‘The highway to Shinano’ from the Man’yōshū (c. 759)
The highway to Shinano Is but newly opened. Mind you do not trip Over the stumps of trees. Wear your sandals, husband. Translation by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite. The Man’yōshū (‘Collection of Myriad Leaves’) is the oldest of Japan’s poetry anthologies. Divided into twenty books, it gathers poems from approximately 456, with the bulk of the collection from the period between 600…