Heian Japan’s *Manyōshū* reveals how feudalism and Buddhist patronage shaped poetry as both resistance and statecraft
Original framing: “A millennium ago, (almost) everyone in Japan was a poet” — The Japan Times
Women poets like *Yamanoue Okura* and *Otomo Yakamochi* were central to the *Manyōshū*, yet their contributions were later attributed to male pseudonyms or dismissed as ‘minor’ works. Peasant poets, who likely composed *uta* in regional dialects, are entirely absent from the canon, while the anthology’s Buddhist scribes—often from lower castes—were credited with transcribing poems they may have altered to fit orthodox themes. Modern feminist scholars like *Miyoshi Masao* have argued that the *Manyōshū*’s ‘feminine’ aesthetic was a tool to contain women’s political agency, framing their poetry as apolitical despite its subversive undertones.
The *Manyōshū* is not a window into a universal Japanese soul but a product of feudal power—compiled by Buddhist scribes and aristocratic patrons to legitimize centralized rule, while systematically erasing Indigenous, peasant, and women’s voices.
Its survival as a cultural icon today reveals how colonial and nationalist narratives repurpose pre-modern texts to obscure historical hierarchies, much like how the *Bhagavad Gita* was co-opted by Hindu nationalists or the *Iliad* by Greek fascists. The anthology’s trickster poems (*akari-uta*) and the labor of its marginalized contributors offer a corrective lens: poetry was never just art but a site of struggle, where subversion and statecraft collided. To reclaim this history, we must treat the *Manyōshū* not as a timeless treasure but as a contested archive—one that demands we ask: *Whose voices were left out, and why does it matter today?