Understand in about 6 minutes
Japan's oldest surviving chronicle traces an unbroken line from the first deities and the creation of the islands, through the sun-goddess Amaterasu and the descent of her grandson, down to the legendary emperors.
Mind Map
Core Message
The Kojiki opens not with doctrine but with genealogy. Deities come into being one after another, generation by generation, and the whole creation is narrated as births: the islands, the seas, the winds, and the gods of field and mountain all arrive as offspring of earlier powers.
Izanagi and Izanami, the Male-Who-Invites and the Female-Who-Invites, stir the ocean with a heavenly spear and stand the first island up out of the brine. From their union the land of Japan and a host of deities are born, until Izanami dies bearing the fire-deity.
When the sun-goddess Amaterasu shuts herself in a rock-cave the world goes dark, and only a noisy gathering of gods can draw her out. Death, pollution, and purification recur throughout, with cleansing rituals that themselves give birth to new deities.
The chronicle's purpose is to anchor the ruling house in the gods. Amaterasu's grandson descends from the Floating Bridge of Heaven to rule the land below, and the later books trace his descendants down through the legendary emperors of early Japan.
Summary
The Kojiki, or Records of Ancient Matters, is the oldest book in Japanese, completed in 712 and assembled by the court official O no Yasumaro from traditions said to have been memorized by Hieda no Are. It gathers the creation myths, the deeds of the gods, and the early legendary history of the imperial house into one continuous account. The English here follows Basil Hall Chamberlain's careful 1882 translation, which keeps the strange, formal flavor of the original and its constant talk of things done 'augustly.'
The story begins at the beginning of heaven and earth. Deities appear one after another in the Plain of High Heaven, some born alone and hiding their persons, until the last divine pair, Izanagi and Izanami, are charged to make and give birth to the drifting land. Standing on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, they stir the brine with a jewelled spear, and the drops that fall from its point pile up into the first island. There they descend, marry, and bring forth the eight islands of Japan along with the deities of sea, wind, tree, and mountain.
The early chapters move through birth, death, and pollution. Izanami dies giving birth to the fire-deity, and Izanagi follows her to the land of Hades but flees in horror from her decay. Cleansing himself afterward, he gives rise to still more gods, and from washing his eyes and nose are born the sun-goddess Amaterasu, the moon-deity, and the storm-god Susa-no-wo. The quarrel between the radiant sun and her violent brother is the emotional center of the early myths.
After Susa-no-wo's outrages, Amaterasu retreats into a heavenly rock-cave and seals the door, and at once the whole Plain of High Heaven and the land below fall dark. The assembled gods devise a plan, with dancing, laughter, a great mirror, and curved jewels, to lure her curiosity. When she peers out and is drawn forth, light returns to the world. The cycle of darkness and restored light gives the chronicle some of its most vivid scenes.
From there the narrative turns toward rule on earth. Amaterasu sends her grandson down to govern the land, and he descends to a peak in Tsukushi and builds his palace there. The remaining books carry the line of descent forward into legendary history: the first emperor Jimmu, later sovereigns, and heroes such as Yamato-take, told through reigns, songs, conquests, and lineages. The aim throughout is to show the ruling house growing without a break out of the age of the gods.
Key Concepts
The Kojiki does not describe a maker shaping the world from outside. Instead deities and things 'come into existence' or are born, one generation producing the next, so creation reads as a chain of becoming rather than a single act.
It shows how the text understands origins: the cosmos, the land, and the gods share one continuous lineage, which is why the chronicle can move so smoothly from the first deities to human emperors.
Chamberlain renders the Japanese kami as Deity. These powers are countless and varied: primal beings, personified forces of nature, ancestors, and rulers, often invoked as 'the eight hundred myriad Deities.'
The kami are the building blocks of the whole work. Understanding them as natural, ancestral, and divine all at once explains why mountains, storms, the sun, and the imperial ancestors all belong to the same world.
Contact with death and decay defiles, and the response is washing and ritual cleansing. Izanagi's purification after Hades is the clearest case, and it is itself fertile, bringing new deities into being.
This pairing of pollution and purification underlies later Shinto practice. In the chronicle it explains much of what the gods do and why, and it links moral and physical cleanliness to renewal.
Mental Models
The Kojiki organizes time as descent. Events are hung on a frame of who begot whom, from the first gods through the emperors, so the line of succession carries the story forward.
It clarifies why the text reads like an extended family register. Following the lineage, rather than looking for a plot, is the way to follow the book.
The sun-goddess hides and the world goes dark; the gods act together and she is drawn out, restoring light. A loss of order is met by collective effort and reversed.
It offers a pattern for reading the myths: disruption, communal response, and renewal recur, and the rock-cave episode is the model case.
The chronicle keeps two stages in view, the Plain of High Heaven and the Central Land of Reed-Plains below it, joined by a Floating Bridge. Authority flows downward from the heavenly gods to earthly rule.
It explains the political point of the descent of Amaterasu's grandson: power on earth is presented as delegated from heaven, which gives the imperial line its claim.
Selected Quotes
These three Deities were all Deities born alone, and hid their persons.
the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island.
Then the whole Plain of High Heaven was obscured and all the Central Land of Reed-Plains darkened.
Source
HTML text: https://archive.org/download/dli.ministry.24027/16189.26016_djvu.txt
The English translation is by Basil Hall Chamberlain, first issued in 1882 as a supplement to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and is in the public domain.
The Kojiki was completed in 712. This page draws on Basil Hall Chamberlain's English translation, first published in 1882 and in the public domain.