A vast number of religious documents were written, transmitted, and circulated in Japan in the course of history. Special note must be made at the outset of the particular importance in Japan of Buddhist texts, commentaries, and related works, including those imported from China or Korea, as well as original works by Japanese authors. Since this voluminous category of writings is covered elsewhere, however, it is only treated in outline in this entry.

Instead, this entry concentrates on certain literary, religious, and historical texts that were used in Japan to establish the legitimacy of the state, not only in the eighth century, when the texts were originally compiled for that purpose, but also in the medieval period and again in modern times. Politicians establishing the modern Japanese nation-state buttressed their ideology by drawing on eighteenth-century nativist philological writings about the early texts, thereby legitimizing the imperial...