Otomo no Yakamochi

Otomo no Yakamochi was a Nara-period nobleman and statesman, a member of the powerful Otomo clan, who served as provincial governor in Etchu and elsewhere and died in 785. He is the most prolific poet of the Man'yoshu, with more than four hundred poems, and is generally credited with its final compilation; the last poem in the anthology, dated 759, is his. He is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry.

The eleven poems here are taken from Clara A. Walsh's The Master-Singers of Japan (1910), where he appears as Yakamochi, Ohotomo no Sukune Yakamochi. They are free English verse renderings of his long poems (choka) and short poems (tanka), with Walsh's own dates and titles; her versions are not literal.