Man’yō Plants | Waka Poetry

The Man’yōshū refers to approximately 160 types of plants in approximately 1500 of its poems. Some plants – for example, the plum (ume), cherry (sakura) or pine (matsu) – are used many times, either as the topics of poems, or as sources of image and allusion; others appear only in single poems. While in many cases there is a broad consensus about which plant the Man’yō name refers to, for others, there are a number of competing theories, with the result that a single Man’yō reference could be identified as different plants by different sources. This means, of course, that one can find different plants identified with the same Man’yō name in different Man’yō gardens, depending upon the sources which the individual garden has relied to make its selections.

Below is a reasonably comprehensive list of Man’yō plants, in modern transcription, produced by consulting the lists of plants available from the various gardens, with further reference to:

Nakane, Mieko (2001) Man’yō shokubutsuka no kanshō (‘An Appreciation of the Plant Poems of the Man’yōshū‘).
Kishita, Takeshi (2010) Man’yō shokubutsu bunkashi (‘An Account of Man’yō Plants’).

The entries for each plant are still in progress – all have the plant’s Man’yō name, transcribed as it would have been pronounced in Man’yō times; the characters used to write it; the modern Japanese name(s) of the plant; its common English name(s) where one exists; its scientific name; its seasonal association (where there is one); and the number of poems in the anthology in which the plant is mentioned – for those poems for which a translation is available on WakaPoetry.net, there are also links to these. For some plants there are also brief indications of its natural distribution in Japan, or original origin. Where there are multiple theories of which plant the Man’yōshū is referring to, the alternative possibilities are also listed, although the first given should be understood as the most widely accepted.

The remainder of the entries only have a placeholder at present, but will be completed as soon as possible.

Akane
Akinoka
Asa
Asagao

Azasa
Ashi
Ashitsuki
Ashibi

Ajisai
Azusa
Awa
Ōchi

Aoi
Abetachibana
Ayamegusa
Aona

Ume
Umo