The Chronicles of Japan, Volume 1 and 2 of the Gods (Yoshida

A Scholar's Working Copy of Japan's Oldest History

Open either of the two scrolls and the page reads the same way: fourteen characters to a line, brushed in black, with small red marks threaded between them to show how the classical Chinese was meant to be read aloud in Japanese. The margins carry notes in a finer hand, and the backs of the sheets are covered in still more writing. All of it came from one person, a court scholar named Urabe no Kanekata, who copied and annotated these scrolls in the 1280s.

What he set down was the opening of the Nihon Shoki, the first official history of Japan, completed in 720 and written in classical Chinese across thirty books. Its first two books cover the jindai, the age of the gods, before the line of human emperors begins. This pair of scrolls holds exactly those two books, which is why the set is known as the Jindai-kan, the Books of the Age of the Gods. Among the many copies made over the centuries, it is the oldest one to survive complete.

The scrolls are called the Yoshida-bon, the Yoshida copy, after the family that kept them. Kanekata belonged to the Urabe, a lineage that served shrines across the provinces and earned its living through divination. From the late thirteenth century the family began using the surname Yoshida, and the name attached itself to these scrolls.

Why It Became a National Treasure

The text alone does not account for the importance of the scrolls. Kanekata's father, Urabe no Kanefumi, had lectured on the Nihon Shoki for the former regent Ichijō Sanetsune and others at court, and the notes Kanekata brushed onto the backs of these sheets grew out of that teaching. A colophon on the lower scroll records that he added this layer of annotation, the uragaki, in the spring of Kōan 9 (1286).

He later drew on the same material to compile the Shaku Nihongi, the earliest surviving commentary on the Nihon Shoki and a gathering of generations of lectures on how the text should be read. In a real sense, these scrolls are the working papers behind that commentary.

Because the colophon and the main text are written in the same hand, scholars take the whole work, body and notes alike, to be Kanekata's own. Reading the layers in sequence, researchers have proposed four stages of work: the upper scroll copied first, then the lower, then a first pass of annotation across both, then a second. The set was designated a National Treasure on 29 March 1952.

What to Look For

The family that preserved the scrolls went on to shape Japanese religion. In the fifteenth century Yoshida Kanetomo, a priest of Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto, assembled a systematic school of thought now called Yoshida Shinto, which held wide influence over shrine affairs for generations. The text these scrolls carry also reached beyond scholarly circles: around 1600 Emperor Go-Yōzei had the Age of the Gods books printed with wooden movable type, one of the imperially sponsored Keichō editions.

For a visitor, the draw is the chance to stand before a thirteenth-century hand at work. The red reading marks, the cramped notes in the margins, the writing that continues onto the reverse of every sheet: together they show a scholar thinking on the page rather than producing a tidy fair copy. The fourteen-character lines give the columns a steady rhythm, and the density of the annotation makes clear how much weight a single sentence of the old myth could carry.

One practical point matters before any visit. Like all early manuscripts on paper, the scrolls are sensitive to light and are shown only for short periods, usually within a themed display or special exhibition rather than on permanent view. Seeing them in person depends on timing.

Around the Museum

The scrolls are held at the Kyoto National Museum in the Higashiyama district, on the eastern side of the city. The museum rotates its holdings frequently, so anyone hoping to see the Yoshida-bon should check the current display schedule before traveling; when it is not on view, the galleries still offer a deep collection of painting, calligraphy, sculpture, and ceramics.

The setting makes the trip worthwhile in its own right. Sanjūsangen-dō, the long hall famous for its rows of standing Kannon figures, stands directly across the street. The temples of southern Higashiyama, including Kiyomizu-dera, lie within walking distance or a short bus ride, and the Shichijō area along the Kamo River offers an easy route back toward central Kyoto.