NARA PERIOD

( 奈良時代 , Nara jidai)

The Nara period 
covers the years from AD 710 to 794. 
Empress Genmei established the capital of 
Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-
year period (740–745), when the capital was
briefly moved again, it remained the capital of
Japanese civilization until Emperor Kanmu
 established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784,
before moving to Heian-kyō, modern Kyoto, a
decade later in 794.
Emperor Genmei Emperor Kanmu
• Japanese society during this period was
predominately agricultural and centered around 
village life.
• Most of the villagers followed a religion based on the
worship of natural and ancestral spirits named kami
 which is Shintoism.
• The capital at Nara was modeled after Chang’an.
• In many other ways, the Japanese upper classes
patterned themselves after the Chinese, including
adopting the Chinese writing system, Chinese
fashion, and the Chinese religion of Buddhism.
Nara Period Literature
Concentrated efforts by the 
imperial court to record its history
produced the first works of 
Japanese literature during the Nara
period. Works such as the Kojiki and the 
Nihon Shoki were political, used to
record and therefore justify and establish
the supremacy of the rule of the emperors
within Japan.
 Man'yōgana
• With the spread of written language, the
writing of Japanese poetry, known in
Japanese as waka, began. 
• The largest and longest-surviving
collection of Japanese poetry, the 
Man'yōshū, was compiled from poems
mostly composed between 600 and 759
CE. WAKA
• This, and other Nara texts, used Chinese
characters to express the sounds of 
Japanese, known as man'yōgana.
MANYŌSHŪ