Korean Influence On Japanese Culture - Art

Art

During the Asuka Period, the artisans from Baekje provided technological and aesthetic guidance in the Japanese architecture and arts. Therefore, the temple plans, architectural forms, and iconography were strongly influenced directly by examples in the ancient Korea. In deed, many of the Japanese temples at that time were crafted in the Baekje style. Japanese nobility, wishing to take advantage of culture from across the sea, imported artists and artisans from the Korean Peninsula (most, but not all, from Baekje) to build and decorate their first palaces and temples.

Among the earliest craft items extant in Japan is the Tamamushi shrine, a magnificent example of Korean art of that period. The shrine is a miniature two-story temple made of wood, to be used as a kind of reliquary. This shrine is so named because it was decorated with Korean indigenous iridescent beetle(Tamamushi) wings set into metal edging, a technique also practiced in Korea and this technique of tamamushi inlay is evidently native to Korea. The shrine's ornamental gilt bronze openwork, inlaid with the iridescent wings of the tamamushi beetle, is of a Korean type.