SOURCE: Rimer, J. Thomas. “The Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves: Man'yōshū.” In A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature, pp. 24-27. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1988.

In the following essay, Rimer briefly encapsulates the Man'yōshū, calling it “the first extensive record of the Japanese emotional response to the world of men and nature.”

The Man'yōshū, the title of which might be translated as “The Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves” or “An Anthology of Myriad Leaves,” is the first great collection of Japanese poetry. For some Japanese readers and critics it remains the very best. Compiled sometime during the latter part of the eighth century, during the Nara period, the final version contains twenty books and something over four thousand poems, written by poets named and unnamed, and in a variety of styles. The anthology has in some ways the same canonic status in Japanese culture that the Book...