Ancient Japanese Culture And Architecture

Ancient Japan, a gateway to a world of peace, relaxation and true natural beauty. This site tells

you about Ancient Japan's culture and architecture highlighting the main aspects of this magnificant country.

To start things off this is a map locating the location
of Japan as we know of it today. Japan today lies above the Philippine Sea and rests beside the Pacific Ocean. Japan is also close by to Korea and part of Russia.

Culture.

Ancient culture of Japan is referred to as early as the 1st century AD. The Chinese historical texts and archaeological evidence indicate the presence of people on the islands of Japan in the paleolithic period. Ancient Japanese culture is the product of a rich ecosystem that supported human development.

There is no precise date to point out when humans first made Japan their home. The core tools and flake tools unearthed is evidence enough of a great migration from different parts of the Asian continent. The earliest era studied dates back between 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. The best way to study ancient Japanese culture is to segregate it into the Pre-Ceramic and Ceramic eras. There are four distinct cultures that emerge from this study, Jomon, Yayoi, Tumulus and Yamato.

Jomon Culture: The term Jomon refers to a type of pottery found during the time. Jomon or cord marks were the basic patterns observed on the clay. Jomon pottery displays features that are common to Neolithic cultures around the world. The use of chipped and polished tools, pottery making and the initiation of agriculture and cattle rearing were the main features of the era. People also patronized the development of weaving and architecture.

The Kyushu Pottery from the southernmost of the Japanese islands, is the result of a continental influence. Since Kyushu pottery remains predate, Jomon culture is believed to be Mesolithic. The development of pottery generated a highly developed culture and lifestyle among the people of the time. They displayed great diversity and complexity in the art. The products of this age highlighted a lot of decoration and an ascending order of development. The people grew on hunting, fishing and gathering edible roots that are still included in some Japanese food.

Clothes were made of organic materials. The custom of extracting or filing certain teeth was a part of a rite announcing adulthood.

The Jomon culture was responsible for the regional differences, many of which can be seen even today and evident in the Japanese Language.

The Yayoi culture was present in Kyushu even as the Jomon culture was still in development. It spread from Kyushu to the northern districts of Honshu,which is also the largest island in Japan. The name Yayoi comes from a place in Tokyo. The name suggests the first evidence of the time being unearthed at Yayoi. The pottery during this era was fired and turned on wheels to keep a stable shape. The advanced technique helped create pottery for practical use. The other signs of evidence of the Yayoi culture of Japan include some metal objects. The Chinese culture influenced Korea and then into Japan through invasion in weaponary and improved the iron and bronze implements that indicate traces of Han culture. The Japanese people of this time made axes, sickles, hoes and swords. They also took to the cultivation of rice along the Yangtze River in southern China. Their techniques of maintaining paddy fields were advanced, involving a lot of time, capital and manual labor. These people wove cloth on looms and used vegetable fibers for the desired dye and print. The migration from China and North Korea as well as South Korea to Japan was most observed in the character of the people. The addition and mixture of culture elements and difference in Jomon and Yayoi skeletal remains are more nutritional than human genetics.

Architecture.

Japanese architecture has a long history as any other aspect of Japanese culture. Originally heavily influenced by Chinese architecture from the Tang Dynasty, it has also developed many differences and aspects which are inative to Japan.

There are no full examples of prehistoric architecture, and the oldest Japanese texts, such as Kojiki and Nihonshoki hardly mention architecture at all. Researches show these houses had thatched roofs and dirt floors. Houses in areas of high temperature and humidity had wooden floors. With the spread of rice cultivation from China, communities became increasingly larger and more complex, and large scale buildings for the local ruling family or rice storage houses are seen in Sannai-Maruyama site in Aomori or Yoshinogari site in Saga.

After the 3rd century, a system was developed and many keyhole-shaped Kofun were built in Osaka and Nara. Among many examples in Nara and Osaka, the most notable is Daisen-kofun, designated as the tomb of Emperor Nintoku. This kofun is approximately 486 by 305 m, rising to a height of 35 m.

The earliest structures is still in Modern Japan, and the oldest surviving wooden buildings in the world are found at the Hōryū-ji to the southwest of Nara. They serve as the core examples of architecture in Asuka period. First built in the early 7th century as the private temple of Crown Prince Shotoku consists of 41 independent buildings; the most important ones, the main worship hall, or Kondo and Goju-no-to, stand in the center of an open area surrounded by a roofed cloister. The Kondo, in the style of Chinese worship halls, is a two-story structure of post-and-beam construction, capped by an irimoya, or hipped-gabled roof of ceramic tiles.

Temple building in the 8th century was focused around the Tōdaiji in Nara. Constructed as the headquarters for a network of temples in each of the provinces, the Tōdaiji is the most religious complex in the early centuries of Buddhist worship in Japan. Appropriately, the 16.2-m Buddha (completed in 752) enshrined in the main hall, or Daibutsuden, is a Rushana Buddha, the figure that represents the essence of Buddhahood, just as the Tōdai-ji represented the center for imperially sponsored Buddhism and its dissemination throughout Japan. Only a few parts of the original statue survive, and the present hall and central Buddha are reconstructions from the Edo period. Clustered around the Daibutsuden on a gently sloping hillside are a number of secondary halls, the Hokkedo, with its principal image, the Fukukenjaku Kannon crafted of dry lacquer (cloth dipped in lacquer and shaped over a wooden armature); the Kaidanin (Ordination Hall) with its magnificent clay statues of the Four Guardian Kings; and the storehouse, called the Shosoin. This last structure is of great importance as an art-historical cache, because in it are stored the utensils that were used in the temple's dedication ceremony in 752, the eye-opening ritual for the Rushana image, as well as government documents and many secular objects owned by the imperial family.

This page's resources come from wikipedia and buzzle.com