Nara period

The Nara Period covers the History of Japan from about 710 to 784 A.D., when the capital of Japanese civilization was at Nara.

Most of Japanese society during this period was agricultural in nature, centered around villages of pit dwellings. Most of the villagers followed the Shinto religion, based around the worship of natural and ancestral spirits (kami).

The capital at Nara, however, was a planned city in imitation of the large cities of ancient China. In many other ways the Japanese upper classes patterned themselves after the Chinese, including the Chinese written characters (kanji) and the religion of Buddhism.