How many volumes make up the Man'yōshū?

The Man'yōshū is made up of 20 volumes. It is Japan's oldest surviving major anthology of waka, compiled sometime after 759 during the Nara period.

The collection contains more than 4,500 poems, including long chōka, short tanka, an unusual poem related to renga, Chinese poems, and prose passages. Its poems were written by people from many levels of society, from emperors and aristocrats to soldiers and folk singers.

The anthology was assembled over time rather than written by one poet at one moment. Ōtomo no Yakamochi is widely regarded as its final compiler, although scholars still discuss how earlier materials were selected and arranged. The latest datable poem is from 759.

A common mix-up is confusing the 20 volumes with the collection's large poem count. The title Man'yōshū is often translated as “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves,” but the anthology contains thousands of poems, not ten thousand volumes or exactly ten thousand verses.