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.[1] 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 stan-
- ↑ See Ch. K., p. 9.
