Man'yōshū

Nukata no Ōkimi, a replica from vol.1

Man'yōshū (万葉集, man'yōshū^?, "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves") is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, compiled some time after 759 AD during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in a series of compilers, is believed to be Ōtomo no Yakamochi. The collection contains poems ranging from AD 347 (poems #85-89)^[1] through 759 (#4516),^[2] the bulk of them representing the period after 600. The precise significance of the title is not known with certainty.

The collection is divided into twenty parts or books; this number was followed in most later collections. The collection contains 265 chōka (long poems), 4,207 tanka (short poems), one tanrenga (short connecting poem), one bussokusekika (poems on the Buddha's footprints at Yakushi-ji in Nara), four kanshi (Chinese poems), and 22 Chinese prose passages. Unlike later collections, such as the Kokin Wakashū,there is no preface.

It is standard to regard the Man'yōshū as a particularly Japanese work. This does not mean that the poems and passages of the collection differed starkly from the scholarly standard (in Yakamochi's time) of Chinese literature and poetics. Certainly many entries of the Man'yōshū have a continental tone, earlier poems having Confucian or Taoist themes and later poems reflecting on Buddhist teachings. Yet, the Man'yōshū is singular, even in comparison with later works, in choosing primarily Ancient Japanese themes, extolling Shintō virtues of forthrightness (真, makoto^?) and virility (masuraoburi). In addition, the language of many entries of the Man'yōshū exerts a powerful sentimental appeal to readers:

[T]his early collection has something of the freshness of dawn. [...] There are irregularities not tolerated later, such as hypometric lines; there are evocative place names and makurakotoba; and there are evocative exclamations such as kamo, whose appeal is genuine even if incommunicable. In other words, the collection contains the appeal of an art at its pristine source with a romantic sense of venerable age and therefore of an ideal order since lost.^[3]

The collection is customarily divided into four periods. The earliest dates to prehistoric or legendary pasts, from the time of Yūryaku (r.?456–?479) to those of the little documented 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.

In addition to its artistic merits, the Man'yōshū is important for using one of the earliest Japanese writing systems, the cumbersome man'yōgana. Though it was not the first use of this writing system, which was also used in the earlier Kojiki (712), it was influential enough to give the writing system its name: "the kana of the Man'yōshū". This system uses Chinese characters in a variety of functions: their usual ideographic or logographic senses; 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.

Julius Klaproth was the first to publish any translation of Taika era Japanese poetry in the West.^[4] 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, fisherman, hardly ideal mentors for the study of 8th century poetry. Not surprisingly, his translation was anything but accurate."^[5]

The Man'yōshū has been accepted in the Japanese Translation Series of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).^[6]

Mokkan

A total of three wooden fragments known as mokkan (木簡^?) containing text from the Man'yōshū have been excavated:^{[7][8][9][10]}

• From the archaeological site in Kizugawa, Kyoto. A 23.4 cm long, 2.4 cm wide, 1.2 cm deep fragment. Dated between 750 and 780, it contains the first eleven characters of poem #2205 (volume 10) written in Man'yōgana. Inspection with an infrared camera indicates other characters suggesting that it was used for writing practice
• From the Miyamachi archaeological site in Kōka, Shiga. A 2 cm wide, 1 mm deep fragment was discovered in 1997 and is dated to mid 8th century. It contains poem #3807 (volume 16).
• From the Ishigami archaeological site in Asuka, Nara. A 9.1 cm long, 5.5 cm wide, 6 mm deep fragment was found. Dated to the late 7th century, it is the oldest of the known Man'yōshū fragments. It contains the first 14 characters of poem #1391 (volume 7) written in Man'yōgana.

Poetry excerpt

In 673, Emperor Temmu moved the capital back to Yamato Province on the Kiyomihara plain, naming his new capital Asuka. The Man'yōshū includes a poem written after the Jinshin conflict of 672 had ended:

Our Sovereign, a god,

Has made his Imperial City^[11]

Out of the stretch of swamps,

Where chestnut horses sank

To their bellies.

-- Ōtomo Miyuki^[12]

Temmu was enthroned at Asuka; and he reigned from this capital until his death in 686.

Others

More than 150 species of grasses and trees are included in 1500 entries of Man'yōshū. More than 30 of the species are found at the Man'yō Botanical Garden (万葉植物園, Manyō shokubutsu-en^?) in Japan, collectively placing them with the name and associated tanka for visitors to read and observe, reminding them of the ancient time in which the references were made. The first Manyo shokubutsu-en opened in Kasuga Shrine in 1932.^[13][14]

See also

• Umi Yukaba

Notes

1. ^ Satake (2004: 527)
2. ^ Satake (2004: 555)
3. ^ Earl Miner; Hiroko Odagiri; and Robert E. Morrell (1985). The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton University Press. pp. 170–171. ISBN 0-691-06599-3. 
4. ^ Tisingh, I. (1834). Annales des empereurs du Japon, p.72-73, note 2.
5. ^ Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai. (1965). The Man'yōshū, p. iii.
6. ^ Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai, p. ii.
7. ^ "７世紀の木簡に万葉の歌　奈良・石神遺跡、６０年更新". Asahi. 2008-10-17. http://www.asahi.com/culture/update/1017/OSK200810170080.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31. ^{[dead link]}
8. ^ "万葉集：３例目、万葉歌木簡　編さん期と一致－－京都の遺跡・８世紀後半". Mainichi. 2008-10-23. http://mainichi.jp/enta/art/news/20081023dde041040012000c.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31. ^{[dead link]}
9. ^ "万葉集：万葉歌、最古の木簡　７世紀後半－－奈良・石神遺跡". Mainichi. 2008-10-18. http://mainichi.jp/enta/art/news/20081018ddm041040146000c.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31. ^{[dead link]}
10. ^ "万葉集：和歌刻んだ最古の木簡出土　奈良・明日香". Asahi. 2008-10-17. http://mainichi.jp/enta/art/news/20081018k0000m040051000c.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31. ^{[dead link]}
11. ^ Emperor Temmu's capital was built on the plain of Kiyomihara at Asuka.
12. ^ Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai. (1969). The Man'yōshū, p. 60.
13. ^ "Manyo Shokubutsu-en(萬葉集に詠まれた植物を植栽する植物園)" (in Japanese). Nara: Kasuga Shrine. Archived from the original on 2009-08-05. http://www.kasugataisha.or.jp/h_s_tearoom/manyou-s/index.html. Retrieved 2009-08-05. 
14. ^ "Man'y Botanical garden(萬葉植物園)" (in Japanese) (PDF). Nara: Kasuga Shrine. Archived from the original on 2009-08-05. http://www.kasugataisha.or.jp/db_pdf/H21-09-27.pdf. Retrieved 2009-08-05. 

References

• Cranston, Edwin A. (1993). A Waka Anthology: Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3157-8. 
• Honda, H. H. (tr.) (1967). The Manyoshu: A New and Complete Translation. The Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. 
• Kodansha (1983). "Man'yoshu". Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. Kodansha. 
• Levy, Ian Hideo (1987). The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'yoshu. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00029-8. 
• Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (2005). 1000 Poems From The Manyoshu: The Complete Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation. Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-43959-3. 
• "Online edition of the Man'yōshū". University of Virginia Library Japanese Text Initiative. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/manyoshu/index.html. Retrieved 2006-07-10. 
• Satake, Akihiro; Hideo Yamada, Rikio Kudō, Masao Ōtani, Yoshiyuki Yamazaki (2004) (in Japanese). Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, Bekkan: Man'yōshū Sakuin. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 4-00-240105-7. 
• Titsingh, Isaac, ed. (1834). [Siyun-sai Rin-siyo/Hayashi Gahō, 1652], Nipon o daï itsi ran; ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland

External links

• Man'yōshū - from the University of Virginia Japanese Text Initiative website
• Manuscript scans at Waseda University Library: 1709, 1858, unknown