Man'yōshū

A page from the Man'yōshū

The literal translation of the kanji that make up the title Man'yōshū (万 — 葉 — 集) is "ten thousand — leaves — collection".

The principal interpretations, according to the twentieth-century scholar Sen'ichi Hisamatsu, are (i) a book that collects a great many poems,[3] (ii) a book for all generations,[3] and (iii) a poetry collection that uses a large volume of paper.[3]

Of these, supporters of (i) can be further divided into (a) those who interpret the middle character as "words" (koto no ha, lit. "leaves of speech"), thus giving "ten thousand words", i.e. "many waka",[3] including Sengaku,[4] Shimokōbe Chōryū,[5] Kada no Azumamaro[5] and Kamo no Mabuchi,[5] and (b) those who interpret the middle character as literally referring to leaves of a tree, but as a metaphor for poems,[5] including Ueda Akinari,[5] Kimura Masakoto,[5] Masayuki Okada (岡田正之),[5] Torao Suzuki,[5] Kiyotaka Hoshikawa and Susumu Nakanishi.[5]

Furthermore, (ii) can be divided into: (a) it was meant to express the intention that the work should last for all time[5] (proposed by Keichū,[5][lower-alpha 2] and supported by Kamochi Masazumi,[5] Inoue Michiyasu,[5] Yoshio Yamada,[5] Noriyuki Kojima[5] and Tadashi Ōkubo[5]); (b) it was meant to wish for long life for the emperor and empress[5] (Shinobu Origuchi[5]); and (c) it was meant to indicate that the collection included poems from all ages[5] (proposed by Yamada[5]).

(iii) was proposed by Yūkichi Takeda in his Man'yōshū Shinkai jō (萬葉集新解上),[5] but Takeda also accepted (ii); his theory that the title refers to the large volume of paper used in the collection has also not gained much traction among other scholars.[5]

The collection is customarily divided into four periods. The earliest dates to prehistoric or legendary pasts, from the time of Emperor Yūryaku (r. c. 456 – c. 479) to those of the little documented Emperor Yōmei (r. 585–587), Saimei (r. 594–661), and finally Tenji (r. 668–671) during the Taika Reforms and the time of Fujiwara no Kamatari (614–669). The second period covers the end of the seventh century, coinciding with the popularity of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, one of Japan's greatest poets. The third period spans 700 – c. 730 and covers the works of such poets as Yamabe no Akahito, Ōtomo no Tabito and Yamanoue no Okura. The fourth period spans 730–760 and includes the work of the last great poet of this collection, the compiler Ōtomo no Yakamochi himself, who not only wrote many original poems but also edited, updated and refashioned an unknown number of ancient poems.

The vast majority of the poems of the Man'yōshū were composed over a period of roughly a century,[lower-alpha 3] with scholars assigning the major poets of the collection to one or another of the four "periods" discussed above. Princess Nukata's poetry is included in that of the first period (645–672),[6] while the second period (673–701) is represented by the poetry of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, generally regarded as the greatest of Man'yōshū poets and one of the most important poets in Japanese history.[7] The third period (702–729)[8] includes the poems of Takechi no Kurohito, whom Donald Keene called "[t]he only new poet of importance" of the early part of this period,[9] when Fujiwara no Fuhito promoted the composition of kanshi (poetry in classical Chinese).[10] Other "third period" poets include: Yamabe no Akahito, a poet who was once paired with Hitomaro but whose reputation has suffered in modern times;[11] Takahashi no Mushimaro, one of the last great chōka poets, who recorded a number of Japanese legends such as that of Ura no Shimako;[12] and Kasa no Kanamura, a high-ranking courtier who also composed chōka but not as well as Hitomaro or Mushimaro.[13] But the most prominent and important poets of the third period were Ōtomo no Tabito, Yakamochi's father and the head of a poetic circle in the Dazaifu,[14] and Tabito's friend Yamanoue no Okura, possibly an immigrant from the Korean kingdom of Paekche, whose poetry is highly idiosyncratic in both its language and subject matter and has been highly praised in modern times.[15] Yakamochi himself was a poet of the fourth period (730–759),[16] and according to Keene he "dominated" this period.[17] He composed the last dated poem of the anthology in 759.[18]

In addition to its artistic merits the Man'yōshū is important for using one of the earliest Japanese writing systems, the cumbersome man'yōgana.[19] Though it was not the first use of this writing system, which was also used in the earlier Kojiki (712),[20] it was influential enough to give the writing system its name: "the kana of the Man'yōshū".[21] This system uses Chinese characters in a variety of functions: their usual logographic sense; to represent Japanese syllables phonetically; and sometimes in a combination of these functions. The use of Chinese characters to represent Japanese syllables was in fact the genesis of the modern syllabic kana writing systems, being simplified forms (hiragana) or fragments (katakana) of the man'yōgana.[22]

The collection, particularly volumes 14 and 20, is also highly valued by historical linguists for the information it provides on early Old Japanese dialects.[23]

Julius Klaproth produced some early, severely flawed translations of Man'yōshū poetry. Donald Keene explained in a preface to the Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkō Kai edition of the Man'yōshū:

One "envoy" (hanka) to a long poem was translated as early as 1834 by the celebrated German orientalist Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783–1835). Klaproth, having journeyed to Siberia in pursuit of strange languages, encountered some Japanese castaways, fishermen, hardly ideal mentors for the study of 8th century poetry. Not surprisingly, his translation was anything but accurate.[24]

In 1940, Columbia University Press published a translation created by a committee of Japanese scholars and revised by the English poet, Ralph Hodgson. This translation was accepted in the Japanese Translation Series of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).[25]

In premodern Japan, officials used wooden slips or tablets of various sizes, known as mokkan, for recording memoranda, simple correspondence, and official dispatches.[26] Three mokkan that have been excavated contain text from the Man'yōshū.[27][28][29][30] A mokkan excavated from an archaeological site in Kizugawa, Kyoto, contains the first 11 characters of poem 2205 in volume 10, written in Man'yōgana. It is dated between 750 and 780, and its size is 23.4 by 2.4 by 1.2 cm (9.21 by 0.94 by 0.47 in). Inspection with an infrared camera revealed other characters, suggesting that the mokkan was used for writing practice. Another mokkan, excavated in 1997 from the Miyamachi archaeological site in Kōka, Shiga, contains poem 3807 in volume 16. It is dated to the middle of the 8th century, and is 2 cm wide by 1 mm thick. Lastly, a mokkan excavated at the Ishigami archaeological site in Asuka, Nara, contains the first 14 characters of poem 1391, in volume 7, written in Man'yōgana. Its size is 9.1 by 5.5 by 0.6 cm (3.58 by 2.17 by 0.24 in), and it is dated to the late 7th century, making it the oldest of the three.

More than 150 species of grasses and trees are mentioned in approximately 1,500 entries of the Man'yōshū. A Man'yō shokubutsu-en (万葉植物園) is a botanical garden that attempts to contain every species and variety of plant mentioned in the anthology. There are dozens of these gardens around Japan. The first Man'yō shokubutsu-en opened in Kasuga Shrine in 1932.[31][32]

• Kotodama
• Umi Yukaba

Texts and translations

• "Online edition of the Man'yōshū" (in Japanese). University of Virginia Library Japanese Text Initiative. Archived from the original on 2006-05-19. Retrieved 2006-07-10.
• Cranston, Edwin A. (1993). A Waka Anthology: Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3157-7.
• Kodansha (1983). "Man'yoshu". Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. Kodansha.
• Honda, H. H. (tr.) (1967). The Manyoshu: A New and Complete Translation. The Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.
• J. L. Pierson Jr. (1929). The Manyōśū. Translated and Annotated. Book 1. Late E. J. Brill LTD, Leyden
• Levy, Ian Hideo (1987). The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'yoshu. Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, Volume One. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00029-9.
• Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (2005). 1000 Poems From The Manyoshu: The Complete Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-43959-4.
• Suga, Teruo (1991). The Man'yo-shu : a complete English translation in 5–7 rhythm. Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry, Volume One. Tokyo: Kanda Educational Foundation, Kanda Institute of Foreign Languages. ISBN 978-4-483-00140-2., Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba City

General

• Cranston, Edwin A. (1993). A Waka Anthology: Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3157-7.
• Nakanishi, Susumu (1985). Man'yōshū Jiten (Man'yōshū zen'yakuchū genbun-tsuki bekkan) (paperback ed.). Tokyo: Kōdansha. ISBN 978-4-06-183651-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Nakanishi, Susumu; Itō, Haku; Gomi, Tomohide; Ono, Hiroshi; Inaoka, Kōji; Kinoshita, Masatoshi; Ōkubo, Tadashi; Hayashi, Tsutomu (1983). "Man'yōshū" 万葉集. Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten 日本古典文学大辞典 (in Japanese). 5. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. pp. 554–571. OCLC 11917421.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Japanese Wikisource has original text related to this article: 万葉集

• Manyōshū – from the University of Virginia Japanese Text Initiative website
• Manuscript scans at Waseda University Library: 1709, 1858, unknown
• Manyōshū – Columbia University Press, Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai translation 1940, 1965