How many chōka poems does the Man'yōshū contain? The traditional count is 265 chōka poems.
A chōka, or “long poem,” is a waka form built from alternating five- and seven-syllable lines and ending with a five-seven-seven unit. Unlike the compact tanka, whose pattern is five-seven-five-seven-seven, a chōka can continue for many lines and therefore gives poets more space for narrative, praise, lament, and public ceremony.
The Man'yōshū is especially important because it preserves the chōka at a scale and variety rarely matched by later Japanese anthologies. Its best-known long poems include works associated with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Yamabe no Akahito, and Ōtomo no Yakamochi. Many chōka are followed by a hanka, a shorter poem that summarizes or responds to the longer composition.
The figure 265 is the conventional count used in standard descriptions. Counts can vary slightly when scholars classify accompanying hanka, duplicates, or textual variants, but 265 is the accepted quiz answer for the anthology’s chōka corpus.