Moors, the Land of Fresh Rice-ears,—of a Thousand Autumns,—of Long Five Hundred Autumns” cannot possibly be regarded as more than an honorific description of Japan. Such a catalogue of words could never have been used as a name. On the other hand it is plain that Tema was simply the proper name of a certain mountain, because there is no known word in Archaic Japanese to which it can with certainty be traced. The difficulty is with the intermediate cases,—the cases of those names which are but partly comprehensible or partly applicable to their bearers; and the difficulty is one of which there would seem to be no satisfactory solution possible. The translator may therefore merely state that in Vol. I of these “Records,” where an unusual number of the Proper Names have a bearing on the legends related in the text, he has, wherever feasible, translated all those which are borne by persons, whether human or divine. In the succeeding Volumes he has not done so, nor has he, except in a very small number of instances, translated the Proper Names of places in any of the three volumes. In order, however, to convey all the needful information both as to sound and as to sense, the Japanese original is always indicated in a Foot-note when the translation has the name in English, and vice versâ, while all doubtful etymologies are discussed.
III.
The “Chronicles of Japan.”
It will have been gathered from what has been already said, and it is indeed generally known, that the “Records of Ancient Matters” do not stand alone. To say nothing of the “Chronicles of Old Matters of Former Ages,” whose genuineness is disputed, there is another undoubtedly authentic work with which no student of Japanese antiquity can dispense. It is entitled “Nihon-Gi,” i.e., “Chronicles of Japan,” and is second only in value to the “Records,” which it has always excelled in popular favour. It was completed in A.D. 720, eight years after the “Records of Ancient Matters” had been presented to the Empress Gem-miyō.
The scope of the two histories is the same; but the language of the later one and its manner of treating the national traditions stand in notable contrast to the unpretending simplicity of the elder work. Not
