The most profound change was the adoption of Chinese, particularly Confucian, models of government in Prince Shotoku's "Seventeen Article Constitution".

In 710, the capital was moved north to Nara. It was a carefully planned city, after the Chinese capital of Chang-an. Meant to be a permanent capital, it was moved again only eighty years later.

During the Nara period, however, Japan was primarily an agricultural and village-based society. Building a capital city on the model of a Chinese capital produced a dramatic separation from Japanese aristocracy to the rest of the Japanese population. In this region of villages, pit-houses, and kami-worship, grew up a city of palaces, silks, wealth, Chinese writing and Chinese thought, and Buddhism. The Nara capital represents the definitive break of the Japanese aristocracy from their roots in the uji.