SOURCE: "The Kokinshu Prefaces: Another Perspective," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1983, pp. 215-38.

In the following essay, Wixted explains how the prefaces to the Kokinshu, while largely modeled on those of earlier Chinese works, affirm a new value attributed to Japanese poetry.

Literary anthologies are compiled for a variety of ends.¹ They can be made for pragmatic / didactic purposes, as was the Shih ching (Classic of Songs); for the sheer diversionary pleasure of the material, as was the Yüt' ai hsin-yung (New Songs from the Jade Tower); or for a more complex mix of motives. The compilation of the most famous Chinese anthology, the Wen hsüan (Literary Selections), was prompted by considerations that were literary as well as didactic and pragmatic. The first imperially commissioned anthology of Japanese verse, the Kokinshū (Kokin waka shū) (A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern), also served more...