Abstract: As Japan's oldest poetic anthology, Man'yōshū ( Collection for a Myriad Ages , eighth century) occupies a strange position in the history of Japanese literature. Due to its archaic language, few people read a single book let alone all twenty volumes in the original. Furthermore, most readers require some form of translation. Yet Man'yōshū is considered a classic, described in Japanese and English-language educational material as the embodiment of a native poetic tradition. By taking poems out of their anthological contexts and discussing them as individual units, these materials also emphasize the emergence of individual lyricism in works by men while labeling women overall as conventional love poets. As a result, women authors and their works have been marginalized in general overviews about Man'yōshū . In this article, I propose a different approach to reading and understanding Man'yō poetry that reveals the many ways in which women participated in eighth-century poetic culture. After outlining men's and women's representation in Man'yōshū and their reception, I show examples of women's poetry in translation, which are often imbued with an eroticism not found in the source text. Finally, I analyze a poem by Lady Ōtomo no Sakanoue called the God-Worshiping Song within anthological and intertextual contexts occupied by men and women alike. Through this, I demonstrate how this poem and Lady Sakanoue herself are integral to the broader textual and cultural landscapes of the anthology, warranting a reconsideration of her work and the canonical text to which it belongs.
Danica Truscott (Wed,) studied this question.