The Kojiki: The Record of Ancient Matters: A New Translation of Japan's Oldest Book

The Kojiki is Japan's oldest surviving book was completed in 712. It begins before Japan itself exists, with gods appearing in the emptiness of heaven, and ends in the reigns of emperors and empresses who lived only a few generations before the man who compiled it.

Between those points are some of the strangest and most memorable stories in Japanese literature. A husband follows his dead wife into the underworld and flees when he sees what she has become. A storm god flays a horse and throws it through the roof of his sister's weaving hall. The sun goddess retreats into a cave, plunging the world into darkness, and is lured out by a dance that is deliberately obscene and genuinely funny. A prince disguises himself in women's clothing to assassinate an enemy. A skinned hare gives a god advice about whom he ought to marry.

These stories are still familiar in Japan. Outside it, many readers have encountered pieces of them without ever reading the book itself: in games, novels, anime, films, or retellings of Japanese mythology. For generations, the best-known complete English translation was Basil Hall Chamberlain's version of 1882, which famously rendered some of the more explicit passages in Latin rather than English.

This translation does not.

The aim is simple: to make the Kojiki readable without making it into something it is not.

The complete Kojiki is presented here in all three books:

Book One: The Age of the Gods. The creation of the world, the land of the dead, Amaterasu and Susanoo, the eight-forked serpent, Ōkuninushi, the surrender of Izumo, and the descent of Ninigi. Book Two: From Jinmu to Ōjin. The eastward conquest, the eight early reigns, Sujin's plague, Yamato Takeru, and Jingū's expedition across the sea. Book Three: From Nintoku to Suiko. Palace rivalries, marriages and murders, jealous empresses, Yūryaku, and the final generations of the record. Each chapter begins with a short headnote giving the historical or mythological context needed to follow what comes next. Notes explain wordplay, customs, geography, and places where the Japanese admits more than one reading, without turning the page into a wall of commentary. A glossary at the back collects the gods, rulers, clans, and places that recur throughout the book.

The result is a version of The Kojiki meant to be read as a book rather than merely consulted as a source: complete, approachable, occasionally baffling, often beautiful, and as close as possible to the oddness of the text that was presented at the imperial court more than thirteen centuries ago.