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Record of Ancient Matters
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| The Kojiki is considered the earliest historical record of Japan. It was completed in 712 but purportedly records the events dating back to 660 bce and the creation of the Japanese Imperial line. The writing of the Kojiki was a particularly tricky task because the Japanese language did not have a written script. Yasumaro, the scribe charged with recording what had heretofore been committed to memory by Hieda no Are and other kataribe, describes the challenges of trying to find a way to use Chinese characters to represent Japanese words. Refer to pages 12-13 of The Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 1 (Columbia University Press, 1958). As a result, the Kojiki is written in a strange mixture of Chinese used both ideographically, phonetically, and otherwise to create Japanese. There was little apparent logic to Yasumaro's selection, and the Kojiki was soon to be illegible until Nativist Scholars unraveled the cumbersome readings in the later centuries. |