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World history
Course: World history > Unit 3
Lesson 11: Medieval JapanClassical Japan during the Heian Period
An overview of classical Japan. Chinese influence merges with Japanese culture. Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki.
Want to join the conversation?
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but, I believe Hommer was a much earlier author than Lady Murasaki.(2 votes)
- well we didn't know Homer is the history or not,and Homer isn't a novelist.(5 votes)
- well,we didn't know the real name of lady Murasaki,and we use the name of the lady in her book to call her .murasaki in Japanese is mean purple.and at that time in Japan,the woman was not agreed to write the public book or art and science book like man,so some women began to write novels,and give it to the noble women to read it for fun.(4 votes)
- Where can I learn more about the specifics like the Taika Reforms? Thank you.(2 votes)
- Hopefully, this website is helpful, but this is where I learned more about the Taika Reforms: http://kansai-odyssey.com/taika-reforms/(2 votes)
- what caused japan to be so fragmented by military rule?(1 vote)
- This period is known as the Sengoku Jidai (戦国時代). Rather than being a single, completely unified state, Japan actually consisted of hundreds of small provinces ryōseikoku(令制国) each with their own rulers, called daimyos (大名). These daimyos made alliances, broke alliances, and waged war against other daimyos. So at that time, military rule was inherently associated with fragmentation.
You'll learn more in the next video.(3 votes)
- what are the distinct culture of Japan?(1 vote)
- For me, I think the culture of Japan would have started during the Jomon period of Japan 14,000 and 300 BCE. It was also the start of the Tokugawa Shogunate which allowed Japan to remain isolated. From then on Japan borrowed customs and ideas from all over the world to make it distinctively Japanese.(2 votes)
- Was the 17 article constitution created during the Heian period?(1 vote)
- it was made in the Asuka era. It is 604 years.(1 vote)
- Who is Himiko? I heard that she was a mystical queen?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] What we're
going to do in this video is talk about roughly 1000
years of Japanese history that take us from what's
known as the Classical period of Japan through the
Japanese Medieval period all the way to the Early Modern period and the key defining characteristic
of the Classical period is this is when Japan really
began to unify and have an imperial form and began to
borrow a lot of the traditions and philosophy and even
religion from China. Then as we get into the Medieval period, Japan gets fragmented, it
comes under military rule, and then as we get into
the Early Modern period, it gets reunited. So as I mentioned, China had
a huge influence on Japan. Even though China never conquers Japan, because of how close they
are, many things like the idea of a centralized bureaucracy,
the Japanese borrow many of these ideas from China
during the Classical period. In fact, the Japanese rulers
sent delegations to China in the 7th century in order
to understand all of what the Chinese do, in order
to run their government, to run their country,
and they start to borrow a lot of the ideas of
Buddhism and Confucianism and merge it with some
of their own beliefs which are often known as Shinto, which you can view as the
original Japanese belief system. So the first part of the Classical period that we're gonna go into some
depth is the Heian period. Its capital Heian-kyo, modern day Kyoto, and as I mentioned, it
was known for taking a lot of these ideas from China and
particularly the Tang dynasty in China and bringing them to Japan. The Heian period was known
as a golden age of Japan. It was a time of culture, it
was a time of architecture, people in the imperial court
would focus on the arts, they would focus on philosophy. As an example, this right over
here is the Byodo-in Temple in Kyoto which shows the level, and this is actually only part of it, it shows the level of cultural
advancement of this time. As I mentioned, the arts were a big deal and women in the imperial
court of Heian China had a lot of influence, in fact, the
most influential family, the Fujiwara family
maintained its influence by having the emperors marry
women from their family and those women would end
up having a lot of control over the emperor and of
course the next emperor. But to get a sense of
the arts of this period, here's an excerpt from the Tale of Genji which was written by Lady
Murasaki, who was believed to be a member of the Fujiwara family. And Lady Murasaki gets a lot of credit, before Chaucer, before Shakespeare, she is by many historians viewed
as the first true novelist that we know of in human history,
not just Japanese history. But I encourage you to read it,
its actually quite riveting, the Tale of Genji, and
this is just a small quote from that story or from that novel, it's about a very handsome prince, Genji. "The difference between
enlightenment and confusion "is of about the same
order as the difference "between the good and
the bad in a romance. "If one takes the generous view, "then nothing is empty and useless."