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Thus, although Kwammu's warnings and exhortations were earnest, and his dismissals and degradations of provincial officials frequent, he failed to achieve anything radical. The reign of Kwammu is remarkable for two things: the conquest of the eastern Yemishi by Tamuramaro and the transfer of the capital from Nara to Kyoto.
A few who could not be clearly traced were placed in a "miscellaneous list." This paragraph of history suggests the quality of Japanese civilization in the ninth century. Junna was Kwammu's third son. He ascended the throne on the abdication of his elder brother, Saga, and he himself abdicated in favour of the latter's son, Nimmyo, nine years later.
Looking back only a few years, a ruler of Kwammu's sagacity must have appreciated that religious fanaticism, as practised at Nara, threatened to overshadow even the Imperial Court, and that the influence of the foreign creed tended to undermine the Shinto cult, which constituted the main bulwark of the Throne.
While still Crown Prince, he fixed his affections on Kusu, daughter of Fujiwara Tanetsugu, who had been assassinated by Prince Sagara during Kwammu's reign, and when Heijo ascended the throne, this lady's influence made itself felt within and without the palace, while her brother, Nakanari, a haughty, headstrong man, trading on his relationship to her, usurped almost Imperial authority.
This monarch, as already shown, was specially selected by his father, Konin, at the instance of Fujiwara Momokawa, who observed in the young prince qualities essential to a ruler of men. Whether Kwammu's career as Emperor reached the full standard of his promise as prince, historians are not agreed. Konin receives a larger meed of praise.
They either prompted or presided over the reforms and retrenchments that marked Kwammu's reign, and personal ambition was never allowed to interfere with their duty to the State. Contemporaneously with the rise of the Fujiwara to the highest places within reach of a subject, an important alteration took place in the status of Imperial princes.
To transfer it involved a correspondingly signal sacrifice. What was Kwammu's motive? Some have conjectured a desire to shake off the priestly influences which permeated the atmosphere of Nara; others, that he found the Yamato city too small to satisfy his ambitious views or to suit the quickly developing dimensions and prosperity of the nation. Probably both explanations are correct.
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