from the Chinese prototypes. But the wonder is not that the Japanese fell short of complete success in creating a Chinese type of central government in Yamato. The surprising thing is that they had the ambition and energy to undertake such a gigantic and grandiose task, and that they already had sufficient understanding of the principles and mastery of the mechanism of Chinese government to create a fair semblance of its complex central administration.
One gains some idea of the scope of the undertaking and the degree of success achieved by considering the capital cities founded by the Japanese as part of their attempt to transform Japan into a little T’ang. In earlier ages there had been no cities, towns, nor even any semi-permanent buildings. Now the Japanese attempted to build a capital city comparable to Ch’ang-an, the great capital of T’ang, a metropolis of close to one million population and very probably the greatest city in the world at that time.
Ch’ang-an was a great rectangle in shape, some five miles by six miles, surrounded by massive walls. A magnificent palace stood at the northern end of the city and broad straight thoroughfares divided it neatly in checkerboard fashion. The first Japanese imitation of Ch’ang-an was undertaken in the year 710 near the modern town of Nara in the Yamato plain. The Japanese naturally reduced the scale, allowing the new capital an area of some two and a half by three miles. They failed to build the customary Chinese city wall, and the population of the capital was so far short of the goal that the western half of the city was never built up at all; but broad thoroughfares were laid out, and