Course Description

In this lecture, we will survey the worldview of Kojiki, comparing the Old Testament, Nordic mythology and Ainu mythology. Many people today probably accept mythologies only as fantasy. However, when comparing them inter-regionally, we will notice that the cultural gap between worldviews of mythologies correlates to the cultural gap between values and mindsets in modern societies. On the other hand, many mythologies have similar motifs, which suggests universal issues of human history. Through comparative mythologies, we will consider characteristics and problems of values and mindset of the Japanese.