By the time Emperor Shōmu’s daughter came to the throne in 749 CE the country’s economy was in ruins, bankrupted by Shōmu’s temple-building projects. Famines and epidemics put an unbearable burden on the peasants. Meanwhile the Buddhist establishment grew stronger and stronger.

Excerpted from The Shortest History of Japan. Reprinted with permission from Pan Macmillan India.

Empress Kōken was as devout as her father and installed many Buddhist priests at court. Encouraged by this imperial sponsorship, the clergy had become politicised and spent their time in intrigue and corruption. Temples paid no taxes, owned huge estates and exploited the peasants who worked their lands.

It came to a head when the empress fell ill and was cured by a faith-healing monk called Dōkyō. He came from a lowranking clan and had lived as an ascetic and practised meditation and sutra-chanting, which he claimed gave him magical powers. He soon ended up in the empress’s bed and started handing out political advice.

The Fujiwara, who ruled as regents, hated this upstart. The chancellor, Fujiwara no Nakamaro, furious at having his power undermined, led a rebellion. The empress was an independent and strong-willed woman. She raised an army and captured and executed Nakamaro.

In thanks for this deliverance, she ordered a million stupas, miniature wooden pagodas, to be made. Rolled up inside each was a prayer printed either from bronze plates or wood blocks. This was one of the first examples of printing in the world, just after it was invented in Tang China and 700 years before the Gutenberg press in the west. The empress had the stupas distributed among ten great monasteries.

She now took the reins of power into her own hands and promoted Dōkyō to chancellor, then to Priestly Emperor. He commissioned the building of Buddhist temples, gave them extravagant donations and banned meat and fish from the empress’s table. 

Then he went too far. He persuaded the oracle of a venerated shrine in Kyushu to predict that Japan would enjoy perpetual peace if he, Dōkyō, were made emperor. It was extraordinary hubris to challenge the imperial family’s sacrosanct claim to the throne. 

The empress sent her own envoy to the oracle, which this time declared that no one outside the imperial lineage could take the throne. Dōkyō had the envoy banished and continued to enjoy the empress’s patronage. But a year later she died. He was stripped of his titles and banished from Nara, escaping execution only because it was the gravest of sins to kill a priest. No one wanted to risk the vengeance of the dead. 

Empress Kōken was one of the most powerful women in Japanese history. After her death the Fujiwara reasserted their authority and declared that Buddhist priests would no longer interfere in affairs of state. They decreed that henceforth the succession would pass to men, as females were too easily influenced. It was to be another 900 years before a woman sat on the throne again. And the capital would have to move away from Nara’s meddling priests.

Escaping the power of the priests

In 784 CE the new emperor, Kanmu, ordered the building of a new capital at Nagaoka, near present-day Kyoto, to escape the bad omens and ceremonial defilement accumulated at Nara. The real aim was to drive the Buddhist establishment out of state politics; while the capital moved, the Buddhist temples and their officials stayed put. 

Kanmu has gone down in history as Japan’s greatest emperor. A man of drive and ambition, he was as far-sighted and strong-willed as his contemporary Charlemagne on the other side of the globe. He was determined to solve the problems besetting his country and to free the throne from the influence of the Buddhist temples or anyone else. 

The new imperial court was on a large hill with rivers running to each side, convenient for water transport. Every province sent their tax revenues for the year to Nagaoka together with the materials needed for the construction. Three hundred thousand men worked day and night, with barely enough food and clothing. Just five months after they started, the emperor moved into the new palace. 

But the project was jinxed from the start. The court had barely moved in when the Fujiwara official in charge – the principal architect of the new city and the royal favourite—was murdered. Kanmu’s brother, Prince Sawara, was blamed, exiled, then strangled. Shortly afterwards Kanmu’s twelve year-old son fell ill, possessed, it was said, by the prince’s angry spirit. No matter how many offerings were made or prayers sent up he did not get better. Then came terrible drought and famine. The streets of the capital were clogged with sick and dying people. 

The ghost was hastily promoted posthumously to emperor and the child recovered but it was obvious that the haunted capital had to be abandoned. 

In 793 CE, under cover of a hunting trip, joined by his royal diviners, Kanmu set out to look for a new location for his capital. This time it would be perfect. And so a new era began with the building of a glorious city, which was to be the capital for a thousand years and which we now know as Kyoto.

Lesley Downer is an author, journalist and historian. She is the author of The Shogun Quartet, Geisha: The Remarkable Truth Behind the Fiction and The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family.