Fuchu ruins

About Kinokuni

During the Ritsuryo period (in the mid-7^th to 10^th centuries) there used to be provincial capitals (Kou) all around the nation which were similar to the prefectural governments today. There are documents from the Heian period that has all the county names written on them. These are called “Kou” in Japanese. We still call these places where the capitals used to be by using the kanji characters “国“ and/or “府”. If you find a name of a place with these kanji characters, there is a chance that the place must have been where the provincial capital used to be back in the old days. Centuries later, much excavational investigating had led to discover what the Kous were like. All the Kous’ main buildings were built facing the south and have front and/or back halls on either side of the main building. At the front of the main building, there were east and west halls arranged symmetrically with a wide front yard in the middle. Sometimes they covered the front yard with pebbles. There was a south gate at the south center entrance, and the researchers have found out that they had three other gates on each direction. There used to be residences for the public servants and warehouses around the area.

The Kou of Kinokuni is considered to have been located at Fuchu in Nagusa area.

It is thought that the government office was placed somewhere around the Seiten-gu and the neighboring land in the west called Hirabayashi along with the area surrounding the Eirin-ji temple in the south.

The area is being boring surveyed, and the experts say that they might find relics from the 8^th and 9^th century among the east side of the shrine.

There is a document saying that a September storm hit this part of land in 878 and twenty-one government buildings including schools and offices had been damaged, but so far no one has found out where these buildings had stood.