Historiography of Japan

The earliest work of Japanese history is attributed to Prince Shōtoku, who is said to have written the Tennōki and the Kokki in 620 CE.

It opposed the Neo-Confucians by seeking to demonstrate the veracity of Shinto mythology, especially of the Age of the Gods and the early emperors, whose existence is doubted.

Rangaku ("Dutch learning"), translations of European works in the mid-19th century, and then the introduction of German historiography of Ludwig Riess in 1887 brought new analytical tools to the various Japanese schools of history.

[2] The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were compiled by functionaries of the imperial administration and centred on the reigns and deeds of past emperors, seeking to legitimize their actions.

[1] The authors of the Kojiki of 712 trace the first work of this type to 620, when Prince Shōtoku is said to have written the first historical books, the Tennōki and Kokki.

[b] It also borrows the Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven, but differs from it to legitimize the entire Japanese imperial lineage.

[5] In 718 Yōrō Code commissioned the Ministry of the Centre to compile a national history; the resulting Nihon Shoki of 720 served as a basis for similar works.

Their form later served as inspiration during the Edo period of the 17th–19th centuries, when the shōguns sought to legitimize their power by having historical works of this type written.

The Shoku Nihongi also describes certain aspects of Japanese society of the time, such as the conditions of the workers at construction sites in the capital Heijō-kyō (modern Nara).

[9] Emperor Saga had the compilation of the Nihon Kōki begun in 819, but the project soon came to a stop due to the deaths of several of its coordinators.

The Fujiwara clan, which dominated the court, displayed its power in other genres of writing, such as rekishi monogatari ("historical tales").

The imperial lineage was sufficiently legitimized by different historical writings and no longer needed to order such works to assert its authority.

In contrast to earlier chronicles, these texts take a more subjective approach, concentrating on narrative to attract the interest of the reader,[12] and were written in Japanese rather than classical Chinese.

Using the image of the historical mirror used by the Chinese historian Sima Qian in 2nd century, and use a narrator to tell a story through the lives of important characters.

The latter asserts Japan as a country chosen by the gods and thus superior to all others, which has left a lasting influence on Japanese historiography, politics, and nationalism.

[20] Two other prominent examples appeared at the beginning of the 17th century, both biographical accounts of military leaders: that of Oda Nobunaga in the Shinchō kōki and that of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the Taikōki.

The work of the Shinto priest Yoshida Kanetomo, is also notable, as it shows correspondences between the Japanese calendar and three foreign ones.

But after the Six National Histories it was interrupted and no longer continued .... Now the evil of misrule by the warriors since the Kamakura period has been overcome and imperial government has been restored.

However, a younger generation of Japanese scholars in the 1970s rejected modernization models because they obscured class conflict and the social dynamics of society.

This led to scholarly debates over gender roles, living standards, domestic economies, agricultural practices, educational programs, and demographic changes.

The line of argument is that modernization was not a single simple trajectory toward social economic and political progress, but it also could have authoritarian and statist outcomes, and in some cases it was led by the militarists.

[28][29] As hard-line Communism weakened following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Marxist historians have increasingly turned away from an emphasis on blue-collar industrial workers and, influenced by French historical theorist Louis Althusser, have focused more on the relationship between power structures and the economy of cultural production.