| Ōmi no Mifune | |
| Native Name: | 淡海三船 |
| Native Name Lang: | Japanese |
| Birth Date: | 722 |
| Language: | Classical Chinese |
| Period: | Nara |
| Genre: | kanshi |
| Notablework: | --> |
| Relatives: | Emperor Kōbun (paternal great-grandfather),, |
was a Japanese scholar and writer of kanshi (poetry in Classical Chinese) and kanbun (prose in Classical Chinese), who lived in the Nara period of Japanese history.
Mifune was born in 722.[1] [2] [3] [4]
His father was, who was a son of, a son of Emperor Kōbun.[1] [2] He was originally an imperial prince, known as,[1] but in the first month of 751 was made a commoner and given the surname Ōmi and the title Mahito.[1] [2]
He served as, and .[4]
He died in 785.[1] [2] [3] [4]
In 770 he composed the work, an account of the Chinese monk Jianzhen's work in Japan.[2] [3] [4]
It has been theorized that he was the compiler of the oldest extant Japanese collection of kanshi, the Kaifūsō.>[2] [3]
Some of his poetry was included in the kanshi anthology Keikokushū.[3]
Mifune is credited with determining the canonical Chinese style posthumous names of early emperors who did not have them before his time (they only had Japanese style posthumous names).[3] Between 762 and 764 he set the names of Emperor Jinmu, Emperor Suizei, Emperor Annei and so on.[2]
Based on his research into Buddhist scriptures, in 779 he declared the, a commentary on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna attributed to, to be a forgery.[2]