- [Instructor] What we're
going to do in this video
is talk about roughly 1,000
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
send delegations to China
in the seventh 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 at 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,
and 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 or the Byodo-in Temple
in Kyoto which shows the level,
and this is actually only part of it,
and 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 of the Heian period
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.
It's 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 different between
the good and the bad
in a romance.
If one takes the generous view,
then nothing is empty and useless.
