The Ten Thousand Leaves

Poems from the Man'yoshu

Ian Hideo Levy

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English

NYRB Poets
12 August 2025

History of Art & Design Styles; Poetry

A sweeping anthology of classical Japanese poetry, including poems about love, war, trees and mountains, everyday life, and so much more. One of the most important works of Japanese literature of all time, available here in an accessible translation.

A sweeping anthology of classical Japanese poetry, including poems about love, war, trees and mountains, everyday life, and so much more. One of the most important works of Japanese literature of all time, available here in an accessible translation.

Winner of the 1982 American Book Award for Translation

The first and greatest anthology of classical Japanese poetry, the Man'yoshu is considered, along with The Tale of Genji, to be one the most important works in classical Japanese literature. In Japanese the title means ""Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves,"" the ""anthology of anthologies"" from the first flowering of an artistic and literary sensibility in Japan during the Asuka and Nara periods-the seventh and eighth centuries. Exhibiting an astonishing variety, the poems range from the grand animistic rhetoric of the laments for the imperial family to the stark and curiously modern ""Dialogue of the Destitute,"" from the elegant banquet verse of aristocrats to the ""poems of the frontier guardsmen."" As its name suggests, The Ten Thousand Leaves represents a culling of what was considered the best from an epoch of cultural and literary innovation perhaps unparalleled in Japanese history.

This edition incorporates books one through five of the twenty that make up the original Man'yoshu and includes an introduction by the translator, Ian Hideo Levy, that provides a general historical and cultural background for this monumental work.

By: Ian Hideo Levy
Imprint: NYRB Poets
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 114mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781681378909
ISBN 10: 1681378906
Pages: 432
Publication Date: 12 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ian Hideo Levy is an American-born Japanese-language author who became the first foreigner to win the Noma Literary Prize in 1992. He was awarded the 2007 Japan Foundation Special Prize for introducing Japanese literature to a foreign audience and the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2017. He lives in Japan.