Historical Materials No.12
NARA NATIONAL CULTURAL PROPERTIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE WOODEN TABLETS FROM THE FUJIWARA PALACE SITE I
English Summary
Nara, 1978
PUBLICATIONS ON HISTORICAL MATERIALS, VOLUME XII, SUPPLEMENTUM
CONTENTS
page
General Remarks
Chapter I Introduction 3
Chapter II Sites Where Wooden Tablets Were Recovered 14
1 Area 6AJE (near center gate on north side of palace) 15
2 Area 6AJF (periphery of daigokuden) 21
3 Area 6AJH (center and western gates on south side of palace; parts of “7-jo, 1-bo of right capital” and part of Suzaku-oji) 24
4 Area 6AJL (government offices at western edge of palace) 27
5 Area 6AJC (east outer moat) 29
Appendix On Forms of Notation Used on Wooden Tablets from the Fujiwara Palace 30
Descriptive Text
* Wooden tablets from Area 6AJE (pit SK1903) drainage ditches SD145 and SD1901; 45
* Wooden tablets from Area 6AJF (building SB530, drainage ditches SD105, SD850, SD1680) 94
* Wooden tablets from Area 6AJH (South outer and inner moats SD501, SD502; well SE1850) 99
* Wooden tablets from Area 6AJL (well SE1105; west inner moat SD1400) 107
* Wooden tablets from Area 6AJC (east outer moat SD170) 109
Index xv
English Summary i
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Map of kori （評） local administrative districts in 7th century
2. Overall view of Fujiwara Palace site; land divisions
3. Sketch map of places in Fujiwara Palace where mokkan were recovered
4. Sketch map of places in vicinity of central gate on north side where mokkan were recovered
5. Cross-section of north outer moat SD145
6. Map of mokkan recovery sites in north outer moat
7. Photograph of north outer moat SD145 from east
8. Sketch map of places in vicinity of SD105 where mokkan were recovered
9. Cross-section of SD105
10. Photograph of SD105
11. Cross-section of SD1680
12. Cross-section of SD502 near center gate on south side
13. Cross-section of SD502 near west gate on south side
14. Photograph of SE1850
15. Photograph of SE1105
16. Cross-section of SD1400
TABLES
Table 1. Number of Wooden Tablets from Each Excavated Area
Table 2. Numbers of Different Types of Tablets Categorized by Content of Notation
Table 3. List of kori （評） Administrative Units
Table 4. A chronological table of Wooden Tablets
PLATES OF EXCAVATED TABLETS
Site Category Particulars Tablet No.
1. SK1903, SE1850 Shipping label 3; 451
2. SK1903 Documents Includes characters 薗職 (office in charge of gardens and landscaping) and 猪使門(center gate on north side of Fujiwara Palace) 1-2
3. SK1903 Fragments, practice, calligraphy 4-7
4. SK1903 Documents Reports submitted to high officials with titles 卿 (kyo, state minister) and 大夫 (taifu, high steward) 8-10
5. SD145 〃 Include characters 塞職 (office in charge of check stations) and 暦作 (document produced by a calendar maker) 11-16
6. SD145 〃 Includes characters 中務省 (nakatsukasasho, government ministry concerned with the personal commands of the emperor) and 西一倉 17-25
Wooden Tablets from the Fujiwara Palace Site
This report deals with wooden tablets unearthed between 1969 and March 1977 at the site of the Fujiwara Palace, in the course of various excavation surveys carried out by the Nara National Cultural Properties Research Institute.
The Fujiwara Palace was built in 694 and used as the emperor’s residence and government headquarters until 710, when the capital was moved to the Nara Palace.
Excavation surveys at the palace site were carried out by the Nihon Kobunka Kenkyujo between 1934 and 1938, and by the Nara Prefectural Education Committee in 1966 and 1967. There were discovered during the latter excavations more than two thousand slender wooden tablets bearing a variety of notations. The content of these tablets, known to archaeologists and historians as mokkan, has been discussed in the Nara Prefectural Education Committee publications Fujiwara-kyu and Fujiwara-kyu shutsudo mokkan gaiho(l969). The present report thus deals only with those mokkan unearthed subsequently at the Fujiwara Palace site.
The Fujiwara Palace, was located at the northern edge of what is generally known as the Asuka Region (within Nara Prefecture), home of a large number of ancient palace sites. It was the last of the imperial palaces built in the Asuka Region. As a consequence, it also had the most highly evolved structural plan among the various palaces erected there after the late 6th century. The Fujiwara Palace was also distinguishable from previous palaces in that it was surrounded on three sides by a true capital city methodically planned and laid out with residential areas for the inhabitants. The Fujiwara Palace was indeed the largest in scale and the best equipped of the imperial palaces in the Asuka Region, but in comparison to the Nara Palace, newly built in 710, it was still in many respects incomplete.
One may say that the Fujiwara Palace not only represented a transition m the evolving styles of palace construction between the various Asuka palaces and the Nara Palace, but also since it was built during a period of transition between the still immature ancient Japanese nation state of the 7th century and what was considered to be the more perfected nation-state of the 8th century, based on the ritsuryo legal system, it may be said to have been characterized by transitional elements related to the changes in the society of the times. The content of the notations on the mokkan unearthed from the Fujiwara Palace site may thus be seen to tell us something not only about activities within the palace itself but also about the surrounding society.
For the study of Japan's ancient history, the significance of the mokkan unearthed from the Fujiwara Palace site is very great in that these wooden tablets shed additional light on the period just prior to the “completion” of Japan’s ancient nation-state. Until the discovery of these mokkan, the only primary source materials for researching the history of the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th century, that is to say the period during which the Fujiwara Palace was in use, were the officially compiled histories Nihon shoki and Shoku Nihongi (compiled in the 8th and 9th centuries), plus a very few other ancient writings and a few inscriptions on stone and metal. Due to this paucity of historical source materials, the discovery of large numbers of mokkan during the excavation surveys treated in this report has been of very great significance for the study of the period in question.
The total number of mokkan unearthed during the excavations of the Nara National Cultural Properties Research Institute is 787, but we have dealt in this report with only 521 of them, omitting shavings and fragments whose notations are illegible or which have only very few remaining traces of inked characters. Of the latter number, 306, whose notations have been successfully deciphered, are listed in the “Descriptive Text” section of the Japanese language report, together with explanatory notes. The present report lists not only those mokkan unearthed during excavation surveys within the area of the Fujiwara Palace itself, but also mokkan which were unearthed during excavations of residential sectors of the Fujiwara-kyo (the residential district contiguous to the palace on the south) and which have been determined to be related to palace activities. The mokkan dealt with in this report were recovered from such structural remains as ditches, pits and wells, within either the area of the palace itself or the residential sector to the south of it. (See Diagram 3.) As shown in the following table, there are a total of 17 sites, in 5 survey areas, which have yielded mokkan.
TABLE 1. Number of Mokkan from Various Sites
Surveyed Area Survey Number Structural Remains Number of Mokkan (No. Catalogued in This Report in Parenthesis)
6AJE (Near center gate on north side)
No. 18 SD145, SD143, SD1901A·B, SKI 903 570 (409)
6AJF (Periphery of daigokuden)
No. 2 SB530 2 (2)
No. 4 SD105, SD850 49 (35)
No. 11 SD1680 6 (2)
6AJH (Center gate on south side ; area near western gate on south side ; area of “7-jo,
1-bo, of right capital” and adjoining sector of No. Suzaku-oji)
No. 1 SD501, SD502 27 (10)
No. 17 SE1850, SD1952 10 (7)
No. 19 SD2030, 2 (0)
No. 19-2 SD502 59 (21)
6AJL (Area of government offices at western edge of palace)
No. 5 SE1105 3 (3)
No. 10 SD1400 4 (4)
6AJC (East outer moat)
No. 18-7 No.19-1 SD170 55 (28)
Relevant structural remains and important mokkan from each of the five survey areas are given as follows.
1) Area 6AJE. The excavations in question were carried out in the central portion of the northern edge of the Fujiwara Palace. They yielded remains of the northern center gale: of an outer moat; of a pit 15 meters east of the center gate; of an inner moat within the center gate; of a road and flanking gutters in use prior to the construction of the gate; and of a drainage ditch (SD1901 · A) which ran east of this road, also prior to the gate construction. A total of 570 mokkan were recovered from the outer moat, the pit 15 meters east of the gate, and drainage ditch SD 1901 A. There are four important points to be noted concerning the content of these mokkan. Firstly, some of the tablets unearthed from the disposal pit bear the name of a palace gate plus the character 市, meaning “market.” The names of the gates mentioned are 猪使門 (ikaimon) and 蝮王門 (Tajihiman), which seem to correspond to the 偉鑒門 (ikanmon) and 達智門 (tatchimon) of the Heian Palace. This is an important new discovery, since in the historical materials available heretofore, the only known Fujiwara Palace gate name had been 海犬養門 (amainukaimon). The above-mentioned notations are also important in that they refer to a market, or markets, within the Fujiwara capital. The fact that the character for “market” is not accompanied by characters specifying “east” or “west” makes it possible to hypothesize that there was perhaps a period when at the Fujiwara capital there were not separate eastern and western markets (as at Heijo-kyo), but a market set up in a single location.
Secondly, among the mokkan recovered from the disposal pit and the outer moat, there appear names of certain government bureaus which differ from those established in the Taiho-ryo of 701. Examples are 薗職 and 塞職, apparently concerned with gardens and check stations, respectively. These names, which were, it seems, in use prior to the enforcement of the Taiho-ryo, have become important for the study of the process through which the bureaucratic structure of the ritsuryo system was established.
Thirdly, among those mokkan used as shipping labels for taxes in kind, two examples recovered from the outer moat bear the term 調 (mitsugi), in use prior to the enforcement of the Taiho-ryo. These are the first tangible examples of the actual use of the term which have come to light, and are extremely important for researching the process of establishing the ritsuryo tax system, perfected in the 8th century.
Fourthly, a large number of the mokkan recovered from the autor moat bear the character 評, to denote the unit of local administration known as kori. This was an orthography in use prior to the Taiho-ryo. These, together with similar examples unearthed in excavations by the Nara Prefectural Education Committee in 1966 and 1967, are important for researching the system of local administration at the end of the 7th century.
2) Area 6AJF. The excavations here were carried out on the periphery of precinct the daigokuden, or imperial council hall, constituting the central part of the Fujiwara Palace. Here were discovered two drainage ditches (SD105, SD850) running from south to north outside the eastern peripheral area surrounding the area of the daigokuden proper; also the remains of a building (SB530) utilizing foundation stones; and also drainage ditch SD1680, which corresponds to SD105 to the west of the daigokuden. It was possible to recover mokkan from all three of the abovementioned drainage ditches, and also from the holes dug for the foundation stones of SB530. The total number of mokkan from the four sites is 56. Noteworthy among these wooden tablets is one from SD105 bearing the name 長谷部首麻呂 (“Hasebe no obitomaro”) and shipping labels from SD1680 bearing the characters 知母 (yamashi) denoting a kind of medicinal herb.
3) Area 6AJH. Excavations here covered areas near the center and western gates on the south side, as well as a part of the residential sector known as “7-jo, 1-bo, of the right capital” and a part of the central boulevard Suzaku-oji. Mokkan were recovered from outer moat SD501 and inner moat SD502 on the south side of the palace; also from well SE1850 in the above-mentioned residential sector; from gutter SD2030 bordering a street in the same sector; and from gutter SD1952 running along the west side of Suzaku-oji. As especially interesting examples among these various mokkan are one from SD502, near the western gate on the south side of the palace, giving the name of a certain government office （宮守官） that does not appear elsewhere in written historical materials, and one from SE1850 which lists the names of various Buddhist monks.
4) Area 6AJL. Excavations here were carried out at the western extremity of the palace precincts, in two sub-areas once occupied by government offices, adjoining the southern ends of the supposed sites of the center and southern gates on the west side, respectively. Near the center gate were discovered remains of a complex of government offices consisting of four buildings noteworthy for the relatively long ridge direction. Between the two westernmost buildings of this group, aligned from north to south, was discovered a well (SE1105). In the area to the south of the supposed site of the southern gate on the west side, there were discovered remains of an inner moat SD1400 running along the west side from south to north, and a large fence along the west side of the palace (SA258), A total of 7 mokkanwere recovered from the remains of well SE-1105 and inner moat SD1400.
5) Area 6AJC. Here parts of the palace's eastern outer moat (SD170) were surveyed in two different places, both of which yielded mokkan. Although the two sectors of the moat surveyed were small in area, a total of 55 mokkan were recovered. Noteworthy among them are notations mentioning nuhi (奴碑, slaves) being summoned by omiya （大宮）.
昭和五十三年一月三十一日 発行
藤原宮木簡一 解説
奈良国立文化財研究所史料第十二冊
