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context: calligraphy > Heian period
Early Books
This page will be superseded when I produce the books section of this site, but I'll mention a couple of things now. The start of the 10th Century saw a couple of notable developments. The first story written in kana appears to have been Taketori Monogatari, Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, in around 900AD. A few years later saw the start of the first official book in hiragana, indeed in any phonetic script, Kokinwakashu, the Collection of Ancient and Modern Verse, featuring 1,200 poems by 120 poets. This was also the first poetry collection where the style is clearly Japanese rather than Chinese.