Discussion Of The Innovation Of The Ritsuryo System In Kanmu Dynasty

In the end of 8th century, the Ritsuryol system in ancient Japan was unstable, showing from the destroying land nationalization and centralization. After a series of politic struggle, the dominant position of the Tenmu faction was replaced by the Tenchi faction, the Mikado Kanmu created a new dynasty. In the face of the worse Ritsuryo system, the Mikado Kanmu made a sequence of severe reform to recover the Ritsutyo system after his enthronement. On the other hand, he began to transfer of capital and suppress Emishi aiming for consolidating his new dynasty and showing authority. However, the result was not ideal for the long duration of time and tremendous amount of labour and resource, which had aggravated the fund shortage and hard living condition as well as obstructed the innovation of the Ritsuryo system. In this case, the Mikado Kanmu changed to a mild attitude during the process of innovation in order to protect land nationalization. This paper is to discuss an attitude change of the Mikado Kanmu towards the innovation of the Ritsuryo system in different periods of governing, through combining the innovation with other two important events-transfering of capital and suppressing Emishi.