Traversing the Frontier: The Man'yōshū Account of a Japanese Mission to Silla in 736-737 by H. Mack HortonMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
I can't really rate this, since most of it was over my head. The actual travel account is from page 10 to 44 (with the Kanji and Japanese sounds transliterated as well). The rest is pretty much commentary.
The first part is more or less an introduction, then the travelogue itself. Then "Traversing the Frontier", or basically a geographical tracing of where they (most likely) traveled. The sections after this (Internal contexts, Historical contexts, Literary contexts, Authorial and Editorial contexts) were pretty much over my head. I scanned some of the Historical contexts section, but even then I didn't absorb much.
As for the travelogue itself, it isn't really a travelogue, but more a collection of poems and sentiments, most about how much they miss home and miss their wives. This was a bit disappointing, although I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy reading it.
Still, obviously much work was done on this book, which from what I can tell is exhaustive and excellent, so hopefully someone more knowledgable than I am on the subject can give it a more thorough review.
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