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Emperor Shōmu (聖武天皇) was the 45th imperial ruler of Japan.
Being suffered the pressure of his mother and wife house, Fujiwara clan, Shomu made several attempts to reduce it. As the Emperor Tenji he moved his sites, capitals far from Asuka area to the other places; Osaka today, Nara and so on.
He is mainly remembered for commissioning the 16 meter high statue of Vairocana Buddha in Todaiji. At the time, this was such a massive undertaking that later chroniclers accuse him of having completely exhausted the country's reserves of bronze and precious metals. The emperor personally painted in the statue's irises at the opening ceremony in 752 and declared himself a servant of the Buddha, the Buddhist teaching and the Buddhist monastic establishment, making this the closest anyone ever came to declaring Japan a Buddhist nation. However, by this time Shomu had already been succeeded by Koken, his daughter.
Shomu is also known as the first emperor whose empress didn't derived from Imperial Household. His wife and empress Koumyou (Bright Light) was a Fujiwara woman. He had a son between her but the child died in his childhood. His successor was therefore automatically determined their daughter, Koken whose problem during her reign was the selection of an appropriate successor.
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Preceded by: Gensho | Emperor of Japan |
Succeeded by: Koken |