J.R. Piggott
So by the eleventh century, residents’ lives were much more autonomous from court supervi-
sion than they had been in the closed capital of old. By then the denizens of Japan’s capital
included many members of a middling nobility that administered and provisioned royal govern-
ment and its top elite—the human comedy of Shinsarugakuki is their world. Therein they are
described busily participating in their own communities defined by work, livelihood, and neigh-
borhood. For sure, festivals like those of the Kamo, Inariyama, and Matsunoo shrines were gen-
erative venues for their collective culture, bringing together officials and non- officials, monks
and laymen, and even outsiders from the provinces. These denizens of Heian- kyō felt free to
sightsee at royal rituals on the Royal Palace Field; some of their sons became monks of the great
official temples and protested court decisions in capital streets; others, officials or not, ignored
court dicta as they participated in festivals.
I would not, however, call this galactic Heian- kyō “a privatized city” as does Matthew Stavros
in his recent book. By the twelfth century, capital residents, elite or lowly, lived as participants
in the blocs and factions that constituted court government.^63 The Heian metropole was still His
Majesty’s royal center. The monarch and his court ruled with strong backing from the senior
retired monarch as head of the royal family and from the regent and premier religious institu-
tions. The metropole with its satellites functioned as the hub of vertical networks that looked to
the throne as the apex of Heian society—those networks constructed the realm politically, eco-
nomically, and culturally.
Notes
1 Monica Smith, The Social Construction, 8–9.
2 For Childe’s criteria see his “The Urban Revolution,” 15.
3 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology vol. 2, 1228. Specifically Weber saw
the “Asian city” as a “princely fortress” administered by officials and lacking commerce, burghers, or
any collectivity of urban citizens. In Weber’s view these were not true cities. This idea has been influen-
tial in the Japanese scholarship: see Terasaki Yasushi, “Kodai toshiron,” 2–32. For Gideon Sjoberg’s
view, see The Preindustrial City Past and Present, especially Chapter 8. For Harold Carter’s ideas, see Intro-
duction to Urban Historical Geography. Like Smith and company, urban historian Niki Hiroshi argues for
varied forms and functions of cities through time and space: see his introduction in Toshi, Zenkindai
toshiron no shatei.
4 Satō Makoto, “Higashi Ajia kodai toshiron no kansei,” 1–2.
5 Chye Kiang Heng, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes,
especially 205.
6 Yamanaka Akira, “Kodai toshi no kōzō to kinō.”
7 On the Asuka capital, see Ozawa Tsuyoshi, Nihon kodai kyūto kōzō no kenkyū. Ozawa characterizes Asuka
as a “palace headquarters” (kyūto)—it had density of population but little built environment. In English,
Paul Wheatley and Thomas See wrote about Asuka in From Court to Capital (1978), but much excavation
has taken place since then. Recent discussions include Joan Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship,
66–101; William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures, 123–158; and Herman Ooms, Imperial
Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan, 75–85. Kaneko Hiroyuki also describes changes in kingship and the
built environment of Fujiwara in his translated essay, “Asuka, Fujiwara, and Heijō.”
8 In English on Fujiwara, see William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts, especially 149–158.
9 The historiography on Heijō in Japanese is extensive. For recent research, see Satō Makoto’s Mokkan
kara yomitoku Heijō-kyō; Watanabe Akihiro, Heijō-kyō no sensanbyakunen zenkensho; Nara bunkazai
kenkyūjo eds. Heijō-kyō jiten; and Kitamura Masaki, Heijō-kyō seiritsu shiron. A good collection of sources
is Heijō-kyō shiryō shūsei, vols. 1–2. In English, see William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts, 158–177; Tateno
Kazumi, “The Heijō Capital, Form and Function”; William Coaldrake, “City Planning and Palace
Architecture in the Creation of the Nara Political Order”; Tsuboi Kiyotari’s The Historical City of Nara
(translated by Gina Barnes); and Piggott, “Tracking the Wa- Kan Dialectic at Nara.” On the Nagaoka
capital see Farris, Sacred Texts, 181–200; and Ellen Van Goethem, Nagaoka, Japan’s Forgotten Capital,
especially 177–211.