Traditional Japanese art includes ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, swords and dolls; acts of bunraku, kabuki, noh, dancing and rakugo; as well as tea ceremony, ikebama, martial arts, caliber, origami, onsen, geisha and games.

Literature Change The earliest works of Japanese literature include the Kojiki and Nihon Shoiki chronicles and the anthology of Man'yōshū poetry dating from the 8th century and written in Chinese characters.

In the early Heian times, phonograph systems known as kana (Hiragana and Katakana) were developed. The Bamboo Cutter Story is considered the oldest Japanese story. The Heian court life narrative is given in Sei Shōnagon's Makura no Sōshi while The Story of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is often described as the first novel in the world.

During the Edo period, the chōnin or people of the country became writers and readers rather than the aristocracy of samurai. The popularity of Saikaku's writings for example heralds a change in the reader and writer as Bashō revives the Kokinshū poetry tradition in his haikai (haiku). The Meiji era saw the decline of traditional literary forms.

Natsume Sōseki and Mori Ōgai were the first modern Japanese novelists followed by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami. Writers Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburō Ōe won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 and 1994.