Chinese civilization and Chinese literature had prevailed so greatly in Japan that the next authentic work, composed only eight years later, was completely Chinese in style and embodied Chinese traditions and Chinese philosophical doctrines, not distinguishing them from their Japanese context. This volume was called the _Nihongi_ (_Chronicles of Japan_). It may be said to have wholly supplanted its predecessor in popular favour, for the classic style--that is to say, the Chinese--had now come to be regarded as the only erudite script. The _Chronicles_ re-traversed much of the ground already gone over by the _Record_, preserving many of the songs in occasionally changed form, omitting some portions, supplementing others, and imparting to the whole such an exotic character as almost to disqualify the work for a place in Japanese literature. Yet this was the style which thenceforth prevailed among the litterati of Japan. "Standard Chinese soon became easier to understand than archaic Japanese, as the former alone was taught in the schools, and the native language changed rapidly during the century or two that followed the diffusion of the foreign tongue and civilization" (CHAMBERLAIN). The neglect into which the _Kojiki_ fell lasted until the 17th century. Almost simultaneously with its appearance in type (1644) and its consequent accessibility, there arose a galaxy of scholars under whose influence the archaic style and the ancient Japanese traditions entered a period of renaissance. The story of this period and of its products has been admirably told by Sir Ernest Satow ("Revival of Pure Shinto," _Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, vol. iii.), whose essay, together with Professor Chamberlain's _Kojiki_, the same author's introduction to _The Classical Poetry of the Japanese_, and Mr W. G. Aston's _Nihongi_, are essential to every student of Japanese literature. To understand this 17th century renaissance, knowledge of one fact is necessary, namely, that about the year A. D. 810, a celebrated Buddhist priest, Kukai, who had spent several years studying in China, compounded out of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto a system of doctrine called _Ryobu Shinto_ (Dual Shinto), the prominent tenet of which was that the Shinto deities were merely transmigrations of Buddhist divinities. By this device Japanese conservatism was effectually conciliated, and Buddhism became in fact the creed of the nation, its positive and practical precepts entirely eclipsing the agnostic intuitionalism of Shinto. Against this hybrid faith several Japanese scholars arrayed themselves in the 17th and 18th centuries, the greatest of them being Mabuchi and Motoori. The latter's _magnum opus_, _Kojikiden_ (_Exposition of the Record of Ancient Matters_), declared by Chamberlain to be "perhaps the most admirable work of which Japanese erudition can boast," consists of 44 large volumes, devoted to elucidating the _Kojiki_ and resuscitating the Shinto cult as it existed