This is the first English language edition of 76 poems from the “Manyoshu”, the earliest surviving collection of Japanese poetry, which was compiled in the mid-eighth century by the poet Otomo no Yakamochi. There are biographical notes on each of the poets included. The Manyoshu contained over 4,000 poems from 250-759 AD. It was intended to demonstrate that the poets of the Yamato ascendancy could match, and even out-match, the Chinese poetry that was then regarded as the model of literary perfection. In Graeme Wilson’s vivid English, seventy-six of these remarkable poems by warrior princes and Imperial princesses, priests ad provincial governors, courtiers and lovers, frontier-guards and conscript soldiers, live again in all their beauty and vitality.