The Man'yōshū Ur-Selection and the Shift to Chronological Historiography.

The compilation of the substantial anthology Man'yōshū took place over a long period. The present study concerns the initial selection of poems, which was supplemented and extended in several stages. While the existence of such an ur-selection itself is unques-tioned, how many and which poems it comprised remains unclear. Focus is on the first book of the extant anthology, based on a hypothesis that the ur-selection consisted of the first fifty-three poems. A different model is also discussed, and it is shown that not all possibilities have been exhausted by previous research to identify the ur-selection more precisely. In the model presented here, the original selection consists of fifty poems, which form a coherent, consistent anthology. It is also shown that the compilation of the ur-selection was subject to a different episteme or intention which ties it more closely to the Kojiki. The ur-selection followed a rather spatially based order that had to give way to a temporal order in a shift to chronological historiography. For the understanding of the ur-selection, it is therefore necessary to re-read it from the perspective of an older, different worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]