The official history of Japan from the age of the gods to 697, compiled in Chinese on the model of the Chinese dynastic histories. Its later books record the founding of the first grid-planned capitals, including the allocation of residential land in the new capital by rank.
The Nihon shoki was presented to the throne in 720, eight years after the Kojiki, and is the first of the six national histories. Its account of the reign of Empress Jitō describes the building of Fujiwara-kyō, the first Japanese capital laid out on the Chinese grid, which the court occupied in 694.
In the twelfth month of the fifth year of her reign (691) the empress decreed how the land of the new capital was to be divided: four blocks to the Minister of the Right, two to officials of the higher ranks, one to those below them, and to ordinary households a block, a half or a quarter according to their size. The principle that a family’s rank fixed the size of its plot in the grid governed Heijō-kyō and Heian-kyō after it.
The book, part by part
I Jitō 5 (691): the allotment of the new capital
Residential land in blocks and fractions of blocks, by rank and by the size of the household.
Rules: Land in the capital by rank