works, such as the “Kojiki” and the “Man’yōshū,” or “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves,” still show comparatively little Chinese influence, and may with some justice be termed examples of “pure” Japanese literature. The “Kojiki” opens with the Creation and continues until the seventh century of our era, moving from a collection of sometimes engaging myths to an encomium of the Imperial family, particularly of the line of the ruling sovereign. In its early sections the “Kojiki” has something of the epic about it, but because it was a compilation of different sorts of material and not a single long story (however complex) known and recited by professional poets, it lacks the unity and artistic finish of a true epic and tends to break down into episodes of varying literary value.
The “Man’yōshū,” on the other hand, needs no apologies. It is one of the world’s great collections of poetry. It can never cease to astonish us that Japanese literature produced within the same century the pre-Homeric pages of the “Kojiki” and the magnificent artistry of the “Man’yōshū.” The latter owes its reputation mainly to the genius of a group of eighth-century poets, notably Hitomaro, Yakamochi, and Okura. The period when the majority of the poems were being written rather resembled the Meiji era, when the introduction of Western civilization led to a tremendous explosion of pent-up Japanese energies in every field. In the eighth century the gradual diffusion of Chinese civilization produced a similar result. Within the “Man’yōshū” itself there are traces of Chinese influence which become quite apparent in the later poems, but there can be no doubt of the book’s essential Japaneseness: what inspired the poets were the mountains and the sea of the Japanese landscape, and their reactions were fresh, Japanese reactions, not echoes of Chinese example.[1] “Countless are the mountains in Yamato”; “In the sea of Iwami, By the cape of Kara, There amid the stones under sea”; “And lived secure in my trust As one riding a great ship”—these are truly Japanese lines in their imagery and evocation.
If Chinese influence is relatively small in the “Man’yōshū” there is another eighth-century collection which is almost purely Chinese
- ↑ There are examples of direct Chinese influence on some of the poems, but their number is not very considerable.
