A Narratological Look at a Correspondence between Yakamochi and Ikenushi : Reading Man' yōshū Poems 17 : 3962 to 3982 as a Closed and Self-Contained Work

Since some poems by Ōtomo no Yakamochi show an unequivocal interest in narrative arrangements, their study requires narratological approaches. In winter 746 or early spring 747, Yakamochi fell severely ill. While he was recovering, he began a correspondence with Ōtomo no Ikenushi, a local government official. The communication, which is contained in Man'yōshū Book 17, comprises Chinese prose of different text types, Chinese poems, and Japanese poems, and is an important contribution to the history of Japanese literature. Examinations and translations include the group of poems from the sickbed (3962 to 3964) but not the subsequent group of the five poems 3978 to 3982. However, a thorough narratological reading will plead for assigning the subsequent group to the preceding sequence starting with poem 3962. The whole sequence displays distinctive narrative strategies, mainly based on the arrangement of time and space, and a comparison at the end of the paper will show that Yakamochi made use of similar narrative strategies in composing the fifteen poems opening Book 19.