The Manyoshu

The Manyoshu (The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) is the earliest collection of Japanese poetry. Most of the poems were written in the seventh and eighth centuries by poets who served the Nara and Heian courts. Divided into twenty parts, the collection comprises several popular Japanese forms and themes ranging from courtly love to death and the soul's destination. The Manyoshu is somewhat unique to Japanese literature for its use of one of the earliest Japanese writing sysems--a blend of Chinese symbols used with their original ideographic meanings and also to represent Japanese phonetics.



Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662-710 C.E.) was one of the most popular court poets of his time. He is the most prominent single poet in the Manyoshu collection, and his work has been very influential on modern Japanese poets.

from On Leaving His Wife as He Set Out From Iwami to the Capital

In the sea of Iwami,
by the cape of Kara,
there amid the deep-sea miru weed;
there along the rocky strand
grows the sleek sea-tangle.

Like the swaying sea-tangle,
unresisting would she lie beside me--
my wife whom I love with a love
deep as the miru-growing ocean.
But few are the nights
we two have lain together.

Away I have come, parting from her
even as the creeping vines do part.
My heart aches within me;
I turn back my gaze--
but because of the yellow leaves
of Watari Hill,
flying and fluttering in the air,
I cannot see plainly
my wife waving her sleeve to me.
Now as the moon, sailing through the cloud rift
above the mountain of Yakami,
disappears, leaving me full of regret,
so vanishes my love out of sight;
now sinks the sun,
coursing down the western sky.

I thought myself a strong man,
But the sleeves of my garment
are wetted through with tears.

The placement of sea-tangle and miru-weed deep within the ocean bed (mimicking the man and his wife) makes the narrator's being torn away violent. Though his leave-taking may have seemed quiet and honorable, we see his emotions are passionate. As he turns his head to gaze upon his home, his view is blocked by fallen yellow leaves--these leaves are a sign of passing time, and a hint that soon old age will come. In many poems this hint would inspire the audience to seize the moment; it is a tragic realization for the narrator, however, for he cannot simply return to his wife. The moon and sun travel their courses through the sky, and the man must cope with the time he is losing. The final lines of the poem that his overwhelmed by his grief--the image of a wet kimono sleeve is frequently used in Japanese literature as a sign of immense sorrow.

Here, as in most Japanese art, the symbol is an extremely subtle guide to emotion. These symbols are often conventional, and Hitomaro uses elements of nature to create metaphors already familiar to the literate Japanese. These familiar symbols allow the poem to stand at three levels--the literal, the figurative, and the aesthetic.