Customer Reviews

Love Songs from the Man'yoshu: Selections from a Japanese Classic (Kodansha's Illustrated Japanese Classics)

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The Man'yoshu ("The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves") is Japan's greatest collection of poetry. Assembled during the golden age of the Nara period, it is a massive, multi-volumed multi-authored anthology, collecting poems praising the Imperial family, retelling old folktales and legends, revealing the sublime glory of nature, and the evocative power of love.

"Love Songs from the Man'Yoshu" combs though this massive text and distills out 35 gems of fire, passion, longing and sexuality, emotions that still drive the human race some 1,200 years later. The edition is bilingual, in both English and Japanese, with flawless translations by Ian Levy. Each poem is paired with a striking Kiri-e (Cut paper) piece by the late master Myata Masayuki, and with commentary by Ooka Makoto setting the stage and filling in the background of the period.

The Nara period was a time of some covert sexual freedom, where men and women did not live together, even married couples, and women awaited visitors who came cloaked in the cover of darkness, arriving at dusk and leaving at the first light of dawn. These visits were prefaced by a subtle dance of seduction, played out over coded love poems exchanged and answered by refined courtiers. Another man's wife was considered the most exotic and seductive of women, and the games of love had many enthusiastic players.

Whose words are these,

spoken to the wife of another?

Whose words are these,

that bade me untie

the sash of my robe?

Other flavor's of lover are on display as well, from a young girl who can not bear to utter the name of her secret love, for fear her emotions would be revealed to him, to a man waxing romantically on the cherry blossoms he is viewing, and how more complete it would be if his companion where here to view them together. All of the poems are intensely private and emotional, filled with the kind of depth that only a society as culturally rigid and bound as Japan's could engender.

Aside from these beautiful and ancient poems, Miyata Masayuki's artwork is enough reason alone to buy "Love Songs from the Man'Yoshu." Erotically charged scenes of beautiful women in various states of dress and undress are presented with both a spry whimsy and a fierce, fiery passion. Using his art form of cut paper, Masayuki makes the lines of the trees and the curves of the women's bodies flow together flawlessly, contrasting the bright colors of the kimono's and seasonal flowers with the stark white of their skin and deep black of their hair.

I shall not take a brush

to this hair that lies

dishevelled in the morning,

for it retains the touch

of my dear lord's arms that pillowed me.

This is an intensely erotic selection of some of the most passionate poems of the Manyoshu, coupled with the most beautiful drawings. Best of all, you have the original Japanese, the romanji and the English together with notes of explanation. What better way to work up your own translations?

`Love Songs from the Man'yôshû' is simply the most beautiful love poetry that I have ever read. Written over 1200 years ago these poems written by men and women of Nara Japan, still retain a freshness and relevance today. They express universal emotions (save their nonchalant attitude to adultery which is rare) with the aid of useful commentary by Ôoka Makoto can be understood by any reader. The gorgeous illustrations of Miyata Masayuki only add to the poems. Although I am not studying Japanese I like the look of having Japanese characters on one side, this also makes this book quite useful for anyone studying the Japanese language.

This book would also make the perfect gift for Valentine's Day; I recommend `Love Songs from Man'yôshû' for all romantically inclined people.