50 Fun Facts About Ancient Japan

Which animals roam Nara freely because they were long protected as sacred messengers of a Shinto god?

Deer in Nara were held so sacred that killing one was a capital offence until 1637. Legend says one of the Kasuga shrine's gods arrived riding a white one.

The twelfth-century Chōjū-giga scrolls of frolicking rabbits and frogs are often called Japan's oldest work of what?

Manga artists still use tricks seen in the scrolls, such as speed lines, and the pictures are read from right to left like a modern Japanese comic.

Kongō Gumi, founded in 578 and often called the world's oldest company, works in which trade?

Construction of Buddhist temples kept the family firm going for more than 1,400 years, until debts forced its sale to a bigger builder in 2006.

Which beauty custom, known as ohaguro, did Heian-period court aristocrats follow with their teeth?

Dyeing them black with a mix of iron filings and vinegar was a mark of beauty, and the custom lasted until Western tastes arrived in the nineteenth century.

Heikegani, linked to warriors drowned at the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura, are which animals with samurai-like faces?

Crabs of this species carry shell ridges that look like a scowling warrior, and legend calls them the reborn spirits of the clan that lost the battle.

Which eleventh-century work by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu is often called the world's first novel?

The Tale of Genji follows a prince's love affairs through more than 50 chapters, and may have reached its first readers at court one instalment at a time.

Heian-kyō, founded by Emperor Kanmu in 794 as Japan's new imperial capital, is known today as which city?

Kyoto remained the emperor's seat for more than a thousand years, and reference books date the end of its time as the capital to 1869.

The giant burial mounds raised for rulers in Kofun-period Japan are famous for which outline when seen from above?

A keyhole outline, square at one end and round at the other, marks the grandest tombs; the largest stretches 486 metres and sits inside a moat.

Which sun goddess, said to have hidden in a cave and darkened the world, is the mythical ancestress of Japan's emperors?

Amaterasu is tied to the throne through her grandson Ninigi, who in the myth was sent down from heaven to rule the earth.

Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, founded in 705 and recognised by Guinness as the world's oldest, is what kind of business?

A hotel fed by natural hot springs, Keiunkan was run by 52 generations of the same family before it passed out of their hands in 2017.

Which sport, staged as a ceremony at the Heian imperial court, grew out of rituals praying for a good harvest?

Sumo first appears in a myth written down in 712, in which two gods wrestle for possession of the Japanese islands.

A 675 edict of Emperor Tenmu banned eating cattle, horses, dogs, chickens and which other animals for part of each year?

Monkeys were off the table only from the fourth month to the ninth, and the edict left wild boar legal to eat all year round.

Before cherry blossom took over in the Heian period, Nara-era flower-viewing parties admired which tree's blossoms?

Plum blossom came first because Japan's elite copied a Chinese habit of drinking wine and composing poems beneath the flowering trees.

In the 760s a Japanese empress had printed Buddhist prayers placed inside one million miniature wooden what?

Pagodas carried the tiny scrolls to temples around Nara, and thousands of the prayers survive as some of the earliest printed texts in the world.

Japan's monarchy, the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, is known as which flower's throne?

Chrysanthemum Throne is a name for the whole institution rather than a single chair, and legend dates its founding to 660 BC.

Which Japanese script was nicknamed 'women's writing' after Heian court ladies took it up for letters and stories?

Hiragana caught on with court women because they were shut out of the Chinese-style schooling given to men, and the era's great literature was written in it.

Which crop became the staple of Yayoi-period Japan, turning bands of hunter-gatherers into settled farming villages?

Rice needed irrigated fields that had to be tended, so people began to stay in one place, and the population grew.

Japan's Nara-period court sent envoys roughly every twenty years to bring home the learning of which Chinese dynasty?

Tang China also supplied the plan for Nara itself, a grid city modelled on the dynasty's capital at Chang'an.

Which princess from the Moon is found as a baby inside a glowing stalk in the Heian-era Tale of the Bamboo Cutter?

Kaguya is the heroine of what is counted as the oldest surviving Japanese prose tale, written by an unknown author around 900.

Which of Japan's four main islands held the ancient capitals of Nara and Heian-kyō?

Honshu is the seventh-largest island in the world and also holds Mount Fuji, the country's highest peak.

The word samurai is thought to come from saburau, an old Japanese verb with which meaning?

To serve a lord was the heart of the role, which is why samurai are generally defined as retainers rather than simply as fighters.

Which shaman queen of Yamatai, described in third-century Chinese records, was chosen as ruler after decades of war?

Himiko's realm has never been pinned down, and scholars have argued since the Edo period over whether it lay in Kyushu or near present-day Nara.

What are the terracotta figures of horses, houses and people that were set on Kofun-period tombs called?

Haniwa means 'clay circle', after the rings they formed above the tombs, and an old chronicle hints that they took the place of human sacrifices.

Which semi-legendary regent of Japan's Asuka period is credited with issuing the Seventeen-Article Constitution?

Prince Shōtoku's text was less a law code than moral advice for officials, and its first article calls for harmony to be valued.

Which temple in Nara houses the Daibutsu, the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana?

Tōdai-ji's own records say more than 2.6 million people gave materials or labour towards the statue and the hall built around it.

Which Japanese temple has a main hall widely recognised as the world's oldest wooden building?

Hōryū-ji was founded shortly after Buddhism reached Japan, and the hall, rebuilt at least 1,300 years ago, has stood ever since.

Which Heian court lady wrote The Pillow Book, a collection of lists, gossip, poetry and complaints?

Sei Shōnagon finished it in retirement in the early 1000s, and the book was passed around in handwritten copies for hundreds of years.

Which storm god of Japanese myth killed the serpent Yamata no Orochi after getting it drunk on strong sake?

Susanoo found a sword inside the dead serpent's tail and gave it to his sister as a peace offering; it became one of the imperial treasures.

In Japanese myth, the gods Izanagi and Izanami made the first island by churning the sea with a jewelled what?

Spear in hand, the pair stirred the watery chaos, and the brine that dripped from its tip hardened into the island of Onogoro.

Before a law code changed the custom, ancient Japan's court usually moved its capital after which event?

An emperor's death was believed to pollute the place where it happened, so each new reign tended to begin in a new palace town.

Which warrior clan, beaten by the Minamoto in the Genpei War, had ruled through the boy emperor Antoku?

Taira began as a surname handed to imperial grandchildren who were cut from the line of succession, so the losers were distant royal cousins.

Which disease killed about a third of Japan's people in 735–737 and moved Emperor Shōmu to build a giant Buddha?

Smallpox spread from Kyushu and killed all four Fujiwara brothers who dominated the court, and the emperor felt personally responsible for the disaster.

Which chronicle of myths, written for Empress Genmei, is usually counted as Japan's oldest surviving literary work?

Kojiki's preface says the courtier Ō no Yasumaro composed it at the empress's request in 711 and 712.

Japan's Reiwa era name, adopted in 2019, was drawn from which eighth-century anthology of poetry?

Man'yōshū means 'Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves', and it is the oldest surviving collection of Japanese verse.

Which ruined southern gate of Heian-kyō gave its name to a famous 1950 film directed by Akira Kurosawa?

Rashōmon had so grim a reputation that people abandoned corpses and unwanted babies there, and not one of its foundation stones survives.

Which Shinto sanctuary, sacred to the sun goddess, has its main buildings taken down and rebuilt every 20 years?

Ise Grand Shrine is renewed so that it stays forever new and forever ancient, and each rebuilding passes carpentry skills to the next generation.

According to legend, which descendant of the sun goddess became Japan's first emperor in 660 BC?

Jimmu is regarded by most scholars as a legend, yet Japan still marks his accession every 11 February as National Foundation Day.

The jūnihitoe, the formal dress of Heian court ladies, takes its popular name from having twelve what?

Layers of silk robes could weigh as much as 20 kilograms in all, and the true number worn varied in spite of the name.

How did the Heian statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga chiefly use his daughters to dominate the imperial court?

Marrying them to emperors worked so well that two of his grandsons became emperors, and each married another of his daughters.

Which building of the Heian-period temple Byōdō-in, completed in 1053, appears on Japan's 10-yen coin?

Phoenix Hall is a nickname from the Edo period: statues of the mythical bird perch on its roof, and the building spreads out in wing and tail corridors.

The title shogun was first given to early Heian commanders campaigning against which people who resisted the court?

Emishi lands lay beyond the empire's frontier, and the court came to write their name with characters meaning 'shrimp' and 'barbarian'.

Who became Japan's first reigning empress after the assassination of Emperor Sushun in 592?

Suiko was chosen to head off a power struggle and went on to rule for 35 years, having taken a nun's vows shortly before she took the throne.

Which monk, known after his death as Kōbō Daishi, founded Shingon Buddhism and its retreat on Mount Kōya?

Kūkai was also famed as a calligrapher and poet, and he fell out for good with his rival Saichō after refusing him a final initiation.

Which Heian scholar, who died in exile in 903, was later deified as Tenjin, the Shinto god of learning?

Sugawara no Michizane was blamed for the disasters that followed his death, so the court built a shrine to calm his angry spirit.

Abe no Seimei, a Heian court official who became a figure of legend, was a master of which art?

Yin-yang divination was a civil-service job: its practitioners kept the calendar, read omens and guarded the capital against evil spirits.

Which imperial court music, shaped in the Heian period from mainland Asian styles, is still performed at the palace?

Gagaku means 'elegant music', and a government bureau was teaching and performing it at court as early as 701.

Dōtaku, the richly decorated bronze objects buried on hillsides in Yayoi-period Japan, are what kind of thing?

Bells of this kind began small enough to ring with a clapper, then grew into showpieces over a metre tall with walls too thin to sound.

Which female samurai is said to have led 300 warriors for Minamoto no Yoshinaka during the Genpei War?

Tomoe Gozen may be more legend than history, since she is known from a later war epic and appears in no primary account of the fighting.

The imperial title tennō, used in Japan since the seventh century, translates into English as which phrase?

Heavenly sovereign is a title kept for Japan's own monarch, and the language uses a different word, kōtei, for the emperors of other countries.

Japan's three imperial regalia, handed down from myth, are a sword, a jewel and which other sacred object?

A mirror stands for wisdom among the three treasures, beside the sword for valour and the jewel for benevolence.