13 HOW TO READ THE WORD <%]^ IN THE KOJIKI -BY MEANS OF BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES WITH AID-MARKS, 'OKOTOTEN' IN JAPANESE- Kazuo Suzuki Department of Japanese Language, Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan Of Chinese compound-words made up of two characters, some consist of characters which are synonymous with each other. Studying how such words were read by our ancestors in the Heian era, I have come to understand that they were read as simple words, not as compound ones. I think that " U^,,,the first word with which the Kojiki begins, should be read as a simple word in Japanese, though it is, in form, a compound word, and its implication is "beginning,,.