Nara period · 665–731Ōtomo no Tabito

A Nara-period nobleman and poet, father of Ōtomo no Yakamochi. After leading a campaign against the Hayato people of southern Kyushu in 720, he was posted around 728 as Governor-General of Dazaifu, where with Yamanoue no Okura he formed a celebrated literary circle. The plum-blossom banquet he hosted in 730 produced the preface from which Japan's Reiwa era name was taken. He returned to the capital as Major Counselor the same year and died in 731. About seventy of his poems appear in the Man'yōshū, including his thirteen poems in praise of wine and elegies for his late wife, marked by a candid, Taoist-tinged sensibility.