Heian-kyo ̄: from royal center to metropolealso appears for the first time. According to Munetada, urban dwellers of all strata, even the mid-
dling nobility, were participating energetically, and Toda Yoshimi considers the field- dancing
craze of summer 1096 to have been “the first social movement in the history of city Kyoto.”^46
Ministers like Munetada and Masafusa certainly wanted it suppressed, but since potential enforc-
ers themselves were dancing in the streets, that was impossible. The court was clearly not in full
control of capital streets.
Later Heian Kyoto—the twelfth century
Historians agree that in the late Heian capital a few great aristocratic households had become
hubs of political and economic influence—Kuroda Toshio has called them “gates of power”
(kenmon; see Chapter 8 in this volume). Following Kuroda’s lead, historians frequently character-
ize late Heian Kyoto as “the gates- of-power city” (kenmon toshi).^47 The premier establishments
were those of the senior retired monarch and the regent who cooperated in leading the court. As
their sources of wealth and power, they depended on incomes from provincial estates as well as
from proprietary provinces (chigyōkoku) for which they appointed the governors and from which
they took taxes. Their clients included wealthy provincial governors as well as lower officials
who did their bidding as housemen (kenin). They resided in walled palaces that were well pro-
tected, in contrast with the original Residential Palace of the sovereign, which had not been
walled in. These great households kept treasures, supplies, and workshops in clusters of ware-
houses abutting their homes, and their status was such that they could shut out most authority
other than their own.
Geographically the shape of the capital was changing too. In Shirakawa and Rokuhara to the
east of the Kamo River, and to the south where the Kamo and Katsura rivers met at Toba, new
royal retirement palaces were built and members of the monarch’s faction as well as his servants
and provisioners erected their own homes nearby. Meanwhile the Fujiwara Regents’ house
(sekkanke) developed its own retirement palace, temples, and burial sites at Uji, south of the
capital, while the northern hills above First Ward Avenue were called home by lesser noble
households.^48 At the same time the Right Capital was less populous, since most of the population
was living in the Left Capital, differentiated between an upper elite sector and a lower sector for
craftsmen and merchants from the Fifth to the Ninth wards. A good sense of this twelfth- century
Heian- kyō, which archaeologist Yamada Kunikazu has dubbed “a galactic capital” (eiseikyō)
because of its satellite suburbs, is afforded by the sizable model created for exhibit in 1994, on the
occasion of the 1200th anniversary of the royal capital.
In two recent books Yamada has elaborated this process of expansion out to the new satellites,
which Matthew Stavros calls “new palace- temple towns.”^49 Beginning in 1077, Shirakawa Tennō
started constructing his Hosshōji palace- temple complex across the Kamo River from Second
Ward Avenue. When its nine- story octagonal tower was completed, Hosshōji became the capi-
tal’s tallest landmark, visible far to the east as travelers on the Tōkaidō circuit road approached
Kyoto.
In its royal patron’s mind, the Hosshōji palace- temple complex likely represented the grand
success of his new royal line: Shirakawa’s heir was his son Horikawa (1079–1107; r. 1186–1107);
and Horikawa’s successor was Shirakawa’s grandson, Toba (1103–1156, r. 1107–1123). More-
over Hosshōji, like Tōdaiji, Tōji, and Saiji in the past, served as a realm- protecting ritual center
for official liturgies performed by prelates and other elite monks. It gave Shirakawa increased
visibility as the Buddhist monarch of the realm, like great Nara rulers had been.^50 Great excite-
ment has been stirred in recent years by excavations at Hosshōji, discovered underneath the
Kyoto city zoo, as well as by discoveries of the gridded zone at Shirakawa. Likely, builders meant