Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/130

 Kojiki to writing, and he presented it in a finished state in the first month of the following year, as is stated in the preface. This is therefore the earliest of the extant records. The Shoku-Nihongi says that the Nihongi was completed in the year 720, the 6th of the Empress Genshô Tennô, and it so far superseded the Kojiki that the latter was almost forgotten. The cause of this was no doubt the general adoption of Chinese ideas, and the consequent preference of a work written in Chinese style to one of which the chief object was to preserve the form and spirit of Japanese antiquity. In 714 Kiyoshito and Fujimaro were instructed to prepare a national history, but either they never completed the work at all, or it must have been looked on as a failure, for no further mention of it occurs anywhere.

The preface to the Kojiki is the only authority for the accepted account of its origin. The emperor Temmu, at what portion of his reign is not mentioned, lamenting that the records possessed by the chief families contained many errors, resolved to take steps to preserve the true traditions from oblivion. He therefore had the records carefully examined, compared and weeded of their faults. There happened to be in his household a person of marvellous memory named Hiyeda no Are, who could repeat without a mistake the contents of any document he had even seen, and never forgot anything that he heard. Temmu Tennô took the pains to instruct this person in the genuine traditions and ‘old language of former ages,’ and to make him repeat them until he had the whole by heart. “Before the undertaking was completed,” which probably means before it could he committed to writing, the Emperor died, and for twenty-five yeats Are’s memory was the sole depository of what afterwards received the title of Kojiki, or Furu-koto-bumi as it is read by Motoori. At the end of this interval the Empress Gemmiô ordered Yasumaro to write it down