Gustav Heldt, The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 312 pages. Hardcover $90.oo/£67.oo; paperback $29.00-22.00, Kindle $28.99/£22.00. isbn 978-0231163880 (hardcover); 9780231163897 (paperback); 9780231538121 (e-book).GUSTAV HELDT'S translation of the Kojiki provides the English-speaking reader with the easiest access to Japan's oldest extant book. Two previous English-language versions of the eighth century Japanese work were intended for a scholarly audience. To be precise, Chamberlain's venerable 1882 rendition was not even a complete English one, the erotic passages of the book being considered by Victorian academics to require a disguise in Latin. Philippi's impeccable translation was published in 1968. Japan at the time was still in many aspects the cultural Other par excellence. In search of a balance between universalism and particularism, today's thinking on Japan follows a less culture-specific perspective. Heldt's translation assimilates the Kojiki in unprecedented way, mainly through the novelty of translating virtually all the names of sacred beings, humans, places, and so on. Chamberlain had adopted a similar translation attitude, but rather inconsistently, as he admitted-he translated the names of human and divine characters which appear in the first volume, but rarely translated them in the succeeding two, and never translated toponyms (Chamberlain 1982, xxiv-xxvi). As for the other translations in European languages, only in the French edition are names partly translated.Heldt's translating strategy echoes Ongian opinions about the power of naming and the homonymy of word and event in oral cultures. Among the reasons for his choice of onomastic translation the author also mentions the intimate intertwining of proper names and narratives in the Kojiki. From the very incipit, the book attests the seminal role of onomastic words: heaven and earth first appeared, the names of the spirits who came about in the high plains of heaven are these [...] (7).Translations of individual names which allude to defining moments in their life are of course the most pertinent ones. For instance, the triplets born just after their mother sets fire to the parturition hall, whose Japanese names are Hoderi, Hosuseri, and Howori, are called Bright Flame, Bold Flame, and Flickering Flame (53). This makes a striking contrast with Chamberlain's unembellished translation: FireShine, Fire-Climax, and Fire-Subside. The onomastic choice may elsewhere look affected but I, for one, am grateful to Heldt for his daring decision, which results, to use his words, in an opportunity for introducing nonspecialist readers to significant aspects of early Japan's material culture, religion, and natural environment (xiv). The panoply of the Kojiki's often very long proper nouns has always been embarrassing problem for translators. The transcription of Japanese pronunciation interrupts the flow of the translated text. Countless genealogies are particularly unfriendly to non-Japanese-speaking readers. Heldt is aware that his choice of translating proper names is in many cases a speculative exercise. One has to consider, however, that long before its versions in foreign languages, it was the Japanese early eighth-century reading of the Kojiki's Chinese-looking prose that required conjectural efforts. It would not be too bizarre to assert that the Kojiki's translations were begun by the Japanese philologists of the Edo period. Motoori Norinaga's Kojikiden (A commentary on Kojiki, 1798) contains the first complete reading of the almost entirely reticent original text. The eighteenth-century scholar established spellings of the Kojiki that many critical editions still accept. In this sense, the Kojiki is a sort of quintessential source text.As Kamei Takeshi pointed out (1957), nobody knows how to read the Kojiki. When Yasumaro recorded the recitation of previous writings performed by the court attendant Are, the literati were ill at ease trying to adapt the Chinese script to the features of the Japanese language. …