Japanese poetry takes the human heart as its seed, which sprouts and grows into countless leaves of words. People living in this world are touched by so many things that they express what they feel in their hearts through what they see and hear. When we hear the warbler singing among the blossoms or the frog that lives in the water, which of all living things does not sing?
It is poetry that moves heaven and earth without effort, stirs the unseen gods and spirits, brings harmony between men and women, and softens the hearts of fierce warriors.
Poetry was born when heaven and earth first opened. But as handed down in the world, in heaven it began with Shitateru-hime, and on earth with Susanoo. In the age of the gods the number of syllables was not fixed; the poems were plain and their words hard to understand. In the age of humans, from the time of Susanoo, poems came to be composed in thirty-one syllables.
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On the eighteenth day of the fourth month of Engi 5, Emperor Daigo commanded Ki no Tomonori, Ki no Tsurayuki, Oshikochi no Mitsune and Mibu no Tadamine to present old poems not included in the Man'yoshu, together with their own. They gathered them into sections: from spring, when plum sprigs are worn in the hair, through summer, when the cuckoo is heard, autumn, when red leaves are broken off, and winter, when snow is viewed; poems of congratulation that wish long life to the lord and to others through cranes and tortoises; poems of longing for a wife at the sight of autumn bush clover and summer grasses; poems praying for a safe journey with offerings at Osaka Mountain. In all a thousand poems in twenty scrolls, and they named it the Kokin Wakashu.
Hitomaro is gone, but the way of poetry remains here. Though times change and things pass away, and joys and sorrows come and go, the letters of these poems will remain.