Old Japanese was the first form of the Japanese language. The script (the way it was written) came from the Chinese script. This was all based on characters which were like little pictures (called kanji today, e.g. 中古日本語). During the Late Old period two new scripts were invented: Hiragana and Katakana. These were much simpler and described the sound of the syllables. It made reading and writing much easier. Famous books were written during this period such as "The Tale of Genji", "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter", "The Tales of Ise" and many others.