Nara and Heian Japan
Japan adopts Chinese models, then turns them into something distinctly its own.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 475 years
- Known to
- ± 20 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Japan builds capitals on the Chinese grid plan at Nara in 710 and Kyoto in 794, adopts Buddhism, Chinese writing and law codes, and then — as contact with Tang China lapses — develops its own court culture. Kana scripts allow writing Japanese directly, and around 1008 Murasaki Shikibu completes the Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel, written by a woman at a court where women wrote in Japanese while men wrote in Chinese.