Tenmu’s conscript army eventually had to be restructured based on new
guidelines provided by the Taihô Codes of 702.
The Taihô Codes defined government offices and a bureaucratic sys-
tem based on the T’ang Chinese model. The codes provided legislation for
military matters aiming at building an organized imperial army. The codes
specified that the army was to be constructed based on a conscription sys-
tem and that the fundamental unit of its organizational structure was the
local militia. In addition to delineating the duties of the military in appre-
hending outlaws and fighting enemies of the court, and the obligations of
its rank-and-file, it specified that soldiers were to practice martial skills
(bugei). Unfortunately, neither the type of practice involved nor the method
of warfare and weapons is clear. Nevertheless, the Taihô Codes clearly in-
dicate a new era in warfare. Emperor Tenmu’s military, strictly based on the
Chinese model, proved to be impossible to support. However, the guide-
lines for the army as stipulated in the Taihô Codes made the earlier system
more suitable for the Japanese. Yet, it took less than a century for court
aristocrats to realize that they must abolish the conscription army in favor
of a smaller army of professional warriors.
During the Nara period (711–794), the imperial army engaged in bat-
tles against Fujiwara no Hirotsugu (740), against whom it was victorious,
and in the latter half of the Nara period the court attempted to assert con-
trol over the Emishi people in northern Honshu. A series of campaigns
against the Emishi proved to be a total failure, since the Emishi were for-
midable warriors, making it impossible for the imperial army to subdue
them. These repeated failures by an army of poorly trained and poorly mo-
tivated soldiers led by civilian courtiers (i.e., the Abe family) brought the fi-
nal abolition in 792 of an army based on the Chinese model. Then, after
Emperor Kanmu (737–806) moved the capital to Heian in 794, an army
led by military aristocrats and well-trained soldiers under the leadership of
Sakanoue-no-Tamuramaro, whom Kanmu selected as the first sei-tai-
shôgun (barbarians-subduing generalissimo), resumed the campaign
against the Emishi. Tamuramaro’s successful campaigns not only strength-
ened the court and its economy, but also proved that military professional-
ism was far more beneficial in protecting court interests.
The growth of a professional class of warriors led by a military aris-
tocracy was made possible by a process commonly known as imperial (or
dynastic) shedding. As the size of court families grew significantly during
the seventh to tenth centuries, they rid themselves of younger sons for
whom there was no room at court by sending them out from the court, af-
ter providing them with a new family name. This process resulted in the
formation of the two most important warrior families—Taira and Mi-
namoto—from whom branched most of Japan’s warrior families. The role184 Japan