Ōtomo no Yakamochi

Ōtomo no Yakamochi (718-785) was a Japanese statesman and waka poet of the Nara period. He is counted among the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets, and he matters chiefly because a large share of the poems in the Man'yōshū, Japan's first great poetry anthology, are his.

He came from the Ōtomo clan, a family of warriors and bureaucrats at the Yamato court. His father, Ōtomo no Tabito, was also a poet, and Yakamochi followed the public career that ran in his family. In 740 he was sent to Kyūshū to help put down the revolt of Fujiwara no Hirotsugu. He then governed several provinces, including Etchū, where he served from 746 to 751 and, by tradition, wrote around 220 waka. Around 754 he was given a posting at the garrison of Naniwa, which the sources call Nanba, and later he governed Ise. He rose to high rank in the administration, reaching chūnagon in 783.

His career was shaped by suspicion. He joined a plot against Fujiwara no Nakamaro, but doubts about his part in it led to his transfer to Satsuma. Late in life, while holding a military post in Mutsu, he drowned in 785. Shortly afterwards Fujiwara no Tanetsugu was murdered, and because Yakamochi was suspected of involvement, he was denied a proper burial, posthumously disgraced and excommunicated. His son was exiled until 806, when he regained his privileges.

As a poet he was remarkably prolific. He is credited with a leading role, perhaps as the final compiler, of the Man'yōshū, in which he gathered, copied and reworked an unknown number of ancient poems. His influence reached later anthologies such as the Shika Wakashū. His most striking legacy is a poem, "Umi yukaba", which became the lyric of a gunka song and served as the Japanese navy's anthem at the start of the war in 1937, an example of the military appropriation of high literary culture.