Kakinomoto Hitomaro

Kakinomoto Hitomaro

 known as Hitomaro

(died 708, Japan) Japanese poet. He entered the service of the imperial court and later became a provincial official. Japan's first great literary figure, he lived when Japan was moving from a preliterate to a literate, civilized society. His writings, on a wide range of subjects, balance the homely qualities of primitive song with sophisticated interests and literary techniques. All 77 poems accepted as indisputably his, and many others attributed to him, appear in the Man'yoshu, the first and largest of Japan's anthologies of native poetry.