Izanagi · Chapter 6 of 6
In One Writing It Is Said
Variants printed · A book that kept them · A tidier retelling
The oldest books disagreed with themselves out loud, on purpose.
One of the chronicles does something this tradition elsewhere rarely does: it prints the versions it did not choose. Beside the main narrative the Nihon Shoki sets alternative accounts, each introduced with a formula meaning roughly in one writing it is said, and in some of them the three noble children are born to Izanagi and Izanami as a couple, with no descent to Yomi and no purification at all. The compilers of 720 had several traditions in front of them and preserved the disagreement rather than smoothing it. The tidy version most retellings use is one branch of a book that refused to prune itself.
- Versions kept
- A refusal to prune
- Two chronicles
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