Japanese Culture: Identity and Tradition

Yamato is the highest part of the country:
The mountains are green walls;
Nestling in its hills, its terraces
lie range upon range -
How lovely is the land of Yamato
(Kojiki, Poem 30)

150 years after Chinese writing was introduced, Buddhism was.
Constitution based on the Chinese one was made in 604.
The continental culture adapted by the Japanese eagerly.

So there was this flow of culture from China

“Enthusiasm of faith and power kindled by Buddhism in Japan made every branch of art and culture blossom.”

Set about plans to build a capital in the continental style, in the north of the Yamato province.

“Peak of the Nara period was reached with the national religious hubris of Emperor Shoomu (724-749 and his daughter ... Men were made to become monks and to do crafts. This was the only way architecture and art could reach such a pitch”

Because of an outbreak of small-pox, and because of earthquakes, they set about making toudaiji. They used all the bronze in the country to build a 16.19 m high statue of the Buddha (daibutsu). It is housed in what is still is the largest wooden building in the world.

Buddhist art was everywhere
temple architecture
iconography of cult images

Japan had developed no scrip of it's own. Things were written with Chinese characters,partly with semantic and partly with phonetic meaning.

“The melodic phrasing og the language began with love poems. The old love duets of the young were called 'song hedges' (utagaki); first pet-formed quite spontenaeously, they were later transmitted as part of the cultural heritage.

Some of the first written texts were histories. The Nihon-shoki of 720 and such. These were written in Chinese.

POETIC STYLES
Waka or uta
Tanka
EARLY WORKS
Uta-gaki (old love duets)
Kojiki
Nihon-shoki
Manyo-shuu