Japanese Love Poems

The hundreds of poets that contributed to the most significant early anthology of Japanese poetry, the "Manyoshu, are virtually silent on the topics of war and the martial spirit. Explorations of the many forms of love, however, appear consistently throughout the collection's more than 4,000 poems. [...]
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The hundreds of poets that contributed to the most significant early anthology of Japanese poetry, the "Manyoshu, are virtually silent on the topics of war and the martial spirit. Explorations of the many forms of love, however, appear consistently throughout the collection's more than 4,000 poems. Excerpted here are paeans to conjugal love, celebrations of intense filial piety and love between brothers and sisters, descriptions of the fierce competition for spouses, and tributes to forbidden attachments. The Manyo poets write in a primitively vital and sensuous language and are unafraid to experiment with form.