Academic literature on the topic 'Nihon shoki'

This study intends to revise and present the positioning of each place name that appear in the process of territorial disputes centered on Banpa that occurred between the 7th and 9th years of the Emperor Keitai of the Nihon Shoki. In the mainstream historical community, Banpa is postioned in Goryeong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Kimoon is set in Namwon and Imsil, Jeollabuk-do, and Daesa is set in Hadong, Gyeongsangnam-do. The 12 places other than Banpa recoreded in the Nihon Shoki were positioned in the southern part of Korea by Japanese scholars initially under Japanese colonial rule, and the contents were accepted by the Korean historical community. In this study, I would like to report that the place names recorded in the Nihon shoki were found in Kurume-City Kyushu Japan, and existed the Anra and Shara in the area of Kyushu.

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.

Através da análise do episódio da queda dos Soga no Nihon Shoki (720 EC), esteartigo 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 corroboremcom a hipótese levantada.

The Kojiki and Nihon shoki have been integral to the formation of Japanese identity, especially since the 18th century. As such, they were constantly exposed to processes of sacralization and desacralization, i.e., the attribution and removal of authority. The research project “Sacred Narrative – The Political Dimension of Japanese Mythology” is concerned with how certain systems of thought or ideology used these texts in a way that raised them to an elevated position or deprived them of it. Organized in three focus areas, the project delves into the topic of the historical change the Kojiki and Nihon shoki underwent in terms of interpretation and instrumentalization from the Edo period up to modern-day Japan. These investigations are integrated into the research group “De/Sacralization of Texts” at the University of Tübingen that started its work in January 2022. In this interdisciplinary context, “Sacred narrative” seeks to promote the integration of East-Asian textuality into general theory formation.

The article analyzes the historical and socio-political foundations for the first draft of the state history in Japan, which gave impetus to the processes of institutional building, as well as the design of mechanisms and structures of government that have proved their effectiveness for centuries in the future.

Most scholars in Japanese studies (history, linguistics, literature) tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend that the phonetic writing system of ancient Japan, known as man'yōgana, came from Paekche. This legend about the ancient Korean kingdom—Paekche—appears in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan's two oldest chronicles. To date there have been few attempts to use concrete data from the peninsula either to prove or reject this legend. This article supplies information from all epigraphic data on the Korean peninsula to show that Paekche spread the use of Chinese (sinographs) to be used phonogrammatically and that Koguryo educated the rest of the peninsula in the use of this script.

This study traces the diverse interpretations of Japan’s oldest official history, the 720 Nihon shoki, from its earliest scholarly treatment in the ninth century until its enshrinement within the canon of Japanese national literature in the modern period. Elites in the early eighth century produced a number of texts that described the fundamental principles of the world and the contours of the Japanese empire, such as Kojiki (712), Kaifūsō (751), Man’yōshū (late 8th c.), and as the official court narrative, Nihon shoki. While each of these possesses its own “imperial imagination,” Nihon shoki is distinct because it heavily incorporates historical polities across Northeast Asia, especially on the Korean peninsula, in creating a narrative of ancient Japan in the world. Further, Nihon shoki, while written primarily in Literary Sinitic, also includes elements of the Japanese vernacular, and rather than delineating a single orthodox narrative, provides a number of alternative, conflicting accounts of Japanese mythology. These characteristics animated much of the debate surrounding the text’s proper reading and meaning as later commentators grappled with its exegesis. The dissertation comprises an introduction and five chapters. The first chapter analyzes the discourse surrounding the Nihon shoki in the eighth and ninth centuries, when lectures were periodically given on the text at court. The notes from these lectures reveal controversies over how the text was composed and the proper method of reading it. After the lectures, courtiers composed Japanese poetry about major figures depicted in the work, frequently creating new mythologies that departed from the original as they sought to connect their vision of antiquity with the present. The poems also demonstrate the use of digests and alternative texts that were used as stand-ins for Nihon shoki. I discuss two of these in detail, Kogo shūi (807) and Sendai kuji hongi (c. 936), and show how they took advantage of ambiguities in Nihon shoki to position themselves as authoritative accounts. In Chapter 2, I take up approaches that used Nihon shoki as an originary narrative from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. This type of treatment begins to appear to a limited degree in poetic treatises such as Minamoto no Toshiyori’s Toshiyori zuinō (1113) and Fujiwara no Nakazane’s Kigōshō (1116) and became widespread through the middle of the twelfth century. These same mid-century scholars were also responsible for producing picture scrolls based on the text and the first Nihon shoki commentary, Shinzei’s Nihongi shō (circa 1150). As the trend intensified, citations began to go further and farther afield, often attributing stories and facts to Nihon shoki that are not in the original text. Use of Nihon shoki as an originary narrative was also adopted in political treatises by commentators such as Jien (1155-1225), and I discuss the methods and acrobatic intellectual maneuvers of these agents in blending Buddhist and continental cosmology with the Nihon shoki creation story. I focus especially on Jien’s Gukanshō (c. 1220) and Ichijō Kaneyoshi’s (1402-1481) Nihon shoki sanso (1457). Chapter 3 begins with the uneasy syncretism between Nihon shoki and Song Confucian metaphysics in the seventeenth century. Works in this lineage, such as Hayashi Razan’s Jinmu tennō ron (1618), imagine the gods as metaphors for human actors and form the mainstream of intellectual treatment of Nihon shoki in the Edo period. Other Confucian thinkers, such as Yamazaki Ansai, instead read the gods as factual and use Nihon shoki as evidence of universal Confucian metaphysics; in Ansai’s case the result was an entirely new school of Shinto, and his disciples were responsible for the first two commentaries that covered the entire text. One response to this was a reading that prioritized continental histories over the Nihon shoki chronicles, epitomized by the full-length commentary Shoki shukkai (c. 1785). Another arose in the nascent discipline of national learning, exemplified by Motoori Norinaga’s (1730-1801) criticism of Ansai. Norinaga went on to write a full commentary of the Kojiki, but his reading relied heavily on Nihon shoki, and he cites it more than any other text in his narrative of Japan’s divine age. Chapter 4 introduces a diversity of approaches that attempt to reconcile Nihon shoki with the ideal of a modern national history at the end of the nineteenth century. I begin outlining an 1888 debate that continued for nearly a year over the chronology of Nihon shoki; producing an accurate chronology of Japanese history was considered critical to measuring Japan’s societal progression in comparison to other civilizations. I then discuss historical and linguistic study of the divine age from 1890-1912. Contemporary scholarship often misreads these accounts as being based in positivist historicism, but I show that they are actually rooted in original reinterpretations of Nihon shoki that mix-and-match variant pieces to create a new imperial narrative. Particular attention is given to how such readings were used to justify colonial expansion to Korea. Chapter 5 addresses Nihon shoki’s shifting position in national literature by analyzing several histories of Japanese literature written from 1890 to 1912, especially Takatsu Kuwasaburō and Mikami Sanji’s Nihon bungaku shi and Haga Yaichi’s Kokubungakushi jikkō. The variety of interpretations applied to Nihon shoki illustrate major shifts in ideas about what constituted literature, how literary periods should be divided, the role of academics in creating a national canon, and whether literature should focus on universal characteristics of civilization or particular attributes of national culture. By the end of this period, emphasis on the idea of a shared national language led scholars to sideline Nihon shoki in favor of texts written in something more closely resembling the Japanese vernacular like Kojiki and Man’yōshū. It also cemented the eighth-century as “Ancient Japanese Literature” (jōdai bungaku), a field periodization still in place today.

This paper introduces the faith of Shinshūkyō 神習教, a Shinto sect of which the writer, Yoshimura Masanori, is the current head. It was founded by the writer’s grandfather, Yoshimura Masamochi, who sought to promote a pure form of Shinto based on the most ancient records (Kojiki and Nihon shoki). At the same time Masamochi emphasized the importance of a personal relationship to the kami, even to the extent of kamigakari (spiritual possession), for which special training is now required. The development of the religion is traced from the 19th century onwards, and aspects of its current life are described. Followers are found all over Japan.