From the moment it was compiled in 712 CE, the Kojiki served as a masterstroke in political theater. By tracing Emperor Jimmu’s bloodline straight back to Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess herself, it welded divine myth and earthly rule into one unbreakable chain. That golden thread of ancestry wasn’t just bedtime storytelling—it hammered home the idea that the Yamato sovereigns were more than mere mortals. They were celestial descendants with a heavenly mandate to govern.

Under the Nara court’s watchful eye, these tales of gods, monsters and heroic emperors became state scripture. Every ritual, every courtly ceremony, referenced passages from the Kojiki, lending a sacred aura to imperial authority. Fast forward to the Meiji Restoration, and echoes of that ancient text resurfaced to underpin a rapidly modernizing Japan. National identity hinged on a shared origin myth, and the Kojiki’s chapters on divine descent proved the perfect rallying cry.

Even today’s ceremonies, like the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito in 2019, still draw on rituals rooted in those very myths. The Daijō-sai harvest festival, for example, reenacts offerings first described in the Kojiki—an unspoken reminder that the imperial line remains tethered to its godly beginnings. In classrooms and manga alike, references to Amaterasu and her grandkids pop up, keeping those millennia-old stories alive in pop culture.

By and large, the Kojiki did more than record myths; it crafted a political creed. Legitimacy wasn’t handed down by nobles alone but granted by the gods themselves, and that divine endorsement—woven through every verse—continues to lend the Chrysanthemum Throne its timeless luster.