关键词: 盘古神话, 化生神话, 日本神话, 比较神话学

Abstract: The Chinese creation myth has it that the first-born semidivine human Pangu creates Heaven and Earth and his eyes become the sun and the moon. Although it was documented more than a thousand years ago that the Pangu myth hads a great influence on Japanese mythology, such a claim has always been disputed in Japanese academia, and it is still very much so today. Some Japanese scholars based their dispute on the universality of such creation myth, while others suspected that before the Pangu myth was introduced into Japan, there were similar myth recorded. Both Pangu myth and the Japaneses myth are typical creative myth with plot and close-knit structure. Therefore, they are not exactly comparable to literary metaphors. By tracing the early spread of the Pangu myth, analyzing the research records on the Pangu myth in early Japanese writings, and examining all the relevant materials that might shed any light on the connection between the mythologies of both countries, we may be able to refute the suspicions from Japanese scholars and verify the close kinship between the Chinese and Japanese mythologies.

Key words: The Pangu myth, the metaplasia myth, Japanese mythology, Comparative Mythology