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Records of Wind and Earth: A Translation of Fudoki with Introduction and Commentaries. By MICHIKO Y. AOKI. Monograph and Occasional Paper Series, Number 53. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 1997. xii, 347 pp. $36.00.
This scholarly English translation of all five major extant "old fudoki" provides accounts of the provinces of Hitachi, Izumo, Harima, Bungo, and Hizen in eighthcentury Japan. "Old fudoki" (kofudoki) refers specifically to those local gazetteers prepared according to the edict of A.D. 713, three years after the beginning of the Nara Period. The book comprises preface, introduction, the five fudoki in the above order, glossary, bibliography, and index.
The preface provides the historical background to the compilation of the gazetteers, clarifies the historical terms used, and explains the nature and importance of these documents. Collecting local information was a part of the Yamato Court's effort to strengthen its control of the nearly sixty provinces. Despite the richness in the kinds of information contained in the fudoki (such as topography, local products, legends about place names, etc.), it has been only partially available to Western readers through previous translations, most notably the Izumo Fud0ki (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1971) by Michiko Y. Aoki. Thus, the book under review is the first complete English translation of the five fudoki which comprise the main body of the writings known collectively as the Fudoki.
The introduction explains further the kinds of information sought by the Yamato Court: "surveys of products, animals, plants, and land conditions, etymologies of place names, and written versions of oral traditions" (p. 1). The introduction also discusses the complementary relationship of Fudoki with other early writings such as the Kojiki (712, Records of Ancient Matters) and Nihon shoki (720, Chronicles ofJapan), a history of Fudoki studies in the modern period in Japan, and the use and transmission of the gazetteers. For example, some families legitimized their power through a religious connection to important deities given in the Fudokl, myths and legends often reflected actual human events such as the struggles between the newcomers and the indigenous people; claims to land ownership were often judged based on the Fudoki references. The last use of the Fudoki...