SOURCE: An introduction to Early Japanese Poets: Complete Translation of the "Kokinshu," by T. Wakameda, The Eastern Press Ltd., 1922, pp. xi-xvi.

In his introduction (written in 1921) to the Wakameda translation of the Kokinshu, Kobayashi advances several reasons why shorter Japanese poems, such as those found in the Kokinshu, became far more popular than longer forms of verse.

The Kokinshu or Poems Ancient and Modern was published as is seen in its Preface, in the fifth year of Yengi in the reign of the Emperor Daigo, viz., in the year 905 A.D., and fifteen years after the founding of Oxford University. This collection of one thousand poems was selected from those which had been composed during a period of two hundred years after the beginning of the Nara period, with the intention of showing models to those who wished to compose verses. It was edited by order of the...