Manyoshu

Manyoshu is the oldest collection of poems.It was made in about 760.Many poems were selected in Japan.There are 20 volumes and about 4500 poems.Many kinds of people in every status composed poems.Someone edited them.Manyoshu means "a collection of ten thousand of leaves".People wrote their feelings and beautiful natures.They didn't use Hiragana and Katakana.They still only use Kanji for it.We call "Manyogana".
Manyogana is the phonetic use of monosyllabic Chinese graphs to represent syllables of the Japanese poems in the Manyoshu.Hiragana and Katakana were made from Manyogana.
In 2003 one narrow strip of wood was found at Ishigami ruins in Nara.
Takashi Morioka, an associate professor of Tsukuba University,read these words on the wooden strip and found out it is a part of a poem in Manyoshu.This strip is believed to be oldest of its kind.
He said"It's become clear that composing poems in kanji in the phonetic Manyo style was popular among people of a certain social class in the Asuka period.The wooden strip provides clues to understanding how people of that time tried to compile poems and how they decided which characters to use to write them."