Across the centuries, the Kojiki has been read through very different lenses, each age finding in it a mirror for its own spiritual and political concerns. In the earliest courtly setting, it functioned above all as a record of divine origins and imperial genealogy, grounding the authority of the Yamato court in a sacred past. Its narratives of the gods were treated as literal accounts of Japan’s beginnings and as a framework for Shinto cosmology, yet they coexisted with broader Buddhist and continental worldviews. Even then, it served less as a rigid “scripture” than as a foundational story-world in which the imperial line and the land itself were woven into a single sacred history.

During the medieval period, as Buddhist thought permeated the religious landscape, the Kojiki’s myths were increasingly interpreted through a syncretic, often esoteric, perspective. Kami came to be seen as manifestations or traces of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and the stories of creation, pollution, and purification were read as moral and spiritual allegories. The text’s authority was refracted through ritual practice and Buddhist cosmology, so that its myths did not stand alone but were harmonized with broader soteriological concerns. Historicity receded in importance, while symbolic and ethical meanings came to the fore.

The Edo period brought a striking reversal through the kokugaku, or National Learning movement, which sought to strip away Buddhist and Confucian overlays and recover an ostensibly “pure” Japanese way. Scholars such as Motoori Norinaga elevated the Kojiki to a central place, treating it as the key to the ancient Japanese spirit and emotional sincerity. Close attention to archaic language and poetry was seen as a path to the authentic heart of the myths, and Shinto elements were emphasized as uniquely Japanese rather than derivative of foreign traditions. In this reading, the text became both a spiritual touchstone and a repository of a distinctive national essence.

With the rise of modern state power, the Kojiki was drawn ever more tightly into political projects. During the Meiji and wartime eras, it was selectively interpreted to support emperor worship, an unbroken divine lineage, and a national essence that justified loyalty, unity, and even expansionist ambitions. The myth of descent from the heavenly deities was highlighted as a doctrinal pillar, and the text’s religious aura was harnessed to bolster state ideology. Its earlier layers of symbolic richness were often subordinated to this single, powerful narrative of imperial legitimacy.

In the postwar period, the Kojiki has largely been released from such overt political uses and approached instead with critical, scholarly, and contemplative distance. Academic interpreters tend to treat it as mythology and literature rather than factual history, comparing it with other cosmogonies and examining its narrative structures, psychological resonances, and cultural functions. At the same time, it continues to serve as a sacred narrative background within Shinto practice, even as literalist readings have declined. The result is a many-sided reception: the Kojiki now stands as a cultural classic, a religious resource, and a field for reflective inquiry into how a people tells the story of its origins and destiny.