Nakasendo Way

A journey to the heart of Japan

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Home / Glossary Terms / Nara

Nara

Nara was the capital city of Japan during the Nara period (710-784). It was built under Chinese influence and modeled on Chinese capital cities, which is to say that it was very large, surrounded by an outer wall, with streets running broad and straight to the compass points. Now much reduced in size, Nara is a quiet city but still filled with large temples and buildings from the city’s earlier days of prominence.

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From the glossary

  • Ashikaga family

    The Ashikaga family were an off-shoot of the Minamoto family which established the Kamakura shogunate, 1185-1333. A member of the family, Ashikaga Takauji, turned against the shogunate and ended it in 1333. Five years later, he made himself shogun. The family headed the Muromachi shogunate, named after the district in Kyoto where their headquarters was located, until it was ended in 1573 by Oda Nobunaga who deposed the last in this line of shoguns, Ashikaga Yoshiaki. The height of power of the shogunate was in the 14th and early 15th century; the remaining period was one of increasing turmoil. The Ashikaga family were major patrons of the arts and many of the most beautiful works of Japanese art date from this period. The Ashikaga shoguns are memorialized in wooden statues at the Tojiin temple in Kyoto.

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