Nihon Shoki - Exaggeration of Reign Lengths

Exaggeration of Reign Lengths

Most scholars agree that the purported founding date of Japan (660 BCE) and the earliest emperors of Japan are legendary or mythical. This does not necessarily imply that the persons referred to did not exist, merely that there is insufficient material available for further verification and study.

For those monarchs, and also for the Emperors Ōjin and Nintoku, the lengths of reign are likely to have been exaggerated in order to make the origins of the imperial family sufficiently ancient to satisfy numerological expectations. It is widely believed that the epoch of 660 BCE was chosen because it is a "xīn-yǒu" year in the sexagenary cycle, which according to Taoist beliefs was an appropriate year for a revolution to take place. As Taoist theory also groups together 21 sexagenary cycles into one unit of time, it is assumed that the compilers of Nihon Shoki assigned the year 601 (a "xīn-yǒu" year in which Prince Shotoku's reformation took place) as a "modern revolution" year, and consequently recorded 660 BCE, 1260 years prior to that year, as the founding epoch.

Read more about this topic:  Nihon Shoki

Famous quotes containing the words exaggeration, reign and/or lengths:

    The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting—the war and the revolution—and the character of the accused—revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power—you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.
    Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)

    In order to prove a friend to one’s guests, frugality must reign in one’s meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.
    Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)

    There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)