Culture in the Nara Period

Despite its insular character, Japan had for centuries been in contact with the civilization centered on China, but only from Prince Shotoku’s time did the Japanese court consciously and habitually borrow from the continent the knowledge that could be used to heighten its power and glory. For generations after Shotoku’s death in 622, courtiers regarded themselves as the pupils of their continental neighbors.

Buddhist temples were particularly important as centers of the new learning. As many as forty are supposed to have been built in Shotoku’s time. None is more important than the Horyuji. It was constructed on a Korean model, based in turn on the plan of Chinese palaces enclosed by walls, and incorporated a pagoda, developed from a structure of Indian origin. The pillars of the enclosing cloisters, convex in the middle, drew on techniques of entasis which had originated in classical Greece. The Horyuji as it stood complete in 607 was foreign in form.

Later, probably in 670, the Horyuji was burned down and then rebuilt. It still stands today, celebrated as the fountainhead of Japanese Buddhist architecture, and the oldest surviving complex of wooden buildings in Japan. The rebuilders departed from the original Korean model. The main hall, containing images of worship, and a pagoda to house sacred relics were set beside each other and not in a line from the entrance. The lecture hall, for the reading of scriptures, was retained as were the cloisters enclosing the main buildings, to maintain the impression of religious life as something apart from the world. The Horyuji remained monumental, not relying in any way on the use of natural settings that has distinguished Japanese religious architecture.

to the piety of successive generations, people like Prince Shotoku’s wife, the Emperor Shomu, and his wife and mother-inlaw presented the Horyuji with precious gifts. Within a year of the prince’s death the Horyuji received a set of three life-sized bronze images, each with a face in his likeness. These images, made in Japan after a Chinese style, survive to this day as further reminders of the debt owed by Japan to continental civilization.