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The Nara Period (奈良時代) of the History of Japan covers the years from about A.D. 710 to 784. The Empress Gemmei
established the capital at Nara, also known as Heijo kyo, where it
remained the capital of Japanese civilization until the Emperor Kammu established the new capital at Nagaoka
(and, only a decade later, Heian, or Kyoto).
Most of Japanese society during this period was agricultural in nature, centered around villages. Most of the villagers
followed the Shinto religion, based around the worship of natural and ancestral spirits
(kami).
The capital at Nara was modelled after Chang'an (Xian), the capital city of Tang China. In many other ways the Japanese
upper classes patterned themselves after the Chinese, including adopting the Chinese written characters (kanji) and the religion of Buddhism.
Nara Period Literature
Concentrated efforts by the imperial court to record and
document its history produced the first works of Japanese literature during the Nara period. Works such as
Kojiki (古事記) and Nihonshoki (日本書紀) were political in nature, used to record and therefore
justify and establish the supremacy of the rule of the emperors within Japan itself and
to China and Korea.
With the spread of written language, Japanese poetry, known in
Japanese as waka, started to be written. Over time, personal collections were referenced to establish the first large
collection of Japanese poetry known as Man'yoshu
(万葉集) sometime after 759. Chinese characters were used to express sounds
of Japanese until Kana was
invented. The Chinese characters used to express the sounds of Japanese are known as man'yogana(w:ja:万葉仮名).
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