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RELATED TOPIC:
THE TALE OF GENJI

 
CLASSICAL JAPAN
Buddhism Introduced

Robert Oxnam :: In the year 552, the Emperor Justinian was on the Byzantine throne, and the great dome of Hagia Sophia was under construction in Constantinople.

This is when Buddhism, the dominant religion in China at the time, reached the Japanese islands from Korea, marking the beginning of the Classical Period in Japan.

H. Paul Varley :: Buddhism is a thousand years old by this time, had come from India into China, and to a large extent had been sinicized and had a number of very complex sects. And it's obvious in studying the early centuries — the late sixth, seventh, even the eighth centuries — that the Japanese, or at least not very many of them, are very clear about the differences between the sects that were introduced to Japan.

But certain basic premises on which Buddhism is based — fatalism, the idea that people are enmeshed in a process of karma, of fate, what they did in earlier lives affects them in this life and so forth — the basic Buddhist ideas, were something that could readily be understood and appreciated and embraced.