Nihon-shi (History of Great
Japan), which consisted of 240 volumes and became thenceforth
the standard history of the country. It is stated that the
expenditures involved in producing this history, together with a
five-hundred-volume work on the ceremonies of the Imperial Court,
amounted to one-third of the Mito revenues, a sum of about 700,000
ryo. There can be little doubt that Mitsukuni's proximate purpose in
undertaking the colossal work was to controvert a theory advanced by
Hayashi Razan that the Emperor of Japan was descended from the
Chinese prince, Tai Peh, of Wu, of the Yin dynasty.

Chiefly concerned in the compilation of the Dai Nihon-shi were Asaka
Kaku, Kuriyama Gen, and Miyake Atsuaki. They excluded the Empress
Jingo from the successive dynasties; they included the Emperor Kobun
in the history proper, and they declared the legitimacy of the
Southern Court as against the Northern. But in the volume devoted to
enumeration of the constituents of the empire, they omitted the
islands of Ezo and Ryukyu. This profound study of ancient history
could not fail to expose the fact that the shogunate usurped powers
which properly belonged to the sovereign and to the sovereign alone.
But Mitsukuni and his collaborators did not give prominence to this
feature. They confined themselves rather to historical details.

ENGRAVING: KAMO MABUCHI

ENGRAVING: MOTOORI NOBINAGA

It was reserved for four other men to lay bare the facts of the
Mikado's divine right and to rehabilitate the Shinto cult. These men
were Kada Azumamaro (1668-1736), Kamo Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori
Norinaga (1730-1801), and Hirata Atsutane (1776-1834). Associated
with them were other scholars of less note, but these are
overshadowed by the four great masters. Kada, indeed, did not achieve
much more than the restoration of pure Japanese literature to the
pedestal upon which it deserved to stand. That in itself was no
insignificant task, for during the five centuries that separated the
Gen-Hei struggle from the establishment of the Tokugawa family,
Japanese books had shared the destruction that overtook everything in
this period of wasting warfare, and the Japanese language itself had
undergone such change that to read and understand ancient books, like
the Kojiki and the Manyo-shu, demanded a special course of study. To
make that study and to prepare the path for others was Kada's task,
and he performed it so conscientiously that his successors were