Within the tapestry of early Japanese spiritual and political self-understanding, the Nihon Shoki stands as a carefully woven chronicle. It was brought to completion in 720 CE, at a time when the court sought to articulate a coherent vision of origins, both sacred and historical. The text does not merely record events; it also reflects an effort to align the emerging Japanese state with broader East Asian models of legitimacy and cosmology. In this sense, its date of completion marks a moment when myth, ritual, and governance were being consciously harmonized.

At the heart of this project was Prince Toneri, who served as the chief editor and principal compiler. As a son of Emperor Tenmu, his role symbolically linked imperial bloodline, political authority, and the shaping of sacred history. Working alongside him was the court scholar Ō no Yasumaro, whose learning and administrative experience supported the transformation of diverse traditions into a unified written form. Around them labored a team of scribes, specialists in history and Chinese learning, whose collective efforts gave the work its classical Chinese style and its structured, annalistic form.

The Nihon Shoki thus emerged from a circle of editors and scholars who were not only recording the past, but also discerning a meaningful pattern within it. By drawing on earlier records and learned models, they sought to present a cosmos in which imperial lineage, divine ancestry, and the unfolding of historical time formed a single, intelligible order. For those who look to it today, the knowledge that it was completed in 720 CE under the guidance of Prince Toneri, with the assistance of Ō no Yasumaro and other court specialists, offers a key to understanding how early Japan envisioned the sacred roots of its own history.