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Visits to the palace of the sea god are a recurring theme in premodern Japanese narratives, and comparing these stories across time periods reveals shifting perceptions of the supernatural world. The earliest sources for narratives of travel to the palace of the sea god in Japan date from the eighth century, most notably in the stories of Luck of the Mountain and Urashima Tarō. In these stories, the descriptions of the sea god's palace, the relationship of the sea god to the natural world, and even the location of the palace were tied to eighth-century understandings of kingship, weather, and geography. Later adaptations of these stories incorporate features of Buddhist geography, Chinese architecture, Buddhist narrative motifs, and even an alternative vision of supernatural time. These alterations occurred because the eighth-century narratives required adaptation to fit a new political, social, and religious reality. This comparison demonstrates that our vision of the supernatural world is inextricably tied to our understanding of the natural. When our fundamental grasp of the nature of reality changes, our imagination of the supernatural transforms in turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the approaches of the historian Tsuda Sōkichi to the study of the myths about the gods described in the historical and mythological records “Kojik” and “Nihon chok”. Tsuda Sōkichi left his mark on Japanese historical science as a scientist who applied new methods to the study of ancient myths. The historian applied the accumulated knowledge gained as a result of studying the advanced Western research methods proposed by B. Chamberlain, L. Ranke, and took a fresh look at the ancient historical sources “Kojik” and “Nihon shok”. During the Meiji period, the state established control over historical research and an official ideology developed around the figure of the emperor. In particular, the events of the era of the gods, described in the oldest written monuments, were believed to be the confirmation of the divine origin of the imperial family. However, the historian doubted the truth of the events relating to the era of the god, and made an attempt to clarify the origins of the myths. S. Tsuda does not consider myths to be entirely fictional stories, suggesting that they could be based on real events, but he denies the reality of the existence of gods. The historian compared the myths in the two monuments and singled out the main storyline, dedicated to the emperor’s ancestral gods, and the secondary one. Using the comparative method, the historian draws a conclusion about the Chinese influence on the official mythology of the ancient Japanese state, and also determines other reasons for the changes in the plots of myths. S. Tsuda sees the origins of myths in folk tales and considers them important ethnographic material. The historian identified several functions of myths: political, moral (or religious), the function of explaining physical phenomena and the origin of toponyms and names. The key function of myths, in his opinion, is precisely the political one, since the narrative of myths is built around the divine descendants of the emperor. The purpose of the myths was to strengthen the imperial family among the nobility,nto exalt his figure, and te creatn the image of a “righteous” ruler by proving blood relationship with the main goddess of the Japanese pantheon Amaterasu.

Visits to the palace of the sea god are a recurring theme in premodern Japanese narratives, and comparing these stories across time periods reveals shifting perceptions of the supernatural world. The earliest sources for narratives of travel to the palace of the sea god in Japan date from the eighth century, most notably in the stories of Luck of the Mountain and Urashima Tarō. In these stories, the descriptions of the sea god’s palace, the relationship of the sea god to the natural world, and even the location of the palace were tied to eighth-century understandings of kingship, weather, and geography. Later adaptations of these stories incorporate features of Buddhist geography, Chinese architecture, Buddhist narrative motifs, and even an alternative vision of supernatural time. These alterations occurred because the eighth-century narratives required adaptation to fit a new political, social, and religious reality. This comparison demonstrates that our vision of the supernatural world is inextricably tied to our understanding of the natural. When our fundamental grasp of the nature of reality changes, our imagination of the supernatural transforms in turn.

Através da análise do episódio da queda dos Soga no Nihon Shoki (720 EC), este artigo mostra como fenômenos climáticos, astronômicos e de outras naturezas foram utilizados pelos redatores da crônica para justificar o golpe de 645 EC. Para isto, será analisada brevemente a trajetória dos Soga, o peso das concepções cosmológicas chinesas no Japão neste período, e o contexto de escrita do Nihon Shoki. Em seguida, os presságios serão estudados em detalhes, traçando um comparativo de seu grau de incidência frente aos três reinados anteriores e aos três reinados posteriores diante dos dois outros reinados onde localizam-se os episódios analisados – o cerne da ascensão e queda dos Soga. Feita esta análise quantitativa da incidência de ocorrências ominosas, o estudo procederá para uma análise exegética dos episódios, de modo a mobilizar argumentos que corroborem com a hipótese levantada.

Early modern Japan witnessed new and unprecedented debates surrounding ancient history, including a school of thought that suggested a significant Korean influence upon ancient Japan. This line of thought contrasted sharply with the contemporary school of kokugaku, which emphasized the traditional understanding of Japan as entirely indigenous. Scholars of kokugaku often positioned their work as a polemic against what they perceived as the widespread influence of traditions imported from China, especially Confucianism, for their alleged corruption of an autochthonic Japanese culture. Modern interpreters of kokugaku thereby focused on the issue of their revulsion of Chinese influence. Focusing on Motoori Norinaga, often considered the consummator of kokugaku, this article analyzes Norinaga's responses to interpretations of a possible Korean origin of Japanese culture and customs. By contriving commentaries that eliminated such possibilities, this article argues that Norinaga attempted to defend the traditional understanding of ancient Japan as entirely indigenous and unified ab initio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Man 'yōshū is known as an anthology of poems but is also consulted as a source of political and particularly cultural history. The present examination, which is intended as an introduction to historical studies on the Man 'yōshū, does not address the content of the poems but focuses on the so-called hyōmoku, "spatial-historical section headings," and the sachū and kachū, i.e., annotations that were later added to the end of the poems, headings, titles, etc. Therefore, this article is less about history than about formal aspects of historiography. The character of the Man 'yōshū anthology of literature as historiography is most evident in the first two books, to which this investigation is limited. On the one hand, the selective nature of this unique kind of historiography is to be shown, and on the other hand, its deviations from the Nihon shoki, which represents the official historiography. It is possible that different sources of material were available at the time the anthology was compiled. A case study will be used to show that the deviations from the official historiography may have been intentional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A t three banquets in 882, 906, and 943, Japanese courtiers gathered to drink wine and write poetry about the deities and heroes enshrined in Nihon shoki , Japan's first official state history. These poems evince how members of the Heian court imagined the origins of the imperial system and demonstrate how the poets related those origins to their own lives. They also tell a very different story about antiquity and the creation of Japan than does Nihon shoki , whose narrative they adapted to conform with the circumstances of their own era. This article examines how and why these adaptations were made and what this shift in meaning reveals about the reading and reception of Nihon shoki during the ninth and tenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay will compare myths found in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki with thematically and structurally similar Chinese myths, and other Japanese texts, in order to shed light on the meanings of both Japanese and Chinese mythology. The authors’ approach is partly in the critical textual study tradition that traces back to Gu Jiegang and Tsuda Sokichi, and partly informed by comparative mythologists, such as Matsumae Takeshi, Nelly Naumann, and Antonio Klaus, with attention to Proppian and Levi-Straussian motifs in structural studies. First, we shall discuss some common themes in Chinese and Kojiki/Nihon Shoki myths. Second, we shall point out common structures in both Chinese and Japanese myths. Finally, we shall try to show how such common themes and structures could potentially help us understand the meanings of the myths in discussion.

T his study brings together archaeological and textual evidence to show how the port and palace at Naniwa, the predecessor of modern Osaka, held more importance for seventh- and eighth-century Japan than is visible from official histories promulgated by the court, with the site possibly having been used as a political center by the mid-seventh-century ruler Kōtoku. Thus the article constructs an alternate reading of what Naniwa meant to the early Japanese court, and it also provides a model for the advancement of historical understanding through the comparison of multiple types of sources traditionally not considered within the purview of a single discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of the god Thoth and King Ammon in Plato's Phaedrus is perhaps the most familiar example of a script‐origin narrative, but such accounts also exist from ancient China (such as Xu Shen's postface to the Shuowen jiezi) and Mesopotamia (the poem "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta"). There are also rich and provocative ancient discussions of what it means to "borrow" or "adapt" writing from an adjacent (often more powerful) civilization, including a set of related narratives in eighth‐century Japanese chronicles about Korean scribes importing Sinitic writing. Such premodern sources can be profitably juxtaposed with modern discussions of colonial and ethnological encounters with literacy, such as frequently quoted and requoted stories of "natives" taken aback at the power of writing, or Claude Lévi‐Strauss's famous "Writing Lesson" (from his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques). This article considers the persistent anachronism that marks such accounts. Whether premodern or modern, it seems they inevitably become parables or allegories of the powers of writing at the time of their composition, rather than plausible reconstructions of its earliest stages. What lies behind this difficulty in writing the history of writing? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literary techniques constitute rhetorical devices that are considered to be unique to the history of Japanese verse. Nevertheless, some English translations of Japanese texts lose connotation such techniques, and few studies of this phenomenon have been written in languages other than Japanese. This study applies the insights of two approaches, i.e. morphological and semantic analysis and a hermeneutics interpretation. The result is twofold. It offers a detailed linguistic analysis, providing many insights into the interpretation of these expressions; and accommodates the hermeneutical explanation given by M. Heidegger, showing the very core of makura-kotoba. First of all, I will give a brief review of previous scholarship on the matter, followed by structural and semantic analyses. Finally, I will attempt to use definitions of hermeneutics to speak about rhetorical devices of Old Japanese verse. Translations of Old Japanese songs with glossing and morphemic analyses will be given in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts a critical review of the existing understanding of the East Asian origins of the concept of "empire," by addressing two major issues. First, it has long been known that the term "empire" appears in The Nihon Shoki, the official historical record of ancient Japan, in a diplomatic petition that King Seong of Baekje sent to Japan. If the record was not a fabrication by Japanese historiographers, this makes it the source of the concept of "empire" in East Asia. Nevertheless, "empire" was not established as a mutually intercommunicable political-diplomatic concept because neither China nor Japan adopted it at this time. The terms which were actually used for this purpose were Tienxia, and the "Heavenly Court." The expression "Imperial Country" also only rarely appeared in Chinese literature during the traditional period, and likewise was not recorded in Japan, at least during the ancient period covered by The Nihon Shoki. The second issue discussed is that the concept of "empire," as found in The Nihon Shoki, is hard to elucidate by itself, and in practice can only be understood in relation to the concept of "Awesome Heavenly Emperor," which is also found in this book. Indeed, "Awesome Heavenly Emperor" is the term used by Baekje, and the other countries of the Korean Peninsula at this time, to designate the Japanese ruler. In addition, since the Japanese ruler was styling himself as the "Heavenly Emperor" or the "Heavenly Son" in Japanese diplomatic correspondence with China about one century before the formal and unequivocal adoption of the title "Heavenly Emperor," the international use of such titles is identified as an intermediate step occurring between the initial introduction of the concept "Awesome Heavenly Emperor," from Baekje, and the ultimate explicit assumption, domestically, of the title "Heavenly Emperor" by the Japanese ruler. The historical context surrounding the concepts of "Awesome Heavenly Emperor" and "empire" is also examined, and since the Korean people served as an intermediary in transmitting advanced civilization based on Chinese characters to Japan, it is considered very possible that "Heavenly Emperor" and "empire" are among the political-diplomatic concepts which were introduced to Japan from the Korean peninsula. Lastly, this article also investigates why ancient Japanese rulers did not adopt the concept of "Imperial Country." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Tokoyo no Kami or God of the Everlasting World cargo cult that worship the insect caterpillar in ancient Japan. Topics mentioned include the appear of the story in the chapter of book "Nihon Shoki" or Chronicles of Japan, the identifying of the host plant of the insect, and the result of the cult in the seventh century due to social and political instability with elements of the cargo cults which were recorded in the 19th and 20th centuties.

This article examines the historical representation of the Jinshin Rebellion as a foundational event in the Nihon shoki and other eighth-century Japanese texts. Focusing on the differences between two alternative stories of Tenmu's departure from the Omi capital to Yoshino, I argue that the Nihon shoki contains traces of several competing historical narratives that are the expression of a historical process: the political struggles over the historical record and the representation of Tenmu's legitimacy in the early eighth century when the Nihon shoki was being compiled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Onmyōdō is based on the ancient Chinese theories of yin and yang and the five phases. Practitioners of Onmyōdō utilized Yijing divination, magical purifications, and various kinds of rituals in order to deduce one's fortune or to prevent unusual disasters. However, the term "Onmyōdō" cannot be found in China or Korea. Onmyōdō is a religion that came into existence only within Japan. As Onmyōdō was formed, it subsumed various elements of Chinese folk religion, Daoism, and Mikkyō, and its religious organization deepened. From the time of the establishment of the Onmyōdō as a government office under the ritsuryō codes through the eleventh century, magical rituals and purifications were performed extensively. This article takes this period as its focus, particularly emphasizing the connections between Onmyōdō and Chinese religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of Japanese myth-historical narrative writing, with a focus on the theme of exile in the writing, in early Japan during the 8th century. The interpretation of the theme of exile in early Japanese myth literature from the perspective of Japanese ethnologist Orikuchi Shinobu is explored. The author refers to the two earliest Japanese works the "Kojiki'' and the ''Nihon shoki'' and their tracing of the genealogies of deities while connecting divine hierarchy to the social order of the Yamato court.

In this paper, we will discuss the role played by the Sakaki tree in Japanese mythology as well as in modern culture. This tree is mentioned in the episode of the rites observed to convince Amaterasu-o-mikami to come out of the heavenly rock cave, in the Kojiki. A similar passage is found in Nihon Shoki, which also mentions the "Sakaki of Mount Shitsu" and "a flourishing Sakaki" in other episodes. Besides being mentioned by Japanese myths, the Sakaki is present in the life of the Japanese in many forms. It has been used since ancient times in divine rituals, and Sakaki branches are used even today in some shinto rituals; one of these is the Yomisashi Matsuri (celebrated every October at Omiya Shrine in Iwade Town, Wakayama Prefecture), a festival which we briefly present in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro conspiracy of 757, the Empress Kōken ("Kōken/Shōtoku Tennō") issued two edicts articulating the royal political theology of the time. The first edict was a senmyō, inscribed in the Shoku Nihongi in Old Japanese; the second was a choku in Chinese. A miraculous omen, the apparition of a silkworm cocoon with a message woven into its surface, was interpreted as the occasion for a change in the calendrical era name, or nengō. This article argues that the imperial edicts express a coherent ideology combining ideas from a cultic matrix in which may be discerned proto-Shinto, Buddhist, and Confucian elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay will compare myths found in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki with thematically and structurally similar Chinese myths, and other Japanese texts, in order to shed light on the meanings of both Japanese and Chinese mythology. The authors' approach is partly in the critical textual study tradition that traces back to Gu Jiegang and Tsuda Sokichi, and partly informed by comparative mythologists, such as Matsumae Takeshi, Nelly Naumann, and Antonio Klaus, with attention to Proppian and Levi-Straussian motifs in structural studies. First, we shall discuss some common themes in Chinese and Kojiki/Nihon Shoki myths. Second, we shall point out common structures in both Chinese and Japanese myths. Finally, we shall try to show how such common themes and structures could potentially help us understand the meanings of the myths in discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the Chinese ritual calendar and continental technologies in the formation of early literary and ritual tropes of the Japanese islands. Special attention is given to a small cluster of legends involving imperial emissaries that are sent to call out women with whom rulers have become enamored. The text argues that these legends illustrate the influence of continental rites and legends related to weaving and sericulture on the formation of early tropes of kingship and courtly romance. Because these legends appear to have been rooted in Chinese rites in which silkworm goddesses were ‘called out’ using imagery based upon the silkworm's ability to ‘die’ and be reborn, the text further argues that these legends may have been related to the development of purportedly ‘native’ funerary practices during the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the established theory that the verb toru in Old Japanese exhibits anomalous spelling. A careful examination of poems in Kojiki (Kurano (1958)), Nihon shoki (Ienaga et al. (1967)), and Man'yôshû (Gomi et al. (1957)) shows that there originally were two different verbs which later merged into one, toru. These two verbs had different meanings. Twor- meant 'hold support', but tor- meant 'take, pick up, capture'. Another important distinction between these verbs was aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]