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 com-
