one consistent capitol and embraced Buddhism. One of the interesting features of the Nara period was that the rulers continued to stay in one city; the most interesting part about that for me is why they had not done that in the first place. I am aware that the most obvious reason is the religious/superstitious issue about not wanting to be where the ghost of the last ruler was, but I wonder if there was any more pragmatic reason to keep moving. It strikes me that moving capitols would necessarily be an expensive process, and would mean that temples and palaces could not be improved over many decades. With these apparent drawbacks, why bother moving the capitol so much? I do not think that I have the information to suggest any other educated answers than the one of getting away from the death of the past ruler, but I would be interested in finding out if any (credible) theories do exist. The only possible (and extremely superficial) reason that I would suggest is that it does effectively convey the wealth of the rulers. Spending all of the funds that it would take to build the new capitol, along with raising all of the corvee labor that would also be required could be a good way to present one’s power to one’s subjects.
The other defining feature of the era was the adoption of Buddhism, which some Nara rulers, Tenmu in particular, enthusiastically embraced. A few things about the new religion raised my curiosity however. First, one of the readings (and I don’t remember which) stated that several emperors actually took Buddhist vows. Does this mean that they became monks? If so, what did that look like on a practical basis for ruling? Moreover, how would such a thing have been received by the rest of the Japanese aristocracy, or even the common people? Finally, was there any precedent for this in the rest of East Asia? Of course all of these questions could be answered by the explanation that the emperors only took the vows after passing the crown to their heirs, but I did not get that impression from the reading, although it did make it seem that passing the crown to one’s heir while still alive was a fairly common practice.
Selection of primary sources on Buddhism and the state during the Nara period in Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume One: From Earliest Times to 1600 2nd edition, edited by William Th. de Bary. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, edited by Karl F. Friday. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. https://muhlenberg.on.worldcat.org/oclc/787849954.
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