Ōmi no Mifune
Japanese scholar and writer
Ōmi no Mifune (淡海三船; 722—785) was a Japanese scholar and writer of kanshi (poetry in Classical Chinese) and kanbun (prose in Classical Chinese), who lived in the Nara period of Japanese history.
Biography
Birth and ancestry
Mifune was born in 722.
His father was Prince Ikebe (池辺王, Ikebe no Ōkimi), who was a son of Prince Kadono (葛野王, Kadono no Ōkimi), a son of Emperor Kōbun. He was originally an imperial prince, known as Prince Mifune (御船王 or 三船王, Mifune no Ōkimi), but in the first month of 751 was made a commoner and given the surname Ōmi and the title Mahito.
Political career
He served as Head of the University (大学頭, daigaku no kami), Professor of Letters (文章博士, monjō hakase) and Steward of the Prosecution Bureau (刑部大輔, gyōbu no taifu).
Death
He died in 785.
Literary career
In 770 he composed the work Tō Daiwajō Tōseiden (唐大和上東征伝), an account of the Chinese monk Jianzhen's work in Japan.
It has been theorized that he was the compiler of the oldest extant Japanese collection of kanshi, the Kaifūsō.
Some of his poetry was included in the kanshi anthology Keikokushū.
Scholarship
Mifune is credited with determining the canonical Chinese style posthumous names of early emperors who did not have them before his time (they only had Japanese style posthumous names).
The public source identifies “Ōmi no Mifune” as japanese scholar and writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mifune, Japanese and scholar.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5014663. VIAF identifies the subject as 109474803. The Library of Congress control number is n81055538. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ōmi no Mifune” 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.