The Japanese Myths - Retold

The Japanese Myths Retold offers you the Japanese myths as recorded in the eighth-century accounts.

Annotated and explained, they are retold exhaustively and faithfully, amusingly and enjoyably, directly from their ancient sources by a scholar of Japanese Mythology.

In their fantastical way, they reveal a world, simultaneously recognisable and otherworldly, where deities compete for power but suffer like humans, where love is sensual but also delicate, where dignity is honoured.

They depict the foundation of social dominions and emergence of kingdoms, the cultivation of land and fight against diseases, the hard way of implementing on Earth the perfect social order: the order established in the Plain of High Heaven by the majestic sun goddess, Amaterasu.

About the author:

Emilia Chalandon was educated in the departments of Japanese History of St Petersburg University (Russia) and Nara Women's University (Japan), and has a PhD in Comparative Culture. Born in Bulgaria, she spent over twenty years in Japan, where she studied and later worked as a researcher and university lecturer in Japanese mythology and comparative culture. After a period in France, where she published her first book, Des Pierres et des Fleurs (l'Harmattan, 2011, co-authored with Roseline Sendym de Rybas-Lyra), she now endeavours to popularise Japanese myths and culture through her writings.