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Literary History

Japan’s oldest book is a religious text

[UPDATED: 2-14-2018]

Japan’s oldest surviving book is a religious Buddhist text called the Hokekyo gisho, the authorship of which is generally attributed to Shotoku Taishi (574-622) in 615.

It is a commentary, that stresses the importance of faith, on the Lotus sutra from the Asuka Period (538-710), a period when Buddhism first arrived in Japan from Korea and China.

It is owned by the Imperial Family and is sometimes also cited as an example of the oldest Japanese calligraphy.

Japan’s oldest book is a religious text Posted March 22nd, 2017 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

Japan’s oldest book is a religious text

New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets[UPDATED: 7-7-2023]

In 1841 Shakespeare’s name appeared in print in Japan in Japanese for the first time[UPDATED: 6-14-2023]

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