Hitomaro’s poems on leaving Iwami are contained in the sōmon section in the Man’yōshū Book 2. Including the preliminary versions, there are nine poems, but the poem 2: 140 can also be seen to belong to them, depending on the interpretation. In the early 1970s, Itō Haku turned against the established reading and proposed a narratologically attractive model in which the time of the narrated world runs backwards towards the center in 2 : 140. However, this model met with fierce resistance and is considered disproven. Strictly speaking, this concerns only the center, not necessarily the reverse chronology, but the established understanding according to which the time of the narrated world unfolds in parallel with the poem texts still dominates the discourse. Although other proposals have been attempted, some essential aspects have not been considered. These aspects, which corroborate Itō’s model, will be the focus of this study. They concern the poem’s contents but also its titles and the position of the sequence within the sōmon section.
Robert F. Wittkamp (Sat,) studied this question.