When Japanese emperor Kotoku rose to the Japanese throne in the seventh century, he began a new age that would bring the island nation into a new era of civilization.
Across the sea on the Asian mainland was the massive and prosperous Tang Chinese empire. During his nine-year reign, Kotoku ordered multiple missions to visit the Tang capital of Chang'an, and started the reforms that would lead to Japan learning from and emulating China at its finest.
The transformations that Japan underwent in the following decades and centuries represented the Japanese elite and nobility’s respect and admiration of the Middle Kingdom. Their efforts to replicate intact the core virtues of Chinese culture in their own architecture, attire, literature, calendric system, arts, and national character would shape the land of the rising sun for over a thousand years.
