The
Man'y?sh?
(
万葉集
,
pronounced
[ma??jo?ː??ː]
; literally "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves")
[a]
[1]
is the oldest extant collection of
Japanese
waka
(poetry in
Classical Japanese
),
[b]
compiled sometime after AD?759 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 today widely believed to be
?tomo no Yakamochi
, although numerous other theories have been proposed. The chronologically last datable poem in the collection is from AD?759 (
No.
?4516).
[2]
It contains many poems from a much earlier period, with the bulk of the collection representing the period between AD?600 and 759.
[3]
The precise significance of the title is not known with certainty.
The
Man'y?sh?
comprises more than 4,500
waka
poems in 20 volumes, and is broadly divided into three genres:
Zoka
, songs at banquets and trips;
Somonka
, songs about love between men and women; and
Banka
, songs to mourn the death of people.
[4]
These songs were written by people of various statuses, such as the Emperor, aristocrats, junior officials,
Sakimori
soldiers (
Sakimori
songs), street performers, peasants, and
Togoku
folk songs (Eastern songs). There are more than 2,100
waka
poems by unknown authors.
[5]
[6]
The collection is divided into 20 parts or books; this number was followed in most later collections. The collection contains 265
ch?ka
(long poems), 4,207
tanka
(short poems), one
an-renga
(short connecting poem), one
bussokusekika
(a poem in the form 5-7-5-7-7-7; named for the poems inscribed 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 Wakash?
, there is no preface.
The
Man'y?sh?
is widely regarded as being a particularly unique Japanese work, though its poems and passages did not differ starkly from its contemporaneous (for Yakamochi's time) scholarly standard of Chinese literature and poetics; many entries of the
Man'y?sh?
have a continental tone, earlier poems having
Confucian
or
Taoist
themes and later poems reflecting on
Buddhist
teachings. However, the
Man'y?sh?
is considered singular, even in comparison with later works, in choosing primarily Ancient Japanese themes, extolling
Shint?
virtues of forthrightness
(
?
,
makoto
)
and virility (
masuraoburi
). In addition, the language of many entries of the
Man'y?sh?
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.
[7]
The compilation of the
Man'y?sh?
also preserves the names of earlier Japanese poetic compilations, these being the
Ruij? Karin
(
類聚歌林
, Forest of Classified Verses)
, several texts called the
Kokash?
(
古歌集
, Collections of Antique Poems)
, as well as at least four family or individual anthologies known as
kash?
(
家集
)
belonging to Kakimoto no Hitomaro, Kasa no Kanamura, Takahashi no Mushimaro and Tanabe no Sakimaro.
[8]
The literal translation of the
kanji
that make up the title
Man'y?sh?
(
万 ? 葉 ? 集
) is "ten thousand ? leaves ? collection".
The principal interpretations of this name, according to the 20th century scholar
Sen'ichi Hisamatsu
?[
ja
]
, are:
- A book that collects a great many poems;
- A book for all generations;
and:
- A poetry collection that uses a large volume of paper.
Of these, supporters of the first interpretation can be further divided into:
- Those who interpret the middle character as "words" (
koto no ha
, lit. "leaves of speech"), thus giving "ten thousand words", i.e. "many
waka
",
including
Sengaku
,
Shimok?be Ch?ry?
?[
ja
]
,
Kada no Azumamaro
and
Kamo no Mabuchi
,
and;
- Those who interpret the middle character as literally referring to leaves of a tree, but as a metaphor for poems,
including
Ueda Akinari
,
Kimura Masakoto
?[
ja
]
,
Masayuki Okada
?[
ja
]
,
Torao Suzuki
?[
ja
]
,
Kiyotaka Hoshikawa
?[
ja
]
and
Susumu Nakanishi
.
Furthermore, supporters of the second interpretation of the name can be divided into:
- It was meant to express the intention that the work should last for all time
(proposed by
Keich?
,
[c]
and supported by
Kamochi Masazumi
?[
ja
]
,
Inoue Michiyasu
?[
ja
]
,
Yoshio Yamada
,
Noriyuki Kojima
?[
ja
]
and
Tadashi ?kubo
?[
ja
]
);
- It was meant to wish for long life for the
emperor
and
empress
(
Shinobu Origuchi
?[
ja
]
);
- It was meant to indicate that the collection included poems from all ages
(proposed by Yamada
).
The third interpretation of the name - that it refers to a poetry collection that uses a large quantity of paper - was proposed by
Y?kichi Takeda
in his
Man'y?sh? Shinkai j?
(
萬葉集新解上
)
,
but Takeda also accepted the second interpretation; his theory that the title refers to the large volume of paper used in the collection has not gained much traction among other scholars.
The collection is customarily divided into four periods. The earliest dates to prehistoric or legendary pasts, from the time of
Emperor Y?ryaku
(
r.
c.
?456
??
c.
?479
) to those of the little documented
Emperor Y?mei
(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 7th 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
,
?tomo 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 ?tomo 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'y?sh?
were composed over a period of roughly a century,
[d]
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),
while the second period (673?701) is represented by the poetry of
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
, generally regarded as the greatest of
Man'y?sh?
poets and one of the most important poets in Japanese history.
The third period (702?729)
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,
when
Fujiwara no Fuhito
promoted the composition of
kanshi
(poetry in
classical Chinese
).
Other "third period" poets include:
Yamabe no Akahito
, a poet who was once paired with Hitomaro but whose reputation has suffered in modern times;
Takahashi no Mushimaro
, one of the last great
ch?ka
poets, who recorded a number of Japanese legends such as that of
Ura no Shimako
;
and
Kasa no Kanamura
, a high-ranking courtier who also composed
ch?ka
but not as well as Hitomaro or Mushimaro.
But the most prominent and important poets of the third period were
?tomo no Tabito
, Yakamochi's father and the head of a poetic circle in the
Dazaifu
,
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.
Yakamochi himself was a poet of the fourth period (730?759),
and according to Keene he "dominated" this period.
He composed the last dated poem of the anthology in 759.
Linguistic significance
edit
In addition to its artistic merits, the
Man'y?sh?
is significant for using the earliest Japanese writing system, the cumbersome
man'y?gana
.
[25]
Though it was by no means the first use of this writing system?which was used to compose the
Kojiki
(712),
[26]
?it was influential enough to give the writing system its modern name, as
man'y?gana
means "the
kana
of the
Man'y?[sh?]
".
[27]
This system uses Chinese characters in a variety of functions:
logographically
to represent Japanese words, phonetically to represent Japanese sounds, and frequently in a combination of these. Such usage of Chinese characters to phonetically represent Japanese syllables eventually led to the birth of
kana
, as they were created from simplified cursive forms (
hiragana
) and fragments (
katakana
) of
man'y?gana
.
[28]
Like the majority of surviving
Old Japanese
literature, the vast majority of the
Man'y?sh?
is written in Western Old Japanese, the dialect of the
capital region
around
Kyoto
and
Nara
. However, specific parts of the collection, particularly volumes?14 and 20, are also highly valued by historical linguists for the information they provide on other
Old Japanese dialects
,
[29]
as these volumes collectively contain over 300 poems from the
Azuma
provinces of eastern Japan?what is now the regions of
Ch?bu
,
Kanto
, and southern
T?hoku
.
Julius Klaproth
produced some early, severely flawed translations of
Man'y?sh?
poetry.
Donald Keene
explained in a preface to the
Nihon Gakujutsu Shink? Kai
edition of the
Man'y?sh?
:
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.
[30]
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).
[31]
Dutch scholar Jan L. Pierson completed an English translation of the Man'y?sh? between 1929 and 1963, although this is described by Alexander Vovin as "seriously outdated" due to Pierson having "ignored or misunderstood many facts of Old Japanese grammar and phonology" which had been established in the 20th century.
[32]
Japanese scholars Honda Heihachiro (1967) and Suga Teruo (1991) both produced complete literary translations into English, with the former using rhymed iambic feet and preserving the 31-syllable count of tanka and the latter preserving the 5-7 pattern of syllables in each line.
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
Ian Hideo Levy
published the first of what was intended to be a four volume English translation in 1981
[33]
[34]
[36]
for which he received the
Japan?U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
.
[37]
In 2009,
Alexander Vovin
published the first volume of his English translation of the
Man'y?sh?
, including commentaries, the original text, and translations of the prose elements in-between poems.
[32]
He completed, in order, volumes 15, 5, 14, 20, 17, 18, 1, 19, 2, and 16 before his death in 2022, with volume 10 set to be released posthumously.
In premodern Japan, officials used wooden slips or tablets of various sizes, known as
mokkan
, for recording memoranda, simple correspondence, and official dispatches.
[38]
Three
mokkan
that have been excavated contain text from the
Man'y?sh?
.
[39]
[40]
[41]
[42]
A
mokkan
excavated in
Kizugawa, Kyoto
, contains the first 11?characters of poem?2205 from volume?10, written in
Man'y?gana
. 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
K?ka, Shiga
, contains poem?3807 in volume?16. It is dated to the middle of the 8th?century, and is 2 centimetres (0.79?in) wide by 1 millimetre (0.039?in) 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'y?gana
. 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'y?sh?
. A
Man'y? 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'y? shokubutsu-en
opened in
Kasuga Shrine
in 1932.
[43]
[44]
- ^
See
§?Name
below
- ^
It is not the oldest anthology of poetry written in Japan, since the
Kaif?s?
, an anthology of Japanese
kanshi
?poetry in
Classical Chinese
?predates it by at least several years.
- ^
Keich? also recognized the first interpretation as a possibility.
- ^
A small number of poems are attributed to figures from the ancient past, such as
Emperor Y?ryaku
.
- ^
Videen, Susan Downing (1989-10-26).
Heich? Monogatari in Literary History
. Harvard University Asia Center.
ISBN
978-1-68417-275-7
.
Archived
from the original on 2023-07-20
. Retrieved
2023-02-26
.
- ^
Satake (2004: 555)
- ^
Shirane, Haruo (2012-09-25).
Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, Abridged Edition
. Columbia University Press.
ISBN
978-0-231-50453-9
.
Archived
from the original on 2023-12-22
. Retrieved
2023-02-26
.
- ^
Richard, Kenneth L. (1983).
"Review of The Ten Thousand Leaves. A Translation of the Man'yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry. Volume One.; From the Country of Eight Islands. An Anthology of Japanese Poetry.; The Zen Poems of Ryokan"
.
Pacific Affairs
.
56
(1): 157?159.
doi
:
10.2307/2758798
.
ISSN
0030-851X
.
JSTOR
2758798
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
2023-02-26
.
- ^
Manyo 2001
- ^
Sugano 2006
- ^
Earl Miner
; Hiroko Odagiri; Robert E. Morrell (1985).
The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature
.
Princeton University Press
. pp.?
170?171
.
ISBN
978-0-691-06599-1
.
- ^
"Man'y?sh? ? . A History . . of Japan . 日本?史"
.
. A History . . of Japan . 日本?史
.
Archived
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. Retrieved
2022-05-08
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- ^
Shuichi Kato; Don Sanderson (15 April 2013).
A History of Japanese Literature: From the Manyoshu to Modern Times
. Routledge. p.?24.
ISBN
978-1-136-61368-5
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- ^
Roy Andrew Miller (1967).
The Japanese Language
. Tuttle. p.?32.
, cited in
Peter Nosco (1990).
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. Harvard Univ Asia Center. p.?182.
ISBN
978-0-674-76007-3
.
- ^
Bjarke Frellesvig (29 July 2010).
A History of the Japanese Language
. Cambridge University Press. p.?14.
ISBN
978-1-139-48880-8
.
Archived
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9 December
2018
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Peter T. Daniels (1996).
The World's Writing Systems
. Oxford University Press. p.?212.
ISBN
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2018-12-09
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- ^
Uemura 1981:25?26.
[
citation needed
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- ^
Nippon Gakujutsu Shink?kai. (1965).
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- ^
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Vovin, Alexander (2009-08-01).
Man'y?sh? (Book 15)
. BRILL.
doi
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b
Rutledge, Eric (1983). "The Man'yoshu in English".
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
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43
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doi
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.
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b
Hare, Thomas Blenman (1982). "Review: The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'y?sh?, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry. Vol. 1".
The Journal of Asian Studies
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Honda, H. H. (1967).
The Manyoshu. A New and Complete Translation
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Levy, I. H. (1981).
The Man'yoshu. English Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry
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[
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The Reed Plains. Ancient Japanese Lyrics from the Many??? with Interpretive Paintings by Sanko Inoue
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Many?sh?
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.
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.
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.
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Japanese
Wikisource
has original text related to this article: