Editing Japanese literature (section)

===Nara-period literature (before 794)===
Before the introduction of [[kanji]] from China to Japan, Japan had no writing system; it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the very beginning of the 5th century, brought by immigrants from Korea and China. Early Japanese texts first followed the Chinese model,<ref name="A History of Writing in Japan"/> before gradually transitioning to a hybrid of Chinese characters used in Japanese syntactical formats, resulting in sentences written with Chinese characters but read phonetically in Japanese.

Chinese characters were also further adapted, creating what is known as {{transliteration|ja|[[man'yōgana]]}}, the earliest form of {{transliteration|ja|[[kana]]}}, or Japanese syllabic writing.<ref name="The Linguistics Encyclopedia">{{Cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=uCrXOLvD7fMC|title=The Linguistics Encyclopedia|last=Malmkjær|first= Kirsten|publisher=Psychology Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-41522210-5}}</ref> The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period.<ref name="A History of Writing in Japan"/> These include the {{transliteration|ja|[[Kojiki]]}} (712), a historical record that also chronicles ancient Japanese mythology and folk songs; the {{transliteration|ja|[[Nihon Shoki]]}} (720), a chronicle written in Chinese that is significantly more detailed than the {{transliteration|ja|Kojiki}}; and the {{transliteration|ja|[[Man'yōshū]]}} (759), a poetry anthology. One of the stories they describe is the tale of [[Urashima Tarō]].