Heijō Palace

Listen for a moment. Wind moves through tall grass. A train hums somewhere across the field. Far off, a dog barks and a kite snaps in the breeze. Underfoot the ground is soft, flat, and wide open. The sky feels enormous here. It is hard to believe that this quiet green expanse was once the political heart of Japan. For most of the eighth century, emperors ruled from this exact spot. Officials, scribes, and servants hurried along wooden corridors where the grass now grows.

This is the site of Heijō Palace, the imperial compound of an ancient capital called Heijō-kyō. The capital was founded in 710, under Empress Genmei. It gave its name to a whole chapter of Japanese history — the Nara period. For roughly seventy years, this city was the centre of power. Then, in 784, the court moved away to a new capital. The palace was dismantled, its timber carried off, and the land slowly returned to rice paddies and fields.

To understand why the place looks like this, picture the planners of the early eighth century. Japan was looking hard at China. The Tang dynasty capital, Chang'an, was one of the largest cities on Earth. Its streets ran in a strict grid. Its palace sat at the northern edge, facing south over the city. Heijō-kyō copied that plan. The palace you are standing in sat at the top of the grid, and the emperor looked south over his capital and his people.

The palace grounds were roughly a square, about one kilometre on each side, with an extra section reaching out to the east. Inside were audience halls, government ministries, storehouses, kitchens, gardens, and the private quarters of the imperial family. Walls of rammed earth enclosed it all. Gates broke the walls at intervals. Thousands of people worked inside every day. Today, most of that world lies just beneath the grass, waiting in the soil.

If you came in from the south, you probably passed through the great red gate called Suzakumon. The original stood here as the formal entrance to the palace. In front of it, a wide ceremonial avenue ran straight south through the whole city. The gate you see now is a reconstruction, completed in 1998. Builders used traditional joinery and careful research into eighth-century techniques. Look at the deep, layered eaves and the bright vermilion columns. This colour was a sign of state power.

Now turn north and look across the field. The large hall rising in the distance is the reconstructed Former Imperial Audience Hall, called the Daigokuden. It was finished in 2010, for the 1300th anniversary of the capital's founding. In the Nara period, this was the most important building in the country. Emperors were enthroned here. Great New Year ceremonies took place here, with officials lined up in rank across the courtyard. Even rebuilt, its scale makes the open space around it feel deliberate.

Here is something many visitors do not expect. A working railway line runs right through the palace grounds. Trains of the Kintetsu line cross the field between the southern gate and the audience hall. The track was laid long before this site gained its modern protection. So an ancient imperial courtyard and a modern commuter railway share the same land. Wait a few minutes and you will see a train glide past, small against the long horizon.

Why is so much of this place empty? The answer is the reason it survived. After the court left, the palace was not covered by a later city. Farmers ploughed the land for centuries, but they did not build over it. Wooden buildings vanished, yet their foundations, post holes, and drainage channels stayed in the earth. In the twentieth century, scholars and local residents pushed to protect the site. Their work kept it open, and that openness is what you see today.

Since the mid-twentieth century, archaeologists have excavated here patiently, season after season. Their most remarkable finds are small. They are thin strips of wood called mokkan. Officials wrote on them with brush and ink. Tens of thousands have been recovered. Many are labels attached to goods sent to the capital as tax — dried fish, salt, rice, seaweed. Others are notes, records, even writing practice. Together they show the daily paperwork of an ancient government, written in the hands of ordinary clerks.

This was also a period of great writing and great faith. Japan's oldest surviving chronicle, the Kojiki, was completed in 712, while the court ruled from here. Poems collected in the anthology known as the Man'yōshū capture the life of this age. Emperor Shōmu, who reigned for part of this period, ordered the huge bronze Buddha at Tōdai-ji, across the city to the east. For a few years he even moved the court away from Heijō, before returning here.

As you walk, look closely at the ground. In some areas, the outlines of lost buildings are marked on the surface, so you can trace where walls and pillars once stood. In the eastern part of the grounds, a garden has been recreated with a winding pond and a pavilion. It shows the elegant setting where the court held banquets and wrote poems. There are also exhibition spaces on site that display excavated objects and models of the palace.

The site is also a living local space. On a fine afternoon you may see families with picnic blankets, children running on the grass, joggers on the paths, and people walking their dogs. In autumn, tall pampas grass turns silver and bends in the wind. In the evening, the low sun throws long shadows across the field and lights up the red columns. Very few royal capitals in the world have become such an ordinary, open park.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment and look from the southern gate to the audience hall. Fill in the space between them in your mind — the courtyards, the roof tiles, the lines of officials in coloured robes. Then notice what is really in front of you. Grass, gravel paths, a passing train, perhaps a crow on a fence post. The capital is gone, but its plan is still written into this ground. As you walk away, you are crossing it.