Teiki
Historical text
The Teiki (帝紀) is a historical text purported to have been compiled in 681. The text is no longer extant.
Background
According to the Nihon Shoki: On the seventeenth day, the emperor, residing in his place in the Daigokuden, commanded Prince Kawashima, Prince Osakabe [etc...] to record a definitive edition of the Teiki and Jōko Shoji.
According to the Kojiki preface, Emperor Tenmu said: What I hear is that the Teiki and Honji brought about by the many houses already differ from the truth and contain many inaccuracies. Should those mistakes not be corrected now, the original meaning will be lost within but a few years. They are the basis of the national system and are the foundation of the imperial government. Thus, I would like to carefully examine the Teiki and Kyūji, remove the errors, and establish the truth for future generations.
He then had Hieda no Are memorize the contents of the Teiki and Kyūji, both of which were later used as historical sources for composing the Kojiki.
Title
The actual title of the text is unknown due to orthographic difficulties of old Japanese texts. The reading Teiki is taken from the on'yomi reading.
“Teiki” enters the record as historical text. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Teiki, Historical and text can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Teiki” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Teiki, Historical and text provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1107261. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Teiki”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Teiki primary sources, Teiki archive and Teiki research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Teiki”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Teiki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.