Page:Kojiki by Chamberlain.djvu/25

Rh within square brackets. The translator’s Notes, which figure at the bottom of each page, do not aim at anything more than the exegesis of the actual text. To illustrate its subject-matter from other sources, as Motowori does, and to enlarge on all the subjects connected with Japanese antiquity which are sometinessometimes [sic] merely alluded to in a single phrase, would require several more volumes the size of this one, many years of labour on the part of the investigator, and an unusually large stock of patience on the reader’s part. The Notes terminate with the death of the Emperor Ken-zō, after which the text ceases to offer any interest, except as a comment on the genealogies given in the “Chronicles of Japan.”

Without forgetting the fact that so-called equivalent terms in two languages rarely quite cover each other, and that it may therefore be necessary in some cases to render one Japanese word by two or three different English words according to the context, the translator has striven to keep such diversity within the narrowest limits, as it tends to give a false impression of the original, implying that it possesses a versatility of thought which is indeed characteristic of Modern Europe, but not at all of Early Japan. With reference to this point a certain class of words must be mentioned, as the English translation is unavoidably defective in their case, owing to the fact of our language not possessing sufficiently close synonyms for them. They are chiefly the names of titles, and are the following:—