Download or read book Old-world Japan written by Frank Rinder and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1895 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HISTORY and mythology, fact and fable, are closely interwoven in the texture of Japanese life and thought; indeed, it is within relatively recent years only that exact comparative criticism has been able, with some degree of accuracy, to divide the one from the other. The accounts of the God-period contained in the Kojiki and the Nihongi-"Records of Ancient Matters" compiled in the eighth century of the Christian era-profess to outline the events of the vast cycles of years from the time of Ame-no-mi-naka-nushi-no-kami's birth in the Plain of High Heaven, "when the earth, young and like unto floating oil, drifted about medusa-like," to the death of the Empress Suiko, A.D. 628.