Manoshu Book 1 ─ A New English Translation Containing the Original Text, Kana Transliteration, Romanization, Glossing and Commentary

Book one of the Man’yoshu (‘Anthology of Myriad Leaves’) continues Alexander Vovin’s new English translation of this 20-volume work originally compiled between c.759 and 785 AD. It is the earliest Japanese poetic anthology in existence and thus the most important compendium of Japanese culture of the Asuka and Nara periods. Book one is the seventh volume of the Man’yoshu to be published to date (following books fifteen (2009), five (2011), fourteen (2012), twenty (2013), seventeen (2016) and eighteen (2016). Each volume of the Vovin translation contains the original text, kana transliteration, romanization, glossing and commentary.

Alexander Vovin, Directeur d'etudes en linguistique du Japon et de l'Asie du Nord-Est, EHESS/CRLAO, Paris, has published extensively on Japanese, Ainu, Korean and Tungusic, as well as other languages of East and Inner Asia. Among his major works are A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu (Brill, 1993), A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and Nihongo Keitoron no Genzai/Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language (co-edited with Osada Toshiki, the International Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, 2003), A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese, parts 1 and 2 (Global Oriental 2005 and 2009), and KOREO-JAPONICA: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin (University of Hawaii Press, 2010). Alexander Vovin is Laureate of the 2015 award of the Japanese National Institute for Humanities (NIHU), Elected member of the Academia Europaea (2015), in WHO IS WHO IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (from 2011) and is featured in English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian Wikipedias.