Collins Japanese Phrasebook and Dictionary

The oldest attested stage of the Japanese language is Old Japanese, which goes back to the eighth century during the Nara period of Japan. This period is also connected to the earliest Japanese texts. Old Japanese was written using the Man'yōgana script, a syllabary that used Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It’s believed to have been introduced to the Japanese archipelago by Korean scholars. Old Japanese evolved into Early Middle Japanese in 794, during the Heian period of medieval Japan. It further evolved into Late Middle Japanese in 1185, under the Kamakura period. Late Middle Japanese was spoken for four hundred fifteen years, before evolving into the modern Japanese language that is spoken today.