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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'yoshu, 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.
| List of Maps and Tables | p. xi |
| Conventions | p. xii |
| Introduction: Charting the Course | p. 1 |
| Translation | p. 10 |
| Traversing the Frontier | p. 45 |
| Lay of the Land | p. 45 |
| Official History: Shoku Nihongi | p. 48 |
| The Structure of the Sequence | p. 49 |
| Internal Contexts | p. 54 |
| The Parting Poems | p. 54 |
| Dramatic Development | p. 66 |
| The Autumn Reunion as Fictional Construct | p. 76 |
| The Lexicon of Longing | p. 79 |
| Association and Progression | p. 102 |
| Homeward Bound | p. 111 |
| Historical Contexts | p. 117 |
| In Search o f "Masurawo" Spirit | p. 117 |
| Silla and Japan | p. 122 |
| Lost at Sea | p. 145 |
| Deaths in Uncountable Numbers | p. 150 |
| Literary Contexts | p. 153 |
| The Frontier between History and Art | p. 153 |
| Style and Stereotypicity | p. 154 |
| Nascent Intertextuality: The Old Poems by Hitomaro and Others | p. 161 |
| Travel beyond the Bounds of the Sequence | p. 198 |
| Poetry by Envoys to the Tang | p. 234 |
| Border Guard Verses | p. 245 |
| The Envoys and the Gods | p. 266 |
| Chinese Models | p. 302 |
| Communion and Convention: The Poetic Site | p. 329 |
| Authorial and Editorial Contexts | p. 359 |
| Prologue: Tabito's Retainers, Shika Seafolk, and Kumagori | p. 359 |
| A Journey of the Imagination | p. 375 |
| Poets, Compiler, Editor | p. 385 |
| Journey's End | p. 414 |
| Appendixes | |
| The Content and Structure of the Account of a Japanese Mission to Silla | p. 417 |
| Man'yoshu in Overview | p. 432 |
| Reference Matter | |
| Notes | p. 469 |
| Works Cited | p. 557 |
| Index to Poems | p. 593 |
| General Index | p. 611 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780674053304
ISBN-10: 0674053303
Series: Harvard East Asian Monographs
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 550
Published: 31st December 2012
Dimensions (cm): 23.5 x 15.6
x 1.5
Weight (kg): 0.666
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