In some respects the _Kojiki_ may be regarded as one of the byproducts of the compilation, Hieta-no-Are being probably one of the assistants of the commission. The essential difference between the two chronicles is that the _Kojiki_ was exclusively compiled from Japanese sources, written by Japanese as well as by naturalized Koreans, and retained much of the colloquial form of ancient Japanese narrated stories, while in the case of the _Nihongi_ many Chinese historical works were consulted, and historical events were so arranged as to conform to what was stated in those Chinese records. Many _bon mots_, it is true, were often borrowed from ancient Chinese classics, and this ornamented and exaggerated style was often pursued at the expense of historical truth, and on that account most of the later historians of our country give less credit to the _Nihongi_ than to the _Kojiki_, though this scepticism about the former is somewhat undeserved. It is beyond question that the two chronicles mentioned above are the oldest historical works written in Japan, now extant. They are not, however, the earliest attempts at historical compilation in our country. Just a hundred years before the compilation of the _Nihongi_ was finished, the Empress Suiko, in the twenty-eighth year of her reign, that is, in 620 A.D. ordered the Crown Prince, known as Shotoku, and Soga-no-Umako, the most influential minister in her court, to compile the chronicles of the imperial house, of various noted families and groups of people, and a history of the country with its provinces. If these chronicles had been completed and preserved to this day, they would have been the oldest we have. Unfortunately, however, by the premature death of the Crown Prince, the compilation was abruptly terminated, and what was partly accomplished seems to have been kept at the house of Soga-no-Umako, until it was burnt down by his son Yemishi, when he was about to be executed by imperial order in 645 A.D. Fragments of the archives, it is said, were picked up out of the blazing fire, but nothing more was ever heard of them. There is a version now called the _Kujiki_, and this has been misrepresented to be that very chronicle, which, it was feigned, was not really lost, but offered in an unfinished state to the Empress the next year after the death of prince Shotoku. If this be true, the record which was burnt must have been one of several copies of the incomplete chronicle, which, as Euclid would say, is absurd! It is now generally agreed that the chronicle is spurious, though it may contain some citations from sources originally authentic.