build a new capital. In 794 this second city was laid out at Kyoto, a few miles north of Nara. Again the scale was grandiose, a rectangle some three by three and a half miles, and again the Chinese city wall and the western half of the city never materialized. But this second capital never disappeared, as did the first. It survived the vicissitudes of the ages, remaining the imperial capital of Japan until 1868, and the checkerboard pattern of the principal streets of Kyoto today still reflects accurately the Chinese-style city laid out over 1,000 years ago.
The creation of a central government in Japan based on Chinese models was an easier task than the creation of the Chinese type of provincial administration. Clan spirit and clan autonomy were still too strong to tolerate the direct rule of all parts of the land by a bureaucracy dispatched to the provincial centers from the court. But the Japanese at least created the outward forms of the Chinese provincial system. The land was divided into prefectures and sub-prefectures, and over these were placed officials with high-sounding titles. Since most of these provincial posts, however, were given to local aristocrats, control from the central government remained vague and probably subject to the tolerance of local leaders.
Perhaps the most daring step taken by the Japanese was an attempt to adopt the Chinese system of land ownership and taxation. In early T’ang China, agricultural land was in theory nationalized and distributed equally among the peasants, so that each adult tax-paying male could carry an equal share of the taxes. This he paid partly in produce and partly in labor, or