Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) · 61 of 191

[Sect. LIV.—Emperor Jim-Mu (Part XI.—His Age and Place of Burial).]

His Augustness Kamu-nuna-kaha-mimi ruled the Empire. Altogether the august years of this Heavenly Sovereign Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko were one hundred and thirty-seven. 1 His august mausoleum is on the top of the Kashi Spur on the northern side of Mount Unebi. 2

Insight

Jim-mu dies at one hundred and thirty-seven; subsequent emperors will live one hundred and sixty-eight, one hundred and fifty-three, one hundred and twenty-three. The pattern is conventional — long-lived founders of sacred dynasties recur across world traditions. Genesis 5 gives Methuselah nine hundred and sixty-nine years; Sumerian king lists give pre-flood rulers reigns of thirty thousand years and more; the Hindu Mahabharata speaks of the dharma-king Yudhishthira as ruling thirty-six years but living through ages. The eighth-century compilers of the Kojiki almost certainly did not believe these were calendar years in the modern sense; they were a way of marking sacred time, the deep antiquity of the line. Modern Japanese scholarship since the early twentieth century has taken Sūjin (the tenth emperor in the list) as the first plausibly historical figure, with everything before him belonging to a stylized founder-cycle.editorial

Footnotes 188:1 p. 188 The author's confused style must not here mislead the student. It is after the decease of the Emperor Jim-mu (Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko), who attains to the age of a hundred and thirty-seven, that the Emperor Suwi-zei (Kamu-nuna-kaha-mimi) begins to rule.

188:2 For Unebi see Sect. LI, Note 9. Kashi signifies "oak." The word rendered "spur "is wo.