Japanese Mythology: Hermeneutics on Scripture (review)

Isomae Jun'ichi is an astute and prolific scholar who has written on a wide variety of topics ranging from the Jōmon period and imperial mythology early in his career to modern Shinto and the disciplinary category of Japanese religion, and, more recently, twentieth-century nationalism and Marxism. This book is based on a collection of essays that were first published in Japanese journals between 1991 and 1997 and then as a book called Kiki shinwa no metahisutorī (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1998). Three of the essays were previously translated into English (chapters 3, 5, and 6) and published as journal articles between 1999 and 2004. Japanese Mythology is the result of retranslating these three articles, translating the two remaining chapters from Kiki shinwa no metahisutorī (chapters 2 and 4), and retranslating an article originally published in Japanese in 2002 and in English as an encyclopedia entry in 2004 (chapter 1). The introduction to the book draws on the brief introduction to Kiki shinwa no metahisutorī, but for the most part has been newly written and translated.

The main topic of the book is how the Kojiki and Nihon shoki have been interpreted in different historical periods. Isomae refers to these two texts with the modern shorthand term "kiki" 記紀. The expression "Kiki mythology" usually invokes an understanding of the various mythical accounts collected in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki as variations on what was originally a single myth. Isomae's use of the term, however, takes into account Kōnoshi Takamitsu's argument in Kojiki no sekaikan (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1986) that the Kojiki and the main text of the Nihon shoki are in fact different myths and articulate different worldviews. His "kiki" therefore does not refer to a unitary "Japanese mythology" but to a cluster of imperial myths and legends that constantly shifted over time.

Given that the essays included in Japanese Mythology were written at different times, there is a fair amount of repetition throughout the book. It is unfortunate that the first chapter, which was the last to be written and outlines the history of myth interpretation, presents the sophisticated arguments that are detailed in the rest of the book in a somewhat reductive form that does not do them justice. Most puzzling is the description of "the foundational myth" of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki (pp. 19-20), which mixes elements of the two texts and could easily be confused for a traditional "pre-Konoshi" unitary mythology.

One of Isomae's most interesting arguments is his explanation for why so many different myths concerning the divine origins of the imperial family developed around the same basic figures and themes prior to the compilation of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. In chapter 2 ("The Canon and Variants: An Examination of the Mythology of Susanowo"), he suggests that this occurred because the various uji lineages were all committed to the legitimacy of the state (hence the basic common motifs and mythical characters), but differed according to each of their own political and genealogical interests (hence the multiple variations). The Kojiki and Nihon shoki are, according to Isomae, the result of this variegated mythology being "canonized" by Tenmu's new imperial order. While the Kojiki text presents itself as the one authentic version of events, the Nihon shoki includes multiple variant accounts but subordinates them to an official main text. The compilation of both texts represented a kind of centralization of mythology and history in which the Kojiki and Nihon shoki (especially the latter) became the official standard by which the various lineages legitimated their own familial myths and histories in the late Nara and Heian periods. This is the case, for instance, with texts such as the Takahashi Ujibumi (789) and the Kogoshūi (807), in which the Inbe and Takahashi lineages produced mythological and historical accounts that chronicled the history of their lineages' service to the court and thus advocated for the legitimacy of...