The Kojiki

It is a great book. However there are lots of typo's in the text but the meaning is clear.

Interesting.

Excellent seller, smooth transaction. I highly recommend this book and this seller to everyone. It shows the difference between the creation and destruction stories I grew up with and the ones Japanesse believe. It is amazing to read this and other mithological creation stories to think which one is the real one, or perhaps are they all false and created by humans? why do different continents have different creation and destruction stories? I now have many doubs about my own religious believes. It is important to read this book and other creation books and do not be afraid to discover new important info about the world's creation.

It goes without saying that the book, and Chamberlain's translation, are excellent and should be a part of any liberal education. I had never read the whole book or the whole of Chamberlain's Introduction and many end notes. So when it arrived I immediately glued in ribbons for place markers and set down to serious study. I found to my chagrin, however, that this edition is highly lacking. The end notes lack the Kanji, the Chinese characters, which are used in Japanese along with their phonetic alphabets, and which Chamberlain intersperses in his Introduction and end notes. Instead of the Kanji from the original the publisher put in a slash or other mark. For me, a student of Japanese, the absence of the kanji makes the book close to useless.Chamberlain's end notes, moreover, use Roman numerals to refer us back to various sections. But the sections themselves have no numbering whatever. How can I use the end notes?I don't know much about the publishing industry. But I imagine that at least the omission of the kanji, and perhaps also the lack of section numbers, may have been intended to save money. And I admit that the price is cheap. But the reader should have been informed in advance of these failings. It is definitely not for the serious student.I feel cheated. I know you are a reliable company with good intentions. But I guess this one slipped past you.What can I do? I pasted in ribbons. Not thinking that I would want to return it, I didn't treat it extremely gently. The front and back covers are a bit wrinkled. (Maybe this is the fault of cheap material. But since I cannot prove that, I'll say that maybe I am responsible for the wrinkles.) So I doubt that I can return it as new.What do you recommend? I would like to get a decent and usable edition. But I don't feel like writing off what I have lost on this one. After all, your description of this edition lacked information. What do you recommend?

I really enjoy how these books have a great introduction in the beginning explaining the authors point of view and a overall expectation of what the stories are going to reveal.

If you want to know about the history of Japan, The Kojiki tells mostly legendary tales from the beginning to the first emperor. The Kojiki was written during the 600s and 700s. It was completed in 711 or so because of encouragement by Empress Genmei, a female monarch of Japan.The translation is interesting because Chamberlain does a word-for-word rendering of character names. This makes the names a little clunky, but also very understandable. Chamberlain also translated in Latin, not English, sections relating to sexuality. I don't read Latin, but was able to translate them okay into English. Chamberlain apparently suffered from Victorian-era prudishness about sex and procreation.In his later years, Chamberlain became somewhat testy about Japanese culture. He lived in Japan for many years partly because the better air quality when compared to England was good for his pulmonary health. Chamberlain was very bright. He learned ancient Japanese to translate The Kojiki. He also knew some modern Japanese, but not as much as ancient Japanese. Although he lived in Japan, he seemed to view Japanese culture as inferior to that of England. He wrote somewhat harshly about Japan, citing poor hospitality to foreigners as a primary concern. He also wrote a harsh paper about what he called the reinvention of Shinto by Meiji aristocrats—some of which may be true—especially concerning emperor worship.

Forgotten Books desperately needs a new editor. There are several typos which came off as unprofessional. The translator didn't do an adequate job addressing differences in phrasing either. Clearly marked editorial notes giving additional historical context would have been a nice touch.All in all, I would recommend The Nihongi, but not this edition.

Was as described

The book was exactly what I ordered, and contains a well translated version of the book. But it isn't perfect as many sections are over translated, especially names and places. But the book does contain a appendix which is useful for finding out what the real names etc are, just it gets a tad annoying when you have to keep going back to the end of the book to find. Also the picture given here isn't what is delivered but is similar.however despite the various mistakes and inaccuracy's, the book is easy to read and follow and is well set out.

Good edition with a very informative prologue about the history of Kojiki and other foundational texts.

日本の「古事記」が外国ではどのように解釈されているかが気になったので、今回購入しました。　大体大枠はとらえられていたので気に入りました。　ただ独特の固有名詞（神々の名前など）が多いので、それをどうするのかも面白かった。　「古事記」原典と合わせながら読み進んでみた。