Nihon Shoki
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An official chronicle in literary Chinese covers the same ground as the Kojiki with dates, foreign relations and variant versions recorded side by side, addressed to readers abroad as much as at home.
- a state chronicle written in Chinese for an international readership
- variant accounts preserved rather than harmonised
- regnal dating imported from Chinese historiographical practice
- the main record of Buddhism's arrival from the Korean peninsula
Where the Kojiki is inward and mythic, the Nihon Shoki is a state chronicle on the Chinese model, written in classical Chinese, organised by reign with regnal years, and citing Korean and Chinese sources. It frequently gives alternative accounts of the same event with the formula that one book says otherwise, which preserves variants a single authoritative version would have erased. It is the principal source for early Japanese political history and for the introduction of Buddhism from Paekche.
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