Though some parts, especially the many old songs included in the book, were meant to be read in Old Japanese, with the Chinese characters only providing a way to record the sounds of the language. The Kojiki was largely written in Chinese as that was the only writing system available at the time. On the other hand, it provided an exclusively Japanese historical narrative for the court, and in extension, for the country at a time when Buddhism and Chinese culture were spreading throughout Japan at full force. The Kojiki thus legitimized the lineage of the Imperial family and traced it back as descending right from the gods that had created Japan.

Amaterasu retreats into a cave and the world turns dark Imperial Family 628 A.D, reigned 593 - 628), the first Empress of Japan.īut Susa-No-O talks his way into Amaterasu's kingdom and soon starts plenty of troubles. The book then follows the complicated genealogical line of the emperors and ends with Empress Suiko (554 A.D. One of those gods turned eventually human, sort of, and became Japan's first Emperor Jinmu. Those myriads of gods had myriads of children and some of them had notable adventures or did noteworthy deeds sketched out in the book. It goes on to detail how they gave birth to a myriad of other gods of which Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun, was the most prominent. The book, written on the request of Empress Genmei, started out with the ancient myth of the god couple Izunagi and Izunami creating the first bunch of Japanese islands. Sun goddess Amaterasu refuses entry to heaven to her violent brother Susa-No-O

in the Western calendar, when scholar, nobleman and court bureaucrat O No Yasumaro presented the Kojiki to Empress Genmei at her court in the newly constructed capital city of Nara.Ī story from the Kojiki as manga. The Kojiki is Japan's oldest still surviving book. A discussion of the English translations of the Kojiki 古事記 (By O No Yasumaro)

The Kojiki by Ō no Yasumaro