Suzakumon Gate

This guide to Suzakumon Gate in Nara opens with a contradiction: in the spring of 734, two hundred forty nobles gathered beneath this formal palace gate not for imperial ceremony but for a raucous utagaki, trading courtship verses back and forth until pairs slipped off into the night. It traces how the same threshold that hosted New Year rites and greeted envoys from Tang China also doubled as a stage for public flirtation, and follows the gate's own long disappearance after Heijo Palace was abandoned in 794. The avenue stretching out before the gate was built seventy five meters wide, wide enough to overawe any delegation walking up it.