Debate gathers around this ancient text wherever questions of history, power, and sacred story intersect. Scholars frequently note that its narratives do not simply recount neutral events, but appear to weave together myth, legend, and political purpose, especially in the way imperial genealogies are traced back to divine beings. The emphasis on the Yamato court and the divine ancestry of the imperial line is often read as a deliberate strategy to legitimize rule and to present a unified vision of Japan’s origins. In this light, the work stands at a threshold between mythic memory and political construction, inviting careful discernment rather than simple acceptance or rejection.

Another area of contention concerns authenticity and textual integrity. The original manuscript no longer survives, and reliance on later copies, separated by centuries from the time of compilation, raises questions about interpolation, corruption, and systematic reshaping of genealogies. This uncertainty is compounded by debates over the actual process of compilation, including how faithfully oral traditions were transmitted and how much they were systematized to serve courtly needs. The relationship with the slightly later Nihon Shoki, which sometimes offers overlapping yet divergent accounts, further complicates judgments about which strands of tradition are older or closer to earlier beliefs.

The text’s language and form also generate sustained scholarly disagreement. Its unusual use of classical Chinese characters to render Old Japanese makes interpretation difficult, and even basic readings of names, poems, and key passages are contested. These linguistic uncertainties ripple outward into theological and philosophical interpretation, since different readings can yield very different understandings of the gods, their actions, and the symbolic structure of the cosmos presented there. As a result, the work can appear at once luminous and opaque, inviting multiple, sometimes conflicting, spiritual and scholarly approaches.

Finally, there is ongoing reflection on how this text should be situated within religious and cultural life. Some regard it as a foundational religious document, others as a court chronicle or literary composition, and many see it as a hybrid that resists neat categorization. Its myths have been used to support strong claims about imperial authority and national identity, especially by those seeking to ground political power in divine origins, and this history of appropriation has itself become a subject of ethical and spiritual concern. For many readers, the challenge is how to engage its rich mythic imagination and sense of the sacred while remaining alert to the ways in which story and power can become tightly, and sometimes dangerously, intertwined.