The best sources for myths about the foundation of the Land of the Rising Sun are two early chronicles, the Kojiki, the Record of Ancient Things, and the Nihongi, the Japanese Chronicles.
The Koji was complied in 712 and is the oldest extant Japanese book, while the Nihongi, the second oldest book of ‘classical Japanese history’, was compiled in 720 eight years later.
Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), an academic and son of an Admiral who taught at Tokyo Imperial University and translated haiku amongst other things after arriving in Japan in 1873, was the first person to translate the Kojiki into English. His translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, in 1882.
The Nihongi was translated into English by a contemporary, William George Aston (1841-1911), another 19th century British Japanologist, who started his Japan-related career in 1864 as a student translator at the British Legation, the precursor to the British Embassy in Tokyo.
Aston’s translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1896.
That said, the oldest surviving Japanese book is not a book about Japan and its history, but a religious text written in 615. It is owned by Japan’s Imperial Family.
Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896
[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]
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Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896
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