The anthology, Manyoshu, , is a compilation of 4,516 poems written around 759

A.D.
The significance of the Manyoshu is that it is the first collection of poems of Japan
and also the first attempt to use Chinese characters to phonetically represent
Japanese language.
Manysh ,"The Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves", contains around 4,500 poems
written around 759 A.D., and names 530 poets . There are over 4,000 tanka (
tahn-kah short poems), 260 chka ( choh-kah long poems), 60 sedka (
seh-doh-kah head-repeating poems), and a single bussokusekika (
adsfkjdajfkal;d; Buddhas footstone poem). Of these 4 types of poems, the tanka
is the most common and comes to be the predominant poetic form in Japanese
poetry later. The other types are rarely seen in later centuries.
The majority of the poems in the Manyoshu follow one of two styles...the choka or
long poem usually had alternate lines of 5 and 7 sounds followed by a line of 7
sounds - example:
shirogane mo
kuganemo tama mo
nani sen ni
masareru takara
koni shikame yamo
neither silver
nor gold, precious stones
any value at all
compared
treasure of children
and the tanka a short poem of 35 sounds in 5 lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 sounds,
example:
thoughts of her
unendurable, I go there . . .
the winter night's
river-wind is chill
and plovers are crying
--Ki no Tsurayuki (approx 900 A.D.).
Japanese poetry was different from European poetry of the same time frame in a
few ways.

First of all in length. There were no epic poems like, The Iliad, for instance.
Also political and philosophical poems were absent.
Dramatic poems were not in existence in Japanese literature until the 14th
Century.
Japanese poems were lyrical, emotional and what we would call epigrams.
An epigram is a short poem that often ends with an unexpected twist or witty
statement.
The Japanese poems spoke of love, homesickness, the beauties of nature, the
dead and lamentations over life's uncertainties.
Japanese verse had no rhyme and vowels were all the same length.

What distinguished it from prose is that it followed a pattern in terms of the

principle sounds of the language