SOURCE: Teele, Roy E. “Speculations on the Critical Principles Underlying the Editing of the Man'yōshū.” Tamkang Review 7, no. 2 (October 1976): 1-15.

In the following essay, Teele studies the structure of the Man'yōshū, submitting an outline of its contents and offering insights into its editorial organization under Ōtomo Yakamochi and others.

On New Year's Day in 759 Otomo no Yakamochi wrote this hopeful poem:

Once again          the New Year's beginning:          the first of spring's Today, and the falling snow's          density foreshadows good things. 

Assigned to the governorship of the province of Inaba, Yakamochi was reciting for his subordinates at a banquet welcoming in the new year. Ironically, he was so far from the capital as to be virtually in exile. Moreover, this is now numbered 4516, the last poem in Book XX, the last book of the Manyoshu. Not only that, it is Yakamochi's last recorded poem; although he had...