Empress Genmei(661 — 722)
Genmei
Japon
8 min read
Reigning empress of Japan from 707 to 715, Genmei is one of the few women to have held supreme power in Japan. Her reign is marked by the compilation of the Kojiki, Japan's first historical chronicle.
Key Facts
- Reigned from 707 to 715 as the reigning empress of Japan
- Commissioned in 712 the compilation of the Kojiki, the oldest historical chronicle of Japan
- Transferred the imperial capital to Nara in 710, establishing the Nara period
- Mother of Emperor Monmu, she succeeded him upon his early death
- Second of the eight reigning empresses in Japanese history
Works & Achievements
The first official historical text of Japan, compiled on Empress Genmei's orders by Ō no Yasumaro from the oral recitations of the court memorist Hieda no Are. It contains the myths of creation, divine genealogies, and the history of sovereigns from the origins of Japan to Empress Suiko.
A major political and urban planning decision: Genmei ordered the construction of Nara on a grid plan modeled after Chang'an, and relocated the entire imperial court there. For seventy years, this capital served as the heart of classical Japanese civilization.
Japan's first official coinage, whose issuance unified economic exchange across the archipelago. This monetary reform was part of the administrative and economic centralization policy pursued by Genmei following the Tang Chinese model.
Compilations ordered by Genmei from each provincial governor, describing natural resources, place names, local customs, and legends. Five of these reports have partially survived and remain an irreplaceable source on Japan during the Nara period.
Throughout her reign, Genmei implemented and consolidated the Taihō Code of 701, organizing provincial administration, the tax system, and the hierarchy of officials. These reforms gave Japan a coherent state apparatus for the first time in its history.
Anecdotes
In 708, Empress Genmei ordered the minting of Japan's first official coins: the Wadōkaichin, struck in copper and silver. This ambitious monetary decision aimed to unify economic exchange across the archipelago and assert the power of the imperial state over provinces that were still poorly integrated.
In 712
the empress received the Kojiki (
Chronicle of Ancient Matters
)
written by the scribe Ō no Yasumaro on her command. This text
the oldest historical work in Japan
gathered the myths of creation
divine genealogies
and the history of the earliest emperors. Genmei wished to commit oral traditions to writing before they were lost forever.
In 710, Genmei moved the capital from Fujiwara-kyō to the new city of Heijō-kyō, present-day Nara. Modeled on the Chinese capital Chang'an, the city was built on a strict grid plan and became Japan's first great permanent urban center, housing up to 200,000 inhabitants at its peak.
Genmei was one of the very few women to reign in her own name in Japan. When she abdicated in 715, she passed the throne not to a man but to her own daughter, Empress Genshō — a unique case in Japanese history of direct mother-to-daughter succession on the imperial throne.
Tradition attributes to her several poems preserved in the *Man'yōshū*, the great Japanese poetry anthology compiled shortly after her death. These verses bear witness to a refined literary sensibility and a deep attachment to nature, reflecting a court culture in which poetry was as much an art of governance as a personal expression.
Primary Sources
Her Majesty the Empress declared: "The imperial chronicles and the foundational accounts transmitted by the ancient houses have already deviated from the truth, and numerous errors have been added to them. If these errors are not corrected now, their meaning will be lost within a few years." She therefore commanded that these accounts be set down in writing.
In the first year of the Wadō era (708), the empress decreed the minting of copper coins in all provinces. In the fourth year (710), she transferred the court to Heijō-kyō. Her reign saw the laying of the foundations of Japan's imperial civilization.
It is hereby decreed that coins struck in the name of the Wadō era shall be legal tender in all provinces of the empire, and that no one may refuse them for any lawful payment between subjects of Her Majesty.
Let the governors of each province compile a full report of the local produce, the ancient names of mountains, rivers, and plains, as well as local traditions and legends, and transmit these documents to the capital.
Key Places
Capital founded in 710 on Genmei's orders, built on a grid pattern modeled after Chang'an and Japan's first major permanent urban center. The remains of the imperial palace, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are visible today in Nara.
Japan's first major permanent capital, where Genmei lived and reigned before transferring the court to Nara in 710. Founded in 694, its ruins are visible in the present-day city of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.
The historical cradle of the Japanese imperial court, where Genmei spent much of her youth and where the major political events of the 7th century unfolded, notably the Jinshin War of 672 that shaped the imperial lineage.
A mausoleum located in the Nara region, built in the late kofun style, where the empress was interred after her death in 722. This site bears witness to the persistence of aristocratic funerary traditions at the turning point between the Tumulus period and the rise of Buddhist burial practices.