Man'yōshū

The Man'yoshu is the oldest surviving collection of Japanese waka poetry, compiled in Classical Japanese after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology contains more than 4,500 poems arranged across twenty volumes, composed over roughly a century and a half between about AD 600 and 759, and drawn from authors across the full range of Japanese society of the period, from emperors and aristocrats to soldiers and peasants, with more than 2,100 of its poems remaining anonymous. The compilation is widely, though not conclusively, attributed to the poet and courtier Otomo no Yakamochi, one of the anthology's own most represented contributors. As the earliest major monument of Japanese poetry, predating the more courtly, refined style of later imperial anthologies, the Man'yoshu is prized for the directness and stylistic range of its verse and remains foundational to the study of early Japanese language and literary history.