[In the following excerpt, Keene presents a concise history of translations of the Manyoshu and praises the Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai version for its rendering of the poems into English.]

The first translations from the Manyōshū into a European language date back more than a century, well before Japan was opened to the West. One “envoy” (hanka) to a long poem was translated as early as 1834 by the celebrated German orientalist Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783-1835). Klaproth, having journeyed to Siberia in pursuit of strange languages, encountered some illiterate Japanese castaways, fishermen, hardly ideal mentors for the study of eighth-century poetry. Not surprisingly, his translation was anything but accurate. Other translations appeared from time to time, particularly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and in 1872 a fair-sized selection of Manyōshū poetry, some 200 poems in all, was published by the Austrian scholar August Pfizmaier (1808-87). Pfizmaier's absorption with Manyōshū studies may account for his reputation as a more than usually absent-minded professor: it is reported that he learned of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War by reading of the event, one year after it occurred, in a Japanese newspaper which had been slow in reaching Vienna. His versions, for all the singular devotion to scholarship they demonstrated, unfortunately were soon superseded by the work of the great generation of English Japanologists, notably that of Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935). From the late nineteenth century onwards translations into English, German, French, or Italian frequently appeared, sometimes the work of a European scholar, sometimes that of a Japanese translating his country's literature into a foreign tongue.

The most satisfactory Manyōshū translations are those of the present volume. Originally prepared by a committee of Japanese, scholars of both English and Japanese literatures, they were subsequently revised by the English poet Ralph Hodgson, a resident of Japan at the time. Collaboration between Japanese and Western scholars has often been urged as the best solution to the eternal problem of how to produce translations of difficult works which are at once accurate and of literary distinction but, as far as I know, The Manyōshū is the only successful example of such collaboration. Generally, the Western member of the team unconsciously seeks to recast the literal translations from the Japanese prepared by his colleagues into an idiom which he himself favors, though it may be inappropriate, or else he intrudes foreign imagery and thoughts in an attempt to make the poetry more appealing to a Western audience. His Japanese collaborators in such cases tend to refrain politely from expressing any objections. Here, however, the combination worked exceptionally well, a tribute equally to the Englishman and the Japanese.

The original edition of this translation was published in 1940. Since then Manyōshū studies have been extremely active in Japan, and new discoveries have repeatedly affected our understanding of different poems. To cite a very simple example: the poem by the Emperor Tenji on the three hills Kagu, Miminashi, and Unebi (p. 5) was long considered to refer to two male hills (Kagu and Miminashi) quarreling over a female hill (Unebi), but scholars have recently suggested that Kagu and Miminashi were two female hills in love with the same male hill, Unebi. Other discoveries have a broader application; the most important, probably, being that the Japanese language in the Manyōshū period had eight vowels instead of the present five, a fact of enormous linguistic significance though it does not affect the translations of the poems.

Not only has Japanese scholarship continued to advance and refine previous knowledge of the Manyōshū, but Western scholarship, inspired in large part by Japanese achievements, has developed apace. The most impressive critical study to appear in a Western language to date, Japanese Court Poetry by Robert Brower and Earl Miner (Stanford University Press, 1961), treats the Manyōshū in considerable detail and also gives a general background to the themes and methods of Japanese poetry. Translations continue to appear, some profiting by the new interpretations of the texts, others representing little more than reworkings in somewhat more poetic language of existing versions.

Interpretations of the Manyōshū have inevitably reflected the outlook of the modern critic almost as much as they conveyed the intent of the original poets. Reading the Introduction to this edition of the Manyōshū, we cannot help but be struck by the repeated allusions to a philosophy of the Japanese state which, though normal in 1940, has largely been discredited since. Not only is the imperial authorship of many poems stressed (though more recent scholars cast doubt on these attributions, aware that anonymous poems were often dignified by associations—however unlikely—with rulers of the distant past), but the glory of the Imperial House itself is proclaimed in a manner as foreign to the Japanese of today as to ourselves: “Turning to human relations, Japanese clan morality in its purified form—namely, that which is based upon the consciousness of the Imperial House as the supreme head of all clans—manifests itself in the Manyōshū in spontaneous sentiments of the loveliest kind, giving the Anthology its chief distinction.” During the war years of 1941-45, the “spirit of the Manyōshū” was constantly invoked by literary men. They meant by the phrase worship of the Emperor and an insistence on “pure Japanese” virtues untainted by foreign influence or by the over-refined, effemináte sentiments displayed in later poetry. As a result of the defeat of Japan in 1945, the Manyōshū acquired still another meaning: this time it was acclaimed as a “democratic” anthology that was given its chief distinction by the poetry of the common people (or of the humbler ranks of the nobility), unlike subsequent anthologies filled with jejune compositions by the decadent courtiers.

The poetry of the Manyōshū is sufficiently varied and abundant to afford corroborative evidence for all these theses, but though each is tenable as an interpretation of part of the work, it cannot be accepted as a judgment of the whole. The compilers of this edition, emphasizing the “cheerfulness” of an age when the Imperial family ruled without interference, declared that “the prevailing atmosphere is happy, bright and peaceful.” Yet surely the “Dialogue on Poverty” by Yamanoe Okura (p. 205) offers unmistakable evidence that, whatever conditions may have prevailed at the court, all was not joy and light in the villages. The Introduction does not dwell on the darker aspect of the Manyōshū any more than postwar interpreters of its “democratic” character choose to examine, say, Hitomaro's profound devotion to the Imperial House. Again, such an assertion as “But filial piety, so sincere, intense and instinctive as shown in the Manyo poems is not likely to be duplicated by any other people and under any other social order” is certainly open to challenge, if not to being dismissed outright as absurd. But this nostalgic view of a distant golden age deserves our attention still, if only as a traditional, persistent Japanese interpretation of the ultimate meaning of the Manyōshū. Even with respect to poetics a preconception that the Manyōshū, in contrast to the artificial elegance of later Japanese poetry, is marked by a “genuineness of thought” unmarred by vanity or frivolity led the authors of the Introduction to discount technique as a major criterion of poetic excellence, and to dismiss as “a simple form of word-play” the highly complicated kakekotoba (pivot-words), which resemble less an ordinary pun than the portmanteau language of Finnegans Wake.¹

It might seem, in the light of the shortcomings of this Introduction, at least from a contemporary point of view, that an entirely new one is desirable. Certainly recent theories which trace the origin of the chōka (long poem) to religious observances that were intended to quiet the souls of the dead by reciting their deeds on earth, or which suggest what the original functions of the “envoy” may have been, deserve attention. But although it is of urgent importance that the fruits of modern Japanese scholarship be introduced to Western readers, it clearly would be unfair to the translators of this edition to change arbitrarily the introduction which they deemed appropriate to their splendid translations. It has seemed preferable, both out of respect for the book as originally conceived, and for the sake of the valuable information presented, to reproduce the Introduction unaltered.

The great merit of The Manyōshū, it goes without saying, is the excellence of the translations. Surely no one could read these versions of the great chōka by Hitomaro or Okura and remain unmoved. They make superb poems in English, and are worthy of the originals. Even some of the lesser works are so beautifully rendered as to acquire an importance in translation not often accorded them in Japan—for example, the poem from the “Tanabe Sakimaro Collection” (pp. 233-34). The selection too is exceptionally intelligent, offering not only such poems of an immediate emotional or aesthetic appeal as we might expect in a volume intended for Western readers, but others which, viewed against the subsequent course of Japanese poetry, seem atypical, and even un-Japanese. These include narratives (e.g., pp. 190, 216, 224), “beggar songs” (p. 275), admonitory poems (pp. 154, 178), commemorative odes (pp. 83, 150, 220), and poems prefaced by extended prose explanations (pp. 74, 272). These poems suggest possibilities of poetic development which either never materialized at all in Japan, or else were directed (as in the case of the poems with prose prefaces) into the domain of prose rather than poetry. Another feature of the selection is the inclusion of various poems on the same themes by men of different times; those which echo the themes and language of Hitomaro (e.g., pp. 42, 125, 313; 46, 227, 233) bear witness not only to his enormous influence on later poets but to the inimitable nature of his manner, no matter how slavishly the externals were followed.

The original texts were recorded in a script which used Chinese characters in an almost perversely difficult manner: sometimes for meaning, sometimes for sound when read as Chinese, sometimes for sound when read as Japanese. Many problems of decipherment remain to be solved, but for the general reader the pronunciations favored by Japanese philologists when The Manyōshū first appeared in 1940 are still acceptable, though it should be borne in mind that some vowel sounds had unfamiliar pronunciations in the eighth century, and many reconstructions are still tentative. The reader who wishes to follow the Japanese texts will find the Romaji versions in the edition of The Manyōshū issued earlier by the Columbia University Press.

For years The Manyōshū was out of print and virtually unobtainable. Its importance and excellence were widely recognized, but the difficulties of making arrangements with the various parties involved in the publication made it seem dubious that a reprinting would ever appear. Mr. Kensuke Tamai of the Iwanami Publishing Company proved especially helpful during the long negotiations. UNESCO sponsorship also encouraged us to persevere despite repeated frustrations. Now that at last this fine translation of the greatest of Japanese anthologies has been published, it is hoped that The Manyōshū will be accorded by the reading public its rightful place of distinction among the poetic masterpieces of the world.

Notes

1. For a discussion of kakekotoba, see Keene, Japanese Literature (New York, Grove Press, 1955), pp. 4-5.