page_title: Japanese poetry
section_title: Man'yōshū anthology
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese poetry / Heian period / Man'yōshū anthology
caption_attribution_description: English: Kakinomoto no hitomaro, 1 print&#160;: woodcut, color&#160;; 34.3 x 23.1 cm.
context_page_description: Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language or ryūka from the Okinawa Islands: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang dynasty. Under the influence of the Chinese poets of this era Japanese began to compose poetry in Chinese kanshi; and, as part of this tradition, poetry in Japan tended to be intimately associated with pictorial painting, partly because of the influence of Chinese arts, and the tradition of the use of ink and brush for both writing and drawing.
context_section_description: Compiled sometime after 759, the oldest poetic anthology of waka is the 20 volume Man'yōshū, in the early part of the Heian period, it gathered  ancient works. The order of its sections is roughly chronological. Most of the works in the Man'yōshū have a fixed form today called chōka and  tanka. But earlier works, especially in Volume I, lacked such fixed form and were attributed to Emperor Yūryaku.
  The Man'yōshū begins with a waka without fixed form. It is both a love song for an unknown girl whom the poet met by chance and a ritual song praising the beauty of the land. It is worthy of being attributed to an emperor and today is used in court ritual.
  The first three sections contain mostly the works of poets from the middle of the 7th century to the early part of the 8th century. Significant poets among them were Nukata no Ōkimi and Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. Kakinomoto Hitomaro was not only the greatest poet in those early days and one of the most significant in the Man'yōshū, he rightly has a place as one of the most outstanding poets in Japanese literature.
  The Man'yōshū also included many female poets who mainly wrote love poems. The poets of the Man'yōshū were aristocrats who were born in Nara but sometimes lived or traveled in other provinces as bureaucrats of the emperor. These poets wrote down their impressions of travel and expressed their  emotion for lovers or children. Sometimes their poems criticized the political failure of the government or tyranny of local officials. Yamanoue no Okura wrote a chōka, A Dialogue of two Poormen (貧窮問答歌, Hinkyū mondōka); in this poem two poor men lamented their severe lives of poverty. One hanka is as follows:
  世の中を　憂しとやさしと　おもへども　飛び立ちかねつ　鳥にしあらねば
  Yononaka wo / Ushi to yasashi to / Omo(h)e domo / Tobitachi kanetsu / Tori ni shi arane ba
  I feel the life is / sorrowful and unbearable / though / I can't flee away / since I am not a bird.
  The Man'yōshū contains not only poems of aristocrats but also those of nameless ordinary people. These poems are called Yomibito shirazu (よみびと知らず), poems whose author is unknown. Among them there is a specific style of waka called Azuma-uta (東歌), waka written in the Eastern dialect. Azuma, meaning the East, designated the eastern provinces roughly corresponding to Kantō and occasionally Tōhoku. Those poems were filled with rural flavors. There was a specific style among Azuma-uta, called Sakimori uta (防人歌), waka by soldiers sent from the East to defend Northern Kyushu area. They were mainly waka by drafted soldiers leaving home. These soldiers were drafted in the eastern provinces and were forced to work as guards in Kyūshū for several years.  Sometimes their poetry expressed nostalgia for their faraway homeland.
  Tanka is a name for and a type of poem found in the Man'yōshū, used for shorter poems. The name was later given new life by Masaoka Shiki (pen-name of Masaoka Noboru, October 14, 1867 – September 19, 1902).
caption: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, major Man'yōshū contributor.
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