When Japanese emperor Kotoku rose to the Japanese throne in the seventh century, he began a new age that would bring the island nation into a new era of civilization.
Across the sea on the Asian mainland was the massive and prosperous Tang Chinese empire. During his nine-year reign, Kotoku ordered multiple missions to visit the Tang capital of Chang’an, and started the reforms that would lead to Japan learning from and emulating China at its finest.
The transformations that Japan underwent in the following decades and centuries represented the Japanese elite and nobility’s respect and admiration of the Middle Kingdom. Their efforts to replicate intact the core virtues of Chinese culture in their own architecture, attire, literature, calendric system, arts, and national character would shape the land of the rising sun for over a thousand years.
The Birth of Japanese Writing
Cultural Accomplishments Preserved
In 735, when Kibi no Makibi returned to Japan, he had with him 200 volumes, which he presented to the emperor, among them the “Essential Compendium of Music.” This classic was later lost in China but preserved in Japan. He also brought classical Chinese musical instruments, such as the guzheng, or Chinese zither, which inspired the Japanese koto.
Kukai, the bonze (a Japanese or Chinese Buddhist monk) who created hiragana, was an accomplished man of letters and calligraphist. A scholar of Chinese literary works, he compiled a groundbreaking theoretical volume on writings from the Han, Wei, Sui, and Tang dynasties—the Bunkyo Hifuron. He used his extensive research to reflect on his own literary style and for future generations to use as an analytical reference.
Kukai also helped spread Chinese calligraphy to Japan, and is considered one of the three calligraphy masters of the Heian period of Japanese history (794–1185).