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Kanji (Hanzi in Chinese) means ‘glyphs of the Han dynasty’, these were first brought to Japan around the 3rd and 4th centuries AD by migrating Chinese and Koreans, and became established during the following four centuries. At that time, despite being one of the older civilizations, the Japanese did not have a formal writing system for the language and so Chinese characters were used in books from that time on..
The oldest written work in Japan is surviving fragments from the ‘Records of Emperors’ (‘tennouki’ and the ‘teiki’), compiled by Prince Shoutoku (574-622). Other important early books include the three-volume ‘Record of Ancient Matters’ or ‘Kojiki’ in 712, and the 30 volume ‘Chronicles of Japan’ or ‘Nihon Shoki’ in 720 by Prince Toneri.
In 713 the ‘fudoki’ became Japan’s first comprehensive local record, unfortunately only records the Shimane prefecture remain but these offer a valuable insight into the local mythology, customs, technology and general lifestyle.
The twenty volume ‘manyo’ushu’u’ was eventually completed in the mid- 8th century, it is an anthology of 4500 poems by people ranging from paupers to princes. The writing style is mainly ‘manyougana’ (a phonetic form of writing kanji which gave rise to kana).
In 794 the capital of Japan was changed from Nara to Heian (now Kyoto). In the Heian period kanji was the established writing style for official documents and kana was used for personal communication. Japanese literature flourished from this time, with popular books emerging such as ‘taketori monogatori’ or ‘Tale of the Bamboo Cutter’ and the blockbuster ‘The Tale of Genji’ which is considered to be the worlds first novel (the picture above shows a scene).
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