The lower scroll begins in full narrative and ends in a list. Nintoku is given at length, including the tale of his climbing a hill, seeing no cooking smoke over the houses, and remitting taxes for three years while his own palace fell into disrepair. Succession quarrels, a jealous empress, exiles, revenges and a great deal of song fill the following reigns. Then, in the last stretch, the text contracts sharply. A sovereign is named, his consorts are named, his children are counted, his tomb is located, and the scroll moves on.
The contraction is often read as failure, as though the compilers ran out of material or interest. It is better read as the book finishing its job. Once the line has been carried unbroken from the sun goddess to the historical court, the only thing that must not be omitted is the succession itself. Anecdote is optional; the chain is not. The genealogical passages that a modern reader skims are, on the book's own terms, the part that could least afford to be lost.
The end point is worth noticing. The scroll stops with Suiko, whose reign ended in 628, and the work was presented to Empress Genmei in 712. Roughly eighty years of recent and politically awkward history, including the reforms and factional violence of the seventh century, sit outside the frame. The Kojiki closes before it reaches anything its readers would have argued about.