Heijo (Nara), founded in 706 as the intended seat of the Japanese government, modeled after the Chinese T'ang dynasty's capital of Ch’ang-an (Xi'an), is completed in 710.

The city becomes the permanent seat of Japanese government, inaugurating the so-called Nara period.

The Chinese-influenced “Tachibana Shrine,” a miniature shrine owned by the Horyu temple in Nara expresses the complex iconography of Amida, the Buddha of the Western Paradise, in the triad of Amida and two bodhisattvas seated on lotus pedestals rising from a pond; behind them stands a low-relief bronze screen portraying a placid scene of the souls reborn in the Western Paradise.