Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
Writing.—The art of writing is one of the numerous elements of civilization for which Japan is indebted to China. The date of its first introduction is not definitely known. There are indications that some acquaintance with the Chinese written character was possessed by individuals in Japan during the early centuries of the Christian era, but the first positive information on the subject belongs to A.D. 405, for which an erroneous date corresponding to A.D. 285 is given in the Nihongi. In this year a Corean named Wani or Wangin was appointed tutor in Chinese to a Japanese Imperial Prince. He was the first of a succession of teachers from that country whose instructions paved the way for a revolution in Japanese institutions and manners, not less profound and far-reaching than that produced in our own time by the influence of European ideas.
From its geographical position, Corea was the natural intermediary by which China became known to Japan. In these early times there was no direct sea communication between the two last-named countries. Travellers crossed the Strait from Japan to Corea, and pursued the rest of their journey by the circuitous overland route. But the Corean national genius seems to have left no impress of its own on the civilization which it received from China and handed on to Japan. Medicine, Buddhism, painting, and the mechanic arts were transmitted, as far as we can see, without modification, and there is little trace of any special Corean character in the knowledge of Chinese literature and science which Coreans communicated to Japan. They had themselves taken up this study only thirty years before Wani's departure.[1]
The newly-acquired Chinese characters were soon put to practical use. Wani himself is said to have been employed to keep the accounts of the Treasury. In the reign of Nintoku we are told that Ki no Tsuno no Sukune committed to writing an account of the productions of the Corean kingdom of Pėkché. The date given for this in the Nihongi is A.D. 353, to which, as in the case of other events of this period, two cycles or 120 years should probably be added. In the following reign (Richiu's) "recorders were appointed in the provinces in order to note down words and events." But from the specimens of their reports which are preserved in the Nihongi, these officials do not seem to have contributed much of importance to historical knowledge. Fabulous stories and accounts of monstrosities and portents form the staple of their compositions. It may be inferred, however, that such functionaries were already in existence at the capital, and indeed we find mention at this time of hereditary corporations of fumi-bito or scribes, known as the Achiki Be and Wani Be, the successors of Atogi and Wani, the Corean scholars who first taught Chinese at the court of the Mikado.
History. The Kiujiki.—The first literary efforts of the Japanese took the direction of history. No doubt the Norito or rituals of the Shinto religion and some poetical compositions date from an earlier period. But they do not seem to have been committed to writing. The earliest book of which we find mention is the Kiujiki or Kujiki (Chronicle of old matters of former ages), which was compiled in A.D. 620 under high official auspices, as indeed were all the historical works which have come down to us from these ancient times. The writing of history was, and still is, regarded as pre-eminently a matter of State concern in all those Eastern countries where Chinese ideas are predominant. The Kiujiki was entrusted to the keeping of the Soga House, but on its downfall in 645, a large portion was destroyed by fire, a part only, described as Kokuki or national annals, having been saved from the flames. Whether this work is or is not identical with the Kiujiki of our own day, is a question on which I shall have more to say afterwards. At present it is sufficient to note that the latter work contains nothing which is not also to be found in the Kojiki or Nihongi except a few passages in the mythological portion and a list of local governors. The historical part is almost word for word the same as the Nihongi, which, however, is very much fuller, and is brought down to a much later period.
The Kojiki.—In A.D. 682 a number of Princes and High Officials were formally commissioned by the Emperor Temmu to prepare a "History of the Emperors and of matters of high antiquity." Nothing is known of the result of their labours, but this measure led eventually to the compilation of the Kojiki, as we learn from a passage in the Preface to that work.[2] It was not completed, however, until A.D. 712. The Kojiki has fortunately been preserved to us. If the Kiujiki is excepted, as of doubtful authenticity, it is the earliest product of the Japanese historical muse, and indeed the oldest monument of Japanese literature. It presents many features of the highest interest, but it is needless to dwell here on a subject which has been so thoroughly dealt with by Chamberlain in the Introduction to his admirable translation of this work.
In 714, or two years after the completion of the Kojiki, the Empress Gemmiō gave orders for the preparation of a national history. We hear nothing more of this project, which may or may not have served to provide materials for the Nihongi.
The Nihongi—Date and Authorship.—We now come to the Nihongi itself. It has no title-page or preface, and our information as to its date and authorship is derived from other sources. The Kōnin Shiki (commentary on the Nihongi, of the period 810-824) informs us that it was completed and laid before the Empress Gemmiō in A.D. 720 by Prince Toneri and Yasumaro Futo no Ason. In addition to the thirty books which have come down to us, there was originally a book of genealogies of the Emperors which is no longer extant. The term used by the Shiki in speaking of its preparation is "selected afresh," which points obviously to compilation rather than original composition. An examination of the work itself favours this view. It consists of detached passages linked together by chronological sequence, and some endeavour is visible to shape the materials into a consistent whole, but the result has a more or less patchwork appearance, and falls far short of the standard of uniformity of style and method which we are accustomed to look for in historical compositions.
Materials for the Nihongi.—The remains of the Kiujiki must have formed a very important element of the authors' material. Indeed I lean to the belief that whether the present Kiujiki is authentic or not, much of the earlier part of the Nihongi (except the first two books) is practically the composition of the illustrious Shōtoku Daishi, its reputed author. It is recorded that he was a profound student of Buddhism and of Chinese classical literature, and internal evidence shows that the writer of this part of the Nihongi was well versed in these subjects. The Kojiki is not directly referred to, and little use seems to have been made of it. But it was well known to the authors. Indeed one of them, Yasumaro, was the very person who took down the Kojiki from the lips of Hiyeda no Are, a man (or woman) who had a remarkable memory, well stored with the ancient traditions of the Japanese race. That no community of style can be traced between the two works is easily explained by the circumstance that Yasumaro was in the first case little more than an amanuensis, and in the second a compiler. It is possible, too, that his associate, Prince Toneri, was the guiding spirit of the undertaking, and that Yasumaro simply carried out his directions.
The Nihongi contains a few phrases which show that the Norito or Rituals of the Shinto cult were familiar to the authors, but nothing of importance is drawn from this source.
Another stock of information which was probably at their disposal is referred to in the History of the reign of Jitō Tennō (A.D. 694), where it is stated that orders were given to eighteen of the principal noble Houses to deliver to the Government their genealogical records. Other historical works, notably a certain Kana Nihongi have been spoken of as in existence before the date of the Nihongi, and that there was a copious historical or legendary literature accessible to the authors cannot be doubted. The work itself, as we have it, contains ample evidence of this in the numerous quotations from other writings, added, as most Japanese critics think, by the authors themselves, or, as I prefer to believe, by subsequent scholars soon after its appearance. These extracts are always referred to in later times as if they formed part of the Nihongi, and there can be no harm in accepting them as of equal authority with it. Some are, no doubt, of still greater antiquity.
An institution which must have contributed substantially, though perhaps indirectly, to the collection and conservation of the materials for the more legendary part of the Nihongi was the Katari Be, or hereditary corporation of reciters. Unfortunately we know very little about it. Hirata, in his Koshichō, states, on what authority does not appear, that the Katari Be came forward and recited "ancient words" before the Emperor at the festival of Ohonihe when he inaugurated his reign by sacrifices to the Gods. It is not probable that their services were confined to this occasion.
Character and Contents of the Nihongi.—The Nihongi consists of very heterogeneous elements which by no means all answer to our ideas of history. The earlier part furnishes a very complete assortment of all the forms of the Untrue of which the human mind is capable, whether myth, legend, fable, romance, gossip, mere blundering, or downright fiction. The first two books are manifestly mythological. They are followed by an account of Jimmu's Conquest of Yamato, which has probably a basis of truth, though the legendary character obviously predominates.
Most of the meagre details given us of the reigns of the next eight Emperors have a Chinese stamp, and must, I fear, be pronounced simply fictitious. Nor need this greatly surprise us. There are other countries where
Whene'er they speak of sceptre-bearing kings.
A portrait gallery in Holyrood Palace illustrates the same principle, though in a different way.
Then we have a series of legendary stories full of miraculous incidents, but in which grains of truth may here and there be discerned. The value of this early part of the work is enhanced by the numerous poems of great antiquity which have been incorporated into it, and which have considerable antiquarian and philological interest.
The narrative becomes more and more real as it goes on, until about the 5th century we find ourselves in what, without too violent a departure from the truth, may be called genuine history, while from the beginning of the 6th century until A.D. 697, when it is brought to a close, the Nihongi gives us what is to every appearance a trustworthy record of events. We must still, however, be on our guard against the Chinese diction and sentiments which are put into the mouths of the Mikados and their Ministers, and there are some strange stories of a kind not likely to impose on our credulity. This part of the Nihongi is of very great value, comprising as it does a period of the highest importance in the life of the Japanese nation. It was at this time that the Japanese adopted and assimilated the civilization of China, material, moral, and political, together with the Buddhist religion, thereby profoundly modifying the entire course of their future history.
The defects of the Nihongi are due partly to the uncritical spirit of the age when it was written, but mainly to the circumstance that the authors were accomplished scholars deeply imbued with ideas derived from the classical and historical literature of ancient China. With exceptions to be noticed presently, the work is composed in the Chinese language. This is in itself an obstacle to the faithful representation of things Japanese. But unfortunately it is not all. Chinese ideas and traits of Chinese manners and customs are frequently brought in where they have no business. In the very first paragraph we have an essay spiced with Chinese philosophical terms which reads strangely incongruous as a preface to the native cosmogonic myth. Battle axes are mentioned at a time when no such weapons were in use by the Japanese, stone mallets are converted into swords, and we hear continually of the Temples of the Earth and of Grain, a purely Chinese metaphor for the State. No inconsiderable part of the work consists of speeches and Imperial decrees interlarded with quotations from Chinese literature, and evidently composed for the occasion in imitation of Chinese models. In one case the authors have gone so far as to attribute to the Emperor Yūriaku a dying speech of several pages, which is taken with hardly any alteration from a history of the Chinese Sui dynasty, where it is assigned to an Emperor who died 125 years later.
But what is far more misleading than these naive inventions is the confirmed habit common to the writers both of the Kojiki and of the Nihongi, though the latter are the greater offenders, of throwing back, no doubt more or less unconsciously, to more ancient times the ideas of their own age, when the national thought and institutions had become deeply modified by Chinese influences. As Dr. Florenz very justly remarks, "The little which European inquiry has hitherto been able to teach us of the real condition of Japan in the most ancient times shows that the historical representation of this period in the Kojiki and Nihongi (upon which rest all the later statements of the Japanese) is most profoundly penetrated by false principles. The newer relations, partly developed from native material, partly influenced by Chinese culture, are reflected back upon the oldest without due distinction, and the result is a confused picture in which the critical inquirer can, it is true, frequently separate what is original from subsequent additions, but must often let fall his hands in despair." A conspicuous instance of this is the way in which the Imperial theory of the universal authority of the Mikados is extended backwards to a time when their sway was really restricted to the provinces round the capital and a few other places. It is also exemplified by the treatment of territorial and official designations in the older part of the history as if they were already family names, which they did not become until a later period.
Chronology.—The Kojiki wisely has no chronology. But the authors of the Nihongi, or more probably of some of the works on which it is based, thought it necessary, in imitation of their Chinese models, to provide a complete system of dates extending as far back as the middle of the 7th century B.C., and giving the exact years, months, and even days for events which are supposed to have happened in this remote period. When it is remembered that there was no official recognition of the art of writing in Japan until A.D. 405, and that the first mention of calendar-makers belongs to A.D. 553, the historical value of such chronology may be readily estimated. After the Christian epoch there may have been some blundering and unsuccessful endeavours to give the right years, but for several centuries longer the months and days must have been simply supplied from the writers' imagination. Even so late as the beginning of the 5th century the chronology can be shown to be wrong in several cases by no less an interval than 120 years. Abundant proofs of its inaccuracy are revealed by a comparison with the contemporary histories of Corea and China, and an examination of the Nihongi itself yields many more. The impossible lengths attributed to the Emperors' reigns are a well-known example, and some, but by no means all, of the other evidence to this effect is indicated in the notes to the present version.
The first date in the Nihongi which is corroborated by external evidence is A.D. 461, but the chronology is not a little vague for some time longer. Perhaps if we take A.D. 500 as the time when the correctness of the Nihongi dates begins to be trustworthy, we shall not be very far wrong.
In an essay contributed to a Japanese magazine called Bun, in 1888, Mr. Naka has brought together absolutely overwhelming evidence of the utter inaccuracy in matters of chronology of the early part of the Nihongi, and I may be allowed to refer the reader to a paper on "Early Japanese History" read before the J.A.S. in December, 1887, in which the same thesis is maintained. Such scholars as Satow, Chamberlain, Bramsen, Griffis and others have expressed themselves to a similar effect, and it may be hoped that we have now heard the last of the thoughtless echoes of old Kaempfer's audacious assertion that since the time of Jimmu Tennō, the Japanese have been "accurate and faithful in writing the history of their country and the lives and reigns of their monarchs."
But enough has been said of the defects of the Nihongi. The above strictures apply almost exclusively to the earlier half of the work, and they must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that it after all presents a very full and varied picture of the civilization, manners and customs, and political, moral, and religious ideas of the ancient Japanese. Even the large untrue element which it contains is not without its value. Bad history may be good mythology or folk-lore, and statements the most wildly at variance with fact often throw a useful light on the beliefs or institutions of the age when they became current.
Estimation in which the Nihongi was held.—The importance of the Nihongi was at once recognized by the somewhat narrow circle of courtiers and officials for whom it was intended. Subsequent history contains frequent mention of its being publicly read and expounded to the Mikado's Court, one of these notices belonging to the very next year after its completion. It threw wholly into the shade its predecessor the Kojiki and superseded the recitations of the Katari Be and other similar customs. Another testimony to its value is the series of commentaries which began to be written upon it immediately after its appearance. Some of these notes, known as Shiki or "private notes" have been preserved to us in a work called Shaku-nihongi, written about the end of the 13th century. They are described as of the periods Yōrō, (714-724), Kōnin (810-824), and Yengi (901-923).
This high estimation for the Nihongi has lasted until our own day. Its pre-eminence as a source of knowledge of Japanese antiquity was never contested until quite recent times. Even Motoöri[3] acknowledges its value, although his religious and patriotic prejudices lead him to give a preference to the Kojiki which is less profoundly tainted by an admixture of Chinese ideas.
The Kojiki and the Nihongi.—Both the Kojiki and the Nihongi present to the eye a series of Chinese characters. A closer examination, however, reveals a marked difference in the way in which they are used by the respective authors. In the Kojiki, which was taken down from the mouth of a Japanese by a man with some tincture of Chinese learning, the Chinese construction is every now and then interrupted or rather helped out by Japanese words written phonetically, the result being a very curious style wholly devoid of literary qualities. It is in fact possible to restore throughout the original Japanese words used by Hiyeda no Are with a fair degree of probability, and this has actually been done by Motoöri in his great edition of the work known as the Kojikiden, This feature gives the Kojiki a far greater philological interest than the Nihongi. The latter is composed almost wholly in the Chinese language, the chief exception being the poems, for which it was necessary to use the Chinese characters with a phonetic value so as to give the actual words and not simply the sense, as is the case when they are employed as ideographs. The proper names in both works are naturally Japanese.
As a repertory of ancient Japanese myth and legend, there is little to choose between the Kojiki and Nihongi, The Kojiki is on the whole the fuller of the two, and contains legends which the Nihongi passes over in silence, but the latter work, as we now have it, is enriched by variants of the early myths, the value of which for purposes of comparison will be recognized by scientific inquirers.
But there can be no comparison between the two works when viewed as history. Hiyeda no Are's memory, however well-stored, could not be expected to compete in fulness and accuracy with the abundant written literature accessible to the writers of the Nihongi and an examination of the two works shows that, in respect to the record of actual events, the latter is far the more useful authority. It should be remembered, too, that the Nihongi is double the size of its predecessor, and that whereas the Kojiki practically comes to an end with the close of the 5th century, the Nihongi continues the narrative as far as the end of the 7th, thus embracing an additional space of two hundred years of the highest importance in the history of Japan.
Text and Editions.—The class of readers for whom the present work is intended would be little interested in an account of the text of the Nihongi and of its various manuscripts and printed editions. In any case this subject has been so exhaustively treated by Dr. Florenz in his Introduction as to render research by other inquirers a superfluous labour.
A few words, however, should be said respecting the Shūkai (or Shūge i.e. collected interpretations) edition, which has been taken as the basis of the present version. There are a few departures from it, chiefly where the translator has restored passages of the "Original Commentary" which the Shūkai editor has struck out or relegated to his notes.
The Shūkai edition is on the whole the most useful one, being well printed, and provided with a copious Chinese commentary. To facilitate reference to it the book and page of this edition have been noted throughout in the margin of the present translation.
The large black type of the Shūkai is the text. The "Original Commentary" and the quotations from other books are printed in a smaller type. Both of these are usually assumed to be part of the Nihongi, and are quoted as such. They have been included in the present translation, but they are distinguished from the Nihongi proper by being indented, or in the case of some very short passages, enclosed in square brackets. Still smaller characters are used by the editor for his notes. In addition to these, small Katakana characters may be seen at the side of many of the characters of the original text and commentary. They are frequently referred to in the notes of the present version under the description of the "interlinear Kana" or the "traditional Kana rendering," and consist of translations into Japanese of the Chinese characters alongside of which they stand, or add particles which are necessary to complete the sense in a Japanese translation. These glosses are of considerable but unknown antiquity. They are sometimes useful, especially in giving obsolete words and the pronunciation of proper names, but they cannot be implicitly relied on. They are often wrong, and still more frequently inadequate.
Spelling.—In transliterating Japanese words, the method adopted by the Japan Society has been followed pretty closely. It is nearly identical with that which is recommended by the Royal Geographical Society, and which may be briefly described as—"the vowels as in Italian, the consonants as in English." There are no silent letters.
Some inconsistencies will doubtless be observed in the spelling of proper names, in regard to which the Japanese themselves are often very vague. There is a good deal of confusion between the hard and soft consonants t and d, ch or sh and j, h and b, and k and g, which it is difficult for a European scholar always to avoid.
The spelling in the case of words of Japanese derivation follows the Japanese written language in representing an older pronunciation than that now current.
Corean proper names are spelt after the system described by Sir E. Satow in his "List of Corean Geographical Names." It is based on the principle of the Royal Geographical Society's method above-mentioned. But the true pronunciation of these names is involved in much obscurity, and the rendering adopted is in many cases merely provisional.
In spelling Chinese proper names, the ordinary authorities have been followed. They do not agree very well among themselves, but it is hoped that the inconsistencies which have resulted will not occasion any difficulty to the reader.
- ↑ See a paper on "Writing, Printing, and the Alphabet in Corea," in the "J.R.A.S.," July, 1895.
- ↑ See Ch. K., p. 9.
- ↑ Motoöri has left a poem to the following effect:—
In all their fulness
How should we know
The days of old,
Did the august Yamato writing (the Nihongi)
Not exist in the world?Hirata says ("Kodō Taii," I. 36), "If we put aside the ornaments of style of Chinese fashion, there is none among all the writings in the world so noble and important as this classic."