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Updated: November 13, 2025
In perusing the "Kojiki" one scarcely knows, when he begins a story, whether the character which to all appearance is a man or woman is to end as a snake, or whether the mother after delivering her child will or will not glide into the marsh or slide away into the sea, leaving behind a trail of slime.
The "Nihongi," however, not only gives a different view of this evolution basing it upon the dualism of Chinese philosophy that is, of the active and passive principles and uses Chinese technical terminology, but gives lists of kami that differ notably from those in the "Kojiki."
The impression which the designer had intended to convey was that of approaching the sea over a verge of dunes, and the illusion was beautiful. 2 The Kojiki, translated by Professor B. H. Chamberlain, p. 254. 3 Since this paper was written, Mr. Conder has published a beautiful illustrated volume,-Landscape Gardening in Japan. By Josiah Conder, F.R.I.B.A. Tokyo 1893.
Although writing was unknown in Japan until early in the Christian era, the chronology of the previous six or eight hundred years is accepted on the authority of a single statement in the Kojiki, written 712 years A.D. This statement was reproduced from the memory of a single man, who remembered miraculously the contents of a book written shortly before, but accidentally destroyed by fire.
Japan has produced no great god; out of the mass of nature gods reported in the Kojiki not one becomes preëminent. There is recognition of Heaven and Earth as the beginning of things, and of the sun as a deity, but neither the sky-god nor the sun-goddess becomes a truly high god.
An attendant brings tea. 'The Governor asks, interprets Nishida, 'if you know the old history of Izumo. I reply that I have read the Kojiki, translated by Professor Chamberlain, and have therefore some knowledge of the story of Japan's most ancient province. Some converse in Japanese follows.
They rest, respectively, upon the Kojiki and other ancient Japanese literature and the modern commentators; upon the Chinese classics edited and commented on by Confucius and upon Chu Hi and other mediaeval scholastics who commented upon Confucius; and upon the shastras and sutras with which Gautama, the Buddha, had something to do.
And lest this should be supposed to be a modern faith, the confession further declares that "This is the religion which the true prophet Zurthust, or Zoroaster, brought from God." The Shintoists of Japan, according to their sacred book, the "Kojiki," believe in one self-existent and supreme God, from whom others emanated.
In such a state of unrestricted competition among various religions, the universal law of the survival of the fittest acts freely. Buddhism was the fittest and became the predominant religion. Shintoism was the weakest and sank into helpless desuetude. But with the revival of learning, as Kojiki and other ancient literature were studied with assiduity, Shintoism began to revive.
"The nature of this 'way' is to be learned by studying the Kojiki and ancient writings, but mankind has been turned aside from it, by the spirits of crookedness, to Buddhism and Chinese philosophy.
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