planted by his grave, and a stone set up inscribed simply with his name.
Motoöri was a prolific writer. He brought out fifty-five distinct works in over one hundred and eighty volumes. His fame as a scholar and writer rests chiefly on his Kojiki-den, a commentary on the Kojiki, the sacred book of the Shinto religion.[1] Before his time the study of the Kojiki had been much neglected, the very language in which it is written being well-nigh unintelligible even to educated Japanese. In this monumental work, which fills no fewer than forty-four good-sized volumes, he brought to bear on the elucidation of a very difficult text a vast store of erudite knowledge, derived from a long study of the Manyōshiu and other books of the old literature. It occupied him for many years. Begun in 1764, it was not completed until 1796, and the final volumes were not issued from the press till long after his death.
The Kojiki-den is not only valuable for its prodigious learning; it was a vigorous blow aimed at the supremacy of the Chinese school of ethics and philosophy. No opportunity is lost of girding at everything Chinese, and of exalting the old Japanese customs, religion, and language, in a spirit of ardent and undiscriminating patriotism. The Kojiki-den had no small share in producing the reaction against Chinese ideas and institutions which has become so pronounced a characteristic of modern Japan.
The Reki-chō Shoshi-kai-in is an edition, with notes, of the speeches and proclamations of some of the early Mikados which have been preserved to us in a historical work entitled Shoku Nihongi.
Other works of Motoöri's are his edition of the Kokin-
- ↑ See above, p. 18.
