Old-World Japan

HISTORY and mythology, fact and fable, are closely interwoven in the texture of Japanese life and thought; indeed, it is within relatively recent years only that exact comparative criticism has been able, with some degree of accuracy, to divide the one from the other. The accounts of the God-period contained in the Kojiki and the Nihongi—“Records of Ancient Matters” compiled in the eighth century of the Christian era—profess to outline the events of the vast cycles of years from the time of...