SOURCE: "Kokinshu as Literary Entity" in Brocade by Night: "Kokin Wakashu" and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 421-93.

In the following excerpt taken from her important critical work on the Kokinshu, McCullough reviews all the books that comprise the anthology, particularly their topics, transitions, and arrangement.

Introduction

Tsurayuki and his colleagues undoubtedly viewed their imperial commission as a mandate to advance beyond the modest accomplishments of their immediate predecessors, the compilers of Kudai waka and Shinsen man-'yōshū. As we have seen, they brought together far more poems by far more authors, covered a wider range of topics and themes, and worked diligently to achieve a better balance between the Chinese and Japanese poetic traditions in order to establish the waka as the literary peer of the shi. They also confronted, with unprecedented vigor and inventiveness, the difficulties created by the brevity...