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Updated: October 13, 2025
Its organic connection with the god-way may be clearly shown. To go farther back in point of time than the "Kojiki," we find that even before the development of art in very ancient Japan, the male gods were represented by a symbol which thus became an image of the deity himself.
Now that the Kojiki is in English and all may read it, we can clearly see who and what were the Japanese in the ages before letters and Chinese civilization; for these stories of the kami are but legendary and mythical accounts of men and women. One could scarcely recognize in the islanders of eleven or twelve hundred years ago, the polished, brilliant, and interesting people of to-day.
To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or Japanese Buddhism. Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha? The Philo and Euhemerus of Japan was the priest Kukai, who was born in the province of Sanuki, in the year 774.
He took for bride the princess Tatara, the daughter of one of his chiefs, and the most beautiful woman in all the land. The rest of his life was spent in strengthening his rule and extending the arts of civilization throughout his realm. Finally he died, one hundred and thirty-seven years old, as the Kojiki states, leaving three children, one of whom he had chosen as the heir of the throne.
As to the origin of the "Kojiki," we have in the closing sentences of the author's preface the sole documentary authority explaining its scope and certifying to its authenticity. He therefore had the records carefully examined, compared, and their errors eliminated.
It is needless to say that such applications of the higher criticism to the ancient sacred documents proved to be no safer for the applier than if he had lived in the United States of America. The government, which, despite its Constitution and Diet, is in the eyes of the people really based on the myths of the Kojiki, quickly put the professor on the retired list.
And the tale of his descent into that strange nether world, and of what there befell him, is it not written in the Kojiki? And of all legends primeval concerning the Underworld this story is one of the weirdest more weird than even the Assyrian legend of the Descent of Ishtar.
Instead of the terse, carefully measured, balanced, and antithetical sentences of correct Chinese, those of the "Kojiki" are long and involved, and without much logical connection. The "Kojiki" contains the real notions, feelings, and beliefs of Japanese who lived before the eighth century.
I reply in the negative; and the Governor says the tradition is given in a commentary upon the Kojiki. 'It is in the thirty-second section of the fourteenth volume, where it is written that Ya-he-Koto-Shiro-nushi-no-Kami clapped his hands. I thank the Governor for his kind suggestions and his citation.
One of the motives for, and one of the guiding principles in the selections of the floating myths, was that the ancestry of the chieftains loyal to the Mikado might be shown to be from the heavenly gods. Both the narratives of the "Kojiki" and the liturgies show this clearly.
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