A History of Japanese Literature

From the Manyoshu to Modern Times

Shuichi Kato, Don Sanderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136613678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A new simplified edition translated by Don Sanderson. The original three-volume work, first published in 1979, has been revised specially as a single volume paperback which concentrates on the development of Japanese literature.

Chapter One
The Age of the Man' yōshū

From extant written materials, the history of Japanese literature can be traced back to the seventh or eighth century. At the beginning of the eighth century the emperors of Japan, who had lived in the Asuka region in the previous century, created the city of Nara in imitation of the Chinese capital Chang-an. Nara, Japan's only real city at that time, had a population of about 200,000, a quarter of that of its Chinese model. Two national histories were written within ten years of Nara's establishment as the capital in 710: the Kojiki (completed in 712) and the Nihon shoki (completed in 720).

The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) is written in a rather odd style of Chinese containing elements of Japanese while the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of japan) is in pure Chinese and modelled on Chinese historical chronicles. Both are in chronological order and can be divided into two parts: one dealing with the divine and mythical origins of the Japanese imperial house, the other with the historical deeds of the emperors.

The circumstances in which the two works came to be written are riot entirely clear. Work on both seems to have been begun at the end of the seventh century but their primary sources, the Teiki (a genealogy of the imperial family) and the Kyūji (a record of stories current at court), neither of which is extant, seem to have been compiled in the sixth century.

Tsuda Sōkichi and other scholars have made clear how, in the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki, the powers behind the system were attempting to justify their position by continuing an account of the age of the gods on to actual historical occurrences without making clear where myth ended and history began. Stories current amongst the court and the people were no doubt used as raw material but these were chosen and embellished for inclusion in the histories, shaped by a point of view whose main concern was, clearly, the legitimacy of imperial rule. That the rulers of seventh and eight century Japan felt the necessity to demonstrate the legitimacy of imperial rule in historical terms was probably due to the diplomatic prestige and advantage this brought to their dealings with the kingdoms of Korea and their tributary relationship with China.

The three volumes of the Kojiki begin with an account of the creation of Heaven and Earth, the birth of the gods, the formation of the Japanese islands, the relationships between the gods and their various deeds. It proceeds to an account of the semi-legendary emperors of Japan beginning with the Emperor Jinmu and finally deals with the historical emperors, ending with the Empress Suiko who ruled in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. The Nihon shoki, in thirty volumes, likewise begins with an account of the creation and the various gods and then gives a chronological record (suspect in many cases) of the reigns of the emperors from Jinmu to the later seventh century Empress Jitō. The Kojiki has a preface in Chinese by Ōno Asomi Yasumaro and a main text written partly in Chinese, partly in Chinese characters used phonetically to represent the syllables of Japanese names etc and partly in characters used to convey the whole meaning of Japanese words. The Nihon shoki has no preface and is written entirely in Chinese.

While the Kojiki was not widely read until the development of kokugaku (national studies) in the Tokugawa period, the Nihon shoki was revered as Japan's first authentic history and a succession of court chronicles was written to supplement it. The Kojiki does not cover the late seventh century whereas the records provided by the Nihon shoki are greatly valued by modern historians. Both, however, are coherent works of literature and, in that they provide accounts of the age of the gods and the legendary emperors, are of profound significance in the history of thought.

The compilers sought out fragmentary myths and stories originally handed down in the provinces and interwove them with court and popular ballads, embellishing their material and organizing the whole through the mediums of Confucian philosophy and rhetorical and historical formulae adopted from China. Thus in the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki there was an encounter between popular indigenous culture of the entire period from the Yayoi (200BC-250CE) to the seventh century and the foreign culture which had been studied by the intellectuals of the court in the late seventh and eighth centuries. However, the methods by which the popular indigenous cultural sources were sought out and the overall narrative was treated were not simply imitations of mainland models; the structure of indigenous spirit clearly emerges in the way the stories are told.

The most ancient portions of the source material, the fragmentary myths concerning the gods, were not unique to japan. For example, the Sun Goddess (Amaterasu) is not exclusively associated with Japan and the story of her grandson Ninigi no Mikoto descending from heaven to the mountains of Kyūshū has many parallels in North Asia. In a similar myth concerning the origins of Korea, for instance, the god Kan'yū is said to have descended to the summit of Mt Taihaku.

Many other Japanese myths included in the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki have parallels in South Asia. How and when these myths were transmitted is not clear but it is at least certain that these stories, a complex synthesis of North and South Asian elements, had become an intrinsic part of indigenous belief and legend by the time the source material for the two histories was being collected. There was, thus, nothing unique or original about the sources but the organization of so much material from the provinces into a kind of compendium of mythology was, however, peculiar to ancient Japan.

An examination of the structure of the unified mythology which is principally to be found in the Kojiki (and with only certain differences in the Nihon shoki), reveals the following scenario.

In the beginning there were three gods in Heaven: Amano-minakanushi, Takami-musuhi and Kami-musuhi. The first of these three, a god who features hardly at all in later stories, was probably created from the formal necessity of adhering to continental patterns where normally three original deities were recognized. The highly abstract nature of his name, something like Heavenly Central Lord, also tends to confirm this.

These three gods produced many offspring, culminating in Izanagi and Izanami, the male and female deities who gave birth to the Japanese islands. The two gods stirred up the sea to create land, descended to this land to marry and subsequently to give birth to the islands of Japan and a number of other gods. Izanami died after giving birth to the Fire God, who was slain by the furious Izanagi. Izanagi then visited Izanami in the lower regions (Yomi, the land of the dead), ritually cleansing himself of impurity on his return. The Sun Goddess Amaterasu was born when he washed his left eye, the Moon Goddess Tsukuyomi from his right; and washing his nose yielded Susanoo, the Storm God.

Izanagi then divided the world among these three children, giving to Amaterasu the 'Plain of Heaven', to Tsukuyomi the 'Realm of Night', and to Susanoo the 'Sea Plain'. (According to the Nihon shoki he gave the Ne no Kuni, which seems to mean the Underworld, to Susanoo), Thereafter Tsukuyomi virtually disappears from the scene.

According to the Kojiki and Ninon shoki, the world consists of the Plain of Heaven given to Amaterasu, the Earth (the Middle Earth of the Reeds) - with the struggle to rule this forming the main strand of the history of the divine age in both the Kojiki and Nihon shoki - and the Sea Plain or Underworld given to Susanoo. Thus, the world concept of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki is a three-fold division into Heaven, Earth and Sea, or Heaven, Earth and Underworld. In both works there are stories about events on the surface of, and under, the sea and in the subterranean worlds. The former is a world of light approximating to the Daoist concept of Paradise, while the latter, the Underworld, is a place of darkness and shadows.

It is hard to decide which of these worlds had the longer history in Japanese thought but both shared the aspect that it was possible for a mortal man from this Earth to live there for a time and then return. In this sense both were extensions of the Earth. The gods who lived in Heaven sometimes visited the Earth and in exceptional cases a mortal had the power to transform himself after death (into a white bird which flew up to Heaven in the case of Yamato Takeru) and join the gods. Thus, Heaven was not totally divorced from this world. Moreover, in the myths of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a given event is taking place in Heaven or on Earth. The gods conspire, fight and are jealous of each other, threaten, punish, marry, dance, laugh and cry. The Plain of Heaven is best understood as an extension of the Yamato Court - or rather as a kind of predecessor of thai court set in space. Heaven was not a place where the gods were born but rather a meeting place where the gods who roamed the Earth could gather. The Heaven of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki was inspired by the Chinese world-view. But Heaven and Earth were not divorced from one another and it is perhaps not surprising that the age of the gods became inextricably involved with the ancestry of the rulers of men. The indigenous world-view which runs through the pages of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki was totally this-worldly; there was no suggestion of a world which transcended the realities of this earth.

The stories of Amaterasu and Susanoo (and later Ōkuninushi) which form part of the central development of the Kojiki deal with the fight between the two gods in Heaven and Susanoo's banishment to Earth; Amaterasu's retirement into a cave because of the mischief made by Susanoo and the antics of the gods to lure her out; the deeds of Susanoo on Earth; and the activities of Susanoo's son (or grandson) Ōkuninushi in Izumo.

The accounts of Ōkuninushi are particularly detailed, and include many stories, such as the incident in which he is killed in a fight for one woman with the 'Eighty Gods' (Yasogami) and restored to life by an envoy sent from Heaven by Kami-musuhi, Other stories include his descent to Ne no kuni to see Susanoo and escape with his daughter Suseri-bime; his love affair with a woman in Koshi no kuni (the Land of the North), and the jealousy of Suseri-bime; and the foundation of the Middle Earth of the Reeds in co-operation with Sukunahikona, the son of Kami-musuhi. During this long series of stories, the gods of the line of Takami-musuhi and Amaterasu seem to be entirely forgotten. The only intermediary deity from Heaven who appears is Kami-musuhi and he plays no rote at all in the Kojiki stories about Heaven.

Susanoo himself is the main character who links events before and after his banishment from Heaven. There is also the matter of the two major lines of gods identified in provincial traditions, the Izumo line and the Yamato line. In the Yamato tradition it was Izanagi and Izanami who created the Japanese islands; in the Izumo tradition it was Ōkuninushi and Sukunahikona. It was essential, therefore, to introduce some kind of Link between the Amaterasu and Ōkuninushi lines to bring some consistency to the celestial and earthly stories about Susanoo's banishment from Heaven. In the Kojiki, this link is provided by the story known as 'surrendering the country' (of Izumo).

This surrender (or conquest) was not easily achieved. Envoys sent by Takami-musuhi and Amaterasu twice returned with their mission unfulfilled before a third envoy, Take-mikazuchi, conquered Izumo and accomplished the 'surrender of the country'. This account differs substantially from the earlier version found in the history of the Izumo region, the Izumo fudoki.

After this, the gods of Izumo cease to exist as a distinct line. Ninigi, grandson of Amaterasu, descends to Earth and lays the foundation of the Yamato court and his great-grandson, the Emperor Jinmu, founds the imperial house which completes the conquest of Japan and continues on in an unbroken line of succession.

This at any rate is the general outline of the story. There are, of course, obscurities and inconsistencies in the accounts given in the two chronicles. However, to rationalize the blood relationships of the various gods and the legends associated with them, even to the extent that was achieved, indicates a remarkable talent in the compiler of the account. We are not sure exactly who put all this together but it is certain that he had clarity of purpose and selected, organized and structured his material at the highest intellectual level. In the Kojiki, at least, the work bears the vivid stamp of a perceptive contemporary intellect rather than revealing the influence of a shut-off continental culture. The 'myths' in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki are not the authentic myths which lived in the hearts of the common people but mythological literature created by the ruling class.

Neverless, the way in which the stories of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki are told shows that something of the spirit of the ordinary people has been captured by this literary ruling class. There is a chara...