The Heian capital (Kyoto) of the tenth century, reduced to one ward on each side of Suzaku-ōji: blocks of forty jō and avenues of true width, the palace at the north, the Rashōmon at the south with the two state temples beside it, the East and West Markets, nobles’ shinden estates and commoners’ row houses.
Emperor Kanmu moved the court to Heian-kyō in 794, and the new capital was laid out, like Nara before it, on the model of Tang Chang’an. The Engishiki records its measurements in jō of about three metres: blocks (machi) forty jō square, lanes of four jō between them, avenues of eight to twelve, and Suzaku-ōji, the central avenue running from the palace gate to the Rashōmon, twenty-eight (some 84 m). The town keeps these true, but has one ward (bō) on each side of Suzaku-ōji instead of four, and five rows of blocks south of the palace instead of twenty-eight.
As at Chang’an and not as in the Kaogong ji, the palace stands at the north edge, and the emperor faces south over the whole city: the Left Capital to the east and the Right Capital to the west, each with its market and its state temple (Tō-ji and Sai-ji, flanking the Rashōmon). There was no city wall. Land was granted by rank, following a decree of 691 in the Nihon shoki: a whole block for a noble, who built on it a shinden estate arranged, as the Sakuteiki directs, round a south court and a pond fed from the east; a thirty-second of a block for a commoner, whose row house faced the street. By the late tenth century the western half was emptying while the eastern half filled; the town shows the west thinly settled.
Temple buildings follow the proportional system of the carpenters’ manual Shōmei; the Hall of State is built in the Chinese manner of the Yingzao fashi. Click any building to see its rule and its source.