Reading the Nihon Shoki

This volume brings together two treatises that differ in kind but converge in theme. The first, originally published in "Orientierungen", offers a historical survey of 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 identification of Chinese texts also pertains to the annotations in Bentley's 2025 Nihon Shoki translation.