Book announcement
WittkampRobert F
I would like to draw your attention to a forthcoming publication scheduled for February 1, 2026. The book will be printed in Germany but should also be available internationally through the usual distribution channels.
Robert F. Wittkamp:
Reading the Nihon Shoki: Chinese Encyclopedias, Source Criticism and Historical Writing in Old Japan
This book brings together two treatises that differ in kind but converge in theme. The first, originally published in Orientierungen (December 2025), offers a historical survey of Japanese source research on Chinese encyclopedias. The second, presented here for the first time, is a detailed response to John R. Bentley’s 2021 monograph The Birth of Japanese Historiography. Despite their distinct purposes, both studies share a common intellectual terrain, engaging with questions of Chinese encyclopedias, the practice of source criticism, reception history, and the shaping of historical writing in early Japan.
The second treatise does not aim to serve as a comprehensive review article. Instead, it focuses on two interrelated themes: first, the concept and historical development of historiography; and second, the methods by which quoted expressions and passages in the Nihon shoki are traced back to their unreferenced Chinese sources. These two concerns, though distinct, are deeply connected and inform one another throughout the discussion. Numerous of the quoted expressions and text excerpts were transmitted either directly from China or indirectly through the Korean peninsula, and they likely played a formative role in shaping the beginnings of Japanese historical writing. This question also bears on Bentley’s annotations to his recent English translation of the Nihon shoki (2025), which therefore warrants consideration. Taken together, the two studies shed light on the scholarly reception of the Nihon shoki from its earliest interpretations to present-day research.
The origins of writing in China can be traced to characters inscribed on bones and etched into bronze vessels. Yet it took a long and gradual process before historical writing emerged. Against this backdrop, it seems reasonable to assume that certain epistemological developments were necessary for genealogies and “reports of deeds” – both describing a state of being – to evolve into historical writing, which renders a process of becoming, grounded in the awareness that what exists today will change tomorrow. While the theory and philosophy of East Asian historiography cannot be treated fully, it is essential to consider how Bentley’s 2021 monograph addresses these questions. The remarks on his work will be critical, but this should be understood as part of the normal course of scholarly inquiry. Bentley’s study offers a welcome opportunity to deepen the discourse on the nature of historical writing in Japan.
Table of Contents
About this book (7)
How to commence a cosmogony: Chinese encyclopedia, the making of the Nihon shoki, and Japanese source criticism (13)
Chinese encyclopedia (leishu) 16
The medieval discourse and the “preface theory” 22
The Shoki shikkai 35
The discovery of the encyclopedia 58
Post-Kojima research on Chinese encyclopedia 63
The sources of the beginning of the Nihon shoki cosmogony 68
Reading John R. Bentley’s The Birth of Japanese Historiography (76)
The history of historical writing 80
Excursus 1: belief and evidence 94
From genealogy to historiography (?) 102
Excursus 2: The entry in the “Book of Suiko” (28th Year) 112
Bureau of History 116
Source criticism 118
Short quotations 122
Long quotations 131
Partition theories (kubun-ron) 140
Literature (153)
Index (164)
Ross Bender
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WittkampRobert F
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