This "Man’Yōshū" is an example of Man’yōgana. Because Japan did not have its own writing system, there was a only way to use the Chinese script (kanji). To first ‘read’ texts written in kanji, they had to understand both the meaning and pronunciation of each characters. And during that age, Japanese invented their own unique way to pronounce kanji (which were similar to their speaking language). So, through using this Japanese-style reading, they found a way to employ Chinese characters (to represent Japanese language). This writing system was called Man’yōgana.
