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Kotoku, when he promulgated his system of centralized administration, conceived the idea of a fixed capital and selected Naniwa. Mommu remained at the latter place until the closing year of his reign, when, finding the site inconvenient, he gave orders for the selection of another.

Six months afterwards, the Empress abdicated in favour of Prince Karu, known in history as forty-second sovereign, Mommu. THE Emperor Mommu took for consort a daughter of Fuhito, representative of the Fujiwara family and son of the great Kamatari.

History further relates that these statutes were revised by the Emperor Mommu, who commenced the task in 681 and that, eleven years later, when the Empress Jito occupied the throne, this revised code was promulgated.

It is noticeable that in the compilation of all these a leading part was taken by one or another of the great Fujiwara ministers, and that the fifth numbered among its authors the illustrious Sugawara Michizane. When the Emperor Mommu died , his son, the Prince Imperial, was too young to succeed.

It has been well said by a Japanese historian that the fortunes of the Yamato were at their zenith during the reigns of the three Emperors Jimmu, Temmu, and Mommu. From the beginning of the eighth century they began to decline. For that decline, Buddhism was largely responsible.

During the night he compelled demons to draw water and gather firewood, and during the day he rode upon clouds of five colours. The Kami Hitokotonushi, having been threatened by him for neglecting his orders, inspired a man to accuse him of treasonable designs, and the Emperor Mommu sent soldiers to arrest him.

Mommu, dying, willed that the throne should be occupied by his mother in trust for his infant son afterwards Emperor Shomu. In ancient times it was customary to change the locality of the Imperial capital with each change of sovereign.

The Emperor Mommu enacted a law for the better control of priests and nuns, yet he erected the temple Kwannon-ji. Kamatari approved of his eldest son, Joye, entering the priesthood, and sent him to China to study the Sutras. He also gave up his residence at Yamashina for conversion into a monastery.

Some make love their theme; some deal with sorrow; some are allegorical; some draw their inspiration from nature's beauties, and some have miscellaneous motives. To the same century the eighth as the Manyo-shu, belongs the Kiraifu-so, & volume containing 120 poems in Chinese style, composed by sixty-four poets during the reigns of Temmu, Jito, and Mommu, that is to say, between 673 and 707.

On the 25th of February, 1869, for instance, we find two entries: "The Emperor wrote characters of good omen," and "The game of football was played at the palace." The game was first introduced from China in the year of the Empress Kôkiyoku, in the middle of the seventh century. The Emperor Mommu, who reigned at the end of the same century, was the first emperor who took part in the sport.