Asada no Yasu
Japanese Poet in the Nara Period
Asada no Yasu (麻田陽春) was a poet in Japan's Nara period who composed both waka (poetry in Japanese) and kanshi (poetry in Chinese).
Biography
Asada no Yasu was active in the Nara period of Japanese history. His birth and death dates are unknown.
He was a member of the immigrant Tōhon clan (答本氏), and was originally named Tōhon no Yasu, but in the fifth month of Jinki 1 (724) was given the surname Asada and the hereditary title Muraji, and so became Asada no Muraji Yasu (麻田連陽春). At this time, he held the court rank of Senior Eighth Rank, Upper Grade.
It is known that by 730 he was working in Dazaifu under Ōtomo no Tabito, and had attained the Junior Sixth Rank, Lower Grade.
In the first month of 739 he was promoted to the Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade. According to the Kaifūsō, during the time he held this rank he became the governor of Iwami Province, and this was in his fifty-sixth year, but it is unclear when that was.
He probably lived until around 749.
Poetry
Waka
Four of his tanka (the name used for waka in the standard 5-7-5-7-7 metre in the pre-Heian period) were included in the Man'yōshū.
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This entry incorporates text from “Asada no Yasu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.