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Template:Japanese name Yamanoue no Okura (山上 憶良, Yamanoue no Okura, 660–733) was a Japanese poet, the best known for his poems of children and commoners. He was a member of Japanese missions to Tang China. He was also a contributor to the Man'yōshū and his writing had a strong Chinese influence. Unlike other Japanese poetry of the time, his work emphasizes a morality based on the teachings of Confucius. He was perhaps born in 660 because his fifth volume, published in 733, has a sentence saying "in this year, I am 74".

Yamanoue no Okura accompanied a mission to Tang China in 701 and returned to Japan in 707. In the years following his return he served in various official capacities. He served as the Governor of Hōki (near present day Tottori), tutor to the crown prince, and Governor of Chikuzen. While there, he associated with Otomo no Tabito, who was serving in Dazaifu.

Origins

Many modern scholars, including president of the Nara Prefectural Complex of Man'yo Culture Susumu Nakanishi, consider Okura to have likely been of Korean descent. He is believed to have been the son of one of the refugees from the Korean kingdom of Baekje (called Kudara in Japanese) who fled the Korean peninsula for Baekje's close ally Japan after their kingdom was invaded by Tang China.

In the 1970s and 80s, this theory was attacked by some historians based on Okura's kabane "Omi" not generally being given to foreigners, and the Shinsen Shojiroku (Japanese Misplaced Pages) listing the Yamanoue clan as being of imperial descent..

Notes

1. Keene, 132
2. Keene, Donald 1993. Seeds in the Heart page 160, note 9,
3. 日本古典文学研究史大事典.
4. 日本古典文学大辞典

Further reading

• Nakanishi Susumu (1973), Yamanoue no Okura, Kawade Shobo Shinsha

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