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

Harvard East Asian Monographs #330

by H. Mack Horton

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 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.

648 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2012

Reviews

[Ocean G]

I can't really rate this, since most of it was over my head. The actual travel account is from page 10 to 44 (with the Kanji and Japanese sounds transliterated as well). The rest is pretty much commentary.

The first part is more or less an introduction, then the travelogue itself. Then "Traversing the Frontier", or basically a geographical tracing of where they (most likely) traveled. The sections after this (Internal contexts, Historical contexts, Literary contexts, Authorial and Editorial contexts) were pretty much over my head. I scanned some of the Historical contexts section, but even then I didn't absorb much.

As for the travelogue itself, it isn't really a travelogue, but more a collection of poems and sentiments, most about how much they miss home and miss their wives. This was a bit disappointing, although I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy reading it.

Still, obviously much work was done on this book, which from what I can tell is exhaustive and excellent, so hopefully someone more knowledgable than I am on the subject can give it a more thorough review.