In Japan, two poetic anthologies, the Man’yōshū and the Kokinshū, are highly revered as literary embodiments of the Japanese spirit. Though both are similar in their purposes as literature, the intent behind compiling each anthology as well as the legacy each has left behind differ greatly. With its inclusion of poets from all classes and embodiment of makoto or sincerity, the Man’yōshū helped the Japanese form a national identity through its poetry. The Kokinshū was able to build on this foundation and establish such poetry as a high art form using miyabi, or refinement and elegance, helping Japan further establish its own independent place in the literary world.
The Man’yōshū or “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves”) is the first anthology that consisted entirely of what Japan considered its own literature in its own native language. It is made up of 4,516 waka poems that range across approximately 350 years, from the early 5th century to the year 759 AD (Citko H2.1). This is particularly significant because of Japan’s prior reliance on Chinese styles of structure and imagery to craft their poetry. Chinese culture influenced the majority of Japanese institutions because Japan’s own civilization lagged in technology and modernization. The Japanese “quickly became aware of the high value placed in China on the composition of poetry…They wished to record a literature of their own” (Citko H2.2). The Man’yōshū was created to break away from the practice of idealizing Chinese poetry and shift the focus to making Japanese poetry uniquely Japanese. Oral traditions and songs from the people’s past were placed beside poems created by the Japanese people, which included legends, folk tales, and poems written for the imperial family, such ...
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...s today and strove to compete with its former mentor, the Chinese, as a legitimate art form.
These two anthologies together laid the foundation for centuries of waka to come. In setting a national identity and standards for their own poetry, the Man’yōshū and Kokinshū ensured their own longevity as two of the most significant pieces of literature in Japanese history.
Works Cited
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The understanding of the Pacific Islands literature is still a very confusing material for many scholars. Only the indigenous residents can interpret fully interpret their own cultural concept of writing. However, in the “My Urohs” which is a slim collection of poetry published by Emelihter Kihleng in May 2008 as her first collection of poem. It provided a new path for their own people to view themselves differently and add an important element in the Pacific Islander literature. Some of the basic informations about the author was that Emelihter is a Micronesian and more specifically Pohnpeian that was born in Guam and earned a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2003.
Throughout history artists have used art as a means to reflect the on goings of the society surrounding them. Many times, novels serve as primary sources in the future for students to reflect on past history. Students can successfully use novels as a source of understanding past events. Different sentiments and points of views within novels serve as the information one may use to reflect on these events. Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro successfully encapsulates much of what has been discussed in class, parallels with the events in Japan at the time the novel takes place, and serves as a social commentary to describe these events in Japan at the time of the Mejeii Restoration and beyond. Therefore, Kokoro successfully serves as a primary source students may use to enable them to understand institutions like conflicting views Whites by the Japanese, the role of women, and the population’s analysis of the Emperor.
Although wildly different in subject matter and style, Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World both show how Japan has been internationalized as well as how it has remained traditional. Kawabata’s novel is traditional and acceptable, much like the haiku poetry he imitates, but has a thread of rebelliousness and modernity running through the web that binds the characters together. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is devastatingly modern, and yet has a similar but opposite undertone of old Japan, or at least a nostalgia for old Japan. In both novels a more international culture has taken root in Japan, and it seems that the characters both embrace and run from the implications of a globalized, hybridized culture.
Riichi, Yokomitsu. Shanghai. Michigan: The Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan , 2001.
“Until the seventeenth century, Japanese Literature was privileged property. …The diffusion of literacy …(and) the printed word… created for the first time in Japan the conditions necessary for that peculiarly modern phenomenon, celebrity” (Robert Lyons Danly, editor of The Narrow Road of the Interior written by Matsuo Basho; found in the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Second Edition, Volume D). Celebrity is a loose term at times; it connotes fortune, flattery, and fleeting fame. The term, in this modern era especially, possesses an aura of inevitable transience and glamorized superficiality. Ironically, Matsuo Basho, (while writing in a period of his own newfound celebrity as a poet) places an obvious emphasis on the transience of life within his travel journal The Narrow Road of the Interior. This journal is wholly the recounting of expedition and ethos spanning a fifteen hundred mile feat, expressed in the form of a poetic memoir. It has been said that Basho’s emphasis on the Transient is directly related to his and much of his culture’s worldview of Zen Buddhism, which is renowned for its acknowledgement of the Transient as a tool for a more accurate picture of life and a higher achievement of enlightenment. Of course, in the realization that Basho does not appear to be unwaveringly religious, perhaps this reflection is not only correlative to Zen Buddhism, but also to his perspective on his newfound celebrity. Either way, Matsuo Basho is a profound lyricist who eloquently seeks to objectify and relay the concept of transience even in his own name.
The Tale of Murasaki, by Liza Dalby, is about Murasaki, a young woman who lived in the Heian period (794-1185) of Japan. She writes a story called The Tale of Genji, and earns so much recognition for it that she is invited to court to attend the empress. Not only was she known for her writing, but she drew attention by learning Chinese. In the story, a Chinese education is essential for a man hoping to be a high-ranked member of society. Because the Japanese considered Chinese culture as superior, waka, a popular form of Japanese poetry, carries less cultural value in the novel. Therefore, both high-class women and men have to learn about wakas and use them daily. A woman who can compose good wakas and is beautiful would have the best chances of going to court, which is the best way to guarantee a comfortable life. Liza Dalby’s The Tale of Murasaki accurately portrays the abilities of each sex, the importance of Chinese learning, and the role of Japanese poetry in the Heian period of Japan.
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Over the course of Japanese history, arguably, no artist is more famous for their works than Katsushika Hokusai. During his 88 years of life, he produced over 30,000 pieces of artwork, and heavily influenced Western styles of art. His most famous piece was created around 1831, a Japanese styled piece titled, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This piece has stood as a defining piece of artwork in the Japanese culture for over 180 years, analyzed by students and authors for the interpretations filling the paper. The relationship between Hokusai’s painting has directly affected the Western point of view of Japanese style. The English author, Herbert Read’s novel interprets the painting distinctly differently from a Japanese point, American poet,
In his preface of the Kokinshū poet Ki no Tsurayaki wrote that poetry conveyed the “true heart” of people. And because poetry declares the true heart of people, poetry in the minds of the poets of the past believed that it also moved the hearts of the gods. It can be seen that in the ancient past that poetry had a great importance to the people of the time or at least to the poets of the past. In this paper I will describe two of some of the most important works in Japanese poetry the anthologies of the Man’yōshū and the Kokinshū. Both equally important as said by some scholars of Japanese literature, and both works contributing greatly to the culture of those who live in the land of the rising sun.
The Heian period(794-1185), the so-called golden age of Japanese culture, produced some of the finest works of Japanese literature.1 The most well known work from this period, the Genji Monogatari, is considered to be the “oldest novel still recognized today as a major masterpiece.”2 It can also be said that the Genji Monogatari is proof of the ingenuity of the Japanese in assimilating Chinese culture and politics. As a monogatari, a style of narrative with poems interspersed within it, the characters and settings frequently allude to Chinese poems and stories. In addition to displaying the poetic prowess that the Japanese had attained by this time period, the Genji Monogatari also demonstrates how politics and gender ideals were adopted from the Chinese.