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Man'yoshu (Man'yoshū) or Anthology of a Myriad Leaves is the first great
Japanese poetry anthology, compiled by the poet Otomo no Yakamochi around
759.
The most important poetic forms in the anthology are the choka (long
poem), consisting of alternate lines of five and seven syllables, followed
by a final line of seven syllables; and the tanka (short poem), consisting
of 31 syllables, written in five lines according to a pattern of five,
seven, five, seven, and seven syllables.
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro is one of the poets featured in the work.
The anthology is written using a syllabary called man'yo-gana, in which
Chinese characters serve as phonetic symbols of syllables rather than of
words.
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