Dynastic History | Heijō Palace Suzakumon 朱雀門 — The Tribute Walked In On Foot

The court moved to Heijō 平城 on the tenth day of the third month of Wadō 3 — 13 April 710 by the Julian reckoning, though the lunisolar date is the one the record actually gives. The 続日本紀, compiled by the same state some eighty years afterwards, marks the move in a single line.

The grid that followed ran roughly 4.3 km east to west and 4.7 km north to south, and Suzakumon 朱雀門 stood at the head of it, the point where the palace enclosure opened onto the avenue that gave the city its axis. Building the capital and supplying it was an obligation rather than a purchase. Under the ritsuryō codes a household owed 調, paid in cloth or in one of a schedule of regional products, and 庸, owed in labour. District officials selected the men who carried the tribute goods to the capital on foot, and the carrying counted as the labour owed. The people assessed for the tax delivered it themselves.

Nothing of the eighth-century gate survives above ground. What stands is a reconstruction completed in 1998 on the excavated site, and the difference is worth holding onto: the timber, the tile and the vermilion are twentieth-century work. The Kintetsu Nara line crosses the palace grounds just north of the gate, so commuter trains run between Suzakumon and the hall it once faced. The surrounding park is open and free to enter.

📸 Cover: the 1998 reconstruction of Suzakumon, not the eighth-century gate; photograph by Tokumeigakarinoaoshima, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons