age of men--who wrote and spoke ideographically--grew to be
different from the language of women--who wrote and spoke
phonetically. When Hiyeda no Are was required to memorize the annals
and traditions collected and revised at the Imperial Court, the
language in which he committed them to heart was pure Japanese, and
in that language he dictated them, twenty-nine years later, to the
scribe Yasumaro. The latter, in setting down the products of Are's
memory, wrote for the most part phonetically; but sometimes, finding
that method too cumbersome, he had recourse to the ideographic
language, with which he was familiar. At all events, adding nothing
nor taking away anything, he produced a truthful record of the myths,
traditions, and salient historical incidents credited by the Japanese
of the seventh century.

It may well be supposed, nevertheless, that Are's memory, however
tenacious, failed in many respects, and that his historical details
were comparatively meagre. An altogether different spirit presided at
the work subsequently undertaken by this same Yasumaro, when, in
conjunction with other scholars, he was required to collate the
historical materials obtained abundantly from various sources since
the vandalism of the Soga nobles. The prime object of these
collaborators was to produce a Japanese history worthy to stand side
by side with the classic models of China. Therefore, they used the
Chinese language almost entirely, the chief exception being in the
case of the old poems, a great number of which appear in the Records
and the Chronicles alike. The actual words of these poems had to be
preserved as well as the metre, and therefore it was necessary to
indite them phonetically. For the rest, the Nihon Shoki, which
resulted from the labours of these annalists and literati, was so
Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the
cosmogonic myths of the Middle Kingdom, and to put into the mouths of
Japanese monarchs, or into their decrees, quotations from Chinese
literature. "As a repertory of ancient Japanese myth and legend there
is little to choose between the Records and the Chronicles. The
former is, on the whole, the fuller of the two, and contains legends
which the latter passes over in silence; but the Chronicles, as we
now have them, are enriched by variants of the early myths, the value
of which, for purposes of comparison, is recognized by scientific
inquirers. But there can be no comparis