Man’yōgana (万葉仮名) is an ancient form of Japanese kana which uses Chinese characters to represent Japanese sounds. The date of its earliest usage is not clear, but it seems to have been in use since at least the sixth century. The name man’yōgana is from the Man’yōshū (万葉集, “Anthology of Myriad Leaves”), a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written in man’yōgana.
(I was familiar with that name, but not with mana, and I’m curious to know if there’s any distinction between the terms, and who uses which when.) Brian writes:
Matt at No-Sword introduced me to a text called the Shinji (or Mana) Ise Monogatari, an edition of the Tales of Ise written entirely in kanji… The text is written in “mana,” sometimes called “man’yôgana” in modern scholarship, but the meaning of these terms can seem very fuzzy at times, so I thought it would be useful to go through a section of it to introduce some of the orthographic techniques it uses.
He quotes the first few lines with a kana gloss, a modern text, an English translation, and a photo of the actual book, giving a thorough explanation of how it works (with some nice crunchy Early Middle Chinese reconstructions) and concluding “This text is a great example of the richness of premodern Japanese writing practices, and of the problems with trying to draw a neat line between kana and kanbun writing.” Should be good reading for anyone interested in Japanese writing.