Classical Japanese

The ancient and classical period runs from 604, the traditional date of Prince Shōtoku’s Seventeen-article Constitution, to 1185, covering the Asuka, Nara and Heian eras. Buddhism came to dominate philosophy, leaving social and legal matters to Confucianism and folding the veneration of the kami into its own system. At the end of the eighth century two new schools, Tendai and Shingon, took distinctively Japanese forms, and Shingon’s founder Kūkai is often considered Japan’s greatest premodern systematic thinker.