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Find your way through history.

Explore 279 entries across places and centuries. Follow an event, compare its context, and examine the evidence.

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794–1185 CEIn-depth study

Fudō Myōō, Japan, twelfth century: a surviving joined-wood Buddhist sculpture with lacquer, gold leaf and colour. Formerly at Kuhonji Temple; not a samurai portrait.
Picture source & rights
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, 1975 · 1975.268.163 · Public domain / CC0 · Resized to WebP · Licence terms

Asia / Culture

Heian Japan: court writing, belief and artistic worlds

Before the familiar image of samurai rule, Heian Japan developed influential literary and religious traditions. Court diaries, narrative fiction and Buddhist sculpture offer different kinds of evidence, not one uniform picture of society.

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