Nara

Nara is where the Japanese state first settled in one place. In 710 the court moved to Heijo-kyo, a capital laid out on a grid modelled on Chang'an in Tang China, with a palace enclosure at the northern end and a great avenue running south. The eighth century that followed takes its name from the city: it produced the first written histories, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, the poetry anthology Man'yoshu, and a state Buddhism that culminated in 752, when Emperor Shomu dedicated the Great Buddha of Todai-ji before an assembly that included monks from India and China.

That concentration of temple power was also the city's undoing. In 784 the court moved away, to Nagaoka and then to Kyoto, partly to escape the influence of the Nara monasteries. The temples remained wealthy and, in the case of Kofuku-ji, politically formidable, holding the Yamato province for the Fujiwara family for centuries and fielding armed monks. Fires and war damaged them repeatedly: Todai-ji's Great Buddha Hall was burned in 1180 and again in 1567, and the present hall dates from 1709.

Around the temples a merchant town grew up making sake, ink, brushes and bleached cloth, which is the Naramachi of today. The city was largely passed over by industry in the modern era, and spared bombing in the Second World War. Nara Park was laid out in 1880, the city was incorporated in 1898, and in 1998 its temples, shrines, palace site and forest were inscribed together as the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The deer are the first thing anyone notices. Sacred to Kasuga-taisha, whose deity is said to have arrived on a white stag, they have wandered the park for centuries and are protected as a national natural monument; killing one was once a capital offence. They are wild animals, and signs around the park warn visitors not to tease them while feeding.

The city's cultural weight is Buddhist and old. Six schools of Buddhism introduced in the Nara period are still represented by their head temples here, Todai-ji's Omizutori rites have been performed every year since 752, and the Shosoin treasures, kept since the 8th century, are shown for a few weeks each autumn. Noh grew out of the sarugaku troupes of the Yamato plain, and the city still has its own Noh theatre.

Craft traditions run alongside: Nara sumi ink, ground from soot and glue, and brushes made in the same workshops supply calligraphers across Japan, and the city also makes fans, bleached hemp cloth and carved wooden dolls. Nara's manner is markedly quieter than Osaka's, closer to Kyoto's reserve but with less ceremony, and the rhythm of the place is set by the temples' calendar of observances rather than by tourism.

About 360,000 people live in Nara, which has slowly shrunk for two decades as younger residents move towards Osaka. A great many of those who remain commute: Kintetsu and JR trains put the city half an hour from Osaka and Kyoto, and Nara functions in part as a residential edge of the Kansai conurbation, with housing estates spreading over the hills to the west.

The local economy is government, education, tourism and small manufacturing. The prefectural offices, several universities, including Nara Women's University, and a large number of temples and museums are the main employers, alongside ink, brush and textile workshops and food producers. Tourism brings millions of visitors a year, but most come for the day, so the city has long worked at persuading them to stay a night.

Life in the centre is low-rise and regulated: building heights are limited to protect views of the temples and hills, which keeps the skyline unusually flat for a Japanese city. Residents share the place with the deer, which stray into gardens and onto roads and damage crops on the edges of town, and with the custom of feeding them only the crackers sold in the park. Away from the park, daily routines are those of any provincial capital — the shopping arcades, the station department store, school clubs in the evening and quiet streets by ten.

Nara's cooking is inland, vegetarian in origin and built on preservation. The best-known dish is kakinoha-zushi, a slice of salted mackerel or salmon pressed onto a block of rice and wrapped in a persimmon leaf: developed in the mountains of southern Nara, where sea fish arrived salted over the passes, and now sold at stations and shops across the prefecture.

Temple cooking shaped the rest. Chagayu, rice gruel simmered in roasted green tea, has been a Nara breakfast since the 8th century, and shojin ryori, the vegetarian food of the monasteries, is served near the temples. Yamato vegetables — a distinct set of old local varieties, including sweet Yamato cucumbers and the mountain yam — appear in simple simmered dishes, and Yamato beef is the local wagyu. Miwa somen, thin wheat noodles from Sakurai to the south-east, are among the oldest noodles in Japan.

Preserving shows up again in narazuke, vegetables pickled over months in sake lees until they are dark and heady; the shops that make them in Naramachi double as souvenirs. Nara claims a foundational role in Japanese sake as well, since clear refined brewing is recorded at Shoryaku-ji in the 15th century, and small breweries continue in the district. Sweets are plain and rice-based, and the mochi shops of the Mochiidono arcade pound their rice in public, in a fast double act of mallet and hand that draws a crowd.