Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/46



HERE are three written records of Japan's early history. The oldest of them dates from the beginning of the eighth century of the Christian era, and deals with events extending back for fourteen hundred years. The compilation of this work was one of the most extraordinary feats ever undertaken. The compiler had to construct the sounds of his own tongue by means of ideographs devised for transcribing a foreign language. He had to render Japanese phonetically by using Chinese ideographs. It was as though a man should set himself to commit Shakespeare's plays to writing by the aid of the cuneiform characters of Babylon. A book composed in the face of such difficulties could not convey a very clear idea of contemporary speech or thought. The same is true, though in a less degree, of the other two volumes on which it is necessary to rely for knowledge of ancient Japan.

It might reasonably be anticipated, arguing from the analogy of other nations, that some