forgot anything which he had heard.  This person was duly instructed in the genuine traditions and old language of former ages, and made to repeat them until he had the whole by heart.  “Before the undertaking was completed,” which probably means before it could be committed to writing, “the emperor died, and for twenty-five years Are’s memory was the sole depository of what afterwards received the title of ‘Kojiki.’ ...  At the end of this interval the Empress Gemmi[=o] ordered Yasumar[=o] to write it down from the mouth of Are, which accounts for the completion of the manuscript in so short a time as four months and a half,"[1] in A.D. 712.

It is from the “Kojiki” that we obtain most of our ideas of ancient life and thought.  The “Nihongi,” or Chronicles of Japan, expressed very largely in Chinese phrases and with Chinese technical and philosophical terms, further assists us to get a measurably correct idea of what is called The Divine Age.  Of the two books, however, the “Kojiki” is much more valuable as a true record, because, though rude in style and exceedingly naive in expression, and by no means free from Chinese thoughts and phrases, it is marked by a genuinely Japanese cast of thought and method of composition.  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.

Remembering that prefaces are, like porticos, usually added last of all, we find that in the beginning all things were in chaos.  Heaven and earth were not separated.  The world substance floated in the cosmic mass, like oil on water or a fish in the sea.  Motion in some way began.  The ethereal portions sublimed and formed the heavens; the heavier residuum became the present earth.  In the plain of high heaven, when the heaven and earth began, were born three kami who “hid their bodies,” that is, passed away or died.  Out of the warm mould of the earth a germ sprouted, and from this were born two kami, who also were born alone, and died.  After these heavenly kami came forth what are called the seven divine generations, or line of seven kami.[2]

To express the opening lines of the “Kojiki” in terms of our own speech and in the moulds of Western thought, we may say that matter existed before mind and the gods came forth, as it were, by spontaneous evolution.  The first thing that appeared out of the warm earth-muck was like a rush-sprout, and this became a kami, or god.  From this being came forth others, which also produced beings, until there were perfect bodies, sex and differentiation of powers.  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.”  This latter fact seems to have escaped the attention of those who write freely about what they imagine to be the early religion of the Japanese.[3]