Far Eastern Civilisations — China, Japan, Korea

The chapter opens with a good theoretical introduction: myths reflect a society's culture in its simplest form, and in the Far East it is impossible to draw a firm line between historical figures and legendary heroes. The author lists «universal patterns» that recur in world mythologies: the entrance to the underworld being a cave, a rainbow bridge linking heaven and earth, divine places on high mountain tops, and anyone who eats the food of the underworld being unable to return. Lévi-Strauss's «evil father-in-law» myth — the father who puts the hero through deadly trials and the daughter who sides with her husband against him — is given as an intriguing parallel between Japan and the Americas.

The section on Chinese mythology is the fullest. It introduces the «Five Legendary Emperors» — the Yellow Emperor Huangdi, ancestor of the Chinese; Zhuanxu, who cut the link between heaven and earth; Yao, who devised the calendar; Shun, embodiment of virtue; and Yu the Great, who tamed the flood. It describes the divine order ruling the four directions and four seasons from Huangdi's throne on Mount Kunlun; the cosmic egg split into Yin and Yang and the giant Pangu; the dragon symbolising heaven and the tiger symbolising earth; and Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, who guards the peach of immortality. The most striking myth is Nüwa's creation of humans: the rich come from figurines she carefully shaped from river clay, and ordinary people from drops of mud flung from a vine.

The section on ancestor worship shows well the thread linking the three countries: at China's Zhongyuan, Japan's Obon and Korea's Baekjung festivals, ancestral spirits are believed to return home. The head of the family's right and duty to pray to the ancestors at the household shrine survives to this day. This is the truly «comparative» part of the chapter and gives readers a key to understanding East Asia's religious and cultural unity.

But this section also contains problematic claims. The book writes that the Zhou dynasty is «thought to have been originally Turkic» and that ancestor worship is «thought to derive from the Turks' belief in Gök Tengri» — each time noting there is «no conclusive evidence», yet it is unclear why these hypotheses are included at all. Such claims of origin are not accepted in serious scholarship, and their presence in a pocket encyclopaedia may mislead readers.

The most serious problem is in the Japan section. The paragraphs beginning «Shinto means the way of the gods…», covering the Kojiki, the Nihongi, the concept of kami and the three-layered universe, are word for word identical to the introduction of the same publisher's «Shinto», published under the name Robby Silver. This shows that the series' «author» names should be treated with caution and that the texts are copied from a common source. Readers of both books will read this section twice.

Even so, by comparing Chinese myths with Greek mythology the chapter explains an important difference well: in China there is no firm line between gods and humans, and people such as General Guan Yu were later deified. It is a useful map for a first look at Far Eastern myths, but the rest of the book — especially its brief summaries of the dynasties — should be supplemented with a more serious history.

• Chronological chapters by Chinese dynasty
• Quotations from mythological texts and scholars (Lévi-Strauss, Birrell)
• Colour illustrations and short marginal notes
• Bibliography and the translator's sources at the end