A millennium ago, (almost) everyone in Japan was a poet
Pages from the “Manyoshu” from 1184, owned by the Tokyo National Museum (ink on decorated paper, one page size 25x17 centimeters) | VIA WIKIMEDIA
Oct 20, 2026
Listen:
“Your basket, with your pretty basket, / your trowel, with your pretty trowel, / maiden picking herbs on this hillside, / I would ask you: Where is your home? / Will you not tell me your name?”
Isn’t that beautiful? Not quite comprehensible, perhaps, but that’s as it should be: It is a poem of fifth-century Japan. People were different, thoughts and feelings were different, everything was different. And yet not.
In a time of both misinformation and too much information,
quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.