The Way of the Gods. Motoori Noriaga's Naobi no Mitama

Bibliographic Data

ID10294366
AuthorsSey Nishimura (corresponding author), Motoori Norinaga
Year1991
Volume46
Issue1
Pages21-21
Publication date1991-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMonumenta Nipponica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0027-0741 • E-ISSN: 1880-1390
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2385145
OpenAlexW2108936085
LanguageEN
Citations received6

M W } OTOORI NORINAGA , 1730-1801, was thirty-four years old when he began his life-work, Kojikiden -+n*OY; when publication was completed in 1822, fifty-eight years had passed since the commentary's inception and twenty-one years since his death. The result of so much time and endeavor, Kojikiden surpassed in volume and quality all previous works relating to Kojiki , 712.1 With Kojikiden, educated readers were able to comprehend the ancient text, which was transcribed in erratic and abstruse Chinese and full of obscurities. Further, the encyclopedic nature of Kojikiden enabled readers to grasp much of ancient Japanese civilization, provided that they were willing to tackle the mass of detail contained in the lengthy work.2 Norinaga believed in interpreting a text exhaustively. For that reason his work in Kojikiden is sometimes positivistic research at its most tedious, drawing from a vast amount of sources, including Confucian and Buddhist writings (of whose doctrines he disapproved). He shows himself to be a gifted scholar, however, extracting many insights from the material. His method is logical and objective, the delivery uncontrived, and the conclusions forthright. Unfortunately sustenance for such effort came from a passion, a belief beyond the ordinary realm of reasoning, that the Kojiki text was historically authentic. Positively, this passion generated and propelled his work. But it was also a negative factor since the belief that all the records in Kojiki were valid undermined the persuasive power of his otherwise academically formidable study. Like all commentaries, Kojikiden has no topical intellectual organization. Material is presented in order of appearence in the Kojiki text, covering in the

Ancient history · Art · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History

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