Editing Nara period (section)

==Literature==
Concentrated efforts by the [[Emperors of Japan|imperial court]] to record its history produced the first works of [[Japanese literature]] during the Nara period. Works such as the {{Lang|ja-latn|[[Kojiki]]}} and the {{Lang|ja-latn|[[Nihon Shoki]]}} were political, used to record and therefore justify and establish the supremacy of the rule of the emperors within [[Japan]].<ref name="KatoSanderson2013One">{{cite book|author1=Shuichi Kato|author2=Don Sanderson|title=A History of Japanese Literature: From the Manyoshu to Modern Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JwGOYBfNdrUC&pg=PA12|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-61368-5|pages=12–13|access-date=9 December 2018|archive-date=8 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211108190219/https://books.google.com/books?id=JwGOYBfNdrUC&pg=PA12|url-status=live}}</ref>

With the spread of written language, the writing of [[Japanese poetry]], known in Japanese as ''[[Waka (poetry)|waka]]'', began. The largest and longest-surviving collection of Japanese poetry, the {{Lang|ja-latn|[[Man'yōshū]]}}, was compiled from poems mostly composed between 600 and 759 CE.<ref name="KatoSanderson2013Two">{{cite book|author1=Shuichi Kato|author2=Don Sanderson|title=A History of Japanese Literature: From the Manyoshu to Modern Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JwGOYBfNdrUC&pg=PA24|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-61368-5|page=24|access-date=9 December 2018|archive-date=8 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211108190223/https://books.google.com/books?id=JwGOYBfNdrUC&pg=PA24|url-status=live}}</ref> This, and other Nara texts, used Chinese characters to express the sounds of [[Japanese language|Japanese]], known as ''[[man'yōgana]]''.<ref name="Frellesvig2010">{{cite book|author=Bjarke Frellesvig|title=A History of the Japanese Language|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1FcAgiAC9IC&pg=PA14|date=29 July 2010|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-48880-8|pages=14–15|access-date=9 December 2018|archive-date=5 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805182643/https://books.google.com/books?id=v1FcAgiAC9IC&pg=PA14|url-status=live}}</ref>