If it's okay to remove the punctuation in a modern text format of Kojiki (古事記)


The original version of the Kojiki [looks like it has no punctuation
whatsoever](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ri05/ri05_04868/).

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U9oup.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U9oup.jpg)

I found a more recent [text version of Kojiki
online](http://www.ceres.dti.ne.jp/~alex-x/wakan/kojikix1.html) though, which
has all kinds of punctuation and formatting.

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AQx5K.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AQx5K.png)

It has brackets, quotes, periods, commas, paragraphs, nested list and table
indentations, etc. Where did all of this come from? How can I remove the
formatting and punctuation so that it becomes more like the original? Would it
be safe to simply find/replace remove all punctuation and
whitespace/indentation/nesting? Or what should I do?

**Update**

Here is my intention. I would like to create a book for myself that looks like
the ancient text. I want to do this so I can experience what it's like to
directly try and translate an original source document. I want to print the
text in a nice clear font though so it's easy to at least see the characters.
I want to then try and figure out where the boundaries are between the
sentences and everything on my own, without any help or preconceived notions
or past junk from academia. I want to figure out the meaning of the text for
myself. And to do that I would like to get the data down to its bare bones:
just the characters in a sequence. From that I can print it how I like so it's
easy to read, and I can figure out how I would like to add punctuation. This
is, to be real, HOW THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT WAS FORMATTED ANYWAYS. I want the
format of the original document, or close to it. It's not like I'm taking
latin and removing the spaces, because they didn't do that when they wrote
their books (at least to my knowledge). If they did, well then great I will do
it for Latin too, but if they didn't, then I am going to leave the punctuation
that they originally had.




I can't read the Kojiki and don't know much about it, but I found
[this](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%8B%E8%A8%98). It has all
the books in a digital format,
[上卷](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%8B%E8%A8%98/%E4%B8%8A%E5%8D%B7),
[中卷](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%8B%E8%A8%98/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%B7)
and
[下卷](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%8B%E8%A8%98/%E4%B8%8B%E5%8D%B7),
and also seems to feature minimal formatting. Looking at the images you
provided of the physical book it seems as only the «。» and newlines were
added, so removing those should do it.

This does not contain any katakana however which seems to be present in the
original script, probably to provide the reading for some characters, but I am
not sure. If you want to create a more modern typeset of the books with this
information preserved I don't know where you would find it. There is also
sometimes markings between and/or on the left of characters. This doesn't seem
to match any of the modern punctuations so my best guess would be it represent
tones, but I am again not sure.

I also couldn't help to see that some characters where different, specifically
the first character on the third page «躰» which becomes «體» in both of the
online versions mentioned, both meaning body (体 in modern Japanese). And it's
worth mentioning that the text is old, so characters will look different in
modern fonts. But also not every Chinese character that exists can be written
on a computer as it first need to be added to Unicode, just take the character
Biang from [BiangBiang
noodles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles), despite being well
know (for it's ridicules complexity) it still can't be typed on a computer, at
least in a format that can be universally understood. Which may or may not be
relevant here.

If you really want to decipher the text yourself you should probably use the
images of the original as otherwise you might throw important information
away. Anyway, I hope this was helpful in any way.




I am mystified why this wasnot mentioned before, but the first challenge to
read the Kojiki in the original is that the original is not any stage of
Japanese at all. The book is made in [Classical
Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese), albeit in a
localized flavour ( _[hentai
kanbun](https://faculty.washington.edu/aldr/pdf/JK-20.pdf)_ ). This means that
reading the text with knowledge of Old Japanese is, blankly saying, impossible
- while reading it with knowledge of Classical Chinese would still require
some attunement to the local peculiarities of usage and phrasing, but is
nevertheless feasible. As befit of Classical Chinese, the only punctuation
that is consistent is the full stop; any other is finally an effort of modern
commentators.

The only kind of punctuation that is vital for understanding and is actually
used non-stop is the fact that the text is covered by multiple reading guides,
which are normally typeset in smaller font (as
[here](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%A4%E4%BA%8B%E8%A8%98) - note this
is Chinese WikiSource). Almost non-stop the text will give in those some word,
seemingly Chinese, and then explain it is a native Japanese word, read such-
and-such. The readings themselves are given with
[man'yōgana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27y%C5%8Dgana), which is a
local method of spelling words phonetically, and so you should familiarize
yourself with man'yōgana as well, at least to recognize it when it starts (古事記
uses so-called "System D" [Miyake 1999, p. 17], a handy reference is
[Bentley's
dictionary](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0824856104), and an
accessible explanation is given by Miyake's dissertation, _The Phonology of
Eighth Century Japanese revisited: Another Reconstruction Based Upon Written
Records_ (1999)).

And it also has multiple songs, written in man'yōgana, and these are
definitely written in Old Japanese. So, to understand them, Old Japanese
understanding is required. If you manage to get ahold of _Bjarke Frellesvig -
A history of the Japanese language - Cambridge University Press_ (2010) and
use [the corpus](https://oncoj.ninjal.ac.jp/) as the dictionary, it won't be
that hard... compared to the unique challenge of mastering Classical Chinese
for the rest, I mean.

