Man'yoshu ─ A New English Translation Containing the Original Text, Kana Transliteration, Romanization, Glossing and Commentary

Vovin presents the most recent volume in his new English translation of the earliest and largest Japanese poetry anthology, compiled between 759 and 785 AD, with detailed commentaries. The translation is an academic one rather than a literary one, he says, and he sacrifices poetic-sounding English for literal translations in so far as they do not violate English usage. This is because the Man'yoshu is not only a work of literature, it is the most important compendium of Japanese culture during the Asuka period (592-710 AD) and most of the Nara period (710-784 AD). The volumes are not appearing in numerical order; this is the sixth. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Alexander Vovin, Directeur d'etudes en linguistique du Japon et de l'Asie du Nord-Est, EHESS/CRLAO, Paris, has published extensively on Japanese, Ainu, Korean and Tungusic, as well as other languages of East and Inner Asia. Among his major works are A Reconstruction of Proto-Ainu (Brill, 1993), A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and Nihongo Keitoron no Genzai/Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese Language (co-edited with Osada Toshiki, the International Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, 2003), A Descriptive and Comparative Grammar of Western Old Japanese, parts 1 and 2 (Global Oriental 2005 and 2009), and KOREO-JAPONICA: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin (University of Hawaii Press, 2010). Alexander Vovin is Laureate of the 2015 award of the Japanese National Institute for Humanities (NIHU), Elected member of the Academia Europaea (2015), in WHO IS WHO IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (from 2011) and is featured in English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian Wikipedias.