Nihon Kōki

The Nihon Kōki ( Japanese 日本 後 紀 , dt. "Later Annals of Japan") is an official chronicle of Japan for the years 792 to 833. It is the third part of the six official empire histories ( Rikkokushi ). Fujiwara no Otsugu is considered to be the editor of Nihon Kōki .

background

Compilation of this chronicle began in 819 by order of the Tenno Saga . As a follow-up to the "continuation of Nihongi" ( Shoku Nihongi ), it should cover the years that followed. In their production, which lasted until 840, mainly members of the Fujiwara family took part , whose point of view shaped the representation.

Originally the work comprised 40 fascicles, most of which were lost in the 15th century during the Ōnin war . Today only books 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20-22 and 24. The missing content can be partially reconstructed from the source Ruijū Kokushi (German: "Imperial history sorted by genre"; completed in 892) , in which Sugawara no Michizane had categorized and chronologized the events of the six imperial stories.

content

The text, written in classical Chinese , covers the period from 792 to 833 and thus the rule of four Tennos: Kammu , Heizei , Saga and Junna .

literature

• Hammitzsch, Horst (ed.): Rikkokushi. The official imperial annals of Japan. The government annals of the Kammu-tenno, Shoku-Nihongi 36-40 and Nihon-Koki 1-13 (780-806) . Tokyo 1962. (Announcements of the German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia XLIII)
• Sakamoto, Tarō: Rikkokushi . Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1994 (1st edition 1970) ( 坂 本 太郎 『六 国史』 吉川弘 文 館 ), ISBN 4-642-06602-0
• Sakamoto, Tarō / Brownlee, John S. (transl.): The Six National Histories of Japan . Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press / Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991, pp. 123-140, ISBN 0-7748-0379-7 ; 4-13-027026-5

Web links

• searchable text of the Nihon Kōki Chronicle (Japanese)