Heian-kyo ̄: from royal center to metropolethe early eleventh century they were gaining more of their livelihoods as absentee proprietors
(ryōshu) of landed estates in the provinces. This strategy required the knitting together of net-
works of associates and clients across the archipelago—including provincial governors, transport
and storage specialists, and provincial elites—all of whom aided in establishing and administering
estates by assuring production, collecting rents and other revenues, and shipping them back to
proprietors in the capital.^29
Ōyama Kyōhei has noted too that in the increasingly aristocratic environment at court, those
in the countryside found it difficult to secure needed certificates of ownership for their fields. To
protect themselves from confiscation or excessive taxation by provincial authorities, those with
the connections to do so negotiated ties with aristocrats, to whom they paid rents and other serv-
ices.^30 For Toda and Hotate, the developing shōen economy of the eleventh century was a par-
ticularly important vector in transforming the capital into an economic hub for aristocratic
wealth and power while diffusing the authority of monarch and court in what has been called the
“court- centered polity” (ōchō kokka).^31
In Heian- kyō, aristocratic proprietors had increasing wealth to recruit specialist craftsmen,
once exclusively affiliated with the royal palace. We hear, for instance, that in 1039 silk weavers
were working for the Fujiwara regents’ household as well as the royal household, sometimes
resulting in quarrels over priorities. In this more competitive environment, the prosperity of
such specialists grew. Meanwhile the market economy in the capital and environs expanded as
these fully urbanized specialists needed goods and services too. Wakita Haruko argues that it was
precisely this new organization of production in mid- Heian that was the foundation for the
medieval city of Kyoto.^32
The movement of goods by land and sea as well as reliable warehousing and exchange became
significant concerns for absentee urban proprietors. Ōyama Kyōhei has pointed out how various
places around the Kinai developed as transport hubs at this time.^33 Provincial governors (zuryō),
long involved in moving tax goods and corvée laborers to the capital, served as logistics experts
for high- ranking patrons like the regents who led the court.
The cityscape itself was transformed as wealthy governors lived more grandly than had their
predecessors. Rather than residing on one- quarter chō plots as in the past, successful provincial
governors, whose daughters often married into their patron’s family, now enjoyed grander
homes including blocks of storehouses that covered a full chō (120 square meters). In this environ-
ment, Kushiki thinks that the cost of land in the Left Capital rose steadily during the eleventh
century.^34
Increasing density of occupancy meant new problems—indeed the year 960 saw the first in a
devastating series of fires that incinerated parts or all of the royal palace precincts time and again
during the tenth and eleventh centuries. As a result many monarchs began spending considerable
time living outside the original Residential Palace (dairi), either in retirement palaces or in the
mansions of their leading ministers. These “town palaces” (satodairi) meant that the original palace
ceased to be the architectonic center and representation of His Majesty’s capital.^35
Shigeta Shin’ichi and other researchers think that the deserted Residential Palace and pre-
cincts weakened royal legitimacy—he cites occasions in the early eleventh century when com-
moners invaded the palace grounds during official rites.^36 A contemporary witness agreed. In 982
the retired official and literatus Yoshishige Yasutane (?–1003) complained that the royal center
was no longer ideal in either appearance or governance. In his memoir Record of the Pond Pavilion
(Chiteiki) Yoshishige bemoaned in particular that “Heaven has devastated the western capital.”
Archaeologists think that Yoshishige was exaggerating somewhat, but as early as 840 there is a
report that few people were living in the swampy Right Capital. Yoshishige mourned too that
Heian- kyō had become a royal center where aristocratic proprietors enjoyed the greatest authority