The compilers of the Nihon Shoki stood at a crossroads where myth, memory, and imported learning converged, and they drew deliberately from all three. At the heart of their work lay indigenous Japanese traditions: Shinto creation myths, cosmological narratives, and sacred stories transmitted orally through generations. These included clan genealogies and family histories, as well as regional folklore and local traditions that preserved the presence of the kami in particular landscapes. Such materials, shaped by ritual performance and shrine practice, provided the raw narrative substance for the early ages of the world and the divine ancestry of the imperial line.

Alongside these oral and ritual currents, the compilers relied on a body of written records that had already begun to crystallize Japan’s past. They consulted earlier Japanese chronicles and court records, including genealogical documents such as the Teiki and Kyūji, as well as various clan records (ujibumi) that preserved lineages and claims to authority. Imperial archives, court administrative records, and official documents such as decrees, edicts, and land grants offered a more prosaic but indispensable framework for recounting reigns, political events, and institutional developments. Temple and shrine records, together with inscriptions on monuments and tombs, further anchored the narrative in concrete acts of devotion and governance.

Equally significant was the turning of the compilers’ gaze toward the continent, where they found both models and materials for their work. Chinese historical texts and chronicles, along with Confucian classics and other philosophical writings, provided patterns of historiographical structure and a vocabulary for articulating rulership, order, and cosmic legitimacy. Korean historical records, particularly from Baekje, and diplomatic correspondence with Chinese and Korean kingdoms supplied details of foreign relations, cultural transmission, and the positioning of the Yamato court within a wider East Asian world. Buddhist sutras, commentaries, and related records also informed the intellectual atmosphere in which the text was shaped, even as Shinto cosmology remained central to its earliest chapters.

From this tapestry of sources—oral and written, native and foreign, sacred and administrative—the Nihon Shoki emerged as both a chronicle and a theological statement. By weaving Shinto myths and clan traditions into a narrative framed by continental historiographical methods, the compilers articulated a vision in which the imperial house stood at the meeting point of heaven and earth. The result is a work that does more than list events; it fashions a cosmos in which political authority, ritual practice, and the stories of the kami are inseparably intertwined, each source lending its voice to a single, overarching account of origin and order.