SOURCE: “Five Poetic Sequences from the Man'yoshu,” in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. XIII, No. 1, April, 1978, pp. 5-34.

In the following essay, Cranston offers literary analyses of several series of poems found in the Manyoshu.

Roy Miller has brilliantly demonstrated in his Footprints of the Buddha² that the arrangement of Japanese poetic sequences into artistically conceived patterns of association and progression antedates the era of the imperial anthologies. This paper is inspired by his work, and consists of a few footnotes to it. The sequences analyzed are drawn from the Man'yôshû, the eighth century anthology which contains most, but not all, of what we have from early Japanese poetry.

In the third month of 692, the sixth year of her reign, the express Jitô took members of her court on an excursion to the province of Ise. Not among her entourage was the poet...