ABSTRACT
The need of a selection and a careful choice will become apparent when the people consider the political objects the Kojiki and Nihongi were alike composed to subserve. In the Japanese mythology as officially “ selected” in the eighth century, the people begin in the Plain of High Heaven, where a succession of deities come into existence without creation and afterwards die. In both the Nihongi and the Kojiki the history of the early Emperors is continuous with the mythology. The Kojiki deals with all this in a single sentence:—” The Heavenly Sovereign, lamenting the transgressions in the surnames and gentile names of the people of all the surnames and names in the Empire, placed jars hot water at the Wondrous Cape of Eighty Evils in Words at Amakashi, and deigned to establish the surnames and gentile names of eighty heads of companies.”.
