Kojiki: The Record of Ancient Matters

BEFORE THERE WAS JAPAN, THERE WAS CHAOS

From the first stirring of heaven and earth, through the quarrel that split the sun goddess and the storm god and plunged the world into darkness, to the divine ancestors who descended from the heavens to rule the islands, the Kojiki is where the story of Japan begins.

Compiled in 712 CE by the court scholar Ō no Yasumaro from the oral recitation of Hieda no Are, the Kojiki is the oldest surviving book in Japan and the foundational text of Japanese civilization. It moves from the raw, strange power of creation mythology, where gods die giving birth to fire and descend into the underworld to retrieve the dead, through the Age of the Gods and the establishment of the imperial line, into the semi-historical reigns of the early emperors and empresses. Along the way it preserves some of the oldest poetry in the Japanese language: love songs, war songs, laments, and riddles that were already ancient when they were first written down.

This is not the Kojiki of the classroom. This original translation by Kenji Weaver renders Japan's origin story as what it was always meant to be: a work of literature, told with the gravity and sweep its subject demands. The gods behave like gods, passionate, jealous, magnificent, and terrifying. The emperors consolidate their power through marriage, war, and guile. Whether the subject is the goddess Amaterasu hiding in her cave or the Emperor Jimmu's long campaign to the east, the prose flows easily and readably throughout.