Japan has provided the world with some of the greatest novelists, poets and essayists ever known. Starting with the writings of the Nara period during the mid-eighth century and continuing until today, great writers have blossomed from the islands of this small eastern nation. Although influenced heavily by China, where the Japanese are believed to have migrated from approximately 3000 years ago, Japanese writers have come to develop a truly unique style (Albert 504). Otomo Yakamochi is credited with compiling the finest collection of poems ever in Japan. The Manyoshu, which was composed in the late eighth century, is translated into English as Collection of 10,000 Leaves. The most famous poet who contributed to this work was Kakinomoto Hitomaro (Japan 793). According to the Encyclopedia Americana, “his finest elegies have a sweep and power that few if any later poets equaled” (794). He used a longer form of poetry that was rare in his time; yet he did it successfully (Japan 794). Hitmaro was peerless when straying from the crowd could be tremendously harmful and while doing so gained eternal prestige.Approximately 990 another writer came onto the scene in Japan. This time it was a female named Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book, the work that made her famous, was not even meant to be public. In actuality it was her private journal. This work is so great because of its vivid sketches and the image it presents of Shonagon’s personality (Albert 590). In this writing she expresses her longing for privacy, and she even goes into the details of how she hides the journal. Ironically it was found and published (Albert 579).Kawabata Yasunari is considered most successful short story writer to the Japanese. Even though he wrote novels, including Snow Country and A Thousand Cranes, he considered them to merely be series’ of short stories (Kato 244). A Japanese writer had never won the Nobel Prize for Literatu...
