Heian Palace
The Heian Palace was the original imperial palace of Heian-kyō, then the capital of Japan. Both the palace and the city were constructed in the late 700s and were patterned on Chinese models and designs. The palace served as the imperial residence and the administrative centre for most of the Heian period.
Located in the north-central section of the city, the palace consisted of a large, walled, rectangular Greater Palace, which contained several ceremonial and administrative buildings including the government ministries. Inside this enclosure was the separately walled [|residential compound] of the emperor, or the Inner Palace. In addition to the emperor's living quarters, the Inner Palace contained the residences of the imperial consorts and buildings more closely linked to the person of the emperor.
The original role of the palace was to manifest the centralised government model adopted by Japan from China in the 7th century – known as the ritsuryō system, where the bureaucracy under the emperor was headed by the great council of state and its subsidiary Eight Ministries. The palace was designed to provide an appropriate setting for the emperor's residence, the conduct of great affairs of state, and the accompanying ceremonies. While the residential function of the palace continued until the 12th century, the facilities built for grand state ceremonies began to fall into disuse by the 9th century. This was due to both the abandonment of several statutory ceremonies and procedures and the transfer of several remaining ceremonies into the smaller-scale setting of the Inner Palace.
From the mid-Heian period, the palace suffered several fires and other disasters. During reconstructions, emperors and some of the office functions resided outside the palace. This, along with the general loss of political power of the court, acted to further diminish the importance of the palace as the administrative centre. In 1227 the palace burned down and was never rebuilt. The site was built over so that almost no trace of it remains. Knowledge of the palace is thus based on contemporary literary sources, surviving diagrams and paintings, and limited excavations.
Location
The palace was located at the northern centre of the rectangular city Heian-kyō, following the Chinese model of the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an. The model had been adopted already for the Heijō Palace in the earlier capital Heijō-kyō and the short-lived interim capital of Nagaoka-kyō.The main entrance to the palace was the gate Suzakumon, which formed the northern terminus of the great Suzaku Avenue, which ran through the centre of the city from the gate Rajōmon. The palace thus faced south and presided over the symmetrical urban plan of Heian-kyō. In addition to the Suzakumon, the palace had 13 other gates located symmetrically along the side walls. A major avenue led to each of the gates, except for the three along the northern side of the palace, which was coterminous with the northern boundary of the city.
The south-eastern corner of the Greater Palace was located in the middle of the present-day Nijō Castle.
History
Early history
Less than ten years after a presumably politically motivated move of the capital from Heijō-kyō toNagaoka-kyō, Emperor Kanmu decided to move the capital again, likely due to frequent flooding of the Nagaoka-kyō site. In 794 the court moved into this new capital of Heian-kyō, where it was to stay for more than 1000 years. The palace was the first and most important structure to be erected at the new capital, but it was not completely ready by the time of the move; the Great Audience Hall was completed in 795, and the government office in charge of its construction was disbanded in 805, though work on the place was still incomplete. Construction of the palace and imperial family residences was a major expenditure for Kanmu's administration, accounting for the majority of revenues gathered during his reign, according to a 10th-century source. The powerful immigrant Hata family may have influenced and financially supported the decision to move the capital to Heian-kyō, closer to its power base. Later sources claim that the new imperial residence occupied the site of a former Hata leader's residence.
Two of the most important official sections of the palace complex, the grand Chinese-style Official Compound and Reception Compound, started to fall into disuse quite early on. This paralleled the decline of the elaborate Chinese-inspired ritsuryō government processes and bureaucracy, many of which were gradually either abandoned or reduced to empty forms while de facto decision making moved into the hands of most powerful families and new extralegal offices.
Partly as the consequence of these developments the real administrative centre of the complex moved gradually to the emperors residential Inner Palace, or Dairi.
As activity was concentrated in the Dairi, other sections of the Greater Palace began to be regarded as increasingly unsafe, especially by night. One reason may be the prevalent superstition of the period: uninhabited buildings were avoided for fear of spirits and ghosts, and even the great Buraku-in compound was thought to be haunted. In addition, the level of security maintained at the palace went into decline, and by the early 11th century only one palace gate, the Yōmeimon in the east, appears to have been guarded. Hence burglary and even violent crime became a problem within the palace by the first half of 11th century.
Decreasing use
Fires were a constant problem as the palace compound was constructed almost entirely of wood. The Buraku-in was destroyed by a fire in 1063 and was never rebuilt. The Daigokuden was reconstructed after fires in 876, 1068 and in 1156 despite its limited use. After the major fire of 1177 destroyed much of the Greater Palace, the Daigokuden was never rebuilt.Starting in 960, the Dairi was also repeatedly destroyed by fires, but it was always rebuilt, and it continued to be used as the official imperial residence until the late 12th century. According to historian William H. McCullough, the Dairi fires were frequent enough that arson is "generally assumed". During the periods of rebuilding, the emperors frequently had to stay at their secondary palaces within the city. Often these secondary palaces were provided by the powerful Fujiwara clan family, which especially in the latter part of the Heian period exercised de facto control of politics by providing consorts to successive emperors. Thus the residences of the emperors' maternal grandparents started to usurp the residential role of the palace even before the end of the Heian period. The institution of rule by retired emperors, or the insei system, from 1086 further added to the declining importance of the palace, as retired emperors exercised power from their own residential palaces inside and outside the city.
Late history
In the aftermath of the 1156 Hōgen rebellion, Emperor Go-Shirakawa ordered the rebuilding of portions of the palace as part of an effort to reclaim more power to the emperor and restart some ceremonial practices. Go-Shirakawa soon abdicated in favor of his son, Emperor Nijo, and both were attacked and held captive in the palace during the Heiji rebellion. They escaped a few weeks later, and forces loyal to them retook the palace and ended the rebellion.After a fire in 1177, the original palace complex was abandoned and emperors resided in smaller palaces within the city and villas outside it. In 1227 a fire destroyed what remained of the Dairi, and the old Greater Palace went into essentially complete disuse. In 1334 Emperor Go-Daigo issued an edict to rebuild the Greater Palace, but no resources were available to support this and the project was not completed.
Though the Heian palace fell into total disuse, Heian-kyō remained the capital until 1868, with the name Kyoto applied to it starting in the eleventh century. The present Kyoto Imperial Palace is located immediately to the west of the site of the Tsuchimikado Mansion, the Fujiwara residence in the north-eastern corner of the city that increasingly functioned as a temporary imperial residence and eventually developed into a new permanent palace. The ruined site of Jingi-kan is the longest-surviving known part of the Heian palace and apparently remained in some use until 1585.
Primary sources
While the palace itself has been completely destroyed, a significant amount of information regarding it has been obtained from contemporary and almost contemporary sources. The Heian Palace figures as a setting in many Heian period literary texts, both fiction and non-fiction. These provide important information on the palace itself, court ceremonies and functions held there and everyday routines of the courtiers living or working there. Notable examples include the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, the so-called Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon and the chronicles Eiga Monogatari and Ōkagami. In addition, paintings in certain emakimono picture scrolls depict scenes that took place at the palace and similar aristocratic dwellings; the Genji Monogatari Emaki, dating from about 1130, is perhaps the best-known example. There are also partially damaged maps of the palace from the 10th and 12th centuries showing the layout and function of the buildings within the Dairi. Modern archaeological study of the palace site has been hampered by the development of urban Kyoto over the palace ground ruins, but a few parts have been excavated, including the Burakuden.Greater Palace ()
The Daidairi was a walled rectangular area extending approximately from north to south between the first and second major east–west avenues Ichijō ōji and Nijō ōji and from west to east between the Nishi Ōmiya ōji and Ōmiya ōji north-south avenues.The three main structures within the Greater Palace were the Official Compound, the Reception Compound and the Inner Palace.