Fujita H., translated by D. Eason
precepts, known today as the ritsuryō system or the ritsuryō polity.^8 Among the geographic phe-
nomena revealed in maps from the classical era, the grid plan according to which cities were laid
out (jōbō-sei) and the land division of rural settlements (jōri-sei) are especially significant. Before I
discuss the research that has been conducted on these topics from a geographic perspective, it is
necessary to outline a basic description of each.
The foundations of city planning in Japan can be said to date to the time of Fujiwara- kyō at
the end of the seventh century.^9 Kishi Toshio’s reconstruction has long been considered the
standard work on geographic developments in and around this early capital. While numerous
discoveries of blocks outside the area Kishi recognized as the Fujiwara- kyō city grid have ren-
dered his reconstruction problematic and spawned several new models, thus far none of the
newer reconstructions has earned broad general acceptance among scholars.^10
Commentaries on the next capital city, Nara (Heijō-kyō), focus on the placement of the impe-
rial palace at center north, where both the emperor’s residence and government offices stood side
by side. At the midpoint along the southern edge of this enclosure rose Suzakumon, the gate
from which the city’s central thoroughfare, Suzaku Boulevard, ran southward and served to split
the capital into left and right halves. Rajōmon, the gate erected at the southernmost end of the
city, stood at the intersection with Kujō (Ninth Street).^11
Based on imported Chinese notions that the emperor should face south, the city was first
bisected into a southeastern “right capital” and a southwestern “left capital.” Thus, for instance,
the area between Nijō (Second Street), the large east–west road directly south of the Suzaku
Gate, and even further to the south, became the Sanjō (Third Street) region. In addition, major
north–south roads that fanned out from the palace in both directions were designated as avenues
(bō) and sequentially numbered from one through four, in order of the closest to the most distant.
Bounded on each side by a major road, each block was further traversed both crosswise and
lengthwise by three narrow lanes, thereby subdividing the resultant space into sixteen parcels.
Thereafter each one of these parcels was referred to as a lot (tsubo) and assigned a number from
one through sixteen, beginning from the location closest to the palace, proceeding outward to
the southern edge, moving to an adjacent lot the next column over, and then doubling back
northward in a winding pattern.
In this way, Suzaku Boulevard played fundamentally the same role in providing an axis of
symmetry for both the left and right sides of the capital. That said, the earliest city plans indicate
that an extended section, called the North Avenue neighborhood, in a limited area north of
Ichijō (First Street), was the only area in the western half of the right capital where blocks spanned
just half the standard distance from north to south.^12 The zone that comprises the city center of
present- day Nara, moreover, formed from the placement of temples such as Tōdaiji and Kōfukuji
at the eastern edge of the left capital together with the lengthening of Sanjō. Although research-
ers have long known of this “outer capital” (gekyō), questions remain as to when and how this area
was created, due to the paucity of contemporaneous written sources coupled with relatively few
excavations of streets and roads.^13
This urban grid pattern of streets and avenues was also adopted for Heian- kyō (Kyoto). Here,
planners instituted various minor modifications, such as altering the designation for lots from
tsubo to chō, while nevertheless upholding the same basic system for subdividing the city. For
historical geographers, who prioritize changes from past to present that can be captured carto-
graphically, the ability through modern, 1:25,000 scale, maps to confirm grid patterns based on
ancient capital city planning—and thus prove that influences from ancient cityscapes extend to
the present day—represents an exceedingly significant development. When reconstructing these
grid patterns throughout the capital at Nara, the distance between small roads was found to be
forty jō (approximately 120 meters), which, measuring about five millimeters on a 1:25,000 scale