Myth and Origin — The Beginnings of the Imperial House

The Japanese imperial house is known as one of the longest unbroken lines in the world. As we trace its course backward, we eventually pass beyond the horizon of reliable records and arrive at a realm where the stories of the gods are told. The tales of the beginning of heaven and earth handed down in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki are not things whose recorded events can be confirmed as historical fact just as they stand. And yet they remain an essential gateway for understanding how the people of this land have passed down the story of their own origins. In Episode 1, we look as neutrally as we can at the boundary between the beginnings of the imperial house as told in myth and the facts that history can trace.

The Stories of the Gods — How the Chronicles Tell of the Beginning of Heaven and Earth

The story surrounding the origins of the imperial house is recorded in two old books compiled at the start of the eighth century. One is the Kojiki, regarded as the oldest surviving history; the other is the Nihon Shoki that followed it. Together they are called the ‘Kiki.’ These books are thought to have re-woven, as an enterprise of the state, the stories of gods and kings that had until then been handed down orally or in records.

In the world the Kiki describe, after heaven and earth were divided, many gods are said to have appeared in the heavenly realm called Takamagahara. In time, the two deities Izanagi and Izanami gave birth to the lands and to many gods of nature. Among them, the one said to have been born as the deity who governs the sun was Amaterasu Omikami. Amaterasu was later positioned as the ancestral deity of the imperial house and has been handed down as the imperial ancestress.

What matters here is that these are ‘things handed down as myth and tradition,’ which differ in character from facts that can be substantiated by historical sources. Just as many peoples of the world have told of their own beginnings through the stories of gods, Japan too has passed down its origins in the form of myth. The myths of the Kiki can be read not as historical fact itself, but as a precious record of the spirit — a reflection of how the people of antiquity understood the world and the story of their own descent.

The Heavenly Descent and the Tradition of Emperor Jimmu

Among the stories of the Kiki, one of the best known is the tradition called the heavenly descent. Amaterasu Omikami is said to have sent her grandson Ninigi from Takamagahara down to the earth, so that he might govern the land below. At this time Amaterasu is said to have bestowed rice ears and the treasures later spoken of as the Three Sacred Regalia, and the story took shape that the imperial house descends from the blood of this heavenly grandson. The descendants of the gods who came down to earth would in time become the kings who governed the land — the heavenly descent is the pivotal tradition in that plot.

And placed at the extension of this lineage is the figure regarded as the first emperor, Jimmu. According to the Kiki, Jimmu set out eastward from Hyuga in Kyushu, and after a long campaign entered the land of Yamato, where he is said to have acceded at the palace of Kashihara. The Nihon Shoki records this accession as having taken place in ‘the year of kanototori.’ Applied to the later calendar, this is said to correspond to 660 BCE, and in the Meiji era an era reckoning was established with this year as its starting point.

This date of 660 BCE, however, calls for caution. Scholarship holds that the compilers of the Nihon Shoki derived this year of accession by counting backward from the year of kanototori in the reign of Empress Suiko (601 CE), drawing on a calendrical idea originating in ancient China. In other words, 660 BCE is generally regarded not as a date confirmed by contemporary records, but as a figure set by back-calculation in an age after the book was compiled. As for the figure of Emperor Jimmu himself, whether he was a real person cannot be confirmed, and the cautious view is that he has been spoken of as a founder of tradition.

Where Myth Ends and History Begins

So where do the stories of the gods give way to the horizon of history? That boundary is not something that can be drawn as a single clear line. The accounts of the Kiki are at first deeply colored by myth, and as the ages descend, concrete names and events gradually increase. The shift from myth to history is continuous, like a gentle slope.

When we overlay the image that archaeology draws, another outline comes into view. From the third to the fourth century, enormous tumuli came to be built, centered on the Kinki region, and the keyhole-shaped mounds spreading across the land are thought to indicate the expansion of a power centered on Yamato. The Chinese histories also hand down the name of Himiko, a queen of Wa around the third century. These tell, by a path separate from the myths of the Kiki, of how a powerful political force took shape in ancient Japan. Where and how the lineage the Kiki relate connects with the kingship of the Kofun period that archaeology shows — that elucidation is a question over which research is still being layered.

What is certain is that the origins of the imperial house lie within the overlap of two layers: myth and fact. Myth conveys how the people of this land have passed down the story of their own beginning; fact gradually clarifies how the ancient state actually rose. Neither one alone allows us to survey rightly the long course of the imperial house. To not mistake myth for fact, yet not to make light of the meaning myth has carried, and to look quietly upon both — that very stance should be a firm foothold for the long journey we will trace across the ten episodes ahead.

When the stories of the gods fade and the doings of people begin to remain as records, we at last come to find the figure of the emperor clearly within the light of history. Next time, we will trace the path from the ancient kings called great kings to the moment the title of ‘emperor’ was fixed.