A close reading of the cosmogony found in preface to Ō no Yasumaro 太安萬侶’s Kojiki 古事記 (Record Ancient Matters, 712 CE) reveals ways which Japan’s early Nara period elites appropriated aspects China’s Daoist traditions for their own literary, mythological, and political purposes. This debt Daoism on part oldest Shintō 神道 scripture, turn, extent were eclectically mined content that Japanese useful...