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| 754 |
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The Chinese Buddhist monk Ganjin (in Chinese, Jianzhen, 688–763), after five unsuccessful attempts to reach Japan, finally arrived in Nara, where he set up the first ordination platform and firmly established the Ritsu sect (in Sanskrit, Vinaya), which stressed discipline over doctrine. This sect and five others formed the Nara sects, the oldest sectarian division of Japanese Buddhism. The other five were: Sanron (Madhyamika), said to have been introduced in 625; Hoss (Dharmalaksana), brought from China by Dsh (629–700); Kegon (Avatamsaka), which was largely responsible for the cult of Rushana, the universal and omnipresent Buddha; Kusha (Abhidharmakosa); and Jjitsu (Satyasiddhi). The last two may not have existed as independent religious bodies in Japan. | 1 |
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| 759 |
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The Manysh (Collection of 10,000 Leaves), an anthology of more than 4,500 poems composed largely by court nobility between 687 and 759, was compiled shortly after this date, followed in later centuries by similar works. In 751 the Kaifus (Fond Recollections of Poetry), an anthology of 120 poems, had been completed, and was similarly followed by like works. | 2 |
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| 764 |
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| A clash for power between Fujiwara no Nakamaro (706–64), the leading statesman during Junnin's reign (758–64), and Dky (d. 772), the favorite monk of retired Empress Kken (r. 749–58), led to the death of Nakamaro, the exile of Junnin and his subsequent assassination, and the reascension to the throne of Kken as Empress Shtoku (r. 764–70). | 3 |
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| 764–70 |
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| Dky was all-powerful during Shtoku's reign and even aspired to the throne himself. Strong opposition and the empress's death led to his downfall. For almost nine centuries thereafter, no woman occupied the throne. | 4 |
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| 718–806 |
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| The reign of the energetic Kanmu witnessed the conquest of much of northern Honsh in a prolonged border struggle with the Ainu. After several initial failures, the natives of this region, both Ainu and Japanese frontiersmen, were brought under central control by Sakanoue Tamuramaro (d. 811). His campaigns concluded centuries of slow advance into Ainu territory. | 5 |
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| 794 |
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| Kanmu moved the capital from Nagaoka to Heian, the modern Kyoto, where it remained until 1868. Among the reasons (still unclear) for his abandoning of Nara for Nagaoka in 784 were possibly the desire to make a new political and economic start, the desire to escape the influence of the powerful Nara monasteries; and the superior location of Nagaoka (and, later, Kyoto), which had better water access to the sea. The reasons for the sudden removal of the capital ten years later from Nagaoka to Kyoto, a few miles further inland, are still more obscure, but it may have been connected with Kanmu's fear that the first site had incurred the curse of certain deities. The establishing of the capital at Kyoto marked the beginning of the Heian period. | 6 |
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| 794–1185 |
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| The Heian period encompassed nearly four centuries marked by few violent upheavals, in which the transition from an era of imitating of China to the subsequent feudalism of the Kamakura period was evident. The centuries were characterized by an increasingly rarefied court society, ever more divorced from political and economic realities; the gradual decline and collapse of the economic and political systems borrowed from China; the growth of tax-free manors; the slow emergence of a new military class in the provinces; the full glory and subsequent decline of the Fujiwara family; the appearance and development of the Buddhist sects that would dominate much of Japanese religious history; a firmer understanding of the imported Chinese civilization and a greater ability to synthesize it with native traditions and beliefs, or to modify it to fit the distinctive needs of Japan; a resultant growing cultural independence from China; and the reappearance of more distinctly Japanese art and literature. | 7 |
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| 800–816 |
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| New offices appeared in the central government that were to affect profoundly the whole administration. These included the kageyushi (audit board, 790), which in time usurped the prerogatives of the original audit and revenue offices; the kurdo-dokoro (bureau of archivists, 810), which gradually attained control of palace affairs and became the organ for issuing imperial decrees; and the kebiishi ch (police commission, 816), which in time became the primary law enforcement organ of the state and eventually created, outside the official codes, its own code of customary law. | 8 |
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| 805 |
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| The Tendai sect of Buddhism was founded by Saich (Dengy Daishi, 767–822), and the following year (806) the Shingon sect was founded by Kkai (Kb Daishi, 774–835). These were the two leading sects of Heian Buddhism. Both monks accompanied the eleventh embassy to Tang China in 804. Saich returned the next year to found his sect, named after Mt. Tiantai in China. The syncretic, inclusive nature of the philosophy of Tendai appealed to many Japanese, and its central monastery, Enryakuji, founded by Saich on Mt. Hiei, overlooking Kyoto, became the center from which sprang most of the later significant movements in Japanese Buddhism. Kkai returned from China in 806, bringing with him the Shingon or Tantric sect, a late esoteric and mystical form of Indian Buddhism. Because of his charismatic personality and the powerful appeal of Shingon to popular beliefs at the time, the new sect won considerable support among the populace, and the Kongbuji monastery on Mt. Kya, which Kkai founded (816), became one of the great centers of Buddhism. Tendai and Shingon seem to have appealed to more native strains that did the Nara sects, and the Shingon sect in particular furthered the union of Buddhism and Shinto. | 9 |
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| 838 |
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| The twelfth and final embassy to the Tang was dispatched. When in 894 Sugawara no Michizane (845–903) was appointed to be the next envoy, he persuaded the court to discontinue the practice on the grounds that China was in chaos and was no longer able to teach Japan. Although some unofficial intercourse continued between the two countries, this brought to an end three centuries of the greatest cultural borrowing from China and marked the beginning of a period in which distinctive Japanese traits increasingly asserted themselves in all phases of Japanese life. | 10 |
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| 858 |
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| The complete domination of the Fujiwara clan over the imperial family was achieved by Yoshifusa (804–72) when he became de facto regent of the child-emperor Seiwa (r. 858–76). In 866, after Seiwa had attained his majority, Yoshifusa assumed the title of regent (sessh), becoming the first nonimperial regent. Seiwa was the first male adult emperor to have a regent. The typical inner-family control that the Fujiwara exercised over the emperors can be seen in the relationship that existed between Seiwa and Yoshifusa, for the latter was both the grandfather and father-in-law of the young ruler. It was the policy of the Fujiwara to have a young imperial grandson of the head of the clan occupy the throne and to have him abdicate early in favor of another child. | 11 |
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| 866–1160 |
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| The Fujiwara period was one characterized by the domination of the Fujiwara family. | 12 |
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