Ancient Japanese architecture, is not a little bit of the flavor of ancient Chinese architecture!

Japanese architecture developed its basic characteristics as early as the 1st century AD, which were the use of wooden frames and lightness of movement. These characteristics may have been influenced by southern China and the South Seas, but also by the abundance of wood on the Japanese islands.

Later, Chinese influences became significantly more dominant, and the timber frames were constructed with Chinese-style beams and columns, and even arches. They were arranged in parallel, so that the spatial layout was also based on the "room" as the basic unit, with several rooms arranged side by side to form a horizontal rectangle. They have all the characteristics of Chinese architecture, including curved roofs, flying eaves and corners, and various details such as scops owls and finials. Thus, it can be roughly said that ancient Japanese architecture belongs to the Chinese architectural system.

However, Japanese buildings still have distinctive national characteristics and are very creative, especially their aesthetic features. In addition to the early shrine, Japan's ancient capital city pattern, large temples and palaces, etc., more adherence to the Chinese type system, while the residence to the later is almost completely free of Chinese influence and its own style, structural methods, spatial layout, decorative, artistic style, etc. are very different from the Chinese residential interest. Tea rooms, counting houses and so on, can be said to be completely unique to Japanese architecture. Their aesthetic characteristics are very easy and friendly, rich in human feelings. The scale is small, the design is meticulous and simple, subtle and elegant. Japanese architecture emphasizes and excels in presenting the natural beauty of materials, structures and functional factors. Grass, wood, bamboo, stone, and even burlap and paper are utilized to the fullest extent.

However, there were periods when aspects of Japanese architecture were exaggerated. For example, the eaves that stretch far, the large arches, the overly ornate decorations, the withered landscapes in the gardens, etc., and even the penchant for natural forms of jutsu stone can be so paranoid as to fall into the realm of artifice.

In the course of nearly two thousand years of development, Japanese architecture has maintained a link with Chinese architecture, constantly responding to changes in Chinese architecture. Because it was linked, at a later stage, mainly to the folk architecture of southern China, it was able to maintain a free and lively character with a strong sense of life.

The most distinctive feature of Japanese architecture is the shrines, which are scattered all over the country, numbering more than 100,000, and have been built from ancient times to the present without interruption. The early shrines were modeled after the more elaborate residential buildings of the time, because the idea was that shrines were the residences of the gods, and people could only guess the lives of the gods according to their own lives, and architecture was far from being at a level where it was possible to create a separate type of shrine just for the gods. Therefore, these early shrines were close to the lives of simple people, and their architectural styles can represent the basic temperament of Japanese architecture.

Shrines are the inherent Shinto worship buildings of Japan, which began in the proto-historic period. Shintoism worships natural gods and ancestors, and is divided into three systems: Shrine Shinto, Sect Shinto, and Folk Shinto, with Shrine Shinto as the mainstream, which exists to this day. Shrine Shinto honors Amaterasu Omikami, the goddess of the sun, as its main deity. It practiced the unification of religion and government and deified the lineage of the Emperor, and was based on the classics of the Kojiki (Chronicle of Ancient Matters) and Nihonshiki (The Century of Japan), which were written in the 8th century. The main point is that the emperors from the first Emperor Jimmu onwards were descendants of Amaterasu Omikami, who unified the Japanese islands and had a natural and undisputed right to rule.

Shintoism holds that human nature is sacred and that human personality and life should be respected. Man is responsible for society and has a vocation to carry on the work of the past and the future. It advocates "truth" as the basic attitude in life, from which the virtues of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and faith can be derived.

Shintoism has no fixed dates for worship, and one can visit a shrine at any time, on the first day of the month, on the fifteenth day of the month, or on the day of the festival. Some devout people also visit every morning. In Japanese houses, there are shrines to Amaterasu Omikami and the god of protection, as well as shrines to Buddha and ancestors. The main festivals are the spring and autumn festivals and the regular festival. The spring festival is the New Year's Prayer Festival, and the autumn festival is the New Taste Festival. In the regular festival, which is also called the annual festival, a mikoshi (portable shrine) is held and parades are held with devotees carrying the mikoshi on their shoulders.

The shrine is laid out in a deep and layered manner, and at the entrance there is a pagoda with a large wooden plank resting horizontally on a pair of pillars, with the ends sticking out from side to side, and some of them have a wooden square resting horizontally a little lower down, which is called a "torii". After entering the pagoda, you can walk along the main road to the "Jyobon" where you can wash your hands and mouth before walking to the main hall. In the main hall, symbols of the gods are enshrined, usually a mirror, a puppet statue, and a sword called "Congun Sword". These symbols represent the body of the god and are called gorindai, and are carefully wrapped up so that they cannot be seen by the worshippers. Only the chief priests are allowed to go to the innermost part of the main hall.

The holiest shrine in Japan is Ise Jingu, located in a dense forest on the waterfront in Mie City, which was originally a sacred site. It is divided into two shrines, the inner shrine, called the "Imperial Great Shrine" and dedicated to Amaterasu Omikami, was built around the turn of the century. The outer shrine was built about 500 years after the inner shrine and was called "Toyouke Omikami Shrine", where Toyouke Omikami was responsible for protecting Amaterasu Omikami's food. The form of the inner and outer shrines is more or less the same, but Emperor Tenmu (reigned 673-685) in the 7th century A.D. established a system whereby they were rebuilt in the original style every 20 years, so the present building is not the original of the early period, but it has been preserved in its original form. In order to avoid having no place to worship during the reconstruction, the inner and outer shrines have two sites side by side, and the shrines are built and demolished in turn.

Inside and outside the palace is not far from each other, are to "the Palace" as the center of the small complex, lot for the rectangular, outside the fence around a circle. The main palace is three rooms wide and two rooms deep, with the style of "Shinmei-zukuri". There is a high wooden frame underneath to form a platform called "Takatoko", and a high fence is set up around it. In addition to the portal between the center, the walls are all made of thick wooden boards stacked horizontally, two slopes of the roof, covered with thatch, about 30 centimeters thick, fluffy and elastic. The ridge is a piece of wood through the length of the frame on the outside of the wall in the center of the post. The ridge is nailed to the "deck", which is picked out a lot on both sides of the wall. On the ridge, there are 10 "Kinugi" that are picked out horizontally from the front and back, and the bofeng boards cross under the ridge and slope upward into "Senmu". Each piece of Bo Feng on the upper end of each flat out of four thin strips of wood, called "whip hanging". Deck, firm fish wood, a thousand wood and whip hanging, are evolved from the structural components, exaggerated, into a very artistic expression of the decorative components.

They and high beds, high rails together, so that the Palace is full of contrasts between reality, light and shadow and form, appear extremely ethereal and light. They reach out in different directions, and the tiny Honkong takes on an outwardly radiating character.

The detailing of the shrine is exquisite. The wood of the fish is in the shape of a pike, the top of the column is rolled and killed, and the cross-section of the whip hanging is originally square, but it tapers to a rounded shape at the front end. They make simple and square shrine soft and rich up, more angry, more human. Firm fish wood ends, thousands of wood on the doorway and even on the floor, appropriately decorated with some openwork gold leaves, to the warm and elegant plain white wood and thatch stained with a noble luster. Gold and plain wood and thatch reflect each other, both simple and gorgeous, see the aesthetic power of the keen and thought through. A layer of pebbles floats over the grounds, loose, and they set the building off beautifully.

The Asuka Period (552-645), Japanese society from slavery to feudalism transition, in order to consolidate the feudal system and unified autocratic state, Japan absorbed a large number of Chinese feudal court canon and culture. Buddhism was introduced to Japan from China via Korea and was initially resisted by the Shinto tradition, but in 587 the Soga clan, which had won the struggle for the succession to the throne, supported Buddhism, and in 604 Prince Seitoku formally practiced Buddhism, building 46 Buddhist temples in 30 years. Chinese Buddhist architecture was also introduced to Japan from Korea.

In 588 A.D., the King of Baekje in Joseon sent several temple workers, tile makers, and dew-pan workers to Japan, bringing models of Buddhist temples to help build them, and Baekje craftsmen continued to arrive in Japan in the early 7th century, followed later by craftsmen directly from China. The Baekje and Chinese craftsmen laid down the basic features of Japanese Buddhist architecture, which were also the basic features of Chinese Buddhist architecture at that time. The main ones are: first, the use of the wooden structure system with parallel beams, including the arch; second, the use of the "room" as a spatial unit and the parallelism of the rooms to form the internal space of the building; third, the introduction of the inward courtyard layout and symmetrical axes; fourth, the forms and styles of the buildings; and, fifth, the layout of the Buddhist temples and the types of buildings, such as the pagodas. such as pagodas. The first four features are not limited to Buddhist temple architecture, but are fundamental to all kinds of Japanese architecture, which was Chineseized.

Prince Sentoku built the first large temple, Horyuji, near Nara in 607 A.D. It caught fire in 670 and was rebuilt later, and the east wing was built in 739. The main body of Horyuji is a "convex" shaped courtyard surrounded by verandahs. In front of the temple is the Hall of Heavenly Kings, and in the back there is the Great Lecture Hall, which is flanked by the Scripture Tower and the Bell Tower, both of which are connected to the verandahs. In front of the Hall, in the center of the courtyard, on the left and right sides of the axis are the Golden Hall and the Five-storied Pagoda. This layout was later called the "Tang Style", probably dating from the Northern and Southern Dynasties of China or the end of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Jintang two-storey, the width of the ground floor is 5 rooms, the depth of 4 rooms (18.36 meters × 15.18 meters), the second floor is reduced by one room. Heshan roof, with arch, the form is not yet very strict, with cloud arch and cloud bucket. Columns rolled kill and become shuttle columns, but do not use the rainbow beam. The lower column is only 4.5 meters high, and the eaves even reached 5.6 meters, very exaggerated. The second layer of eaves fall on the bottom of the gold column above, contraction is very big, more appear out of the eaves floating far away. Five heavy tower was built in 672-685 years, from the bottom to the fourth floor, are three square, the fifth floor for 2 rooms. The width of the bottom layer is 10.84 meters, the height of the column is more than 3 meters, and the height of the column is only 1.4 meters. But the eaves are very large, the bottom floor out of 4.2 meters. So it is as if it is the overlap of the top of the five layers, very handsome. The pagoda also uses arches, similar to those of Jindang, with cloud arches and cloud buckets, which were done timidly during the Northern and Southern Dynasties in China. The use of a single arch instead of a heavy arch, and the use of a steal heart instead of a counting heart, became important features of later Japanese arches. Pagoda inside the center column, from the ground level straight through the top of the treasure. The total height of the tower is 32.5 meters, of which the phase wheel is 9 meters high.

In the east courtyard, there is an octagonal Yume-den and a Translucent Land Hall, both of which are original from the time of the first construction. By that time Japan had its first fixed capital, Nara.

The era when Nara was the capital (710-794) is called the Nara Period, which was during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, when Chinese culture was introduced to Japan on a large scale and in a comprehensive manner.

Chinese characters were adopted, calligraphy and painting were studied, history books were compiled, and Chinese-style metrical poetry was written. A code of law was drawn up in accordance with the laws of the Tang Dynasty, and the name "Emperor" was officially used. The central government was fully formed at this time, and the ministries were organized in accordance with the Tang system. The boundaries of Japan were extended to the southern part of Kyushu and the northern part of Honshu, and an extensive road network was built. The short Nara period was a time of cultural prosperity for Japan.

The ancient capital of Nara was called Heijo-kyo, and its layout was modeled after that of the Tang Dynasty's Chang'an Castle. Because Buddhism was established as the state religion, a number of very important temples were built in Nara, the most significant of which was the Tang Shodi Temple (built in 759), built under the auspices of the Chinese monk Jianzhen, who traveled from China to the east. This temple was built in 759 under the auspices of the Chinese monk Ganjin, who preached Ritualism in Japan, and Tang Shodi Temple was the head temple of the Ritualists in Japan. Some of the craftsmen who built the temple were brought from China by the monk. Only the Golden Hall, the Lecture Hall and the East Pagoda remain from the original construction of Tangzhodi Temple. The Golden Hall has a width of 7 rooms, about 28.18 meters long, and a depth of 4 rooms, about 16.81 meters. The size of the openings from the bright room to the sides of the diminishing, the central five openings with a finely decorated door, the end of the room is only a finely decorated window. The column head has arch, and the complementary room only has bucket Shu column. Pillar head arch for six store, double copy single under the angular, single arch, steal the heart of the creation. Beam, square, arch have colorful paintings, columns painted red. Arch eye wall and mat board all pink and white, the load-bearing components distinctly set off, appearing to be structurally organized and logical. The roof is a four-note type, which has been remodeled with a steeper slope than the original. The center of the interior is dedicated to Rushena Buddha, flanked by Medicine Buddha and Thousand-handed Guanyin, and against the mountain wall are the Four Heavenly Kings. The ginodo enshrines a seated statue of Ganjin, one of the most outstanding dry-lacquered wood carvings in Japan. This golden hall can be taken as a representative of Chinese monumental architecture of the Tang Dynasty, with a graceful and generous style, dignified and peaceful.

In 784 A.D., in order to avoid interference in political affairs by the growing Buddhist power in Nara, Emperor Huanwu decided to move the capital, and in 793 proceeded with the construction of Heijo-kyo, which became Kyoto. 794-1185 was the Heian period in Japanese history. Like Nara's Heijo-kyo, the layout of Heian-kyo was modeled after Tang Chang'an, and was similar in size to Heijo-kyo but slightly larger.

After the 9th century, as feudal relations developed further, local secessionist forces hired and expanded their estates and encroached on public land. As the power of the emperor declined, the Chinese-style centralized government gradually collapsed and power fell into the hands of the great nobles, leading to the abdication of Emperor Shirakawa in 1086 and the introduction of "institutional rule".

With the rise of the local ruling forces, Buddhism ceased to be the state religion, and the ancient Shinto religion regained its influence and infiltrated Buddhism, which became more popular as monks were allowed to marry and have children, and to drink alcohol and eat meat.

Because of the development of the feudal economy, the 11th century, the aristocratic society reached its heyday, the princes and nobles, the powerful clan of the life of the more cheap, indulgent. They built a large number of residences and other properties, and built Buddhist temples in the residences and other properties, or, as was the custom in China, they gave up their residences for temples.

In this case, the Japanese culture strengthened its national characteristics, and from about the second half of the 10th century, Japanese architecture was also localized and tended to be luxurious. However, it did not escape the influence of Chinese architecture, but on the contrary, it continued to draw on the achievements of Chinese architecture and responded to changes in Chinese architecture.

At this time, there was a new type of residence building, which was a main house with two compartments, connected by a corridor, often with a pond in front, called the "bedchamber building". Buddhist temples also adopted this system, and the most important representative of this type of temple is Heikein Phoenix Hall in Uji City. The main building of the temple is the Phoenix Hall, which was converted into a Buddhist temple in 1052 after being converted into a private residence of Fujiwara Michinaga, who was the Minister of Taijutsu, and who was in charge of the imperial government at that time. The nobles, who had been so wantonly indulgent, did not dare to forget their home, but they used their worldview to understand it. Among them, the belief in "Pure Land" emerged, believing that by gathering together and reciting sutras, one could transcend the "filth" of the present world and reach the Western World of Ultimate Bliss. This belief is known as the Pure Land Sect of Buddhism, which worships Amitabha Buddha. Amida-do halls were built in the residences and other properties, and monks were summoned to ring the bell-pan wooden fish and recite the sutra. Amidado halls were decorated with precious materials and even jewelry, and the panels and doors were painted with the beautiful scenery of Elysium. These Amida-do's were the crowning achievement of Japanese architecture and craftsmanship at the time. However, they were often overly elaborate and overflowing with aristocratic interest, in sharp opposition to the folk architectural traditions that emphasized simplicity and naturalness. Phoenix Hall is such an Amida Hall.