THE SACRED BOOKS

OF

JAPAN

shrines of Japan. Here then, if anywhere, we may watch literature as it is first born.

This primitive character of the early Japanese books must be insisted on, lest the reader feel disappointed when he compares the sacred books of Japan with those we have previously examined. Not even the “Pyramid Texts” of Egypt or the first Babylonian legends of the Flood show man in such a primitive state of physical life and spiritual culture as is revealed in the ancient rituals of “Shinto,” the original religion of Japan.

Even the legends of the Japanese only date the earthly origin of the race back to some six hundred years before Christ. At that date, the old books say, the Sun-goddess Amaterasu sent her grandchildren down from Heaven to invade and occupy Japan. Their leader was the god—or chief grandchild of the goddess—now known as the first Mikado of Japan. Both as god and man, he is highly honored under the Chinese name, given to him many centuries after his death, of Jimmu or Jimmu Tenno.

We do not really know if the mighty Jimmu ever existed, and the date of his conquest of Japan has no authority that European chronology would accept for a moment. All that we positively know is that a thousand years later the Japanese race was in control of the land. Then, in the fifth or sixth century A.D., Chinese scholars arrived, bringing Chinese civilization and the Chinese system of writing. The Japanese welcomed these things; they absorbed their value as completely as they have absorbed modern civilization today. Almost immediately they began writing books of their own, and the earliest of these to be preserved were the now-celebrated “Kojiki” and “Nihongi,” which present to us the accounts of the first civilized Japanese regarding the traditions of their past.

THE “KOJIKI” AND “NIHONGI”

The “Kojiki” and “Nihongi” are the books that tell us of the invading god-emperor Jimmu. They even preserve the songs—the crudest of barbaric chants—which he and his