Overview
The Asuka period is when Japanese dress first becomes law. In 603 the court established twelve official ranks distinguished by the colour of a cap, and from that point what a man wore at court was a statement of grade rather than of taste — the beginning of a thousand years of regulated Japanese court costume.
Key garments and style
The kan’i junikai assigned each of twelve grades a cap of a set colour, in a scheme drawn from Chinese rank systems and Confucian virtues. It is the first time in Japan that clothing is tied by statute to office, and it arrived with the same wave of continental borrowing that brought Buddhism, the calendar and a bureaucratic state.
Court dress itself moved toward Chinese models: a wide-sleeved robe crossing at the front, worn with trousers or a skirt and a cap, replacing the cord-tied two-piece of the Kofun period at the top of society.
Buddhism brought monastic dress — the kesa, a rectangular mantle of joined patches worn over the shoulder — which had no precedent in Japan and became a permanent part of the visual landscape.
The Takamatsuzuka tomb murals, painted at the end of this era, show groups of men and women in continental robes and pleated skirts, and are the closest thing to a photograph of Asuka court dress.
Transition
The ritsuryo state extended these rules into the fuller Nara clothing codes, which prescribed dress for every rank and occasion.