empires and dynasties: Asia and the Pacific 367 due to its divine descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu The Soga uji eventually took over the day-to-day affairs of the early Japanese state Following a war over the imperial succession in 587, the Yamato emperors—initially an empress— became symbolic heads of state and spent most of their time performing state Shinto rituals, while the uji were assigned specific tasks in the new imperial administration (including revenue management, religious rituals, and waging warfare) by the Soga Prince Shōtoku, who served as the court regent to the Yamato empress Prince Shōtoku (r 593–621) promoted the spread of Buddhism in Japan as a superior new form of magic as well as because of its importance in forming ties to contemporary China Prince Shōtoku thought that Buddhism played a key role in the renewal of the Chinese social order that promoted centralization of political power With Shōtoku’s encouragement, clan leaders in Japan competed with one another to erect lavish local shrines dedicated to the main Buddhist sects, each an extension of Buddhist sects based in China The central temples of these Buddhist sects in Japan were located in the imperial city of Nara The Nara temples served as centers from which the competing sects spread their influence among the clans The Buddhist priests and uji elite accepted their proper place in the new Yamato political and religious order After Prince Shōtoku died, the heads of several powerful uji, led by Fujiwara Kamatari, the head of the Nakatomi clan, planned and eventually staged a successful revolt in 645 coincident with the succession of a new emperor to the throne Subsequently Kamatari assumed a partnership with the new emperor, Tenchi, and as the head of the retitled Fujiwara family he implemented the new Taika (“great change”) Reforms that were intended to eliminate what remained of Japan’s old decentralized government Kamatari also established a new capital at Naniwa (now incorporated within the modern-day city of Osaka, south of Nara), which was modeled on the urban grid pattern of the contemporary Chinese Tang capital at Ch’angan The Taihō Code (702), which was implemented in 710 by Kamatari’s Fujiwara successors, further codified the new Japanese political order, formalizing the Yamato state structure that had emerged gradually over the previous century Nara became the new imperial capital in 710 following the death of Emperor Tenchi, ending the historical tradition that the Yamato court move each time an emperor died in order to avoid the ritual pollution associated with the deceased Nara was the site of the realm’s greatest Buddhist temples, such as the stunning Tōdai-ji (Eastern Great Temple) and its great statue of the Buddha, known as the Daibutsu The monks of six Nara-based sects competed for the patronage of the emperor and his elite but too often took this competi- tion into the streets of Nara, where subsequent records report that they regularly fought with one another as justification for the government’s fear over the growing importance of Buddhism An open affair between a Buddhist priest and the empress Shōtoku in the 750s reinforced public fears that Buddhism had become a threat to the civil order When the priest and the empress tried to dislodge the Fujiwara family’s control of the court, the imperial military intervened to physically occupy the Nara temples and to place the Nara priests under a form of house arrest With the death of the empress the new emperor Kammu (r 781–806) and his Fujiwara advisers decided in 784 to move the Japanese capital to Heian (modern-day Kyoto) at the northern end of the Yamato plain The move was completed in 794, leaving behind the tarnished reputation of the Nara court and the previously powerful Nara-based Buddhist sects To eliminate the negative influence of the Buddhist sects and female members of the imperial family, during the Heian imperial era (794–1185) only the Tendai and Shingon sects of Buddhism were officially recognized, and women were no longer allowed to hold the imperial throne as rulers in their own right The imperial authority of the Heian rulers reached its height in the 10th century, when the Fujiwara clan had exclusive management of the affairs of the court on the emperor’s behalf Under the Fujiwara family, which continued to dominate imperial government until 1160, the court became more and more insulated from the affairs of the countryside, and eventually the rural areas were no longer subject in fact to the direct authority of the court After 1185 a series of military strongmen called shoguns wielded ultimate political authority in Japan The shogun received his authority from the emperor after winning battles against armed opponents In theory, the emperor delegated the responsibility of running the Japanese imperial state to the shogun Under the decentralized system of the Kamakura shogunate (1185–1333), which was based in the city of Kamakura southeast of modern Tokyo, the regional samurai lords were vassals of the Kamakura shoguns The Kamakura court was administered by hereditary educated samurai Its authority depended on its negotiated alliances with local samurai rather than reassignments of loyal Kamakura samurai to military fiefs The emperors in Kyoto and the Kamakura shoguns competed for the support of local administrators, who controlled semiautonomous farming estates called shōen that had developed in the later imperial era The Kamakura shoguns were successful in repelling two Mongol invasions of Japan, in 1274 and 1281, respectively The shoguns had considerable help from the kamikaze (“divine winds”), severe typhoons that destroyed the invading