Historical Description and Shamanism in Nihonsyoki(<Special Issue>Language and Shamanism)

Abstract

In Rikkokushi, shamanistic episodes are described as if they were historical facts. What did historical knowledge mean to the ancient scholars? This essay will treat the method of old historical description which was based on omens. In the ancient times, they had quite a diffrent notion of history than we do now. For then there was no differentiation between sharmanistic and academic knowledges. Predicting future events by reading omens was thus very scientific.