SHOKU NIHONGI 770-791: A Translation of Maki 31-40

SHOKU NIHONGI 770-791: A Translation of Maki 31-40

This is a translation of Shoku Nihongi Maki 31 – Maki 40 covering the years 770 to 791. It is based on my translations with introductions of the reigns of Emperors Kōnin and Kanmu. See Selected Bibliography . Dates are converted to their equivalents in the Julian calendar using Matthias Schemm’s online conversion tables. Weights and measures, whose precise value for the time are not clear, are translated with rough equivalents, such as ‘bushel’ or ‘acre’. The digitized Japanese text is freely available online; I have used that from the entire Rikkokushi . However, the authoritative edition is the five-volume Iwanami produced by a team of scholars headed by Aoki Kazuo and published at the end of the twentieth century. This magnificent and encyclopedic tome includes lengthy headnotes, footnotes, and detailed end notes. ( Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei , 12-16) Three modern Japanese translations produced at roughly the same time are also very helpful; these were edited by Ujitani Tsutomu, Hayashi Rokurō, and Naoki Kōjirō. See the Appendix for history of the text and bibliographic information. For translation of Chinese and Japanese terms I have consulted A. Charles Muller’s online Digital Dictionary of Buddhism , along with his CJKV-English Dictionary and Jean and Robert Karl Reischauer’s Early Japanese History .