services he had rendered to the cause of the Southern Court by his sword, his pen, and his counsel, were recognised in 1351 by the highest honours which his sovereign could bestow. He died a few years later.
The Jinkōshōtōki is Chikafusa's principal work. His object in writing it is indicated by the title, which means "History of the True Succession of the Divine Monarchs." It was composed in order to show that the Mikados of the Southern Court, whose minister he was, were the rightful sovereigns of Japan. This explains the prominence which he gives to matters affecting the authenticity of the Mikado's claims to the throne, such as the history of the regalia, genealogies, questions of disputed succession, and the like.
It was written in the reign of Go Murakami (1339–1345). The first of the six volumes of which it consists is purely mythical. It begins literally ab ovo with the egg-shaped chaotic mass from which heaven and earth were developed. Then we have an account of the creation of Japan by the male and female deities Izanagi and Izanami, taken partly from the Nihongi, but mixed up with Chinese philosophy and Indian mythical cosmography in the strangest manner. The descent of the Mikados from the Sun-goddess, who in Japan is the daughter of the divine creator pair, is then traced with due attention through a series of deities down to Jimmu Tennō, who is reckoned the first human sovereign of Japan.
The next four volumes are a resumé, necessarily brief and meagre, of the history of Japan from Jimmu Tennō (who came to the throne, according to the ordinary Japanese chronology, in B.C. 660) down to the accession of Fushimi in A.D. 1288.
The sixth volume deals with the history of Chikafusa's
