Kojiki

The Kojiki, meaning Record of Ancient Matters, is Japan's oldest surviving book, compiled by the court scholar O no Yasumaro at the command of Empress Genmei and presented to her in 712 CE. Written primarily in Classical Chinese, with the songs and poems it contains rendered in Old Japanese through the phonetic man'yogana writing system, the work is organized in three volumes covering the mythological separation of heaven and earth and the deeds of the kami, or deities, through the founding of Japan and a genealogical, semi-historical account of the imperial line down to the early seventh century. Alongside its mythological narratives, the Kojiki records origin stories, hymns, songs and oral traditions that had previously circulated only by memory, assembled explicitly to fix an authoritative account of the imperial lineage and the nation's origins in writing. Although compiled for religious and political purposes tied to Shinto belief and imperial legitimacy, scholars have long recognized the Kojiki's independent literary value, comparing its mythological narrative art to that of ancient Greek and Roman literature and studying it, alongside works such as Beowulf, as a foundational national epic in prose. It remains the primary written source for the earliest strand of Japanese mythology and narrative literature.