Ancient Japan
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50 free Ancient Japan trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ancient Japan is full of surprises. Long before the samurai took charge, the islands were home to some of the world's earliest potters, to rulers buried under mounds the size of small hills, and to a court that prized poetry, perfume and fine handwriting above almost everything else. Much of what feels most Japanese today, from the imperial line to the native gods and the love of blossom, took shape in these centuries. This quiz gathers fun facts from the whole stretch. It starts with the hunter-gatherers of the Jōmon age and the farmers of the Yayoi, moves through the tomb builders and the first Buddhist temples, and ends with the Nara and Heian courts and the clan war that closed the era. Expect myths, strange laws, beauty customs, record-breaking buildings and businesses, famous writers and a few legends who may never have lived at all. The questions suit students working on a unit about early Japan, teachers who want a ready-made multiple-choice round, and anyone curious about life before the shoguns. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a new fact even when you guess wrong.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animals roam Nara freely because they were long protected as sacred messengers of a Shinto god?
Deer
Deer in Nara were held so sacred that killing one was a capital offence until 1637. Legend says one of the Kasuga shrine's gods arrived riding a white one.
Q 02The twelfth-century Chōjū-giga scrolls of frolicking rabbits and frogs are often called Japan's oldest work of what?
Manga
Manga artists still use tricks seen in the scrolls, such as speed lines, and the pictures are read from right to left like a modern Japanese comic.
Q 03Kongō Gumi, founded in 578 and often called the world's oldest company, works in which trade?
Construction
Construction of Buddhist temples kept the family firm going for more than 1,400 years, until debts forced its sale to a bigger builder in 2006.
Q 04Which beauty custom, known as ohaguro, did Heian-period court aristocrats follow with their teeth?
Dyeing them black
Dyeing them black with a mix of iron filings and vinegar was a mark of beauty, and the custom lasted until Western tastes arrived in the nineteenth century.
Q 05Heikegani, linked to warriors drowned at the 1185 Battle of Dan-no-ura, are which animals with samurai-like faces?
Crabs
Crabs of this species carry shell ridges that look like a scowling warrior, and legend calls them the reborn spirits of the clan that lost the battle.
Q 06Which eleventh-century work by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu is often called the world's first novel?
The Tale of Genji
The Tale of Genji follows a prince's love affairs through more than 50 chapters, and may have reached its first readers at court one instalment at a time.
Q 07Heian-kyō, founded by Emperor Kanmu in 794 as Japan's new imperial capital, is known today as which city?
Kyoto
Kyoto remained the emperor's seat for more than a thousand years, and reference books date the end of its time as the capital to 1869.
Q 08The giant burial mounds raised for rulers in Kofun-period Japan are famous for which outline when seen from above?
A keyhole
A keyhole outline, square at one end and round at the other, marks the grandest tombs; the largest stretches 486 metres and sits inside a moat.
Q 09Which sun goddess, said to have hidden in a cave and darkened the world, is the mythical ancestress of Japan's emperors?
Amaterasu
Amaterasu is tied to the throne through her grandson Ninigi, who in the myth was sent down from heaven to rule the earth.
Q 10Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, founded in 705 and recognised by Guinness as the world's oldest, is what kind of business?
A hotel
A hotel fed by natural hot springs, Keiunkan was run by 52 generations of the same family before it passed out of their hands in 2017.
Q 11Which sport, staged as a ceremony at the Heian imperial court, grew out of rituals praying for a good harvest?
Sumo
Sumo first appears in a myth written down in 712, in which two gods wrestle for possession of the Japanese islands.
Q 12A 675 edict of Emperor Tenmu banned eating cattle, horses, dogs, chickens and which other animals for part of each year?
Monkeys
Monkeys were off the table only from the fourth month to the ninth, and the edict left wild boar legal to eat all year round.
Q 13Before cherry blossom took over in the Heian period, Nara-era flower-viewing parties admired which tree's blossoms?
Plum
Plum blossom came first because Japan's elite copied a Chinese habit of drinking wine and composing poems beneath the flowering trees.
Q 21The word samurai is thought to come from saburau, an old Japanese verb with which meaning?
To serve
To serve a lord was the heart of the role, which is why samurai are generally defined as retainers rather than simply as fighters.
Q 22Which shaman queen of Yamatai, described in third-century Chinese records, was chosen as ruler after decades of war?
Himiko
Himiko's realm has never been pinned down, and scholars have argued since the Edo period over whether it lay in Kyushu or near present-day Nara.
Q 23What are the terracotta figures of horses, houses and people that were set on Kofun-period tombs called?
Haniwa
Haniwa means 'clay circle', after the rings they formed above the tombs, and an old chronicle hints that they took the place of human sacrifices.
Q 14In the 760s a Japanese empress had printed Buddhist prayers placed inside one million miniature wooden what?
Pagodas
Pagodas carried the tiny scrolls to temples around Nara, and thousands of the prayers survive as some of the earliest printed texts in the world.
Q 15Japan's monarchy, the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, is known as which flower's throne?
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum Throne is a name for the whole institution rather than a single chair, and legend dates its founding to 660 BC.
Q 16Which Japanese script was nicknamed 'women's writing' after Heian court ladies took it up for letters and stories?
Hiragana
Hiragana caught on with court women because they were shut out of the Chinese-style schooling given to men, and the era's great literature was written in it.
Q 17Which crop became the staple of Yayoi-period Japan, turning bands of hunter-gatherers into settled farming villages?
Rice
Rice needed irrigated fields that had to be tended, so people began to stay in one place, and the population grew.
Q 18Japan's Nara-period court sent envoys roughly every twenty years to bring home the learning of which Chinese dynasty?
Tang
Tang China also supplied the plan for Nara itself, a grid city modelled on the dynasty's capital at Chang'an.
Q 19Which princess from the Moon is found as a baby inside a glowing stalk in the Heian-era Tale of the Bamboo Cutter?
Kaguya
Kaguya is the heroine of what is counted as the oldest surviving Japanese prose tale, written by an unknown author around 900.
Q 20Which of Japan's four main islands held the ancient capitals of Nara and Heian-kyō?
Honshu
Honshu is the seventh-largest island in the world and also holds Mount Fuji, the country's highest peak.
Q 24Which semi-legendary regent of Japan's Asuka period is credited with issuing the Seventeen-Article Constitution?
Prince Shōtoku
Prince Shōtoku's text was less a law code than moral advice for officials, and its first article calls for harmony to be valued.
Q 25Which temple in Nara houses the Daibutsu, the world's largest bronze statue of the Buddha Vairocana?
Tōdai-ji
Tōdai-ji's own records say more than 2.6 million people gave materials or labour towards the statue and the hall built around it.
Q 26Which Japanese temple has a main hall widely recognised as the world's oldest wooden building?
Hōryū-ji
Hōryū-ji was founded shortly after Buddhism reached Japan, and the hall, rebuilt at least 1,300 years ago, has stood ever since.
Q 27Which Heian court lady wrote The Pillow Book, a collection of lists, gossip, poetry and complaints?
Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shōnagon finished it in retirement in the early 1000s, and the book was passed around in handwritten copies for hundreds of years.
Q 28Which storm god of Japanese myth killed the serpent Yamata no Orochi after getting it drunk on strong sake?
Susanoo
Susanoo found a sword inside the dead serpent's tail and gave it to his sister as a peace offering; it became one of the imperial treasures.
Q 29In Japanese myth, the gods Izanagi and Izanami made the first island by churning the sea with a jewelled what?
Spear
Spear in hand, the pair stirred the watery chaos, and the brine that dripped from its tip hardened into the island of Onogoro.
Q 30Before a law code changed the custom, ancient Japan's court usually moved its capital after which event?
An emperor's death
An emperor's death was believed to pollute the place where it happened, so each new reign tended to begin in a new palace town.