SOURCE: Masao Yaku, "Love Songs" and "The Theme of the Kojiki," in The Kojiki in the Life of Japan, translated by G. W. Robinson, The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1969, pp. 82-121, 122-50.

[In the following excerpt, the Kojiki is presented as a unified, literary work designed to provide a "basis and origin" for the Emperor's sovereignty. Combining literary and political analyses, Yaku contends that the "principle of conflict, fusion, and harmony" facilitates "an account of the creation of a state with centralized power brought about by the submission to the emperor of the chieftans and heads of clans at the base. "]

Were one to define the Kojiki in a single phrase, one would say that it gives an account of the origin of the rise and prosperity of our ancient Japanese state. Then, from another point of view, from the literary point of view, the work may be said to be made up of a number of heroic legends. And many of these legends are a sort of 'ballad tale' of which lyrics or ballads form the core.

But if we compare those tales in the Kojiki of which the core is lyric or ballad with the ballad tales of the Heian period, we find that while both share the essential character of the ballad tale in respect of the central importance in both of the hero's or heroine's song or songs, there seems to be some difference when it comes to such features as the character of the hero or heroine or the relative importance of song and prose narrative. Even so we can probably say that the literary form of the ballad tale from the Heian period on had its beginnings in the Kojiki. Moreover, the method adopted in the Kojiki to develop the single coherent theme that I have just described, by forming into a single whole a large number of short myths and legends may be regarded as exactly analogous to the narrative method of such later works as Taketori Monogatari [The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. 2 books. An anonymous work written in the early Heian period.] The Tale of Genji and Heike Monogatari. The Kojiki may therefore be regarded as a forerunner of the Japanese literary form known as 'the long work made out of a series of short works.' Thus the Kojikfs significance in point of literary form may be said to be unexpectedly profound. So that, if the Manyoshu can be described as the forerunner of Japanese poetry, we can certainly say that the Kojiki is the start of Japanese prose literature. It was a seed that has never ceased vigorously to put forth buds in the Japanese literature that developed in later periods….

Myth, legend and actuality form a single chain, so that we may regard both myth and legend as expression of the attitude with which their transmitter apprehends the world. In point of time of formation, it is by no means inevitable that legend should follow on after the creation of myth. In so far as both are formed from actuality, one should perhaps regard simultaneity as the norm. Even so, individual, actual experience cannot be divorced from national historical consciousness, and I think that this connection between the two constitutes the essence of historical consciousness.

How, then, to apply this relationship to the Kojikil? … [The] first part of Naka-no-ōe's 'Song of the Three Mountains' is a tale of 'the Age of the Gods' and so corresponds to the Kojiki's Volume One. About 'antiquity' the 'Song of the Three Mountains' does not particularize but, in saying, 'in antiquity just so too,' the poem simply carries on with the tradition of 'the Age of the Gods' and may thus be said to have omitted 'antiquity.' Corresponding to this we have that part of the Kojiki, from Volume Two on, which we call legendary. Whether this means both Volume Two and Volume Three or only Volume Two is a question, which does not admit of a simple answer. For the present I will leave it as meaning the legends in Volumes Two and Three. The theme of the 'Song of the Three Mountains,' 'We mortals too now seem to contend for our wives,' is, in that poem, that which had given the poet a sense of actuality, and as such, if transferred to the Kojiki, may be taken to correspond to the ideas of those who transmitted and compiled the myths and legends of the Kojiki.

…. .

The scope of the whole work is defined in O-no-Yasumaro's Preface to the Kojiki as 'from the beginning of heaven and earth up to the reign at Oharida,' and so the Kojiki does in fact start with the beginning of heaven and earth and end with the reign of the Empress Suiko. This is then divided into three volumes. In short, Volume One runs from Ame-no-minakanushi to Ugayafukiaezu, Volume Two from Jimmu to Ôjin and Volume Three from Nintoku to Suiko.

Volume One is a world of mythology which resulted from a process of searching back from the point of departure constituted by the Emperor Jimmu. Having first gone back to the emperor's birthplace in Himuka, they went right back further still and postulated the heavenly world, what they called the Plain of High Heaven. If we take the myths of Volume One to be an attempt to account for the emperor's rule over the whole country, then we may take Volume Two to be an attempt to provide a historical origin for the establishment of the great empire including the Korean conquests. While we may regard Volume One, with its mythological account of the activities of gods, to be a theoretical, once and for all, stereotyped explanation, Volume Two can be regarded as an account of the basis of that imperial rule, founded on considerations of historical development. In Volume One the gods act directly, in Volume Two they are shown as subserving the actions of the heroes. In Volume Two the gods are exhibited as helping or obstructing the heroes' activities, so that it is not they, but the heroes, who have the principal roles. Here perhaps lies the distinction between 'the Age of the Gods' and 'antiquity.'

In contrast to this, Volume Three consists entirely of stories of people, and, though gods do appear, they do so in their capacity as objects of worship and they themselves have no normative effect in the human sphere. We thus perceive that Volumes One, Two and Three have each its own character. Might we say that Volume One is the age of gods, Volume Two the age of gods and men together, and Volume Three the age of men?

In his Kadokawa Bunko edition of the Kojiki, Professor Takeda Yūkichi divides Volume One as follows:

i. Izanagi and Izanami (the beginning of heaven and earth, the birth of the islands, the birth of the gods, the Land of Darkness, the purification).

ii. The Great Goddess Amaterasu and Susanoö (the oath, the Rock Gate of Heaven).

iii. Susanoö (cereal seeds, the eight-forked snake, genealogies).

iv. The god Ōkuninushi (the hare and the crocodiles, the Cockle-shell Princess and the Clam Princess, the Remote Subterrancan Corner Land, the ballad story of the god of Eight-Thousand-Spears, genealogies, the god Sukunabikona, the god of Mount Mimoro, descendants of the god of Great Harvests).

v. The Great Goddess Amaterasu and Ōkuninushi (Amewakahiko, the Cession of the Country).

vi. Ninigi (the descent from heaven, Princess Sarume, Princess Konohanasakuya).

vii. Prince Hikohohodemi (Sea Luck and Mountain Luck, Princess Toyotama).

viii. Prince Ugayafukiaezu.

Such, then, is the outline of Volume One. To illustrate their relationships at various junctures, I use the attached diagram.

If we now look at the broad outline of Volume One arranged in this diagrammatic fashion, we are in a position to define the Kojik's schematization of the gods as follows: it is the story of negotiation, conflict and fusion between the gods of the Heavenly Grandson line (equally called the Amaterasu line or the Plain of High Heaven line) of which the apex is Takamimusubi, and the gods of the Izumo line, of which the apex is Kamumusubi. And the conclusion is the peaceful submission of the gods of the Izumo line to those of the Heavenly Grandson line. Ame-nominakanushi may be regarded as the symbol of this fusion. The Kojik Vs opening passage provides the clue to this schematization of the gods…. And so what we may regard as the main theme of the Kojiki is this: 'In this world now too, not only the chieftain of Izumo, but all the chieftains and the clans should be obedient to the emperors directly descended from the Great Goddess Amaterasu.'

As I have said, the myths of Volume One may be defined as first providing an explanation of the origin of the Japanese nation and then demonstrating the basis for the sacred character of the imperial government. What, then, would be the themes of Volumes Two and Three? I think we may take it that the fact that Volume One breaks off with Ugayafukiaezu and Volume Two begins with Kamuyamato-iwarebiko is intended both to show, by placing the first emperor at the head of Volume Two, that Volume One should be regarded as his origin, and also to make a break between myth and legend. We may regard this division as intended to have some kind of significance. If this is the case it would also seem that starting Volume Two with the first emperor, Jimmu, and breaking it off with Ōjin, has some inherent reason over and above the threefold division required simply by the length of the work.

Now, the broad outline of Volume Two is this: it starts with Jimmu's pacification of Yamato and then goes on with Sujin's pacification of the eastern provinces and Koshi and Taniha, Suinin's despatch of Tajimamori to the Eternal Land, Yamatotakeru's unification of Honshu, and ends with the Empress Jingū's subjugation of Silla and Paekche in Korea. Such an outline principally takes account of territorial expansion, but there runs parallel what may be regarded as another very important element, the religious side of things. That is to say, we have the legends of Jimmu's marriage with the god Ōmononushi's daughter, Isukeyori, Sujin's worship of the god Ōmononushi, Suinin's worship of the great god of Izumo, Yamatotakeru's worship of Amaterasu, Jingū's worship of Amaterasu and the three deities of Suminoe, Ōjin's worship of Kehi, the god of food, and finally of Ame-no-hiboko and the goddess of Izushi. If we regard all this as running parallel to the theme of the expansion of the territory, we understand how that territorial expansion runs parallel to an expansion of relations with the gods of the territory.

In a general way, indeed, it is quite a natural development of mythological thought that the pacification of the territory should involve at the same time combining with, or, rather, pacifying the deities who preside over the territory. Pacification of the territory or worshipping the gods of the territory, it is the same thing. So we can see that the general outline of Volume Two is like this: it starts with the uniting of Jimmu with the god of Yamato, then it goes on by way of Sujin and Suinin's expansions and Yamatotakeru's unification of the whole country, to end up with Jingū's and Ōjin's Korean conquests, and the accompanying expansion involved in worshipping gods of a foreign kind. Thus Japan's maximum expansion, reached with the Korean conquests, is traced from the historical hypothesis of Jimmu's unification of Yamato; it may be a historical fact, but as it could also be a logical conjecture, I will leave it as a hypothesis for the time being. At this point we may ask what becomes in Volume Two of the relations between the imperial line gods and the Izumo line gods …

Jimmu's unification of Yamato in Volume Two of the Kojiki starts with his subjugation of the resister, Nagasunebiko, and his marriage with Isukeyori, daughter of the Izumo line. From Sujin on the expansion into the territories round Yamato runs parallel with worship of the Izumo line gods, while when we come to Yamato-takeru's pacification of the whole country, the light of the Great Goddess Amaterasu spreads out to shine over all Ōyashima.

This interrelationship extends to Korea through Jingū's expedition to Silla. From the political point of view, we pass from the establishment of the Yamato court centred on the region of the three mountains of Asuka to the unification of the Ōyashima nation, and then to the extension overseas, and the establishment, as a consequence of the Korean expedition, of the powerful Far Eastern state, the state of the 'sovereign who rules over all under heaven.' On the religious side there is the corresponding ascendancy gained for the divine authority of Amaterasu over the great god of Izumo and numerous other local deities. In these circumstances, the particular prominence of Izumo should not perhaps be regarded as simply due to its being the name of an actual region rivalling Yamato in the cultural sphere; it may be that, as the alternative names of the gods Ōmononushi and Ōkuninushi suggest, Izumo bears a generalized significance symbolizing all the regions and localities ruled over by local gods or divine ancestors of the provincial chieftains, the kuni-no-miyakko. Thus Ōkuninushi is also a symbol of all local powerful clans or clan chieftains. We have thus a consistent single theme for Volumes One and Two which we may sum up thus: religiously, they provide an explanation of the basis and origin of Amaterasu's absolute character; politically, they explain the basis and origin of the imperial rule over a Far Eastern nation.

Volume Three starts with the Emperor Nintoku. Nintoku is called the 'Sage Sovereign.' His line, which broke off once with Seinei, went on through Woke and Ōke, i.e. the Emperors Ninken and Kenzō, and was once more broken off with Buretsu. At this juncture, we are told, the whole country was searched for a successor to the throne until finally a descendant from Ōjin in the fifth generation was found, the Emperor Keitai. Thus from Keitai to Suiko, the Kojiki consists almost solely of genealogical information about the dynasty, with virtually no other matter. So the contents of the greater part of Volume Three cover the reign of Nintoku down to that of Buretsu, last of Nintoku's line.

The start with the Sage Sovereign and the conclusion with the cruel prince, such as the Nihon Shoki depicts Buretsu as being, is on the stereotype of the rise and fall of kingdoms in ancient China, so one might say that the theme of Volume Three consists in the rise and fall of the Nintoku monarchy. By the connection of Keitai, the successor to this monarchy, to Ōjin, the succession is derived from the last emperor of the Kojiki's Volume Two, sothat Keitai, as the fifth generation descendant from Ōjin, symbolizes a revival of the epoch of Ōjin, after the interposition of the rise and fall of the Nintoku monarchy. In the light of this, it may be preferable not to regard the imperial clan's internal disputes about the throne in Volume Three as intended to emphasize the legitimacy of the throne; it may be more natural to regard all this as a reflection of historical fact, and there too we find treated without dissimulation the inevitable tragedy of human life. It would then follow that the ideals of the national life as a whole are to be sought in Volumes Two and One.

The expansion of the national territory to its greatest extent in Ōjin's reign, as described in Volume Two, is not treated in Volume Three. The contents of Volume Three are exclusively concerned with the internecine disputes of the imperial clan and the consolidation of the absolute power of the emperor. Japan's retreat from Korea, which started under Keitai, was the beginning of the long and bitter Korean question, later to become the central problem in Japanese policy. It is precisely for this reason that the desire in the period from Keitai on to revive the Ōjin period may be regarded as a natural tendency….

If we thus arrange the development of this theme in the form of a pyramid, we can well understand what the Kojiki is saying.

The relation between Ame-no-minakanushi, Takamimusubi and Kamumusubi, at the apex of the triangle in the diagram, illustrates the basic principle of the theme of the myths and legends, while the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, which comes next, is an explanation of the origin of the earth and the birth of all living creatures. This myth at the same time illustrates, through the husband-wife relationship of the two deities, the principle of the conflict, fusion and harmony between the ancestors of the Yamato court and those of the chieftains of Izumo. Between the various gods and heroes who figure against one another further down the diagram, the main principle of division is between the line of the Plain of High Heaven or imperial ancestors on the one hand, and the line of the ancestors of the provincial chieftains, with special reference to those of Izumo, on the other; and this amounts to an attempt to explain the reason and basis for the submission of the ancestors of the provincial chieftains to those of the emperors. In short, we can probably regard it as an account of the creation of a state with centralized power brought about by the submission to the emperor of the chieftains and heads of clans at the base, in short a justification of the principles underlying the Taika Reform. [Political reform led by Prince Naka-no-ōe who destroyed the powerful Soga clan in 645.]

The reader will have understood now, from the foregoing diagram, the compilers' central intentions. One might call this a logical deduction of the compilers' intentions, based on analysis of the themes of the different volumes of the Kojiki, but there remains the question whether or not such intentions are congruous with those of the compilers that are considered historical facts. As I have said, there is no overt statement of the matter in the Kojiki itself. But we can draw conclusions by studying the Nihon Shoki and the Preface to the Kojiki

Just who, then, were the compilers of the Kojikil Difficult though it, of course, is to identify a particular person as the compiler, since the work was not spontaneously generated, we are obliged to some extent to point to some human agency. The Nihon Shoki and the Preface to the Kojiki justify us, I think, in taking as compilers those who were connected with the Emperor Temmu's compilation of the Kojiki as well as those responsible for the 'Chronicle of the Emperors' and the 'Chronicle of the Country' in Suiko's reign.

The first information we find with direct reference to the compilation of the Kojiki is the compilation of a record of the emperors and a record of the country, in the 28th year of the reign of the Empress Suiko (620). This was one of the things done by Prince Shōtoku, who is also regarded as responsible for establishing the twelve cap-ranks and for drawing up the Seventeen Articles, of which the third enjoins 'absolute submission to imperial commands.' The Prince strove with all his might to resolve the problems of the period I have just described, and it may be supposed that the spirit in which he strove provided one of the motives for national historiography.

About this record of the emperors and the record of the country, we have the entry for the fourth year of the reign of the Empress Kōgyoku (645), stating that Funano-Esaka, a scribe, hurriedly seized the burning record of the country and presented it to Naka-no-ōe. And so is related the destruction of this precious material by fire. However, in view of the statement that the record of the country was presented to Naka-no-ōe, it would hardly be a mere coincidence that Naka-no-ōe's, that is to say, the Emperor Tenchi's younger brother, the Emperor Temmu was responsible for having the Kojiki recited. The Taika Reform had already been carried through and a state had been created with centralized power and the emperor at its head. We may very well imagine the desire to account for the sacred character of the emperor and his authority over the whole country, which constituted that state's basis, by means of myths and legends. There can be no question that it was the purpose of the Kojiki to make plain, in the words of Temmu in its Preface, 'the fabric of the country, the grand foundation of the monarchy,' that is to say, the basic principle of the unified national life. Since this also means that the principal aims in compiling the Kojiki included the coordination of the traditions of the clans, one ought, of course, to touch on the historical development of the ideas involved, but as this is rather beyond my present scope, I am leaving the matter at that for the present.

If we assumed a considerable revision of the contents to have taken place after Temmu's time, we might also properly include as compilers of the Kojiki all those involved up to and including Ō-no-Yasumaro's definitive recension in the reign of the Empress Gemmei. However, since, according to Yasumaro's Preface, his work was confined, as is well known, to establishing the written text, there would seem no necessity to extend the time limit so far in point of contents. Moreover, we may also suppose that an oral prototype of the Kojiki had come into being by Suiko's time and that this was what had been orally transmitted down to the time of Temmu. However, taking into consideration such a fact as that whereas the Kojiki contains a large number of tanka or lyrics, there are no lyrics in the pre-Suiko part of the Nihon Shoki which can reliably be accepted as historical products of that period, it would seem reasonable to suppose that the tanka form, as a mode of individual lyrical expression, came into being round about the Suiko period; in which case, the Kojiki may well have been composed after Suiko. Moreover, since the myths and legends themselves contain matter which supposes some cultural advance, it is all the more difficult to accept a pre-Suiko date of composition. And even if one did go so far, one could hardly go back so far as the pre-Keitai period.

Reasoning along these lines, we may conclude that the composition of the Kojiki must, very broadly, have taken place during the period extending from the time of Keitai through that of Suiko up to the reign of Temmu. This period corresponds to that treated in the final part of Volume Three of the Kojiki, the period for which it records only the imperia genealogy and no other information. Thus the time of 'we mortals now,' i.e. the present time, in Naka-no-ōe's 'Song of the Three Mountains,' is that which is not recorded in the Kojiki. That is to say, the myths and legends were compiled for the purpose of finding a basis for the present, but the present itself was not directly handled. Accordingly, when we now read the Kojiki, we must extract from our reading of the myths and legends, in their background, the real preoccupations and feelings which constituted the thought of the compilers' period. This is what comprehension of the Kojiki should surely be.

This is not to say that the individual myths and legends were created by the Kojiki's compilers. One can probably take it that the original forms of the myths and legends are almost all of ancient date, perhaps from about the Nintoku period. Nevertheless it is likely that such matters as giving shape to the general body of the mythology, the bringing together of the legends and their leading heroes, the casting of the myths and legends in literary form, all this would have been the work either of the compilers' or of the spirit of the age of the compilers. So we may take it that the main element for us to absorb from the Kojiki as a whole will be, in the first place, the compilers' intentions, that is to say, the spirit of the Keitai-Suiko-Temmu period. Though we may well occupy ourselves with discovering the process by which particular myths were formed and the comparative importance of each in the whole, we must seize our primary understanding from the tendency of the whole of the Kojiki, from its narrative as a whole. Even if we are unable to produce proven accounts of the way in which particular myths took shape, we can, if we accept the simple significance of their presence in the Kojik's narrative, apprehend, not the social background to the creation of the myths in their original form, but the intentions of the Kojiki's compilers. Resolution of the whole of the Kojiki into its component myths and legends, and investigation of their original forms and the process of their creation, may be a part of mythological or historical studies, but they do not amount to a direct apprehension of the Kojiki.

We will now consider what was the spirit of the age from the time of the Emperor Keitai to that of the Emperor Tenchi and what were the central problems for the ruling class of the period. The first item to consider here is the question of repulsing Silla's invasion of southern Korea and the restoration of Imna. The second is the question of the reception of Buddhism. The third is the establishment of a centralized bureacratic state with the emperor at its head.

The first of the above preoccupations ended, after a series of successes and failures in the collapse at the final battle of the Baekchon River. In respect of the second, Japan went the whole way and became a country of Budhist culture. The third achievement was made good by the Taika Reform. If we put these three together it would amount to saying that Japan's political and cultural independence had been achieved. By these means, the ancient barbarous nation had turned into a civilized state.

Such then, in outline, were the thoughts and preoccupations of the period which covered the compilation of the Kojiki.

I trust, then, that my readers agree that what the Kojiki's myths and legends as a whole relate is on the whole consistent with the compilers' intentions, such as they may be made out to be from the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki's Preface and so on.

The period is somewhat early, but the Sung Shu, the History of the Liu Sung Dynasty, has preserved a 'memorial' addressed to the Emperor Shun-ti by the Emperor Yūryaku, in 478; and the text of this, in classical Chinese, shows a congruity between the political ideas and historical outlook of the Japanese court at that time and the intentions of the Kojiki's compilers. The same reasoning, whereby 'the Age of the Gods' and 'antiquity' in Naka-no-ōe's Three Mountains expresses the author's sense of actuality of 'we mortals now,' serves to entitle the Kojiki, using myth and legend as material, to be regarded as a work of great narrative literature expressing the spirit of the Asuka and Hakuhō periods. The Kojiki is indeed the epic poem of the birth of Japanese culture.

The Kojiki has a Preface written by the great exponent of Chinese prose, Ō-no-Yasumaro, and this describes the origins of the compilation and the course of its composition. The Preface also deals with the division of the Kojiki into Volumes One, Two and Three and gives an outline of the myths and legends. The text being in Chinese, there are some points on which it is difficult to grasp the author's true intention, but it is the only clue we have to knowing how Ō-no-Yasumaro, one of the best scholars of the time, who left us the Kojiki and took part in the planning of the Nihon Shoki, took and interpreted the myths and legends of the Kojiki. One might say that what moves us so much is the thought of a sort of 'Discourse on the Kojiki' written by a scholar twelve hundred years ago. I propose now to extract and study just those parts of the Preface that give the outline.

I have given, first, a reading of the original Chinese text, based on Professor Takeda's and other comments, and I have then given my own translation with a certain amount of interpretative interpolation. I have written my version in colloquial style for the sake of intelligibility. I have also, for the sake of convenience, divided it into paragraphs, numbered to correspond with the translation. In this way the form of Ō-no-Yasumaro's outline, together with the thought that was its basis, may be understood….

[1] I, Yasumaro, say: Now when chaos had begun to condense, but force and form were not yet manifest, and there were no names and no doing, who could know its shape? Then Heaven and Earth were separated for the first time, and the three gods performed the beginning of creation; the male and female principles then developed, and the two spirits became the ancestors of everything. So they entered the darkness and emerged into the light; and the sun and the moon appeared from the washing of his eyes; and when he floated on into the water of the sea, gods of heaven and gods of earth appeared from the ablution of his person.

[2] Therefore, in spite of the obscurity of the great origin, we may learn from the true doctrine about the time of the conception of the earth and the birth of the islands, and, in spite of the remoteness of the beginning, we may apprehend from the saintly ones of old the age of the genesis of the gods and the establishment of mankind.

[3] We know truly: a mirror was hung up, jewels were spat out, and then a hundred kings succeeded one another; a blade was bitten, a serpent cut in pieces, and then a myriad gods flourished.

[4] After deliberations in the Tranquil River, the world was pacified; after discussions on the small beach, the land was purified.

[5] Then Ho-no-Ninigi-no-mikoto first descended on to the peak of Takachi, and the Emperor Kamuyamato proceeded to the island of Akitsu.

[6] A strange bear came out of a river; a heavenly sword was obtained at Takakura. Creatures with tails obstructed the road, and a great crow guided to Yoshino. Dancing in rows, they expelled the brigands, listening to songs, they overcame the enemy.

[7] Being instructed in a dream, he did reverence to the gods of heaven and earth, and was therefore called the Wise Monarch.

[8] Having seen the smoke from afar, he was benevolent to the black-haired people, and was therefore called the Sage Sovereign.

[9] Determining the frontiers and civilizing the country, he issued laws in Nearer Ōmi.

[10] Putting right the surnames and selecting the clan names, he held sway in Further Asuka.

[11] Though each differed in caution and in ardour, though all were unlike in accomplishments and character, yet there was none who did not by contemplating antiquity correct manners that had withered away, and by illumining the present repair laws that were approaching dissolution.