Kojiki Explained

The, also sometimes read as [1] or ,[2] is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641[3] concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the, and the Japanese imperial line. It is claimed in its preface to have been composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Genmei in the early 8th century (711–712), and thus is usually considered to be the oldest extant literary work in Japan.[4]

The myths contained in the as well as the are part of the inspiration behind many practices and unified "Shinto orthodoxy".[5] Later, they were incorporated into Shinto practices such as the purification ritual.[6] [7] [8]

Composition

It is believed that the compilation of various genealogical and anecdotal histories of the imperial (Yamato) court and prominent clans began during the reigns of Emperors Keitai and Kinmei in the 6th century, with the first concerted effort at historical compilation of which we have record being the one made in 620 under the auspices of Prince Shotoku and Soga no Umako. According to the Nihon Shoki, the documents compiled under their initiative were the Tennōki (Japanese: 天皇記, also Sumera-mikoto no fumi) or the "Record of the Emperors", the Kokki (Japanese: 国記, also Kunitsufumi) or the "National Record", and other "fundamental records" (Japanese: 本記, hongi or mototsufumi) pertaining to influential clans and free subjects. Out of these texts, only the Kokki survived the burning of Soga no Emishi's estate (where these documents were kept) during the Isshi incident of 645, and was itself apparently lost soon after.[9]

The Kojiki preface indicates that leading families also kept their own historical and genealogical records; indeed, one of the reasons it gives for the compilation of the Kojiki is the correction of errors that had supposedly crept into these documents. According to the preface, Emperor Tenmu (reigned 673–686) ordered the review and emendation of clan documents and commissioned a certain court attendant (toneri) of exceptional memory named Hieda no Are to memorize records and oral traditions concerning the imperial lineage. Beyond this memorization, nothing occurred until the reign of Empress Genmei (reigned 707–715), who on the 18th of the 9th month of 711 (Wadō 4) ordered the courtier Ō no Yasumaro to record what had been learned by Hieda no Are. He finished and presented his work to Empress Genmei on the 28th of the 1st month of 712 (Wadō 5).[10] [9]

Purpose

The Kojiki is a collation of different traditions woven into a single "official" mythology, made in an attempt to justify the rule of the imperial Yamato polity and at the same time to subsume different interest groups under its wing by giving them a place and an interest in the national genealogy-mythology. Apart from furthering the imperial agenda, an increased interest in the nation's origins in reaction to the influx of foreign culture and the need for an authoritative genealogical account by which to consider the claims of noble families and to reorganize them into a new system of ranks and titles are also possible factors for its compilation.[11]

The Kojiki narrative establishes the Yamato line's right to rule via myth and legend, portraying it as the progeny of heavenly deities and the rightful heir to the land of Japan. A good part of the latter portion of the text is spent recounting various genealogies which served not only to give the imperial family an air of antiquity (which may not necessarily reflect historical reality), but also served to tie, whether true or not, many existing clans' genealogies to their own. Regardless of the work's original intent, it finalized and possibly even formulated the framework by which Japanese history was examined in terms of the reign of emperors.[11]

In contrast to the Nihon Shoki (compiled 720), the first of six histories commissioned by the imperial court, which was modeled on Chinese dynastic histories and was intended to be a national chronicle that could be shown with pride to foreign envoys, the Kojiki is inward looking, concerned mainly with the ruling family and prominent clans, and is apparently intended for internal consumption. Whereas the Nihon Shoki uses a variety of source documents (including Chinese texts), the Kojiki is apparently based on sources handed down within the court.[12] [13] [14]

Transmission and study

Whereas the Nihon Shoki, owing to its status as one of the six imperial histories, was widely read and studied during the Heian period (794–1185), the Kojiki was mostly treated as an ancillary text. Indeed, a work known as the Sendai Kuji Hongi (also known as the Kujiki), claimed to have been authored by Prince Shōtoku and Soga no Umako, was considered to be earlier and more reliable than the Kojiki. (Modern scholarly consensus holds the Kuji Hongi to be a Heian period forgery based on both the Kojiki and the Shoki, although certain portions may indeed preserve genuine early traditions and sources.) By the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the work languished in obscurity such that very few people had access to the text, particularly that of the middle (second) volume.[15] It is due to this neglect that the Kojiki is available only in comparatively late manuscripts, the earliest of which dates to the late 14th century.[16]

It was with the advent of printing in the early modern period that the Kojiki first reached a wide audience. The earliest printed edition of the text was the Kan'ei Kojiki (Japanese: 寛永古事記), published in Kyoto in 1644 (Kan'ei 21). A second edition, the Gōtō Kojiki (Japanese: 鼇頭古事記, "Kojiki with Marginal Notes") was printed by Deguchi (Watarai) Nobuyoshi, a priest at Ise Shrine, in 1687 (Jōkyō 4).[16] [17]

The birth of nativist studies (kokugaku) and nationalist sentiment during the Edo period saw a reappraisal of the Kojiki. Kokugaku scholars saw Japan's earliest writings as the repository of a uniquely superior Japanese identity that could be revived by recovering the ancient language they were written in; the Kojiki, by virtue of its antiquity, gained the status of a sacred text.[18] The Kojiki came to be highly regarded that scholars such as Kada no Azumamaro and Kamo no Mabuchi – himself a student of Azumamaro – produced annotated versions of it.[16]

The Kojiki received its most serious study and exposition in the hands of Motoori Norinaga, who obtained a copy of the Kan'ei printed edition in 1754. After meeting Mabuchi in 1763, Norinaga began to devote his efforts to an in-depth scholarly study of the text. A monumental 44-volume study of the Kojiki called, composed over a 34-year period (1764–1798), was the fruit of his labor.[16] With Norinaga, the Kojiki assumed an importance equal to the Nihon Shoki; in fact, in his view the Kojiki was a more trustworthy source for ancient Japanese traditions than was the Shoki precisely because it was free of "Chinese mentality". He viewed the Kojiki as a true account of actual events that when read correctly, could reveal Japan in its pristine, ideal state as a community where the kami, the emperor and the people lived in harmony.[16] [19] Norinaga's work was carried on in different directions by his disciple Hirata Atsutane and his rivals Fujitani Mitsue (1781–1849)[20] and Tachibana Moribe (1768–1823),[21] who each produced commentaries and treatises on the text.[16]

The Kojiki became once more the object of scholarly focus and discussion in the Meiji period with the introduction of Western academic disciplines such as philology and comparative mythology. The importance of the text as a work of literary value was recognized, and scholars realized that its accounts were comparable in many ways to ancient Greek and Roman myths. At the same time, however, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki achieved a sort of scriptural status under State Shintō, which viewed the stories contained therein as orthodox national history. Official ideology upheld as unquestionable fact the belief in the emperor's divinity and the idea of Japan as a racially superior "national body" (kokutai), with scholars who questioned their veracity facing the threat of censorship, forced resignation, or even trial in court.[16] [18]

Until the Meiji era, the text's sacred nature was not known to have been questioned.[22] However, the Kojiki was still widely seen as inferior to the Nihon Shoki until Motoori Norinaga wrote the Kojiki-den.[23] In 1913, Tsuda Sōkichi argued in a study that the Kojiki, particularly in its earlier sections, was neither history nor myth but a document created to legitimize the rule of the imperial line. While his conclusions led to considerable controversy, his influence remains in subsequent studies of the text (particularly in post-World War II scholarship), which amounts largely to development and correction of the line of thought originally proposed by him. In reaction to Tsuda, Watsuji Tetsurō (1920) argued for a literary appreciation of the Kojiki, claiming that this gave it inner coherence. Kurano Kenji (1927) took it a step further, proposing that the Kojiki may best be compared with Western epic literature and regarded as a national epic like Beowulf is in the English-speaking world. During the 1920s and 30s, linguist Hashimoto Shinkichi studied the phonology of the Old Japanese language, and his conclusions were applied by scholars to the study of the text.[16]

The Kojiki continued to attract the attention of academics and other specialists in the post-war period, which saw the appearance of numerous editions, translations and commentaries on the text by authors such as Kurano Kenji, Takeda Yūkichi, Saigō Nobutsuna, and Kōnoshi Takamitsu.

Manuscripts

There are two major branches of Kojiki manuscripts: Ise and Urabe. The extant Urabe branch consists of 36 existing manuscripts all based on the 1522 copies by Urabe Kanenaga. The Ise branch may be subdivided into the manuscript of 1371–1372 and the manuscripts. The Dōka sub-branch consists of:

The Shinpukuji-bon manuscript (1371–1372) is the oldest existing manuscript. While divided into the Ise branch, it is actually a mixture of the two branches. The monk Ken'yu based his copy on Ōnakatomi Sadayo's copy. In 1266, Sadayo copied volumes one and three but did not have access to the second volume. Finally, in 1282, he obtained access to the second volume through a Urabe-branch manuscript that he used to transcribe.

Structure

The Kojiki contains various songs and poems. While the historical records and myths are written in a form of the Chinese language, the songs are written in Old Japanese with the Man'yōgana writing system, which uses Chinese characters only phonetically.[24]

Sections

The Kojiki is divided into three parts: the, the and the .

Synopsis

What follows is a condensed summary of the contents of the text, including many of the names of gods, emperors, and locations as well as events which took place in association with them. The original Japanese is included in parentheses where appropriate.

Preface (Japanese: 序)

Ō no Yasumaro's preface, in the form of a dedicatory address to Empress Genmei, begins with a poem summarizing the main contents of the work. He then relates how Emperor Tenmu commissioned Hieda no Are to memorize the genealogies and records of the imperial house years earlier, and how Genmei in turn ordered Yasumaro to compile a written record of what Are had learned. He finally concludes the preface with a brief explanation of the Chinese characters used to transcribe native Japanese words in the text and the division of the work into three volumes.

The Nakatsumaki (Japanese: 中巻), or second volume

The Shimotsumaki (Japanese: 下巻), or final volume

English-language translations

See also

References

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: World Religions At Your Fingertips . Michael . McDowell . Nathan Robert . Brown . Penguin . 2009 . 978-1101014691 .
  2. Book: スーパー大辞林. Super Daijirin.
  3. [Jaroslav Průšek]
  4. Book: Duthie, Torquil. Man'yoshu and the imperial imagination in early Japan. 9789004251717. Leiden. 864366334. 2014.
  5. Book: Bellingham . David . Myths and Legends . Whittaker . Clio . Grant . John . Wellfleet Press . 1992 . 1-55521-812-1 . Secaucus, New Jersey . 181 . 27192394.
  6. Book: Reader, Ian . Simple Guides: Shinto . Kuperard . 2008 . 978-1-85733-433-3 . 33,60.
  7. Encyclopedia: Encyclopedia of Japan . Kojiki . 2012-09-18 . 2012 . Shogakukan . Tokyo . 56431036 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070825113418/http://rekishi.jkn21.com/ . 2007-08-25 .
  8. Encyclopedia: Dijitaru Daijisen . 古事記 . 2012-09-18 . 2012 . Shogakukan . Tokyo . ja . Kojiki . 56431036 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070825113418/http://rekishi.jkn21.com/ . 2007-08-25 .
  9. Book: Philippi . Donald L. . Kojiki . 2015 . Princeton University Press . 4–7 . 978-1-40087800-0.
  10. Book: Brownlee, John S.. Political thought in Japanese historical writing: from Kojiki (712) to Tokushi Yoron (1712). 1991. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 978-0-88920997-8. Waterloo, Ontario. 243566096.
  11. Philippi, Donald L. (2015). Kojiki. Princeton University Press. pp. 6–14.
  12. Philippi, Donald L. (2015). Kojiki. Princeton University Press. pp. 15–18.
  13. Book: Raaflaub . Kurt A. . Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World . 2013 . John Wiley & Sons . 102–4 . 978-1118413111.
  14. Book: Bently, John R. . Foot . Sarah . Robinson . Chase F. . The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 2: 400–1400 . 2012 . Oxford University Press . 61–62 . https://books.google.com/books?id=8kJoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA61 . The Birth and Flowering of Japanese Historiography: From Chronicles to Tales to Historical Interpretation. 978-0-19163693-6 .
  15. Book: Saitō . Hideki . 古事記 不思議な1300年史 [Kojiki: Fushigi na 1300 nen shi] . 2012 . Shinjinbutsu Ōraisha . ja. 36–77.
  16. Philippi, Donald L. (2015). Kojiki. Princeton University Press. pp. 30–32.
  17. Book: Chamberlain . Basil H. . A Translation of the "Ko-ji-ki", or "Records of Ancient Matters" . 1919 . x-xii . https://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/kj/kj002.htm . The Text and Its Authenticity, Together with Bibliographical Notes.
  18. Book: Heldt . Gustav . The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters . 2014 . Columbia University Press . xxi-xxii . 9780231538121 .
  19. Book: Hardacre . Helen . Shinto: A History . 2017 . Oxford University Press . 329–333 . 9780190621711 .
  20. Web site: Furuso . Masami . Fujitani Mitsue . Encyclopedia of Shinto . 2019-11-01.
  21. Web site: Shibata . Shin'ichi . Tachibana Moribe . Encyclopedia of Shinto . 2019-11-01.
  22. Book: Bellingham . David . Myths and Legends . Whittaker . Clio . Grant . John . Wellfleet Press . 1992 . 1-55521-812-1 . Secaucus, New Jersey . 184 . 27192394.
  23. Book: Bellingham . David . Myths and Legends . Whittaker . Clio . Grant . John . Wellfleet Press . 1992 . 1-55521-812-1 . Secaucus, New Jersey . 184 . 27192394.
  24. Book: The idea of writing : writing across borders. 2012. Brill. Voogt, Alexander J. de., Quack, Joachim Friedrich, 1966-. 9789004215450. Leiden. 773348868.
  25. Encyclopedia: Encyclopedia of Japan . Ninigi no Mikoto . 2012-09-18 . 2012 . Shogakukan . Tokyo . 56431036 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070825113418/http://rekishi.jkn21.com/ . 2007-08-25 .

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