Ōmi no Mifune

Ōmi no Mifune was a Japanese scholar and writer of kanshi and kanbun, who lived in the Nara period of Japanese history.

Biography

Birth and ancestry

Mifune was born in 722.
His father was Prince Ikebe, who was a son of Prince Kadono, a son of Emperor Kōbun. He was originally an imperial prince, known as Prince Mifune, 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 Daigaku-no-kami, Professor of Letters and Steward of the Prosecution Bureau.

Death

He died in 785.

Literary career

In 770 he composed the work Tō Daiwajō Tōseiden, 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. Between 762 and 764 he set the names of Emperor Jinmu, Emperor Suizei, Emperor Annei and so on.
Based on his research into Buddhist scriptures, in 779 he declared the Shakuma Kaen Ron, a commentary on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna attributed to Nāgārjuna, to be a forgery.