![]() In addition to distinctive reinterpretations of Chinese ink monochrome painting and calligraphy, an indigenous taste for the observation and depiction of human activity and an exquisitely nuanced sense of design are readily apparent in most areas of Japanese visual expression, none more so than in narrative painting and in the woodblock print. The reception and assimilation of outside influence followed by a vigorous assertion of national styles thus characterized the cycle of Japanese cultural development. Nevertheless, Chinese art's highly developed, systematic forms of expression, coupled with its theoretical basis in religion and philosophy, proved enormously forceful, and Chinese styles dominated at key junctures in Japanese history. This unusual condition of comparative isolation provided Japanese cultural arbiters with a relative freedom to select or reject outside styles and trends. In the late 13th century, Mongol forces made two unsuccessful attempts at invading the Japanese islands, and the country was spared occupation by a foreign power until well into the 20th century. ![]() Indicatively, it is from this period that Chinese documentation of legation visits to Japan provide the first written records describing the structure of Japanese society. While no single political event seemed to further the transmission of Chinese cultural elements to Korea and Japan, clearly the expansionist policies of the rulers of the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) stimulated what had been a gradual assimilation of Chinese cultural elements by both Korea and Japan. Bronze production and the expansion of rice cultivation gradually appeared in Korea from approximately 700 BC and then slightly later in Japan. This culture provided the base for Shang dynasty (approximately from the 16th to the 11th century BC) culture, which witnessed extraordinary developments in the production of bronze, stone, ceramic, and jade artifacts as well as the development of a pictograph-based written language. ![]() Archaeological evidence firmly corroborates the existence of an emerging bronze culture by approximately 2000 BC. As Korea and Japan continued in various Neolithic phases, developments in China from approximately 2000 BC were far more complex and dramatic.
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