<P> Though there was a strong inclination towards Chinese poetry, some eminent waka poets were active in the early Heian period, including the six best waka poets . </P> <P> Compiled sometime after 759, the oldest poetic anthology of waka is the 20 volume Man'yōshū, in the early part of the Heian period, it gathered ancient works . The order of its sections is roughly chronological . Most of the works in the Man'yōshū have a fixed form today called chōka and tanka . But earlier works, especially in Volume I, lacked such fixed form and were attributed to Emperor Yūryaku . </P> <P> The Man'yōshū begins with a waka without fixed form . It is both a love song for an unknown girl whom the poet met by chance and a ritual song praising the beauty of the land . It is worthy of being attributed to an emperor and today is used in court ritual . </P> <P> The first three sections contain mostly the works of poets from the middle of the 7th century to the early part of the 8th century . Significant poets among them were Nukata no Ōkimi and Kakinomoto no Hitomaro . Kakinomoto Hitomaro was not only the greatest poet in those early days and one of the most significant in the Man'yōshū, he rightly has a place as one of the most outstanding poets in Japanese literature . The Man'yōshū also included many female poets who mainly wrote love poems . The poets of the Man'yōshū were aristocrats who were born in Nara but sometimes lived or traveled in other provinces as bureaucrats of the emperor . These poets wrote down their impressions of travel and expressed their emotion for lovers or children . Sometimes their poems criticized the political failure of the government or tyranny of local officials . Yamanoue no Okura wrote a chōka, A Dialogue of two Poormen (貧窮 問答 歌, Hinkyū mondōka); in this poem two poor men lamented their severe lives of poverty . One hanka is as follows: </P>

When did haikai become popular as a poetic form in japan