The Kojiki: The Shinpukuji Manuscript

In 1371 and 1372, a monk named Ken'yu at the Buddhist temple of Shinpukuji in Owari province copied out, in three volumes, a Japanese book that was already more than six hundred years old. It began: "At the time when heaven and earth first opened..." His copy is the oldest surviving manuscript of the Kojiki, the "Record of Ancient Matters", Japan's oldest surviving book. It is kept today at the temple of Ōsu Kannon in Nagoya and is a National Treasure of Japan.

The book

• According to its preface, the Emperor Tenmu (r. 673–686) ordered the old genealogies and legends to be corrected. A court attendant, Hieda no Are, memorised them.
• Years later the courtier Ō no Yasumaro wrote down what Hieda no Are recited, and presented the book to Empress Genmei in 712.
• Three volumes: the Age of the Gods; the legendary early emperors; and the emperors down to Empress Suiko (d. 628).
• Written in Chinese characters, some used for their meaning in Chinese style, some for their sound to spell Japanese words, names and songs.
• Eight years later, in 720, the court produced a second, longer history in formal Chinese, the Nihon Shoki, which tells many of the same myths in variant forms.

The myths

• The first deities appear alone in the Plain of High Heaven and hide themselves.
• The divine pair Izanagi and Izanami stir the ocean with a jewelled spear and create the islands of Japan and many gods. Izanami dies giving birth to fire; Izanagi follows her to the land of the dead, Yomi, and flees in horror.
• Washing himself, Izanagi gives birth to the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon god Tsukuyomi and the storm god Susanoo. Offended by Susanoo, Amaterasu hides in a cave and the world goes dark until the gods lure her out.
• Amaterasu's grandson Ninigi descends to earth, and his great-grandson becomes Jimmu, the first emperor.

The interactive scroll above gives the opening words in the book's own characters.

A book with a later life

For centuries the Kojiki was less read than the Nihon Shoki. The scholar Motoori Norinaga devoted over thirty years to its study, completing his Kojiki-den in 1798; he treated it as the pure record of ancient Japan. From 1868 the Meiji state used its account of the divine descent of the emperors in State Shinto. After 1945 the emperor renounced claims to divinity, and scholars read the Kojiki as a political and literary work of the early court, as well as a treasury of myth.

Symbology and sacred encoding

Writing sounds with meanings. The Kojiki's mixed script, using Chinese characters for sound (the system later called man'yōgana), is the root of Japanese writing. The names of the gods are often long compounds whose parts carry meaning, such as Ame-no-minakanushi, "Lord of the Centre of Heaven".

The imperial regalia. The myths explain the three sacred treasures of the emperor: the mirror used to lure Amaterasu from the cave, the jewels, and the sword Susanoo took from the tail of an eight-headed serpent. They are still kept at shrines and in the palace and are not shown to the public.

Purity and pollution. Izanagi's washing after returning from Yomi is the mythic model of purification (misogi), central to Shinto ritual.

Connections

Shinto (ch25) and Creation (ch46), with Sacred Kingship (ch49) for the divine descent of the emperors. Compare the Diamond Sutra (V30), from the Buddhist world that also shaped Japan, and the Oracle Bones of Anyang (V55) for the origin of the characters.

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/kojiki.html