1. Zambrano 1
Christopher Zambrano
Honors Thesis Spring 2012
Advisor: H. Mack Horton
12 May 2012
“The Gate of the Mountain Persimmon”:
The Development of Lyricism from Kakinomoto no Hitomaro to Yamabe no Akahito
“[W]hen I was young, I did not enter the garden of artistic pursuits, hence [writing like]
waterweed spills from my brush, and my nature and technique are meager. In my younger
years, I came not to the gate of the mountain persimmon, and when composing poetry, I
lose my diction in the forest [of poems].”1
Ōtomo no Yakamochi, Manyōshū XVII: 3969 preface (~750?)
“During that reign [Nara]2 there appeared a poetic genius called Kakinomoto no
Hitomaro…There was another man, Yamabe no Akahito, who was also an extraordinary
poet. It was impossible for Hitomaro to excel Akahito, or for Akahito to rank below
Hitomaro.”3
Ki no Tsurayuki, Kokinshū Kana Preface (905)
The first excerpt above is from the preface to a set of poems by Ōtomo Yakamochi in the
Japanese poetry collection Manyōshū (“Myriad Leaves Collection”),4 in which he refers to
“sanshi no mon” 山柿の門, literally “the gate of the mountain persimmon.” In context it seems
to refer to some sort of poetic ideal. A century and a half later, Ki no Tsurayuki, in his famous
preface to Kokinshū,5 identifies two poetic geniuses, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro 柿本人麻呂 (fl.
680-700) and Yamabe no Akahito 山部赤人 (fl. 724-736). These are two of the most well-
known poets of Manyōshū, and because of Tsurayuki’s preface they are traditionally thought to
1 This translation comes from Anne Commons, Hitomaro: Poet as God (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2009), 36-7.
2 In a note to her translation of Kokinshū, Helen McCullough states that this refers to the reign of
Emperor Mommu (697-707), though much of Hitomaro’s poetry dates before this. Helen
McCullough, trans., Kokin Wakashū (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 6.
3 This translation is from McCullough, Kokin Wakashū, 6
4 This is the most literal translation, though there is much debate as to what this originally meant.
“leaves” could mean “words,” but also “era” or “age,” so that it could be a collection of myriad
words, or a collection for a myriad ages, etc.
5 The first Japanese imperial anthology, literally “Collection of Old and New.”

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be the referents of “the gate of the mountain persimmon” in the first excerpt above.6 This
interpretation of Yakamochi’s ambiguous reference to sanshi no mon is now hotly debated, as
there are a number of poets far better-represented than Akahito in Manyōshū, and many consider
Akahito to be an inferior poet.7 However, the mere fact that the reference has traditionally been
taken to refer to Akahito points to his importance to the literary tradition, though his contribution
is of a different nature than that of Hitomaro. The two poets were active during a time when
Japanese poetry was parting from its ritualized oral roots toward a more literary written tradition,
a trend that would go on to shape the poetry of later centuries. Hitomaro’s genius was that he
reconciled these two aspects of poetry, while Akahito’s was that he delved more deeply into the
potential of the written form.
Both Hitomaro and Akahito are considered to be “court poets” (kyūtei kajin 宮廷歌人),
courtiers whose roles at court were to compose and recite poetry for public occasions such as
imperial progressions and funerals.8 The reason for this was often to extol the emperor as divine
ruler in order to legitimate the imperial line. Thus, much of the poetry discussed here must be
considered (no matter how private the subject matter) as ultimately public in nature. Ogata
Koreaki cites the public nature of even Hitomaro’s “private” poetry about his wife,9 and Anne
6 “Yama” means “mountain” and “kaki” means “persimmon.” Thus it is widely thought that
Tsurayuki was interpreting Yakamochi’s “gate of the mountain persimmon” as a reference to the
two poets Yamabe no Akahito and Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.
7 Reasons for this are discussed in greater detail in the “Yoshino Poems” section below.
8 Whether the composition and recitation of poetry was their only or even their primary role is
difficult to ascertain, as we know little of either poet’s actual life. The public occasions for
poetry mentioned here are discussed in “Ritual and Lyric,” and subsequent sections.
9 Ogata Koreaki, Manʼyōshū sakka to sono ba: hitomaro kō josetsu (Tōkyō: Ōfūsha, 1976), 106.
Ogata argues for the public nature of Hitomaro’s most “private” poetry about his wife, finding
that it is still highly performative and retains aspects of ritual that we see in his most public
poetry, such as those seen in his “Yoshino Poems” (see “The Yoshino Poems” below).

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Commons also discusses issues of the public/private distinction.10 Finally, however, much of
what we know about these poets is surmise based mainly on their poetry. What little historical
evidence we have indicates that they were both from families of court poets, which is why much
of their work was in a public mode. Conjectures have even been made that they were somehow
related, though this is not verifiable. The term kyūtei kajin itself did not appear until 1917,11 so
in this context it is anachronistic, though the concept is a useful one when thinking of poets such
as Hitomaro and Akahito, since much of their poetry was for the court, in service of the
sovereign.
This is not to say that their poetry expresses nothing in the vein of personal subjectivity
or lyricism. In fact, I will argue that Hitomaro’s earlier steps in the direction of the lyric are
furthered by Akahito, who begins to move away from the ritual nature of poetry in a way we do
not see with Hitomaro. 12 Ogata cites one line of thought which posits that Hitomaro was the
first “poet by profession,” and that poetry after him “became much more free.”13 While the first
part of this statement is debatable, since one must consider what constitutes a “profession,” the
latter part indicates an assumption that is very important to this paper: that Hitomaro’s work
represents a turning point in the Japanese literary tradition. As will be made clear, Hitomaro’s
work includes both public and personal poetry (that is, both poetry that was written for the
emperor and poetry that was written without such public purport), and in comparing examples of
these two styles of work to that of Akahito, it becomes apparent that Hitomaro’s poetry is
10 Anne Commons, Hitomaro: Poet as God (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 23-25.
11 Ogata, Manyōshū sakka to sono ba, 11.
12 The claim that Hitomaro greatly contributed to Japanese lyricism is based on Ian Hideo Levy’s
study, Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1984). This work will be summed up in the “Ritual and Lyric” section below. See note 21 for a
working definition of “lyric.”
13 Ogata, Manyōshū sakka to sono ba, 11.

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steeped in its public, ritual origins, and does not step far outside of this context. By contrast,
Ogata argues that Akahito writes as an “individual,”14 especially in his hanka 反歌 (“repeating
poems”)15, which step far outside the realm of the ritual to which their accompanying chōka 長
歌 (“long poems”) 16 are inextricably bound. Furthermore, I argue that even in Akahito’s public
poetry written on the same topic as Hitomaro, such an individual (and highly lyrical) perspective
can be seen.
As a court poet, Hitomaro’s chōka praising the emperor display highly wrought linguistic
structures and an awe-inspired loftiness that is unparalleled in any poetry preceding or following
him. His contribution to the art of the public chōka is undeniably great, his verse constituting the
zenith of a poetic form that would gradually die out after him. Though Akahito, a generation
later, still employs this form and is greatly influenced by Hitomaro, his style diverges markedly
and moves further from poetry’s ritual origins. His focus shifts from the exaltation of the
emperor to the exaltation of natural imagery. His structural complexity falters and gives way to
a brevity that is indicative of a greater historical shift from a culture whose locus is in oral
performance to one centered on written form. The shortness of his chōka also suggests a shift in
poetic perspective from ritual and collective to literary and individual. This perspective
eventually sunk so deeply into the cultural consciousness of the Japanese aristocracy that it is
expressed thusly in Tsurayuki’s preface to Kokinshū: “Japanese poetry takes as its root the
human heart, and burgeons forth in a myriad of words.”
14 Ogata, Manyōshū sakka to sono ba, 187. This is discussed in the “Yoshino Poems” section.
15 These “repeating poems” accompany chōka, and are identical in form to tanka. A standard
tanka consists of alternating numbers of syllables (or morae—the Japanese “syllable” is slightly
different than an English syllable) per line in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. The term “line” used in the
context of a Japanese poem is incorrect, though there are undoubtedly syntactic units that are
easily dividable. Thus I will be using the Japanese term ku (serving as the singular as well as
plural form) when dealing with poems in the sections that follow.
16 Chōka similarly use an alternating 5-7 pattern, and usually end with a 7-7 couplet.

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The poetry of Hitomaro and Akahito occupied positions on opposite sides of a great
cultural shift. To show this, I will explain the historical context of their work in the following
“Manyōshū Introduction” section. I will then proceed to give a literary context of the scholarship
on early Japanese poetry in “Ritual and Lyricism.” Finally, I will examine the work of these two
poets, first considering poetry in a more personal mode in “The Travel Poetry of Hitomaro and
Akahito,” and later moving on to “The Yoshino Poems” to show how similar yet strikingly
different these poets are in a public ritual context.
Manyōshū Introduction
First, a brief introduction to Manyōshū and its greater historical context is needed. The
sheer scale of the collection is notable, as it is far larger than any of the subsequent imperial
anthologies.17 Manyōshū contains roughly 4,500 poems, and names some 530 poets. These
poems can be categorized in a number of ways, the most basic of which is according to poetic
structure. There are over 4,000 tanka 短歌 (“short poems”), roughly 260 chōka (“long poems”),
only about 60 sedōka 旋頭歌 (“head-repeating poems”), and a single bussokusekika 仏足石歌
(“Buddha’s footstone poem”). Compared to the number of tanka found in the collection, the
other three types are few, but the relative lengths of chōka make them a far greater presence than
the sedōka and the bussokusekika. Another way to categorize these poems is by the
classifications of zōka 雑歌 (“miscellaneous poems”), sōmonka 相聞歌 (“inquiring poems”), and
banka 挽歌 (“coffin-pulling poems”), which the collection itself uses as generic classifiers. For
general convenience we can also categorize the poems based on their thematic concerns or the
17 This and much of what follows is from H. Mack Horton’s book, Traversing the Frontier: The
Man’yoshu Account of a Japanese Mission to Silla in 736 - 737 (Harvard University Asia Center,
2012), 432-3.

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occasion out of which they were born. Thematic concerns common to Manyō poetry (and to
later poetry) are love, longing, travel (these three are often considered together), nature, loss and
lamentation; common occasions are banquets, imperial excursions, partings, and funerals.
I have mentioned that Manyōshū was compiled during a time of great change, and this
requires some discussion before one can understand the nature of both the similarities and
differences to be seen between Hitomaro’s and Akahito’s poetry. Firstly, Manyōshū was
compiled over a great period of time and its poetry covers an even greater period. Its
compilation is thought to have taken place over several decades, undertaken by a number of
different compilers at different times. Furthermore, its earliest named poet (Empress Iwa) died
circa 347 and the last datable poem in the collection is from 759. Though the historical accuracy
of this 400-year period is uncertain, the collection thoroughly represents a solid century and a
half of poetry, from 600 to 750, which is still quite impressive. 18 But more importantly for our
purposes, this was a time of unprecedented (and unrivaled until the Meiji period) social and
political change, part of which Manyōshū itself is indicative. Since the Taika (“great change”)
reforms of the mid-seventh century, continental influence from China and Korea had been a
great impetus for the increasing centralization of imperial power. A Chinese-style capital was
adopted (as opposed to the traditional Japanese capital which would be moved each time an
emperor died), as well as a legal system based on Chinese examples. The advent of a writing
system, which the Japanese did not have before contact with Chinese writing, was a huge part of
this influence. The kokugakusha (“national scholars”) of the Edo period praised Manyōshū as a
pure Japanese vernacular collection, and there is much to be said of the elements of a traditional
Japanese heritage of song and ritual in the collection. However, it must be noted that many of
18Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1961), 80

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the poets, including those whom we consider here, were at least partly influenced by Chinese
poetry, and the mere fact that poetry was written down was naturally the result of contact with
Chinese script.
It is on opposite sides of the line between an oral and a written tradition, then, that we
find our two poets. The first several books of Manyōshū are said to consist of old poems up to
perhaps 720 before a shift to new poems. The first two books were contained old poetry, the
following two were a mixture of old and new as a transition to books five and six, which
contained contemporary poems.19 Thus, Hitomaro is just within the scope of the old poems and
Akahito part of the age of new poems.
Ritual and Lyricism
Up until now I have touched only superficially on the ideas of ritual and lyricism in
Japanese poetry. As stated above, the period I am concerned with here was one of great change
socially, politically, and (most important for our purposes) literarily. Gary L. Ebersole20 and Ian
Hideo Levy21 both treat early Manyō era poetry at great length, and each from different
viewpoints. Ebersole focuses on the ritual nature of early poetry, and goes into great detail about
different types of rituals, the poetry that accompanies them, and their ultimately public nature,
denying claims of a “personal” voice in such poetry. Levy, on the other hand, focuses
particularly on Hitomaro and his contribution to lyricism22 in Japanese poetry. He recognizes the
19 H. Mack Horton, Traversing the Frontier, 452
20 Gary L. Ebersole, Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
21 Ian Hideo Levy, Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984).
22 It is necessary (though perhaps not entirely possible) to clarify what is meant by “lyric.” Earl
Miner, in his book Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature

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origins of Japanese poetry in ritualistic song, but traces the development of a subjective
consciousness that the poet begins to insert between the human and the natural/divine.23 Below I
sum up (with a brevity which could not possibly do justice to the scholars themselves) the work
of Ebersole and Levy before moving on to the poetry of Hitomaro and Akahito.
The origins of Japanese poetry are in primitive ritual song. In fact, the word and
character used to denote a poem is uta 歌 (the ka of chōka, tanka, etc), meaning “song.” Even in
modern Japanese utau 歌う means “to sing,” and though little can be known about early
Japanese song, it is widely accepted that Manyō poetry was meant to be chanted, and it is likely
that the standard 5-7 syllable-alternation pattern originally came from such chants or songs.24
Ebersole sees myths and ritual not as
“timeless and static structures but dynamic agents in the ongoing process of creation &
maintenance of a symbolic world of meaning…they are cultural resources, which can be
appropriated (adopted and adapted) and used for specific individual and / or factional
purposes.”25
This can be easily seen in the context of the great changes discussed above, and specifically in
the case of Emperor Temmu, who took the throne from Ōtomo during the Jinshin war of 672.
Because of his forceful ascension to the throne, Temmu needed a means by which to legitimize
his claim to power. Therefore, he ordered the writing of the Kojiki 古事記 as a means of
constructing a history that legitimizes his own line as proof of his right to the throne. The poetry
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 87, conceives “lyric” as “radical presence and
intensification” as opposed to the “continuance” of “narrative.” The concept of “lyric” may be
seen in a number of ways, and while most people readily recognize certain things as “lyrical,”
explaining what it means is difficult. For the purposes of this paper, I consider lyric to be about
“presence” and “moment.” Rather than narrate events that span time, lyric concerns itself with
the intensification of a moment, and this “moment” is often, if not always, of emotional
significance.
23 I will show shortly that nature and the divine are not separate entities in the Japanese tradition.
24 See notes 16 and 17 above for an explanation of this 5-7 pattern.
25 Ebersole, Ritual Poetry, 6.

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of Hitomaro is part of this larger historiographic project. His poetry in praise of the Emperor and
the imperial line was a practical necessity in light of this recent change in power, and, on a larger
level, the increasing centralization of power begun with the taika reforms. In short, this is the
very proof of ritual poetry as a “cultural resource appropriated and used for specific individual
and / or factional purposes.”
Important to the rituals of early Japan is the concept of kotodama, or the magical efficacy
of words. Though this term is anachronistic,26 it seems apparent from the very nature of
Japanese ritual that there was some sense of kotodama from the earliest times. The following
poem27, an example of the ritual of kunimi or “land-viewing” exemplifies kotodama (MYS I:
2):28
Yamato ni wa
Murayama aredo
Toriyorou
Ame no kaguyama
Noboritachi
Kunimi wo sureba
Kunihara wa
Keburi tachitatsu
Unahara wa
Kamame tachitatsu
Umashi kuni so
Akizushima
Yamato no kuni wa
In Yamato
Are many mountains, but
heavenly Kaguyama,
covered in green,
Is the one I climb.
Looking upon the land,
Over the fields
Smoke rises, rises,
Over the field of the sea
The gulls rise, rise.
A magnificent land it is,
The dragonfly island
Of Yamato.
This poem depicts a standard “land-viewing” ritual, in which the sovereign looks over his land,
invoking the kami (divine spirits) in order to pacify them to assure prosperity in the land. One
way in which someone invokes the kami is through what are called makurakotoba, or “pillow-
26 It is a term created at a later time to describe a certain phenomenon in Japanese culture.
27 Supposedly written by Emperor Yūryaku (thought to have reigned during the 5th century).
28 The version of Manyōshū I use as my source for all poems is Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshū,
(Tōkyō: Shōgakkan, 1971-75). MYS I: 2 refers to Manyōshū Book 1, poem 2. The remaining
translations of poems are my own.

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words,” which were originally believed to have magical properties—they could evoke and pacify
the spirits to whom they refer. In the above poem, the term akizushima, “dragonfly island,” is a
standard makurakotoba referring to Yamato.29 Praise of the land also reflected back onto the
ruler, “serving as an immediate demonstration of his power and position.”30 Also important to
know is the ritual significance of the verb mi-ru31 “to look,” which in such contexts as kunimi has
connotations of possession and knowing,32 and thus the act of looking upon the land is charged
with a greater sense of communion between the land and the viewer. This aspect of mi is
exploited both by Hitomaro and Akahito in their travel poetry, as well as in their poems on the
Yoshino palace, which will be discussed below.
Characteristic of an oral tradition, there is repetition, consonance and assonance, and
parallelism in much of Japanese ritual poetry. This is apparent in the four-ku33 sequence “Over
the fields / Smoke rises, rises, / Over the field of the sea / The gulls rise, rise,” especially in light
of the “k,” “t,” and “a” sounds that dominate this section of the poem in the original Japanese.
Also notable is the fact that the poem is declarative, but not particularly descriptive. This poem
is undoubtedly heavily steeped in a primitive ritual context, something that changes a great deal
in later poetry, and particularly in that of Hitomaro and Akahito.
Ebersole’s study uses Levy’s as a foil and often denies many of its claims to the idea of a
“personal” voice in early Japanese poetry, and in his study can be seen as a corrective of sorts.
However, Levy’s claims to the development of early poetry from ritual to lyric cannot be so
29 Later these makurakotoba would become conventional epithets which merely hark back to old
beliefs such as this, and eventually, like the chōka form itself, they would fall out of use
altogether.
30 Ebersole, Ritual Poetry, 24
31 This is the root and a sentence-ending morpheme which normally accompanies verbs in
dictionary entries. Only the root, mi (as in kunimi), will be referred to from now on.
32 Ibid. 29.
33 See note 15 above for the definition of a ku.

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easily dismissed. 34 From the time of the above kunimi poem to the time Hitomaro and Akahito
were writing, a great deal of change took place, and though we know little of their lives, their
poetry alone testifies to the development of lyricism.
The early Japanese worldview was one in which man, nature and gods were not separate.
Natural objects were gods, the emperor was a god, and humans interacted with them by means of
language and “looking,” as explained above. Many of the dissociations we take for granted now
were not functional concepts in this early worldview. Levy points to a certain construction
common in Manyō poetry as evidence of what he calls “identity” rather than mere “analogy.”35
This construct is no, which often in modern Japanese is changed to no yō ni, meaning “like,” or
“in a way/manner like…” However, no without yō ni suggests immediate identification “without
conscious meditation.” Levy calls this a “magical metaphor”36 in which tenor and vehicle are
not yoked together consciously.
However, Levy recognized that as time went on, a subjective consciousness began to
come between nature and language. Poets began to consciously order nature, making judgments
rather than merely statements. This is evident in the poetry of the Ōmi court of the mid-seventh
century, and especially in the famous “Spring and Autumn” poem by Princess Nukata, in which
the appealing and unappealing aspects of the two seasons are examined and a preference is stated:
Fuyugomori
Haru sarikureba
Nakazarishi
Tori mo kinakinu
Sakazarishi
When from its wintry bondage
Bursts forth the spring,
The birds that had suppressed their song
Fly forth and sing,
The flowers that kept their colors hidden
34 Although the claim denying a “personal” voice in poetry may not necessarily equate to
denying claims to “lyricism,” the emotional aspects of lyricism (and the often highly affective
tone of Hitomaro’s poetry) lead me to see Ebersole’s claim in this light. (See note 24 for a
discussion of the idea of lyric.)
35 Levy, Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism, 130
36 Ibid., 13.

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Hana mo sakeredo
Yama wo shimi
Iritemo torazu
Kusa bukami
Toritemo mizu
Aki no yama no
Ko no ha wo mite wa
Momichi wo ba
Torite so shinofu
Aoki wo ba
Okite so nageku
Soko shi urameshi
Akiyama so are wa
Bud and bloom!
Yet the mountain, thick with verdure,
I cannot enter, cannot take the flowers—
In the bulging grasses
I cannot feel nor see them.
Seeing the leaves
Of the autumn mountain—
I take up and revel in the beauty
Of the yellow flowers
Yet the sad green leaves
That must be left on the branches
Are indeed regrettable.
And after all, the fall must be my choice.
(MYS I: 16)
This poem is indicative of an aesthetic awakening that occurred around this time. Greatly
contrasting with the previous kunimi poem, the “Spring and Autumn” poem revels in description
and aesthetic judgment, rather than mere statement. Poetry was becoming lyrical, which led to
Hitomaro’s great contribution: using such a conscious ordering of nature in the service of the
Emperor. As has been discussed above, having taken power by winning the Jinshin War,
Emperor Temmu needed to legitimize this power, and after the Emperor’s death Hitomaro
dedicated himself at court to the cause of enforcing the legitimacy of the imperial line. He does
so through a conscious ordering of nature and history that does not merely state imperial
greatness, but describes imperial actions as those of a god as a way of “proving” the divinity of
the Emperor.37
The Travel Poetry of Hitomaro and Akahito
So far I have focused on ritual poetry, though at the time Hitomaro and Akahito were
writing there was already an established tradition of personal travel poetry. Like that of later
eras, this poetry conventionally focused on invoking the loneliness of travel. Both poets are well
37 Ibid., 31.

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known for their travel poetry, and each has a sequence of travel poems in Manyōshū, which I
will now discuss.
First, Hitomaro’s poems:
Eight travel poems by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro—
138
2
tamamo karu
minume o sugite
natsukusa no
noshima no saki ni
fune chikazukinu
3
awaji no
noshima no saki no
hamakaze ni
imo ga musubishi
himo fukikaesu
4
aratae no
fujie no ura ni
suzuki tsuru
ama to ka miramu
tabiyuku ware o
5
inabino mo
yukisugikate ni
omoereba
kokoro koishiki
kako no shima miyu.
6
Tomoshibi no
Akashi ōto ni
Iramu hi ya
Kogiwakarenamu
Ie no atari mizu
(Text un-deciphered)
Passing Minume,
Where they cut gem-weed,
Near to the Cape of Noshima
Where the summer grasses grow
My boat has come!
In the breeze of the beach
Of the Cape of Noshima
In Awaji
The sash my wife had tied
Blows back toward her.
In the bay of Fujie,
Of the coarse bark-cloth,
Might they take
This traveler to be
A fisher angling for bass?
While thinking
How hard it is to pass
The field of Inabi
That my heart yearns for,
Kako Island comes into view.
This day I enter
The Strait of Akashi
Of the torches bright
I row away from
The home I can no longer see.
38 This poem is partly un-deciphered, and therefore I do not consider it in my discussion.

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7
Amazakaru
Hina no nagachi yu
Koi kureba
Akashi no to yori
Yamatoshima miyu
8
Kehi no umi no
Niwa yoku arashi
Karikomo no
Midarete izu miyu
Ama no tsuribune
Traveling this long road
Distant as the heavens
My heart fills with longing, when
From the Strait of Akashi
Yamato comes into view.
The Sea of Kehi
Seems a good place for fishing;
Like cut rushes
In disarray come
The fishermen’s boats.
(MYS III: 249-56)
It is uncertain whether Hitomaro originally intended this sequence to be considered as a set, and
it is unlikely that all eight poems describe the same trip. However, poems 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 are
thought to fit together harmoniously as a sequence.39
Regardless of whether they can be considered a sequence, these poems illustrate
important aspects of Hitomaro’s travel poetry, and also suggest some things about the conditions
of travel at this time. The second poem (H2)40 seems to indicate that the speaker is charmed by
the landscape and the commoners’ fishing boats, and is therefore inspired to sing about it. While
there may be some element of such inspiration in this poem, Hitomaro’s personal reasons for
writing cannot be known. For instance, it is important to consider that what may seem to the
reader to be indulgent descriptions of nature (e.g. “where they cut gem-weed” and “where the
summer grasses grow”) are actually makurakotoba, which were conventionally added to place
names and were rooted in rituals for praising and pacifying the gods of the land. Here there may
still be some aspect of pacifying the land, as travel at this time was certainly a much more
dangerous endeavor than it is today. Travelers knew there was a great chance they would never
39 H. Mack Horton, Traversing the Frontier,189
40 I refer to Hitomaro’s poems here as H#, and Akahito’s as A#.

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make it home again. This element of danger is what makes “rowing away from my home I can
no longer see” (H6) so moving. It is known, however, that Hitomaro himself invented a great
number of the makurakotoba he used. Furthermore, they often had a closer semantic relation to
the content of his poems, something particularly visible in his chōka, which will be considered in
the following section. We can see in H7’s “distant as the heavens” that the makurakotoba refers
to the distance of a great journey, which fills the heart with longing for the homeland. And if
one considers the dangers of travel, “of the coarse bark-cloth” (H4) also comes to echo the
difficulties of the journey. By contrast, “The dragon-fly island,” referring to Yamato in the
above kunimi poem, is a mere convention with little relation to the poem’s content per se.
Although it is has spiritual significance to the kunimi ritual, the makurakotoba in this earlier
poem serves no literary function whatsoever.
It was conventional to speak of longing on a journey, both for the homeland Yamato and
for loved ones back home, often a lover or wife. In H3, the speaker remembers his wife back
home tying his sash for him, a common custom for spouses to perform when parting for a
journey. Tying the man’s sash before a journey was a means of enforcing the bonds between
husband and wife, ensuring a safe return.41 How moving, then, to see this sash blown back in the
wind: the only physical tie to the one longed for tugging back in her direction, a physical
manifestation of the speaker’s desire to be with her. To think of the homeland and loved ones
was to think of the familiar in the face of the unknown lands through which one was traveling.
The use of mi in H4-8 may be seen as a means of familiarizing this unknown, because of the
connotations of the verb “to look” discussed above. To look upon something was to know and to
41 Horton, Traversing, 183.

16. Zambrano 16
order the chaos before one’s eyes. In the face of a dangerous journey, to compose poetry on the
scenery was a way to comfort oneself.
A look at Akahito’s poems shows that he comes from a similar tradition:
Six poems by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito—
1
Nawa no ura yu
Sogai ni miyuru
Oki tsu shima
Kogimiru fune wa
Tsuri shi su rashi mo
2
Muko no ura wo
Kogimiru obune
Awashima o
Sogai ni mitsutsu
Tomoshiki obune
3
Ahe no shima
U no sumu iso ni
Yosuru nami
Ma naku kono koro
Yamato shi omōyu
4
Shio hinaba
Tamamo karitsume
Ie no imo ga
Hamazuto kowaba
Nani wo shimesamu
5
Akikaze no
Samuki asake wo
Sanu no oka
Koyuramu kimi ni
Kinu kasamashi wo
6
Misago iru
Isomi ni ouru
Nanoriso no
At the Bay of Nawa
From the rear I see,
At the island in the offing,
The boats rowing about
Seem to be fishing.
At Bay of Muko
A small boat rows about.
From the rear I gaze
Toward Awa Island—
How the little boat pulls at my heart!
On Ahe Island,
On the strand where cormorants nest,
The waves approach,
And without end these past days
How I yearn for Yamato.
If the tide is low
Go out and cut the gemweed;
If my dear at home
Expects a gift from the beach
What will you have to show her?
You must be
Passing Sanu Hill
At daybreak
In the cold autumn wind
Oh that I had lent you a robe!
At Misago
Live the cormorants,
Like the “naming plant”

17. Zambrano 17
Na wa norashite yo
Oya wa shiru to mo
Tell me your name
Even though your parents might find out.
(MYS III: 357-62)
Akahito’s travel set is shorter than Hitomaro’s, although, as with the earlier sequence, it
is not certain whether Akahito himself intended these poems to be seen as a sequences.
Particularly, when we consider how out of place the final poem (A6) seems, asking a maiden her
name rather than yearning for a wife at home, one tends to think that this is not the case. Besides
this minor difference, however, there is a great deal to say about the similarity of Akahito’s and
Hitomaro’s travel poems. Again, miru appears in A1-2, as well as a sense of longing for Yamato
(A3) and one’s wife (A4). Diverging from the others, A5 is from the point of view of the woman
who waits at home, wishing that she could lend a robe to keep her man who is traveling warm.
However, differences clearly arise upon further inspection. Akahito uses no
makurakotoba in these poems, though the function of poetry to order the unknown still seems
apparent. Hitomaro had used makurakotoba for literary purposes, incorporating them
semantically into the content of his poems; but for Akahito, they were relics of an oral tradition
from which he became more and more removed. In his chōka on Yoshino, he still utilized
makurakotoba, but in a public context and as a mere convention, as will be shown in the next
section. Also more apparent in Akahito’s poems is a subjective consciousness that does not
merely observe, but makes conjectures and passes judgment. Compare the following:
H6:
This day I enter
The Strait of Akashi
Of the torches bright
I row away from
the home I can no longer see.
A5:
You must be
Passing Sanu Hill
At daybreak
In the cold autumn wind
Oh that I had lent you a robe!
Though Akahito’s poem takes on the persona of a woman at home who thinks of her husband
who is traveling, it is psychologically more complex than Hitomaro’s. His poem shows a human

18. Zambrano 18
mind making conjecture (“You must be / Passing Sanu Hill”), while Hitomaro’s simply describes
action. Of course, we cannot say that Hitomaro’s poetry is incapable of such imagination; he
considers the thoughts of those on shore, asking “Might they take / This traveler to be / A fisher
angling for bass” (H4) and using the same conjectural construction, ramu, as Akahito does in A5.
This use of conjectural tone is a characteristic found in the poetry of both men, though Akahito
seems to employ it to better effect than Hitomaro. A similar conjectural tone is found in the
word “seems” in H8 (“The Sea of Kehi / Seems a good place for fishing”) and A1 (“The boats
rowing about / Seem to be fishing”), seen in the use of the word rashi in the original texts. Here,
however, there is little difference in the manner in which the two poets utilize this conjectural
construction.
Hitomaro and Akahito both contributed to a tradition of personal travel poetry. For both,
travel constituted a great danger, and an encounter with the unknown. This unknown was faced
with the help of poetry, in which one could attempt to order the unknown by thinking of the
familiar and using makurakotoba to pacify the gods of the land. Both evoke the loneliness of
travel by considering those from whom they are separated, and the homeland which they long for.
Looking at these alone, one might not see a strong difference between the two poets, but a look
at their celebratory Yoshino Poems will illuminate striking differences in style.
The Yoshino Poems
Now I will discuss two chōka / hanka sets that Hitomaro and Akahito wrote on the same
topic and for similar purposes. Hitomaro’s Yoshino poems are some of his most famous, and
they show him at his best in the public celebratory mode:
Poems written by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro when he went to the palace at
Yoshino—

19. Zambrano 19
Yasumishishi
Wa ga ōkimi no
Kikoshiosu
Ame no shita ni
Kuni wa shi mo
Sawa ni aredomo
Yamakawa no
Kiyoki kafuchi to
Mikokoro wo
Yoshino no kuni no
Hana chirafu
Akizu no nohe ni
Miyabashira
Futoshikimaseba
Momoshiki no
Ōmiyahito wa
Fune namete
Asakawa watari
Funagioi
Yūkawa wataru
Kono kawa no
Tayuru koto naku
Kono yama no
Iyatakashirasu
Minasosoku
Taki no miyako wa
Miredo akanu kamo
Hanka
Miredo akanu
Yoshino no kawa no
Tokoname no
Tayuru koto naku
Mata kaerimimu
In peace and tranquility
Our Great Lord
Rules the land.
In all her domain
Many are the lands
But to the pristine pools
Of the mountain streams
That form in the ravines
She gave her heart
And in the fields of Akizu
In the land of Yoshino
Where the blossoms fall
She erected the pillars
Of her palace.
The courtiers of Ōmi capital
Of the myriad stones
Line up their boats
And cross the morning river,
Race in their boats
And cross the evening river.
Like this river
May it last forever,
Like this mountain
May it rise to lofty heights.
Though I gaze upon this palace
By the swift-running current
Never shall I tire of it.
Though I gaze I do not tire
Of Yoshino, and
Like its ceaseless river
Never shall I cease
To return to gaze upon it.
(MYS I: 36-37)
This poem begins with a statement of the grandeur of Empress Jitō and the palace, then describes
the courtiers’ expressions of fealty, and finally ends with an emotional climax, exclaiming the
joy of looking upon the palace. This lyrical climax is then carried into the hanka, in which much
of the same vocabulary is used.

20. Zambrano 20
Hitomaro is known for his “overtures,” the grand openings at the beginning of his chōka
which evoke the loftiness of his subjects. Levy says of this poem, “the panoramic ‘overture’
evokes the vastness of the realm as a plethora of choice, and out of all her lands…the Empress
picks Yoshino for its goodness.” Furthermore, Hitomaro’s task as poet here is to ratify the
decision through aesthetic judgment, something quite similar to Nukada’s “Spring and Autumn
Poem.”42 We see makurakotoba at work, here used in deference to the Emperor (yasumishishi
“In great tranquility”), the field of Akizu (hana chirafu “where the blossoms fall”), and the Ōmi
capital (momoshiki “of the hundred stones”). These serve to affirm the power of the Empress.
But as discussed in the “Ritual and Lyric” section, a mere statement of grandeur is not enough,
and so Hitomaro describes the imperial action of “erecting the pillars of the palace” as “proof” of
the great divine power of the Empress Jitō.
Hitomaro’s chōka moves from a grand demonstration of imperial power to collective
expression of fealty through competition (“the courtiers…line up their boats…race in their
boats”), and finally to a collective emotive expression in the lyrical climax (“though I
gaze…never shall I tire of it”). In the original Japanese, the series of ku from “In all her domain”
to “and cross the evening river” is a single, carefully crafted sentence, which nicely sets off the
briefer lyrical climax, which in itself could stand as a separate tanka. The end of the chōka leads
into the hanka, which maintains, with very similar phrasing, this lyric climax. This is very
typical of a chōka / hanka set by Hitomaro. The hanka utilizes the same diction (“Though I gaze
I do not tire” and “like its ceaseless river” are phrased similarly in the original Japanese) and
quite explicitly keeps within the context of the public ritual that is its original purpose. Akahito
does neither.
42 Levy, Hitomaro, 97.

21. Zambrano 21
We also see here the use of the “magical metaphor” that Levy attributes to Japanese
poetry. In English, the last section of the poem must be rendered as “Like this river / May it last
forever, / Like this mountain / may it rise to lofty heights,” but the original is much simpler,
using no rather than no yō ni (the modern Japanese equivalent of “like”), thus implying a
stronger identification between tenor and vehicle. Rather than being “like” the river, the Palace
at Yoshino is part of the landscape, partaking in the magic of the place, and as the river and as
the mountain (or as some immediate extension of them) it will therefore go on forever and rise to
lofty heights.
All of this is quite plainly for the purpose of extolling Empress Jitō. Hitomaro succeeds
in stating in the grandest of terms the supremacy of the Sovereign and all her land, establishing
with the morning / evening parallelism a sense of endless cycles which is meant to reflect upon
the empress and the Yoshino castle. The poem itself does its job as an extremely persuasive
form of propaganda (in the ideological world it works within), reconciling rituals well
established by his time (pertaining to the gods of the land, in which the “magical metaphor” is
fully active) with a subjective conscientiousness that uses ritual to the poet’s own (or rather, the
sovereign’s) purposes.
In Akahito’s version we see many of the same phrases, and it is evident that his primary
purposes are the same as Hitomaro’s. There is something subtly different, however, about his
approach:
Poems written by Yamabe no Akahito, with hanka—
Yasumishishi
Wa go ōkimi no
Takashirasu
Yoshino no miya wa
Tatanazuku
Aokakigomori
In peace and tranquility
Our Great Lord rules.
From the lofty palace
At Yoshino,
Surrounded by walls of green
Layer upon layer,

22. Zambrano 22
Kawanami no
Kiyoki kafuchi so
Haruhe wa
Hana sakiōri
Aki he ni wa
Kiri tachiwataru
Sono yama no
Iya masumasu ni
Kono kawa no
Tayuru koto naku
Momoshiki no
Ōmiyahito wa
Tsune ni kayowamu
Hanka
Miyoshino no
Kisayama no ma no
Konure ni wa
Kokoda mo sawaku
Tori no koe kamo
Nubatama no
Yo no fukeyukeba
Hisaki ouru
Kiyoki kawara ni
Chidori shiba naku
The water of its river
So pristine.
In the spring uncountable flowers
Blossom, bending the branches,
In the autumn
The mist rises and spreads about.
Like this mountain,
Rising higher and higher,
Like this river,
Without end,
The courtiers of Ōmi
Of the myriad stones,
Will always come here.
In the valley of Kisa Mountain
In Fair Yoshino
From the treetops
Come the voices
Of the singing birds!
When dark falls
Black as jet,
From the pristine river,
Where the red oak grow
Cry a thousand birds!
(MYS VI: 923-25)
Cranston declares confidently that “these are nature poems pure and simple, making no reference
to the conventional awesomeness of the occasion.”43 Though this may be a slight exaggeration,
it cannot be denied that Akahito’s chōka is distinct from Hitomaro’s in style, despite the use of
much of the same vocabulary. Akahito utilizes two of Hitomaro’s three makurakotoba (“In all
tranquility” and “of the myriad stones”), but they seem distinctly conventional here; while
Akahito begins his poem in a fashion similar to Hitomaro’s Yoshino poems, he seems to rush
through the statement of the Emperor’s grandeur, and then finds much more interest in the lush
43 Edwin A. Cranston, trans., A Waka Anthology - Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 309.

23. Zambrano 23
scenery. Indeed Akahito revels in gorgeous description of nature—something not present in
Hitomaro’s chōka. Consider the following excerpts:
Hitomaro:
Many are the lands
But to the pristine pools
Of the mountain streams
That form in the ravines
She gave her heart
And in the fields of Akizu
In the land of Yoshino
Where the blossoms fall
She erected the pillars
Of her palace.
The courtiers of Ōmi capital
Of the myriad stones
Line up their boats
And cross the morning river,
Race in their boats
And cross the evening river.
Like this river
May it last forever,
Like this mountain
May it rise to lofty heights.
Akahito:
At Yoshino,
Surrounded by walls of green
Layer upon layer,
The water of its river
So pristine.
In the spring uncountable flowers
Blossom, bending the branches,
In the autumn
The mist rises and spreads about.
Like this mountain,
Rising higher and higher,
Like this river,
Without end,
The courtiers of Ōmi
Of the myriad stones,
Will always come here.
Hitomaro constructs a single sentence (in the original Japanese) that vaguely refers to blossoms
falling and other natural images. However, the beauty of nature is noted primarily as a means of
extolling the Empress. Furthermore, the action of the Empress and actions of the courtiers,
demonstrating their fealty by racing their boats, are emphasized. Akahito’s treatment, while
using much of the same vocabulary, centers itself on gorgeous descriptions of the scenery, and,
although his poem is shorter, the visual effects are much more efficacious. The river is pristine,
as it is in Hitomaro’s poem, but the palace is even more splendid for it is “surrounded by walls of
green / layer upon layer.” The flowers do not merely blossom, but they do so in such profusion

24. Zambrano 24
as to bend the branches.44 Furthermore, the mists rise, an action of nature rather than man, and
one that is not present in Hitomaro’s poem. In light of its relative brevity, Akahito puts much
more emphasis on natural imagery, clearly reveling in its description for its own sake as well as
for its reflection on the splendor of the palace and the Emperor. (It is important to keep in mind
that his official purpose in writing his poetry is essentially the same as Hitomaro’s.)
Also notable are the different ways in which both poets utilize similar “magical
metaphors” referring to the mountain and the river at the ends of their poems. In Hitomaro’s
poem, it is the palace that, like the river and the mountain, is eternal and reaches to great heights.
In Akahito’s poem, if we look closely at the grammar of the original Japanese, it is the courtiers
who seem to be like the river, ceaselessly coming to Yoshino, and like the mountain rising more
and more in number. Iya masu masu ni comes directly after the ku referring to the mountain, and
so rather than definitively referring to height, it could be translated as “more and more.”
Therefore, instead of depicting the mountains “rising higher and higher” as in my translation
above, it could in fact be referring to the courtiers coming “more and more” or “in greater and
greater number” to the Yoshino palace.
It could be said that this is not a significant difference if one considers that the courtiers’
coming to the palace reflects the magnificence of the palace. However, one must admit that the
focus Akahito’s poem has greatly shifted. In Hitomaro, the focus is on the glory of the Empress,
and the actions of courtiers and natural imagery both serve to emphasize this. Akahito, however,
focuses primarily on natural imagery, and the purpose of glorifying the emperor seems to be
overshadowed, particularly considering the focus on the actions of the courtiers rather than those
of the emperor. Furthermore, Akahito’s first hanka only mentions Yoshino by name, giving
44 The verb ōru means to bend, and specifically refers to tree branches, so the compound verb
sakiōru means something like “to bloom and (cause the branches to) bend.

25. Zambrano 25
most of its attention to the birds crying from the trees, while his second hanka focuses solely on
nature. Neglecting to refer to the location, this second hanka again mentions to the cries of birds,
but also to the pristine river and the red oaks (an image not found in the chōka). Rather than
picking up where the chōka left off and sustaining the lyric moment in the context of the public
ritual, Akahito’s hanka continue their tendencies toward natural imagery until it is all that
remains. This altered chōka/hanka relationship is a miniature representation of the greater
change taking place in Japanese literary history. The lyricism of Akahito’s poetry undoubtedly
lies in nature, as it does for many English language poets, and in a broader historical context, it
seems natural that what was originally an oral poetic tradition steeped in ritual would become
shorter and more lyrical as it began to take on importance as literature when transitioning to a
written medium.
It has been said that Akahito’s poem is highly derivative of Hitomaro’s and therefore of
lesser literary value, but I would argue the opposite. To begin with, though it is difficult to a
reader of Western literature to see Akahito’s overt borrowing as anything other than a lack of
originality, the very purpose of Akahito’s poem is to maintain the glory of the present by paying
homage to the glory of the past. However, as I have shown above, Akahito’s use of vocabulary
is different than Hitomaro’s use of the same vocabulary. His awareness of poetry as a means of
individual artistic expression is, if not greater, more focused than Hitomaro’s. Hitomaro was
himself at a crossroads between ritual and literature: he used the ritual form and expanded its
expressive capability to an incredible extent, but still maintained the ritual integrity of this form
by utilizing this new expressive capacity in praise of the land and the sovereign. This
reconciliation of ritual and lyric constitutes the genius of Hitomaro. Akahito, by contrast, does
not expand the expressive capability of the ritual form. Rather, he distorts it slightly for his own

26. Zambrano 26
literary purposes. We see this in the shift in focus from Emperor to nature; the public chōka is
required to extol the emperor, but such a loving description of nature is Akahito’s own device.
Ogawa phrases this sentiment thusly:
The realm of Akahito’s poetry is celebratory poetry; particularly his hanka (in a society
that traditionally demands the individual to be subsumed by the social) show the germ of
a literature of the individual. Because of this, and furthermore because he establishes
nature as the foundation of his poetry, the quality of his work must be recognized.45
It is such an assessment of Akahito’s poetic prowess that led Sayaka Inoue to write an entire
study on the topic of Akahito as a landscape poet. In considering this poem, she notes that, while
Akahito’s era may well have been quite different than Hitomaro’s, their writing of public poems
in praise of Yoshino and the emperor is a point of commonality. It is therefore quite natural that
Akahito, in accompanying the Emperor to Yoshino and writing a celebratory chōka just as the
great Hitomaro before him, would borrow similar vocabulary and echo that figure.46
Conclusion
I have explained above the ways in which Akahito displays an individual subjective
approach, rather than the social, collective one of Hitomaro. Hitomaro took to the task of
glorifying the line of Emperor Temmu (who was in need of legitimation) with incredible zeal
and undeniable skill. He brought this public mode of poetry to its zenith almost single-handedly.
Akahito, therefore, had little place else to go, and his chōka in many ways are derived from the
diction of Hitomaro’s. However, Ogata referred to his hanka particularly, and his natural
imagery, as sources of a “germ of a literature of the individual,” and I have now shown the ways
in which Akahito’s focus on nature in even his public chōka shows such a germ. Considering
45 Ogawa, Manyōshū sakka to sono ba, 187.
46 Sayaka Inoue, Yamabe no akahito to jokei (Tōkyō: Shintensha, 2010), 199.

27. Zambrano 27
this distortion of the public mode, it does not seem so strange that the chōka form, which was so
heavily (perhaps inextricably) associated with the public ritual form,47 soon died out, giving way
to the far more lyrical tanka that dominate the first imperial anthology of poetry, the Kokinshū.
If we consider the way in which Akahito’s chōka focuses so much more on lyric elements,
leading to hanka which ignore ritual entirely, the next step is naturally that the chōka be omitted
and the tanka take center stage. All of this is indicative of the greater historical fact that poetry
was transitioning from an oral and ritual form (characterized by verbosity and social
collectivism) to a more literary one (characterized by brevity, lyricism, and individuality).48
Beginning with Akahito’s “germ of a literature of the individual,” Japanese literature developed
until Ki no Tsurayuki was compelled to proclaim that “Japanese poetry takes as its root the
human heart, and burgeons forth in a myriad of words.”
47 There are a great number of chōka by both Hitomaro and Akahito on supposedly “private”
topics (often concerning their beloved wife back home), which strangely use makurakotoba and
other diction that is of a “public” nature. It is based on this that I claim the (perhaps inextricable)
association of the chōka with a public mode.
48 This claim to “individuality” must be taken with a grain of salt of course. In later poetry,
though it was increasingly acceptable to express one’s emotions, the expression of emotion itself
was quite conventionalized. But what art is without conventions?

28. Zambrano 28
Selected Bibliography
Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner. Japanese Court Poetry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1961.
Commons, Anne. Hitomaro: Poet as God. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009.
Cranston, Edwin A, trans. A Waka Anthology - Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Ebersole, Gary L. “The Religio-Aesthetic Complex in Manyōshū Poetry with Special Reference
to Hitomaro’s ‘Aki No No’ Sequence.” History of Religions 23, no. 1 (Aug): 18–36, 1983.
———. Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1989.
Horton, H. Mack. Traversing the Frontier: The Man’yoshu Account of a Japanese Mission to
Silla in 736 - 737. Harvard University Asia Center, 2012.
Inoue, Sayaka 井上さやか. Yamabe no akahito to jokei 山部赤人と叙景. Tōkyō: Shintensha,
2010.
Levy, Ian Hideo. Hitomaro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984.
Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry: With Tosa Nikki and Shinsen
Waka. Trans. Helen McCullough. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985.
Miner, Earl. Comparative Poetics: An Intercultural Essay on Theories of Literature. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
———. An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1968.
Manʼyōshū. Ed. Kojima Noriyuki小島憲之, Kinoshita Masatoshi 木下正俊, and Haruyuki
Tōno 東野治之. Shinpen nihon koten bungaku zenshū. vol. 6-7. Tōkyō: Shōgakkan, 1994.
Ogata, Koreaki 緒方惟章. Manʼyōshū sakka to sono ba: hitomaro kō josetsu 萬葉集作歌とその
場 : 人麻呂攷序說. Tōkyō: Ōfūsha, 1976.