Page:The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume 13.djvu/29



HE "Kojiki" is written, as are all Japanese works, in Chinese characters. Hence it reads in columns from top to bottom of the page; and the opening column is at the right instead of at the left. The "Kojiki," as being almost if not quite the earliest Japanese book, is a puzzling medley of Chinese and Japanese. Sometimes the Chinese character is the picture of an object or a thought, just as it is in the Chinese tongue; at other times it is a mere sound or syllable, making part of a Japanese word, and wholly divorced from its Chinese meaning. Thus the "Kojiki" is very hard to read.

When the Japanese scholars of the seventeenth century, under the shelter of Iyeyasu's peace, began to study the old books which had been preserved in the temples, they had much difficulty with the "Kojiki." They raised it to high honor among themselves; and they wrote commentaries on it, as the Hindus and Chinese had written commentaries on their ancient Scriptures. Yet to a Western scholar who knows just when and with what knowledge these Japanese commentators approached the "Kojiki," their explanations appear of little value, as they refuse to accept the book as being the simple, straightforward record of barbaric myths which it seems to us.

The "Kojiki" itself tells us something of how it came to be written. There had been an earlier such work, composed about 620, almost a century before, and this was destroyed by fire. After that the records existed only in the memories of trained reciters, who knew the legends, every word by heart. Finally, the best of these reciters was officially summoned before the Chinese writer Yasumaro, who copied the old tales from the reciter's narrative. How old they really