Yamato period

The Yamato period is the stretch of early Japanese history when a royal court based in Yamato Province, today's Nara Prefecture, rose to rule much of the archipelago. It is conventionally dated from about 250 to 710 and takes in two shorter eras: the Kofun period, about 250 to 538, and the Asuka period, 538 to 710. In these centuries the Yamato kings, ancestors of the imperial line, turned a league of powerful clans into a centralised state on Chinese lines, and the country took the name Nihon, or Japan.

Before Yamato, the rice-farming Yayoi culture had spread across western Japan, following the long era of the Jōmon culture. Archaeology and Chinese records suggest that local chiefdoms only began to merge into larger, more hierarchical polities around 300, when huge tombs start to appear. When Yamato rule truly began is disputed, and other regional powers rivalled it for a long time; what is clear is that the Yamato clans had a decisive advantage by the sixth century.

The Kofun period takes its name from kofun, the earthen burial mounds of the ruling class, many shaped like a keyhole with a square front and round back. The largest, over 400 metres long and sometimes ringed by moats, are attributed to rulers such as Emperors Ōjin and Nintoku. Society was organised into great clans, each headed by a patriarch who performed rites for the clan's kami, with the royal line at the top. Iron, bronze mirrors, books and techniques reached Japan from China and especially through the Korean kingdoms, and immigrants from the peninsula played a major part at court. Yamato sent envoys to the Chinese Liu Song court in the fifth century and sent troops to support the Korean kingdom of Baekje.

Buddhism was formally introduced from Baekje, in 538 according to most accounts, though the Nihon Shoki chronicle gives 552. The Soga clan championed the new faith against the Mononobe and Nakatomi, and only after the Mononobe were defeated in 587 did it begin to spread widely. Empress Suiko (r. 593–628) and her regent Prince Shōtoku adopted Chinese ranks and the Chinese calendar, built temples and sent embassies to Sui China. The Seventeen-article constitution is credited to Shōtoku, though historians note that his role has often been inflated into legend.

In 645 Prince Naka no Ōe and Nakatomi no Kamatari overthrew the dominant Soga in a palace coup and launched the Taika Reform. Land held by the clans was declared public, its people became direct subjects of the throne, and Kamatari's family took the name Fujiwara. Defeat by Tang and Silla forces at the Battle of Baekgang in 663, where Yamato had sent its navy to help Baekje, pushed the court to centralise faster. Naka no Ōe ruled as Emperor Tenji, and a series of law codes culminated in the Taihō Code of 701, which set up Chinese-style ministries and provinces.

The court had moved its palace often, mostly within the Asuka region. In 710 it settled at a permanent capital, Heijō-kyō at Nara, opening the Nara period. The institutions, Buddhist culture and imperial ideology built under Yamato carried on into the Heian period and beyond.

Our maps label the state Yamato and draw it on the maps for 500, 600 and 700, across western and central parts of today's Japan.