The eighth-century poetry anthology “Manyoshu” is to Japan something like what the Bible is to Judeo-Christian civilization: its cultural foundation. Each is a record of its people’s childhood.

No two childhoods are alike. Some are blessed, others cursed, some tranquil, others fraught. “Forth to the field of spring I went to gather violets — enamored of the field I slept there all night through” — “composed,” the original “Manyoshu” editors explain in a footnote to this innocent little ditty, “by imperial command during the Emperor’s sojourn at the Palace of Yoshinu in summer, in the sixth month of the eighth year of Tempyo (736).” We search the Old Testament in vain for anything so simple, unadorned, innocent, childlike — so naively radiant with the sheer joy of being alive.

The Bible’s radiance is another light altogether: fire, brimstone, sin, punishment, divine law, human disobedience — out of weakness? Obstinacy? Evil? All. Human sin begets divine wrath, terrible in its fury. “I am a jealous God,” said God, “punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” True, also “showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” — why, then, were they so few?