topics: |  japanese | poetry | 14th-c | 16th-c

Review: About medieval Japanese poetry

Japan and China have a long tradition of according a high status to poetry. Candidates in the traditional examination system were required to write on-the-spot poems as part of these tests, and poets often achieved high posts in the imperial bureaucracy.

This collection reflects the Japanese court poetry of the late kamakura and muromachi periods, 1250-1500. During this period, the emperors at Kamakura and the shoguns of Kyoto supported different schools of waka poetry and published imperial anthologies (chokusenshū).

During this period the mantle of poetry ran through several rival families, passing down secret teachings (denju) which constituted the poetic philosophy of each group's work. One of the guiding spirits in this efflorescence was Fujiwara no Teika (d.1241), whose father had been a leading poet from the Fujiwara clan, which was affiliated with the Mikohidari family.

Bitter literary feud

Carter notes that the kamakura and muromachi period (the period under consideration) witnessed one of the longest lasting and most bitter literary feuds in history. The dispute, which lasted more than a century, and had "a profound impact upong the whole future course of Japanese poetry."

 
Teika's son Fujiwara no Tameie (d.1275) carried on the Mikohidari
tradition, but after his death, Tameie's three sons (and their friends)
fought bitterly and eventually divided into rival families - the Nijo,
Reizei, and the Kyogoku.  This rivalry lasted for several centuries, with
the Kyogoku becoming more aligned to the Reizei family.  The Nijo tradition
favoured conservative themes, poems on specific themes (e.g. utamakura,
a poem about a famous place), with deep feelings (ushin).  The Reizei
favoured a more liberal bent and encouraged a greater degree of
experimentation within the traditional contours of poetic styles.  Both
groups looked to the legacy of Fujiwara no Teika, and both claimed to
represent his style.  The Nijo were aligned to the more powerful group, and
edited eight of the imperial anthologies of this time, whereas the Reizei
group were involved in only two.

Shotetsu (1381-1459) was the last major poet in this court poetry
tradition.  He has typified this long-lasting feud in this description by a
friend, who writes,

	[In 1450], I paid my first visit of the year to Shotetsu's hut.  
	We chatted about this and that, and he said this about the Nijo 
	and Reizei styles:

	   The poems of the Nijo house tends towards this kind of poem: 

	   	Off at Tatsuta
		white clouds form layers on the hills
		   as spring begins:
		the ridges of Mount Ogura
		   seem to glow with cherry blossoms!

	   The Reizei did not compose in just one style.  But most basic 
	   for them is a poem such as this:

		Scattered all about,
		they cannot catch the colors
		   of the blossoming grass --
		dewdrops carried on the wind
		   over the Miyagi Moors. 
			[source: Kinrai futei, 
			Nihon kagaku taikei v.5.]

Carter notes that "Needless to say, both poems are by Teika."  The first is
an utamakura poem, the second a more close-up description of a natural
event. 

36 poets are presented, representing several generations from some of these
families. 

Most of the poems are in the 31 syllable tanka format, with five lines of
5-7-5-7-7 syllables.   The translations convey the poetic spirit well,
while maintaining a five-line structure. 

Excerpts

Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241)

SKKS = Shin Kokinshu 新古今集 (1206) - "New Collection of Poems Ancient and
	Modern" - is the eighth imperial anthology of waka poetry.  It was
	compiled at the Poetry Bureau of the retired emperor Go-Toba
	(1180-1239).  Teika and Ietaka were among the six compilers.
	"Considered  by most scholars to be the best of all the imperial
	anthologies." Also called the Shin Kokin Wakashu (p.4)

SG = Shui Guso (拾遺愚草) "meager gleanings", 
   personal anthology of works by Fujiwara no Teika, 3500 poems selected
   by himself. 

4 
The black of my hair
  is now mixed with the color
     of the driven snow --
but why should that bring a change
   to the color of my heart? 
		from SG 397 - from a hundred poem sequence composed 1187


15
Not a trace is left
  of that blossom-tinted wind
    that filled my garden
Those that visit me now
   see only snow. 
		SKKS 134 (spring) 
		written at the Poem contest in fifteen hundred rounds, 1201)

21
With the autumn wind				tabbito no
  turning back the flowing sleeves		sode fukikaesu
    of a traveller,	     			akikazee ni			
how lonely in evening light			yube sabishiki
   is the rope bridge up on the peak  	yama no kakehashi
		SKKS 953 (travel)

Note: kakehashi: rope bridge spanning a mountain gorge

Fujiwara no Ietaka (1158-1237)

1
Those cherry blossoms:
were they dream, or reality?
Gone are the white clouds
   from the peak, leaving behind
      the fickle wind of spring. 
			from SKKS 139 (spring)

4
Only this year
  has it begun to blossom
How can it be, then
that the scent of the wild orange
	is one from so long ago.
			SKKS 246 (summer)

Fujiwara no Tameie (1198-1275)

3
Isuzu river:
like a mirror left behind
   from the Age of the Gods,
it shows the unclouded image
   of the moon on an autumn night.

"age of gods": mythical age when Japan islands were created 
			from Shoku gosenshu "Later Collection Continued" (1325)
				(続後撰和)

Contents

Founders

Fujiwara no Teika 			3
Fujiwara no Ietaka 			31
Asukai Masatsune 			46

Contestants

Fujiwara no Tameie 			55
Fujiwara no Tameuji 			65
Kyogoku Tamenori 			73
Nun Abutsu 				78
Reizei Tamesuke 			85

Comrades

Kyogoku Tamekane 			95
Kyogoku Tameko 				110
Jusammi Chikako 			120
Emperor Fishimi 			127
Empress Eifuku 				140

Divided ranks

Nijo Tameyo 				153
Tonna 					162
Toshida no Kenko 			174
Joben 					184
Nijo Tamesada 				189
Keiun 					196
Emperor Hanazono 			203
Emperor Kogon 				215
Reizi Tamehide 				225
Nijo Tameshige 				231
Nijo Toshimoto 				239
Prince Munenaga 			245

Defenders of different faiths

Kazan'in Nagachika 			259
Imagawa Ryoshun 			265
Reizei Tamemasa 			271
Asukai Masayori 			279
Gyoko 					285
Shotetsu 				294
To no Tsuneyori 			313
Shinkei 				313
Sogi 					315
Shohaku 				316
Sanjonishi Sanetaka 			317

Appendix: 
Genealogies 					322
On the twenty-one imperial collections 	327

Review by: Lawrence E. Marceau

		Journal of Asian Studies, v.53:4 (Nov 1994), p.1263-1265

The paperback reissue of Steven D. Carter's award-winning collection of
Kamakura and Muromachi period waka is a welcome addition to the small corpus
of reasonably priced translations available for student purchase. Carter
engages in his own brand of canon formation by providing us with a
self-selected anthology of 447 poems by thirty-two men and four women who
lived between 1158 (Fujiwara no letaka) and 1537 (Sanjonishi Sanetaka). The
range of examples for each poet runs from one for To no Tsuneyori to
forty-five for Fujiwara no Sadaie (=Teika), with an average of nearly
twenty-five poems per individual. 

Drawing from both imperial and privately sponsored collections, Carter
provides us with a surprisingly clear denotation of the stylistic and
rhetorical boundaries that defined the "conservative" Nijo poetic line in
contrast to the "unorthodox" rival Kyogoku and Reizei lines (Carter's
terms). By including poets known for their accomplishments in other areas,
such as Nijo Yoshimoto, Shinkei, and Sogi, Carter indicates the direction
waka composition would take as renga-linked verse gained prominence. 

A minor regret regarding this work is that studies and translations completed
between 1989, when the first edition appeared, and 1994 are not taken into
account. Therefore, when we read of Kyogoku Tamekane (pp. 95-109), we find no
reference, much less a response, to Robert N. Huey's 1989 monograph on
Tamekane and his use of waka to buttress the position of his patrons in the
late-Kamakura aristocracy. Similarly, in his discussion of the nun Abutsu
(pp. 78-84), Carter directs us to read an English translation of her Izayoi
nikki in Edwin 0. Reischauer and Joseph K. Yamagiwa's 1951 Translations from
Early Japanese Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, second
revised edition, 1972), without mentioning that it is also available in Helen
C. McCullough's 1990 Classical Japanese Prose (Stanford: Stanford University
Press). I expect that this problem is more a result of the publisher's
interest in avoiding extra expense than of Carter's lack of desire to update
this work. 

bio

Steven D. Carter is professor of Japanese and chair of the department of
East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford.  He is an award-winning
translator. He has received numerous academic awards, as both a scholar and
a teacher. At Stanford he teaches courses in pre-modern Japanese literature
and language.

Professor Carter's research interests include: Japanese poetry, poetics, and
poetic culture; the Japanese essay; travel writing; historical fiction; and
the relationship between the social and the aesthetic. His most recent book
is Haiku Before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Basho (Columbia University
Press, 2011).

Before coming to Stanford in 2003, Professor Carter taught at UCLA, Brigham
Young University, and UC-Irvine, serving as chair of the East Asian Languages
and Literatures Department at the latter institution for 10 years.

He began his study of Japanese language and culture as an undergraduate at
Brigham Young University, receiving his BA in Japanese with minors in English
and history in 1974. He received an MA and PhD from UC-Berkeley,
concentrating on classical and medieval Japanese poetry. His interest in
Hiroshima dates to a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum in
1969, during one of the hotter periods of the Cold War.

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