Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/425



Nihongi, or Chronicle of Japan, is said to have been composed in the eighth century and finished in the year. 720. It is one of three quasi-historical works, of which the oldest, the Kiujiki, was compiled in 620, and the other, the Kojiki, was completed in 712. The latter has been translated by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain in one of the supplemental volumes of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. The Nihongi has borne in Japan until recent times a much greater reputation than the Kojiki. It has been rendered into German by Dr. Florenz, but has not hitherto appeared in an English dress. Mr. Aston has, by undertaking its translation, rendered a signal service not merely to the study, now growing rapidly in importance, of Japanese history, thought, and manners, but also to that wider science of human thought and human institutions, so large a part of which is comprehended under the name of folklore.

Going boldly back to the beginning of things, the Nihongi starts in words which distinctly remind us of the sublime opening of the book of Genesis, but which are, it seems, derived from Chinese philosophy. "Of old," it tells us, "Heaven and Earth were not yet separated, and the In and Yō [the male and female principles] not yet divided. They found a chaotic mass like an egg, which was of obscurely defined limits and contained germs." When Heaven and Earth had at length been formed "Divine beings were produced between them," as in certain other mythologies. The generations of these gods and their adventures occupy the first two books