Origins and flowering of Japanese historiography

A comparative analysis of Chinese geopolitical discourse, the creation of imperial mythical literature and Japanese national histories

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of the first historical texts to emerge in China on the cultural and political context of the Japanese archipelago and the origins of Japanese historiography. These continental sources were incorporated into the Chinese empire’s political discourse on the notion of otherness and the civilisation-barbarism dichotomy. This notion extended beyond China’s borders and played a major role in geopolitical relations in East Asia, in which China was the dominant cultural influence. The Japanese state’s first attempts to create a national history were based on demonstrating the legitimacy of the social elite, connecting this with the mythological universe. However, these imperial chronicles were followed by other texts with a more accurate historical content.