Old-World Japan

HISTORY and mythology, fact and fable, are closely interwoven in the texture of Japanese life and thought; indeed, it is within relatively recent years only that exact comparative criticism has been able, with some degree of accuracy, to divide the one from the other. The accounts of the God-period contained in the Kojiki and the Nihongi-"Records of Ancient Matters" compiled in the eighth century of the Christian era-profess to outline the events of the vast cycles of years from the time of Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi-no-kami's birth in the Plain of High Heaven, "when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like," to the death of the Empress Suiko, A.D. 628.