Kojiki
composition: secureauthorship: secure
The oldest surviving Japanese book records the age of the gods and the imperial descent from them, written in a strained adaptation of Chinese characters to Japanese sound and syntax.
- divine descent of the imperial line set down as authoritative record
- Chinese characters used for both meaning and phonetic value
- oral recitation named as the source the compiler wrote from
- the foundational text of a religious tradition it did not set out to found
The Kojiki narrates the creation of the islands, the deeds of the gods, the descent of the imperial line from the sun deity Amaterasu, and the reigns down to the seventh century. Its purpose is legitimist: to fix one authoritative version of origins for the ruling house. The writing system is its other significance, since Japanese had no script and the compilers used Chinese characters sometimes for meaning and sometimes for sound, producing a text that is difficult to read and invaluable for the history of the language. It became the foundational text of Shinto.
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