Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 508, The Culture of Classical Japan, part two.

When we talk about classical Japan, in other words the Heian period named after the Imperial

Capital and running from 749 to 1185 CE, really the first thing that tends to come to

mind is literature.

The classical canon of Japanese literature does, of course, run a bit further back than the

Heon era,

the poems of the Man Yoshu, and the mytho histories like the Kojiki predate it, but the works of

Hean Japan are generally more widely read and better regarded today.

In many ways, that is because they are more accessible. As we discussed last week, the Japanese language had begun to evolve into something that's

at least recognizably related to modern Japanese by the early Hayan period.

If you want to read the Man Yoshu, you'll have to read it in translation even if you are

a native Japanese speaker.

The Maniogana hybrid writing system is just impenetrable unless you study it academically,

...