Classical Japan during the Heian Period | World History | Khan Academy

- [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.