Fujiwara Palace
The Fujiwara Palace site is the remains of an ancient capital city located in the environs of Takadono-chōand Daigo-chō in the city of Kashihara, and according to the Nihon shoki chronicle the move to Fujiwara
from the Asuka palace was made in 694, and it was used until the capital moved to Nara in 710. Fujiwara
was the first capital city built in Japan following the Chinese model, and was also significant as the capitalwhere the Taihō Code of criminal and administrative law was drawn up and enacted.
In excavations conducted between December 1934 and August 1943 by the Nihon Kobunka Kenkyūjo(Japan Ancient Culture Research Institute), the location and scale of the State Halls Compound, including
the feature known as Ōmiya dodan as the remains of the Imperial Audience Hall, were basicallyascertained. In March 1952 it was nationally designated a Special Historic Site, although the area of theentire palace was still unconfirmed, and when a plan was drawn up for a bypass of national Route 165 torun through the inferred area of the Fujiwara Palace, an investigation by the Nara Prefectural Board ofEducation centering on the proposed roadway was conducted from December 1966 to March 1969 in order
to confirm the palace district. In this excavation of the Fujiwara Palace site, rows of embedded pillars(features SC175, SC258, SC140) and outer moats (SD170, SD145) delineating the palace district to theeast, west, and north were detected, and a square area approximately 1 km on a side and centering on
Kōmon, the south gate to the Imperial Audience Hall compound, was ascertained as the palace district.
Further, based on the determination of the palace district, the area of the Fujiwara Capital was inferred tohave been established as bounded by the roadways of Shimotsumichi, Nakatsumichi, Yoko Ōji, and Abe
Yamadamichi (known as the “Kishi theory” of the capital). That the development of the ancient capital in
the seventh–eighth centuries from Asuka through Fujiwara to Nara was becoming concretely understood
was a tremendous academic achievement.
The recovery of wooden documents (totaling approximately 2,100 items) in excavations at the Fujiwara
Palace is worth special mention. The first discovery of a wooden document in Japan was at the Nara Palacesite in 1961, and as the wooden documents of the Fujiwara Palace are one stage earlier than those of theNara Palace, they are valuable historical materials for studying conditions prior to the enactment of theTaihō Code.
Subsequently, as investigations of the capital district centering on the Fujiwara Palace site were carriedout, results came forth which substantiated the Kishi theory of the Fujiwara Capital. One the other hand,road features on the same plan as within the capital have been discovered repeatedly in areas lying beyond
the inferred capital district, and it has become certain that the actual Fujiwara Capital extended over a wider
area than held by the Kishi theory. With detection of the western limit of the capital district at theTsuchihashi site in Kashihara City, and the eastern limit at the Kaminoshō site in Sakurai City, at present
the Fujiwara Capital is regarded as having been a square district centered on the palace and consisting of agrid of 10 × 10 east–west and north–south major avenues.