““The Manyōshū is Japanese in the vital sense that the language in which it was written was Japanese, a language quite different from Chinese in its structure. But since the Japanese had not yet evolved a script of their own, the verses were written in Chinese characters. Some of the characters were used, as in China, to convey meaning; but others were used in a different way—to give an idea of the sounds that made up the Japanese words. The result is that while the Manyōshū looks Chinese, it is really Japanese written down in the only script its compilers knew.””
