Jinjakakuroku (historical investigation of old shrines) (神社覈録)
Jinjakakuroku is the book of historical investigation of ancient temples and shrines, such as Shikinai-sha (shrines listed in Engishiki laws). The book, consisting of 75 volumes, was written by Tsuratane SUZUKA. He began writing in 1836 and finished in 1870.
It took the form of studying historical evidence of Shikinai-sha, Kokushigenzaisha and other prominent shrines in terms of the way of reading the names of such shrines, the enshrined deities and the places of enshrinement by quoting the descriptions about each shrine from the various books, such as Rikkokushi (the Six National Histories). As a result of the circumstances at the time, however, it had problems such as misquotations caused by forgeries included in the quoted books. It is also found that some parts were left blank to be filled in afterwards. However, it was highly praised as the most pointed among similar books partly because it contained the text of "Kokunai Jinmyocho" (Official registers of kami and shrines) as fully as possible as a reference.
After the Meiji restoration, following the secret instructions of Jingikan (department of worship) to present the book to the emperor, a clean copy and a duplicate were prepared as the revised and enlarged edition of the original manuscript.
The Seishobon was presented to the emperor on Nov. 22, 1870. (It is currently stored in Imperial Household Archives.)
The writer Tsuratane died two days before the presentation. In 1902, Yorikuni INOUE and Ariyoshi SAEKI, both of whom were lecturers at Koten Kokyusho (a research institute for Shinto), put punctuation marks and guiding marks beside Chinese characters on the original text proofed by Harumichi YANO, which had been owned by the Suzuka family. This edition was published by Koten Kokyusho in the form of two volumes bound in Western style.