SOURCE: Masao Yaku, "Love Songs" and "The Theme of the Kojiki," in The Kojiki in the Life of Japan, translated by G. W. Robinson, The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1969, pp. 82-121, 122-50.

In the following excerpt, the Kojiki is presented as a unified, literary work designed to provide a "basis and origin" for the Emperor's sovereignty. Combining literary and political analyses, Yaku contends that the "principle of conflict, fusion, and harmony" facilitates "an account of the creation of a state with centralized power brought about by the submission to the emperor of the chieftans and heads of clans at the base. "

Were one to define the Kojiki in a single phrase, one would say that it gives an account of the origin of the rise and prosperity of our ancient Japanese state. Then, from another point of view, from the literary point of view, the work...