| editor

Name: The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Volume XIII, Japan — Introduction—The Youngest Civilized Race and Its Revelations of Primitive Religious Thought
Author: | editor

The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

Summary

“The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Volume XIII, Japan — Introduction—The Youngest Civilized Race and Its Revelations of Primitive Religious Thought”, published in 1917, is a work by | editor. It explores elements such as Japanese, Kojiki and Chinese.

Quotes from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (| editor)

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ From the "Kojiki" therefore, Japan's oldest book, we get our clearest vision of the earlier barbaric ages and the earliest spirit of the Japanese.
The "Nihongi," on the contrary, while almost as old as the "Kojiki," is a wholly Chinese work. It reviews the same traditions as the "Kojiki," but polishes them all, revises them to fit the newly acquired Chinese ideas. In short, it gives such an amazing Chinese twist to everything the "Kojiki" had told, that no student of human nature is likely to neglect the opportunity of comparing these two books. ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ More clearly here than in any other works of Japan's present transformation, more clearly perhaps than anywhere else in the world, can we see an entire nation changing not only its outer garments, but its views, its ways of thought, almost its very soul. ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ All that we positively know is that a thousand years later the Japanese race were in control of the land, and then, in the fifth or sixth century A.D., there came to them Chinese scholars bringing the Chinese civilization and the Chinese writing. The Japanese welcomed these things; they absorbed their value as completely as they have absorbed modern civilization to-day. Almost immediately they began writing books of their own ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ Only incidentally do the "Kojiki" and "Nihongi" refer to religion. They are, or regard themselves as, histories, "records of ancient matters." The religion under which the Japanese had emerged from barbarism was the unquestionably very ancient faith of Shintoism. This held its own not only against the first sweep of Chinese civilization with its teaching of Confucianism, but also against all the highly spiritual preaching of Buddhism. Buddhism entered the land with the Chinese invasion and became gradually adopted by most of the Japanese ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ Before that time the Japanese could neither read nor write. They are thus the youngest among modern great nations. The Americans and Australians were colonists, the vigorous heirs of an older civilization; the Japanese have grown from the childhood—almost from the infancy—of barbarism within the sight, within reach of the study, of our older races. ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ Of these two ancient and highly honored books, the "Kojiki" is slightly the elder—it was finished in A.D. 712—and is much the more Japanese. It devotes itself mainly to the gods, and tells of men only as they are god-men, related to the deities or inspired by them to compose poetry. For already the art of poetry, a peculiarly Japanese art quite unlike our Western ideas of poetry, was highly honored among the Mikado's followers. ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ Beyond the year 1159 we come to a period of Japanese disaster. Civil wars rent the poetic little court circle asunder, and repeatedly devastated the entire land until civilization almost disappeared. No literature worth naming was composed for nearly five hundred years. What little continued to exist was preserved by the Buddhist monks in the partial shelter of their monasteries. Religion indeed flourished; many sects sprang up ”

[↩︎]

Source: Wikisource

| editor, The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (1917)

“ During these last centuries of what may be called the pre-European days of Japan, her art and literature revived. Both, however, were of a peculiarly narrow character. To this period belonged the most honored poet of Japan, Basho. Yet no work of Basho's consists of over three lines of poetry, seventeen syllables. The Japanese had become composers solely of epigrams. ”

| editor

Summary

Quotes from The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East… (| editor)

Common terms

Similar works

Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature