, was a

Japanese Buddhist Buddhism was first established in Japan in the 6th century CE. Most of the Japanese Buddhists belong to new schools of Buddhism which were established in the Kamakura period (1185－1333). During the Edo period (1603–1868), Buddhism was cont ...

priest and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

. Little is known of his life except that his

secular name A legal name is the name that identifies a person for legal, administrative and other official purposes. A person's legal birth name generally is the name of the person that was given for the purpose of Civil registry, registration of the birth ...

was Kasa no Ason Maro. While serving at a temple in the north of

Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa and the other Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regio ...

, he was a member of

Ōtomo no Tabito was a Japanese court noble, military leader and poet. He is known for his military campaign against the Hayato Rebellion and as the father of Ōtomo no Yakamochi, who contributed to the compilation of the ''Man'yōshū'' alongside his father. ...

's literary coterie. His few surviving pieces are collected in the ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

''. Mansei is famous for the following waka poem from the Manyoshu: Yononaka-wo Nani-ni Tatohemu Asa-biraki Kogi-inishi Fune-no Ato-naki-gotoshi which means ''All are to disappear, just as the morning boat wake does.''

References

Further reading