Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the compilation of seasonal poetry in Volume VIII of the Man’yōshū merges the natural world with imperial chronology, constructing a narrative about literary practices in the mid-eighth century court that privileged the Ōtomo lineage and their allies.

Paper long abstract:

Japan has a longstanding tradition of compiling vernacular poetry (waka) in accordance with the seasons. Yet in Western scholarship, little consideration has been given to seasonal poetry recorded in the Man’yōshū (“Collection for a Myriad Ages”), even though this vernacular poetic collection contains some of the earliest extant books organized by season. When scholars discuss seasonal poems recorded in the Man’yōshū, they usually evaluate them as prototypes to later works gathered in imperial anthologies such as the Kokin wakashū (“Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Songs,” c. 906), rather than consider these works within the specific literary and social contexts of the Nara period (710-794).

Taking the Man’yōshū on its own terms, this paper is an exploration of how seasonal poetry is presented in Volume VIII, a book distinguished by the inclusion of authors’ names alongside its chronological organization. It considers the ways in which poetic constructs of the natural world, derived much in part from Sinitic literary traditions, interact in the space of the text with those of the imperial realm and imperial chronology. These elements are brought together through the efforts of the compiling hand, believed to have been Ōtomo no Yakamochi and possibly his aunt, Lady Sakanoue, as they are the most represented poets in Volume VIII. Considering this possibility along with other structural elements, I contend that the world as imagined in the space of Volume VIII is constructed from the perspective of the Ōtomo lineage in order to create an idealized literary community with their family and political allies at its center.