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  • 16 - The Heian Academy: literati culture from Minamoto no Shitagō to Ōe no Masafusa

  • from Part II - The Heian period (794–1185)
  • Edited by Haruo Shirane, Columbia University, New York, Tomi Suzuki, Columbia University, New York, David Lurie, Columbia University, New York
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature
    Published online:
    05 January 2016
    Print publication:
    17 December 2015, pp 176-183

  • Summary

    Manyoshu is Japan's oldest extant anthology of vernacular verse and the most revered repository of its classical poetic tradition. Just as Kojiki and Nihon shoki were compiled with the aid of earlier histories that do not survive, Manyoshu drew material from numerous other lost Japanese anthologies that are cited in its pages. The anthology was compiled during the greatest period of social change in premodern Japanese history. Manyoshu begins with a courting verse for a maiden gathering herbs on a hillside; it was purported to have been composed by Emperor Yuryaku, who was remembered as an exemplar. From the accession in 629 of the ruler known as Emperor Jomei, attributions of authorship gain historical plausibility; the number of poems markedly increases. Jomei ascended the throne after the death of the female sovereign Suiko, the last ruler represented in the Kojiki. The characterization of Manyoshu as a text that was widely read through the centuries is a modern myth.