During the late 8th and early 9th centuries, Emperor Kammu (737ì806) sought the services of a budding warrior class to conquer a tribe in the northeast. By the middle of the Heian period (794-1185), these warriors began to follow certain codified practices and rituals. The foundations of the ethical code of samurai was established during this period.
By the beginning of the 14th century samurai were expected to be civilized and educated. Some members of this warrior clan also pursued the literary arts.
Writing came to Japan from China 1,500 years ago. Initially Chinese characters were used with Japanese grammar. Later, a new system of syllabic grapheme were developed to signify Japanese sounds.
In addition to the two sets of kanas called "katakana" and "hiragana", contemporary Japanese contains almost a thousand "kanji" (Chinese characters) used to represent words. |
