Traversing the Frontier: The Man'yoshu Account of a Japanese Mission to Silla in 736-737

by H. Mack Horton

Overview

In the sixth month of 736, a Japanese diplomatic mission set out for the kingdom of Silla, on the Korean peninsula. The envoys undertook the mission during a period of strained relations with the country of their destination, met with adverse winds and disease during the voyage, and returned empty-handed. The futile journey proved fruitful in one respect: its literary representation—a collection of 145 Japanese poems and their Sino-Japanese (kanbun) headnotes and footnotes—made its way into the eighth-century poetic anthology Man’yōshū, becoming the longest poetic sequence in the collection and one of the earliest Japanese literary travel narratives.

Featuring deft translations and incisive analysis, this study investigates the poetics and thematics of the Silla sequence, uncovering what is known about the actual historical event and the assumptions and concerns that guided its re-creation as a literary artifact and then helped shape its reception among contemporary readers. H. Mack Horton provides an opportunity for literary archaeology of some of the most exciting dialectics in early Japanese literary history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674053304
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2012
Series:	Harvard East Asian Monographs , #330
Pages:	648
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

H. Mack Horton is Professor of Premodern Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Tables xi

Conventions xii

Introduction: Charting the Course 1

Translation 10

1 Traversing the Frontier 45

Lay of the Land 45

Official History: Shoku Nihongi 48

The Structure of the Sequence 49

2 Internal Contexts 54

The Parting Poems 54

Dramatic Development 66

The Autumn Reunion as Fictional Construct 76

The Lexicon of Longing 79

Association and Progression 102

Homeward Bound 111

3 Historical Contexts 117

In Search o f "Masurawo" Spirit 117

Silla and Japan 122

Lost at Sea 145

Deaths in Uncountable Numbers 150

4 Literary Contexts 153

The Frontier between History and Art 153

Style and Stereotypicity 154

Nascent Intertextuality: The Old Poems by Hitomaro and Others 161

Travel beyond the Bounds of the Sequence 198

Poetry by Envoys to the Tang 234

Border Guard Verses 245

The Envoys and the Gods 266

Chinese Models 302

Communion and Convention: The Poetic Site 329

5 Authorial and Editorial Contexts 359

Prologue: Tabito's Retainers, Shika Seafolk, and Kumagori 359

A Journey of the Imagination 375

Poets, Compiler, Editor 385

Journey's End 414

Appendixes

A The Content and Structure of the Account of a Japanese Mission to Silla 417

B Man'yoshu in Overview 432

Reference Matter

Notes 469

Works Cited 557

Index to Poems 593

General Index 611

Editorial Reviews

The first literary study of the Man’yōshū published in a generation, Traversing the Frontier provides a smooth and faithful translation of the 145 poems in the Silla sequence. Through erudite and approachable commentaries on this miniature anthology, and valuable chapters on its literary and historical contexts, this fine study serves as an excellent introduction to the entire Man’yōshū, and to early Japanese poetry in general.

David B. Lurie

Traversing the Frontier makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on eighth-century Japan and early Japanese literary history. This extraordinarily detailed study introduces valuable lenses through which scholars and students can examine other aspects of early Japanese culture and literature.

Laurel Rasplica Rodd

Mack Horton’s virtuosic translation and thorough analysis of the Silla sequence demonstrate a connoisseur’s understanding of subtle literary aesthetics and a historian’s mastery of the broader social contexts in which Man’yōshū poetry was composed, performed, and preserved.

Jason P. Webb