Grave of the Japanese poet Yosa Buson

Japanese poetry is poetry of or typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, and may perhaps include the poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty (although the Shijing was well known by the literati of Japan by the 6th century). It took several hundred years to digest the foreign impact and make it an integral part of Japanese culture and to merge it with into a Japanese language literary tradition, and then later to develop the diversity of unique poetic forms of native poetry. For example, in the Tale of Genji both kinds of poetry are frequently mentioned.

A new trend came in the middle of the 19th century. Since then, the major forms of Japanese poetry have been tanka (new name for waka), haiku and shi. Nowadays the main forms of Japanese poetry can be divided into experimental poetry and poetry that seeks to revive traditional ways. Poets writing in tanka, haiku and shi move in separate planes and seldom write poetry other than in their specific chosen form, although some active poets are eager to collaborate with poets in other genres.

Important collections are the Man'yōshū, Kokin Wakashū and Shin Kokin Wakashū.

Ancient[link]

[edit] Poems in Kojiki and Nihonshoki

The oldest written work in Japanese literature is Kojiki in 712, in which Ō no Yasumaro recorded Japanese mythology and history as recited by Hieda no Are, to whom it was handed down by his ancestors. Many of the poetic pieces recorded by the Kojiki were perhaps transmitted from the time the Japanese had no writing. The Nihonshoki, the oldest history of Japan which was finished eight years later than the Kojiki, also contains many poetic pieces. These were mostly not long and had no fixed forms. The first poem documented in both books was attributed to a kami (god), named Susanoo, the younger brother of Amaterasu. When he married Princess Kushinada in Izumo province, the kami made an uta, or waka, a poem.

八雲立つ　出雲八重垣　妻籠みに　八重垣作る　その八重垣を

Yakumo tatsu / Izumo yaegaki / Tsuma-gomi ni / Yaegaki tsukuru / Sono yaegaki wo

This is the oldest waka (poem written in Japanese) and hence poetry was later praised as having been founded by a kami, a divine creation.

The two books shared many of the same or similar pieces but Nihonshoki contained newer ones because it recorded later affairs (up till the reign of Emperor Temmu) than Kojiki. Themes of waka in the books were diverse, covering love, sorrow, satire, war cries, praise of victory, riddles and so on. Many works in Kojiki were anonymous. Some were attributed to kami, emperors and empresses, nobles, generals, commoners and sometimes enemies of the court. Most of these works are considered collectively as 'works of the people', even where attributed to someone, such as the kami Susanoo.

Early Man'yōshū poets (Vol. I-III)[link]

The oldest poetic anthology of waka is the 20 volume Man'yōshū. Probably finished 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 choka and tanka. But earlier works, especially in Volume I, lacked such fixed form and were attributed to Emperor Yūryaku.

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.

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 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.

Chinese influence[link]

Chinese literature was introduced into Japan ca the 6th century CE, mostly through the Korean peninsula. Just as the Chinese writing itself, Chinese literature, historical writings, religious scriptures and poetry laid the foundation for Japanese literature proper. Such influence is somewhat comparable to the influence of Latin on the European languages and literature.

In the court of Emperor Temmu some nobles made attempts to recite Chinese poetry. Chinese literacy was a sign of education and most high courtiers wrote poetry in Chinese. Later these works were collected in the Kaifūsō, one of the earliest anthologies of poetry in Japan, edited in the early Heian period. Thanks to this book the death poem of Prince Ōtsu is still extant today.^[1]

The strong influence of Chinese poetics may be seen in Kakyō Hyōshiki. In the 772 text, Fujiwara no Hamanari attempts to apply phonetic rules for Chinese poetry to Japanese poetry.

Many of the Tang Dynasty poets achieved fame in Japan, such as Meng Haoran (Mōkōnen), Li Bo (Ri Haku), and Bai Juyi ('Haku Kyo'i). In many cases, when these poets were introduced to Europe and the Americas, the source was via Japan and a Japanese influence could be seen in the pronunciations of the names of the poets, as well as the accompanying critical analysis or commentary upon the poets or their works.

Nara period poets[link]

In 710, the Japanese capital moved from Fujiwara (today's Asuka, Nara) to Nara and the Nara period (710-794) began. It was the period when Chinese influence reached its culmination. Todai-ji was established and the Great Buddha was created under the order of Emperor Shōmu. The significant waka poets in this period were Ōtomo no Tabito, Yamanoue no Okura, and Yamabe no Akahito. The Man'yōshū included also 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 choka, 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:

世の中を　憂しとやさしと　おもへども　飛び立ちかねつ　鳥にしあらねば

Yononaka wo / Ushi to yasashi to / Omo(h)e domo / Tobitachi kanetsu / Tori ni shi arane ba

I feel the life is / sorrowful and unbearable / though / I can't flee away / since I am not a bird.

The Man'yōshū contains not only poems of aristocrats but also those of nameless ordinary people. These poems are called Yomibito shirazu, poems whose author is unknown. Among them there is a specific style of waka called Azuma-uta, waka written in the Eastern dialect. Azuma, meaning the East, designated the eastern provinces roughly corresponding to Kantō and occasionally Tōhoku. Those poems were filled with rural flavors. There was a specific style among Azuma-uta, called Sakimori uta, soldiers' waka. They were mainly waka by drafted soldiers at leaving home. These soldiers were drafted in the eastern provinces and were forced to work as guards in Kyūshū for several years. Sometimes their poetry expressed nostalgia for their far homeland.

Waka in the early Heian period[link]

It is thought the Man'yōshū reached its final form, the one we know today, very early in the Heian period. There are strong grounds for believing that Ōtomo no Yakamochi was the final editor but some documents claim further editing was done in the later period by other poets including Sugawara no Michizane.

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.

[edit] The culmination of kanshi

Sugawara no Michizane is revered as the god of learning, as seen on this ema at a Shintō shrine.

In the early Heian period kanshi--poetry written in Chinese by Japanese—was most the popular style of poetry among Japanese aristocrats. Some poets like Kūkai studied in China and were fluent in Chinese. Others like Sugawara no Michizane had grown up in Japan but understood Chinese well. When they hosted foreign diplomats, they communicated not orally but in writing, using kanji or Chinese characters. In that period, Chinese poetry in China had reached one of its greatest flowerings. Major Chinese poets of the Tang dynasty like Li Po were their contemporaries and their works were well known to the Japanese. Some who went to China for study or diplomacy made the acquaintance of these major poets. The most popular styles of kanshi were in 5 or 7 syllables (onji) in 4 or 8 lines, with very strict rules of rhyme. Japanese poets became skilled in those rules and produced much good poetry. Some long poems with lines of 5 or 7 syllables were also produced. These, when chanted, were referred to as shigin - a practice which continues today.

Emperor Saga himself was proficient at kanshi. He ordered the compilation of three anthologies of kanshi. These were the first of the imperial anthologies, a tradition which continued till the Muromachi period.

Kokin Wakashū[link]

In the middle of the Heian period Waka revived with the compilation of the Kokin Wakashū. It was edited on the order of Emperor Daigo. About 1,000 waka, mainly from the late Nara period till the contemporary times, were anthologized by five waka poets in the court including Ki no Tsurayuki who wrote the kana preface (仮名序, kanajo^?)

The Kana preface to Kokin Wakashū was the second earliest expression of literary theory and criticism in Japan (the earliest was by Kūkai). Kūkai's literary theory was not influential, but Kokin Wakashū set the types of waka and hence other genres which would develop from waka.

The collection is divided into twenty parts, reflecting older models such as the Man'yōshū and various Chinese anthologies. The organisation of topics is however different from all earlier models, and was followed by all later official collections, although some collections like the Kin'yō Wakashū and Shika Wakashū reduced the number of parts to ten. The parts of the Kokin Wakashū are ordered as follows: Parts 1-6 covered the four seasons, followed by congratulatory poems, poetry at partings, and travel poems. The last ten sections included poetry on the 'names of things', love, laments, occasional poems, miscellaneous verse, and finally traditional and ceremonial poems from the Bureau of Poetry.

The compilers included the name of the author of each poem, and the topic (題 dai) or inspiration of the poem, if known. Major poets of the Kokin Wakashū include Ariwara Narihira, Ono no Komachi, Henjō and Fujiwara no Okikaze, apart from the compilers themselves. Inclusion in any imperial collection, and particularly the Kokin Wakashū, was a great honour.

Influence of Kokin Wakashū[link]

The Kokin Wakashū is the first of the Nijūichidaishū, the 21 collections of Japanese poetry compiled at Imperial request. It was the most influential realization of the ideas of poetry at the time, dictating the form and format of Japanese poetry until the late nineteenth century. The primacy of poems about the seasons pioneered by the Kokin Wakashū continues even today in the haiku tradition. The Japanese preface by Ki no Tsurayuki is also the beginning of Japanese criticism as distinct from the far more prevalent Chinese poetics in the literary circles of its day. (The anthology also included a traditional Chinese preface authored by Ki no Tomonori.) The idea of including old as well as new poems was another important innovation, one which was widely adopted in later works, both in prose and verse. The poems of the Kokin Wakashū were ordered temporally; the love poems, for instance, depict the progression and fluctuations of a courtly love-affair. This association of one poem to the next marks this anthology as the ancestor of the renga and haikai traditions.

From the late ancient to Middle[link]

Waka in the life of Kuge[link]

In ancient times, it was a custom to exchange waka instead of letters in prose. Sometimes improvised waka were used in daily conversation in high society. In particular, the exchange of waka was common between lovers. Reflecting this custom, five of the twenty volumes of the Kokin Wakashū (or Kokinshū) gathered waka for love. In the Heian period the lovers would exchange waka in the morning when lovers parted at the woman's home. The exchanged waka were called Kinuginu (後朝), because it was thought the man wanted to stay with his lover and when the sun rose he had almost no time to don his clothes which had been laid out in place of a mattress (as was the custom in those days). Soon, writing and reciting Waka became a part of aristocratic culture. People recited a piece of appropriate waka freely to imply something on an occasion. In the Pillow Book it is written that a consort of Emperor Murakami memorized over 1,000 waka in Kokin Wakashū with their description.

Uta-ai, ceremonial waka recitation contests, developed in the middle of the Heian period. The custom began in the reign of Emperor Uda, the father of Emperor Daigo who ordered the compilation of the Kokin Wakashū. It was 'team combat' on proposed themes grouped in similar manner to the grouping of poems in the Kokin Wakashū. Representatives of each team recited a waka according to their theme and the winner of the round won a point. The team with the higher overall score won the contest. Both winning poet and team received a certain prize. Holding Utaai was expensive and possible only for Emperors or very high ranked kuge.

The size of Uta-ai increased. Uta-ai were recorded with hundreds of rounds. Uta-ai motivated the refinement of waka technique but also made waka formalistic and artificial. Poets were expected to create a spring waka in winter or recite a poem of love or lamentation without real situations.

Roei style[link]

Roei was a favored style of reciting poetical works at that time. It was a way of reciting in voice, with relatively slow and long tones. Not whole poetic pieces but a part of classics were quoted and recited by individuals usually followed by a chorus. Fujiwara no Kinto compiled Wakan roeishu (Sino-Japanese Anthology for Roei) from Japanese and Chinese poetry works written for roei. One or two lines were quoted in Wakan roeishu and those quotations were grouped into themes like Spring, Travel, Celebration.

Age of Nyobo or court ladies[link]

Emperor Ichijō and courts of his empresses, concubines and other noble ladies were a big pool of poets as well as men of the courts.

The Pillow Book and Tale of Genji, from the early 11th century, provide us with examples of the life of aristocrats in the court of Emperor Ichijō and his empresses. Murasaki Shikibu wrote over 3,000 tanka for her Tale of Genji in the form of waka her characters wrote in the story. In the story most of those waka were created as an exchange of letters or a conversation. Many classic works of both waka and kanshi were quoted by the nobles. Among those classic poets, the Chinese Tang-dynasty poet Bai Juyi (Po Chü-i) had a great influence on the culture of the middle Heian period. Bai Juyi was quoted by both The Pillow Book and Tale of Genji, and his A Song of unending Sorrow (長恨歌), whose theme was a tragic love between the Chinese Emperor and his concubine, inspired Murasaki Shikibu to imagine tragic love affairs in the Japanese imperial court in her Tale of Genji.

Poetry in the period of cloistered rule[link]

In the period of cloistered rule, the 12th century, some new movements of poetry appeared. First a new form called Imayō (今様, modern style) emerged. Imayō consists of four lines in 8-5 (or 7-5) syllables. Usually it was accompanied by music and dance. Female dancers, known as the shirabyōshi danced to the accompaniment of Imayō. Major works were compiled into the Ryōjin Hishō (梁塵秘抄) anthology. Although originally women and commoners are thought to be proponents of the genre, Emperor Go-Shirakawa was famed for his mastery of imayo.

Some new trends appeared in waka. There were two opposite trends: an inclination to the contemporary, modern style and on the other hand a revival of the traditional style. Both trends had their schools and won the honor to compile imperial anthologies of waka. Fujiwara no Shunzei and his son Fujiwara no Teika were the leaders of the latter school.

Also in this period for the first time renga were included in the imperial anthologies of waka. At that time, renga was considered a variant of waka. The renga included were waka created by two persons only, quite unlike the later style which featured many stanzas.

[edit] Shin Kokin Wakashū

In the late period rule by cloistered Emperors, or the early Kamakura period, Emperor Go-Toba, who had abdicated, ordered the compilation of the eighth imperial anthology of waka, the Shin Kokin Wakashū. Go-Toba himself joined the team of editors. Other editors included Fujiwara no Teika and Kamo no Chōmei.

Later Imperial anthologies of Waka[link]

After the Shin Kokin Wakashū, fourteen waka anthologies were compiled under imperial edict: the 13 Jūsandaishū (十三代集^?) and the Shin'yō Wakashū (新葉和歌集). These anthologies reflected the taste of aristocrats (and later, warriors) and were considered the ideal of waka in each period. Moreover, anthologizing served as a proof of cultural legitimacy of the patrons and often had political connotations.^[2]

Fujiwara no Teika[link]

• Works of Teika as a waka poet, critic, scribe and editor
  • Three lines of descendants of Teika: the Nijō, Reizei family and Kyōgoku family.
• Other poets in those days
• Poetry in the Kamakura period
• Poetry in the Nanbokucho period - Renga development

Tsukubashu - imperial anthology of renga Renga poets, critics and theories Development of shikimoku (renga rules) Sōgi Haikai no renga appears - as a parody of renga Shinseninutusukbashu Noh play and poetry Influence from waka and other poetry Noh play reading as a verse

• Poetry in the Sengoku period

Renga and Waka

Pre-modern[link]

In the Pre-modern or Edo period (1602–1869) some new styles of poetry developed. One of greatest and most influential styles was renku, (also known as haikai no renga, or haikai), emerging from renga in the medieval period. Matsuo Bashō was a great haikai master and had a wide influence on his contemporaries and later generations. Bashō was also a prominent writer of haibun, a combination of prose and haiku.

The tradition of collaboration between painters and poets had a beneficial influence on poetry in the middle Edo period. In Kyoto there were some artists who were simultaneously poets and painters. Painters of the Shujo school were known as good poets. Among such poet-painters the most significant was Yosa Buson. Buson began his career as a painter but went on to become a master of renku, too. He left many paintings accompanied by his own haiku poems. Such combination of haiku with painting is known as haiga.

Waka underwent a revival, too, in relation to kokugaku, the study of Japanese classics. Kyōka (mad song), a type of satirical waka was also popular.

In the late Edo period, a master of haikai, Karai Senryū made an anthology. His style became known as senryū, after his pseudonym. Senryū is a style of satirical poetry whose motifs are taken from daily life in 5-7-5 syllables. Anthologies of senryū in the Edo period collect many 'maeku' or senryū made by ordinary amateur senryū poets adding in front of the latter 7-7 part written by a master. It was a sort of poetry contest and the well written senryū by amateurs were awarded by the master and other participants.

Modern[link]

A new wave came from the West when Japan was introduced to European and American poetry. This poetry belonged to a very different tradition and was regarded by Japanese poets as a form without any boundaries. Shintai-shi (New form poetry) or Jiyu-shi (Freestyle poetry) emerged at this time. They still relied on a traditional pattern of 5-7 syllable patterns, but were strongly influenced by the forms and motifs of Western poetry. Later, in the Taishō period, some poets began to write their poetry in a much looser metric. In contrast with this development, Kanshi slowly went out of fashion and was seldom written. As a result, Japanese men of letters lost the traditional background of Chinese literary knowledge. Originally the word shi meant poetry, especially Chinese poetry, but today it means mainly modern-style poetry in Japanese. Shi is also known as kindai-shi (modern poetry). Since World War II, poets and critics have used the name gendai-shi (contemporary poetry). This includes the poets Kusano Shimpei, Tanikawa Shuntaro and Ishigaki Rin.

As for the traditional styles such as waka and haiku, the early modern era was also a time of renovation. Yosano Tekkan and later Masaoka Shiki revived those forms. The words haiku and tanka were both coined by Shiki. They laid the basis for development of this poetry in the modern world. They introduced new motifs, rejected some old authorities in this field, recovered forgotten classics, and published magazines to express their opinions and lead their disciples. This magazine-based activity by leading poets is a major feature of Japanese poetry even today.

Some poets, including Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku, Hagiwara Sakutaro wrote in many styles: they used both traditional forms like waka and haiku and new style forms. Most Japanese poets, however, generally write in a single form of poetry.

Contemporary Poetry

Japanese Contemporary Poetry consists of poetic verses of today, mainly after the 1900s. It includes vast styles and genres of prose including experimental, sensual, dramatic, erotic, and many contemporary poets today are female. Japanese contemporary poetry like most regional contemporary poem seem to either stray away from the traditional style or fuse it with new forms. Because of a great foreign influence Japanese contemporary poetry adopted more of a western style of poet style where the verse is more free and absent of such rules as fixed syllable numeration per line or a fixed set of lines.

In 1989 the death of Emperor Hirohito officially brought Japan’s postwar period to an end. The category of “postwar”, born out of the cataclysmic events of 1945, had until that time been the major defining image of what contemporary Japanese poetry was all about (The New Modernism,2010). For poets standing at that border, poetry had to be reinvented just as Japan as a nation began reinventing itself. But while this was essentially a sense of creativity and liberation from militarist oppression, reopening the gates to new form and experimentation, this new boundary crossed in 1989 presented quite a different problem, and in a sense cut just as deeply into the sense of poetic and national identity. The basic grounding “postwar”, with its dependence on the stark differentiation between a Japan before and after the atomic bomb, was no longer available. Identity was no longer so clearly defined (The New Modernism, 2010) In 1990, a most loved and respected member of Japan’s avant-garde and a bridge between Modernist and Post-Modern practice unexpectedly died. Yoshioka Minoru, the very embodiment of what the postwar period meant to Japanese poetry, had influenced virtually all of the younger experimental poets, and received the admiration even of those outside the bounds of that genre (The New Modernism, 2010). The event shocked and dazed Japan’s poetry community, rendering the confusion and loss of direction all the more graphic and painful. Already the limits of “postwar” were being exceeded in the work of Hiraide Takashi and Inagawa Masato. These two poets were blurring the boundary between poetry and criticism, poetry and prose, and questioning conventional ideas of what comprised the modern in Japan (The New Modernism, 2010). Statistically there are about two thousand poets and more than two hundred poetry magazines in Japan today. The poets are divided into five groups: (1) a group publishing the magazine, Vou, under the flag of new humanism; (2) Jikon or time, with neo-realism as their motto, trying to depict the gap between reality and the socialistic ideal as simply as possible; (3) the Communist group; (4) Rekitei or progress, mixing Chinese Han poetry and the traditional Japanese lyric, and (5) Arechi or waste land (Sugiyama, 254).

The Western poets who appeal to the taste of poetry lovers in Japan are principally French(Verlaine), Valery, Rimbaud, Baudelaire; and Rilke is also a favorite (Sugiyama, 255). English poetry is not very popular except among students of English literature in the universities, although Wordsworth, Shelley, and Browning inspired many of the Japanese poets in the quickening period of modern Japanese poetry freeing themselves from the traditional tanka form into a free verse styel only half a century ago (Sugiyama, 256). In more recent women’s poetry, one finds an exploration of the natural rhythms of speech, often in a specifically feminine language rather than a high, literary form, as well as the language of local dialects (The New Modernism, 2010). All of these strategies are expressions of difference, whether sexual or regional, and map out shifting fields of identity in modern Japan against a backdrop of mass culture where these identities might otherwise be lost or overlooked. Japanese Contemporary Poets

Fujiwara Akiko Takashi Hiraide Toshiko Hirata Iijima Koichi Inagawa Masato Park Kyong-MI Sagawa Chika Ito Hiromi Wago Ryoichi Yagawa Sumiko Yoshioka Minoru Takagai Hiroya

References

Sugiyama, Yoko. "The Waste Land and Contemporary Japanese Poetry". Comparative Literature. Vol 13, No. 3 Summer, 1961 Oregon, Duke University Presspp. 254–256 Found at <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1769001> May 20, 2011

Selland, Eric. "The Landscape of Identity: Poetry and the Modern in Japan". The New Modern. Ed. 2004. Litmus Press. Found at <http://ericselland.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/the-landscape-of-identity-poetry-and-the-modern-in-japan/> May 19, 2011

Nakayasu, Sawako. "Contemporary Japanese Poetry in English Translation". Ed. Factorial Press. Found at <http://www.factorial.org/Database/database.html> May 20, 2011

Important poets (premodern)[link]

• Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
• Ariwara no Narihira
• Ono no Komachi
• Izumi Shikibu
• Murasaki Shikibu
• Saigyō
• Fujiwara no Teika
• Matsuo Bashō
• Yosa Buson
• Yokoi Yayū
• Kobayashi Issa

Important poets (modern)[link]

• Yosano Akiko
• Kyoshi Takahama
• Masaoka Shiki
• Taneda Santōka
• Takamura Kotaro
• Ishikawa Takuboku
• Hagiwara Sakutaro
• Kenji Miyazawa
• Noguchi Yonejiro
• Tanikawa Shuntaro
• Kitahara Hakushu

Important collections and works[link]

The largest anthology of haiku in Japanese is the 12-volume Bunruihaiku-zenshū (Classified Collection of Haiku) compiled by Masaoka Shiki, completed after his death, which collected haiku by seasonal theme and sub-theme. It includes work dating back to the 15th century.

The largest collection of haiku translated into English on any single subject is Cherry Blossom Epiphany by Robin D. Gill, which contains some 3,000 Japanese haiku on the subject of the cherry blossom.^[3]

H. Mack Horton's translation of the 16th century Journal of Sōchō, by a pre-eminent renga poet of the time, won the 2002 Stanford University Press Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.^[4]

See also[link]

• Classical Chinese poetry
• Honkadori
• List of Japanese poetry anthologies
• List of Japanese language poets
• List of kigo
• List of National Treasures of Japan (writings)
• List of National Treasures of Japan (writings: Chinese books)
• Tang poetry

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Miner, Earl Roy, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell. (1985). The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton :Princeton University Press. 10-ISBN 0-691-00825-6; 13-ISBN 978-0-691-00825-7
• Miner, Earl Roy, and Robert H. Brower. (1968). An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 10-ISBN 0-8047-0636-0; 13-ISBN 978-0-8047-0636-0; OCLC 232536106

Fujiwara no Teika
A portrait of Teika by Kikuchi Yōsai (菊池 容斎)
Born	1162 Kyoto, Japan
Died	September 26, 1241(1241-09-26) Kyoto, Japan

Fujiwara no Teika (Japanese: 藤原 定家), also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie,^[1][2] (1162 – September 26, 1241) was a Japanese poet, critic,^[3] calligrapher, novelist,^[4] anthologist, scribe,^[5] and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods. His influence was enormous, and he is even to this day counted as among the greatest^[6] of Japanese poets, and perhaps the greatest master of the waka form - an ancient poetic form consisting of five lines with a total of 31 syllables.

Teika's critical ideas on composing poetry were extremely influential and studied until as late as the Meiji era. A member of a poetic clan, Teika was born to the noted poet Fujiwara no Shunzei. After coming to the attention of the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239; r. 1183-1198),^[7] Teika began his long and distinguished career, spanning multiple areas of aesthetic endeavor. His relationship with Go-Toba was at first cordial and led to commissions to compile anthologies, but later resulted in his banishment from the retired emperor's court. His descendants and ideas would dominate classical Japanese poetry for centuries afterwards.

Biography[link]

Monument to Fujiwara no Teika, Ogura, Kyoto

Birth[link]

Teika was born to a minor and distant branch of the aristocratic and courtly clan, the Fujiwara, in 1162, sometime after the Fujiwara regents had lost their political pre-eminence in the Imperial court during the Hōgen Rebellion. His branch of the clan sought prestige and power in the court by aligning itself with the Mikohidari family, and by specializing in artistic endeavors, principally poetry. Such specialization was not unusual; branches of extended clans were not in a position to compete directly in politics with the head branch of the clan (or indeed other clans because of their junior status), but could compete in more restricted aesthetic pursuits. (The Mikohidari, also known as the Miko, were a cadet branch of the Fujiwaras, through Fujiwara no Michinaga's sixth son, Fujiwara no Nagaie (1005–1064); the Mikohidari were themselves aligned with the more senior Kujō branch of the original Fujiwara, who opposed the Rokujō family)

Teika's grandfather was the venerable poet Fujiwara no Toshitada. His father was Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204), a well known and greatly respected poet (and judge of poetry competitions), who had compiled the seventh Imperial anthology of waka (the Senzai Wakashū). His sister would also become a well-respected poet of waka and renga, known as Kengozen or Shunzei's Daughter, whom he would occasionally seek out for poetic advice. His elder brother, Fujiwara no Nariee (sometimes romanized as "Nariie"; 藤原 俊成), would be somewhat successful in court, but not nearly as much as his sister.^[8] Teika's foster-brother, the priest Jakuren or "Sadanaga" c. 1139-1202 would be successful as a poet although his career was cut tragically short; he had been adopted by Shunzei when Shunzei's younger brother "retired from the world".^[9]

Career[link]

Teika's goals as the senior male of his branch were to inherit and cement his father's position in poetry, and to advance his own reputation (thereby also improving the political fortunes of his own clan in the court). While his life would be marked by repeated illness^[10] and wildly shifting fortunes- only partially moderated by his father's long-lasting influence in court (Shunzei would live to the advanced age of 90), the young and poetically inclined Retired Emperor Go-Toba's patronage would prove to lead to some of Teika's greatest successes.^[11]

Go-Toba's patronage[link]

The Retired Emperor Go-Toba announced, in the second year of his abdication (1200, the second year of the Shōji era) that he would be conducting a poetry contest.^[12] Retired Emperors frequently became more influential after their retirement from the office of Emperor rather than as the actual Emperor, since they were free from the highly restricting ceremonial requirements and politics of the court. Go-Toba was 20 when he abdicated; he was the consummate amateur, skilled at playing the lute, considered an authority on traditional learning and courtly precedent, excellent at playing Go, and fond of equestrian pursuits such as horseback archery, shooting at running dogs, and swordsmanship.^[13]

Go-Toba regarded all these pursuits as hobbies, taking one up and dropping another. One of these was his support of poetry, especially the waka. Immediately after his abdication, he had announced that he would hold two poetry contests, each requiring a number of preeminent poets to compose some 100 waka in a particular thematic progression, known as the hyakushu genre of poem sequences. The first contest (Go-Toba no In shodo hyakushu - "Ex-Emperor Go-Toba's First Hundred-Poem Sequences") was considered a crucial political nexus; if a clan's poet did well and impressed the powerful (and youthful) Go-Toba, the clan would benefit considerably.^[12]

Another example of Teika's calligraphy; here he has copied a portion of Sugawara no Takasue no musume's Sarashina nikki

Teika's diary records that he looked forward to this chance to improve himself. He was 38, and had reached middle age. While he was recognized as a talented poet, his career was stagnant; he had been in the Palace Guards of the Left for twenty years, and had not been promoted for nearly 10. He was "Lesser Commander of the Palace Guards of the Left" with little prospect of further advancement.^[14]

He had wider political problems: The influence of his patrons, the Kujōs, over the Emperors had declined drastically. Minamoto no Michichika (d. 1202) had insinuated himself into Imperial circles through Go-Toba's former nursemaid; with this leverage, Michichika's adopted daughter (the then Shogun's daughter, who had decided to marry his daughter off to the Emperor, using Michichika as a go-between - contrary to the Shogun's usual policy if favoring Kujo Kanezane. The Shogun's lack of confidence allowed Michichika to push Go-Toba into firing Kanezane as kampaku in 1196^[15]) became Go-Toba's concubine (making Michichika the Retired Emperor Go-Toba's father in law), and she bore him his first heir in 1195; the shame of this usurpation led Go-Toba's first wife, Ninshi, to retire from the court. As Ninshi was the daughter of the Kujō's leader Kujo no Kanezane, the Kujō's influence in court diminished considerably, even to the extent of Kanezane and Yoshitsune (d. 1206; once the regent and prime minister)^[16] being driven from the court in 1196;^[17] with the diminution of their influence, so dimmed Teika's prospects. Teika expressed his disappointment through poetry, such as this example, written when he was "passed over for promotion in the spring list" in 1187 (he would eventually be promoted in 1190, but as his good and encouraging friend Saigyo died that year, it was cold comfort):

In fact, Teika was initially not invited, the instigation of the rival Rokujō clan's leader, Suetsune^[18] and the connivance of Michichika.^[19] Suetsune and Teika were bitter enemies; just a few months before, Teika had humiliated Suetsune by calling him "that fake poet" and publicly refusing to participate in a poetry competition with Suetsune.^[20] His revenge was well-done; Teika was furious, writing in his Meigetsuki: :"I never heard of such a thing as choosing only senior poets [writes Teika about the pretext used to exclude him]. I can just see Suetsune at the bottom of this, contriving by some bribe that I be left out. It has to be Suetsune, Tsuneie, that whole family. Well, I have no regrets, for there is no possible hope for me now. But I did write in confidence to Kintsune so this may all come out eventually. He has replied that there is still room for hope."^[21]

"I gather that it was probably not the Emperor who decided on the rules for the hundred-poem competition. It was due entirely to the machinations of Michichika. One feels like flicking him away in disgust."^[22]

Teika's appeals to the unrelenting Michichika failed,^[12] and so Shunzei stepped in with an eloquent letter (the well-known Waji sojo; "Appeal in Japanese" - writing in Japanese as opposed to the official Chinese was considered a mark of sincerity^[12]) addressed to Go-Toba, arguing that such an exclusion was without precedent, and motivated by base jealousy on their opponent's part:

"Of late the people who call themselves poets have all been mediocrities. The poems they compose are unpleasant to hear, wordy and lacking in finesse."^[20]

As Keene writes, "He denounced by name Teika's enemy Suetsune, calling him an ignoramus, and urged Gotoba not to be misled by his machinations."^[20] Gotoba relented at this appeal from a man he greatly respected (the second time Shunzei had so interceded on Teika's behalf; the first time was in 1185 when Teika had lost his temper and struck a superior - the lesser general Masayuki - with a lamp).^[23][24] He allowed Teika, along with two other "young" poets, Fujiwara no Ietaka (1159–1237; 1158–1237, according to Brower^[25]), adopted son of Jakuren and pupil to Shunzei,^[26] and Takafusa (1148–1209)^[25] to enter the contest. Teika was overjoyed at this turn of events:

"Early this morning came a message from Lord Kintsune that last evening the Ex-Emperor ordered my inclusion among the participants for the hundred-poem sequences.....To have been added to the list for this occasion fills me with inexpressible joy. Though they can hinder me no more, I am still convinced that the trouble was all due to the machinations of those evil men. And that it has turned out this way is a fulfillment of all my hopes and prayers for this life and the next."^[27]

Teika furiously worked for more than two weeks^[28] to complete the full sequence, and when he finally turned his Shoji hyakushu in a day late, Go-Toba was so eager he read the poems immediately. Go-Toba's personal secretary, Minamoto Ienaga, kept a diary (the Minamoto Ienaga nikki) which eulogistically concerned itself with Go-Toba's poetic activities,^[29] and he records that it was Teika's hundred-poem sequence, and more specifically, poem number 93 which was directly responsible for Teika's being granted the special permission necessary to be admitted to the Retired Emperor's court (distinct from the reigning emperor's court; this special admittance was crucial to any future patronage); this is scarcely surprising as the 100-poem sequences submitted were of uniformly high quality (more poems originating in the sequences Go-Toba commissioned were included in the Shin Kokinshū than from any other source except the enormous "Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds").^[30]

Interestingly, this poem is both a fine example of the jukkai ("personal grievances"^[25]) genre and as Minamoto no Ienaga first pointed out,^[32] also an allusion to the poem (preserved, along with Go-Shirakawa's reply, in the Imperial anthology Senzai Wakashū^[33]) Shunzei had sent Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa 14 years previously, imploring him to forgive Teika for striking a superior with a candlestick; "the allusion conveys the hope that just as Shunzei's poem obtained his erring son's restoration to rank and office under Go-Shirakawa, now Teika's own poem will win him admission to Go-Toba's Court despite his connection with the "disgraced" Kujō faction."^[28]

Teika and Go-Toba would have a close^[34] and productive relationship; Teika would be favored in such ways as being appointed by Go-Toba as one of the six compilers (and de facto head compiler by virtue of his dedication and force of personality in addition to his already established reputation as a poet) of the eighth Imperial Anthology of waka poetry, the esteemed Shin Kokinshū (c. 1205, "New Collection of Japanese Poetry, Ancient and Modern") which Go-Toba ordered to be written after the success of the hundred-poem sequences (which furnished a base for the collection). In order to compile it, Go-Toba had resurrected the defunct institution, the Poetry Bureau in the seventh month of 1201, with fifteen yoryudo, or "contributing members", and three added later),^[35] who participated in the many poetry contests and similar activities that soon began taking place in the Bureau; of the Fellows, six (Minamoto Michitomo, Fujiwara Ariie, Teika, Fujiwara Ietaka, Fujiwara Masatsune and Jakuren, who would not live to finish the task, and was not replaced. Minamoto Ienaga was apparently detached from being Go-Toba's personal secretary to instead serve as the secretary for the compilation committee; his and Teika's diaries have survived, affording an unprecedentedly good view of the inner workings of how an imperial anthology was created)^[35] were chosen to compile the Shin Kokinshū in the eleventh month of 1201.^[32]

As if the honor of helping to compile the Shin Kokinshū and of having a remarkable 46^[36] of his poems (including three from the Shoji hyakushu) included were not enough, Teika would later be appointed in 1232 by the Retired Emperor Go-Horikawa to compile - by himself - the ninth Imperial Anthology, the Shinchokusen Wakashū (c. 1235; "New Imperial Collection"). Teika was the first person to have ever been a compiler of two Imperial anthologies.

A painting of Teika, possibly by his son, Tameie

Teika and Go-Toba quarrel[link]

This favorable patronage and collaboration eventually soured even as Teika's relation with Emperor Juntoku and Minamoto no Sanetomo deepened, over many things such as differences in how one should use "association and progression" (as Brower terms it) in poetic sequences. In 100-poem sequences and the like, the poems were usually in one of several groups (the four seasons were common ones, as was love); the poems generally formed an integrated sequence in which they dealt with the same subject matter, proceeding from stage to stage (for instance, a sequence on Love might proceed from loneliness, to falling in love, to a mature relationship, and then the sorrow when it ends) or which refer to elements of previous poems (a technique later central to renga sequences). Go-Toba used such techniques consistently and often, whereas Teika's use was more erratic. During the compilation of the Shin Kokinshū, there were other differences, apparently over how wide-ranging a net to throw for poems:

"In a situation like the present, where he [Go-Toba]has included poems by a great many people one has never heard of, whose names have remained in almost total obscurity for generations, and persons who have only recently begun to attract attention had as many as ten poems apiece included- in such a situation it is no particular distinction for me to have forty-odd [46]poems chosen, or for Ietaka to have a score or more. The Ex-Sovereign's recent decisions make it appear he is choosing men rather than poems- a questionable procedure."^[37]

Teika's displeasure manifested itself in more petty ways, such as refusing to attend a banquet in 1205 (300 years after the Kokinshū was completed) celebrating the official completion of the Shin Kokinshū because there was no precedent for such a banquet (apparently he was not convinced by the precedent of the banquet celebrating the completion of the Nihon Shoki);^[38] Go-Toba reciprocated by cutting Teika out of the process of continually revising the Shin Kokinshū^[39] (while it was officially complete by the date of the banquet, it was de facto incomplete as the Japanese Preface only existed in rough drafts^[38] and because Go-Toba would continue revising the selection of poems for some time thereafter, only releasing the final edition approximately 6 years later, sometime after the ninth month of 1210;^[40][41] indeed, Go-Toba would continue revising it until his death, although the later revisions are not extant).^[42]

In addition, there apparently were serious personality conflicts, which lead Go-Toba to write once, after praising Teika's poetry, that:

"The way Teika behaved, as if he knew all about poetry, was really quite extraordinary. Especially when he was defending his own opinion, he would act like the man who insisted a stag was a horse. He was utterly oblivious of others, and would exceed all reason, refusing to listen to anything other people had to say."^[43]

(The stag and horse anecdote refers to the ancient Chinese Chao Kao (d. 207 BCE), who revolted after an incident in which he brought a stag to the Imperial court, claimed it was actually a horse, and saw that more of the officials sycophantically agreed with him, rather than the emperor who pointed out that the horse was actually a stag.)

Donald Keene believes that as Teika grew more important, he resented Go-Toba's peremptory use of him.^{[10][44][45][46]} In his later years, Go-Toba took issue not merely with Teika's personality, but also with his poetry, complaining of Teika's more liberal style that Teika (among other things^[47]) "by contrast, paid no attention whatsoever to the topic. For this reason in recent times even beginners have all come to be like this. It is outrageous. Only when one concentrates very hard upon a compound topic and composes a poem which centers upon the topic is the result of any interest. This modern style is sheer carelessness. It is absolutely essential to practice composing poems on compound topics in the correct way."^[48][49]

In any event, the precipitating events were two incidents, one in 1207 and the next in 1220. In 1207, Go-Toba decided to organize the creation of 46 landscape screens for the Saishō Shitennō Temple which he had built in 1205 (interestingly, apparently "in order to enlist divine aid in the overthrow the feudal government");^[50] each of these screens would also have a waka on the famous landscape depicted, composed by a leading poet, who would compose the requisite 46, with the best poems for each landscape selected. Of course, Teika was asked to contribute, but one (on the "Wood of Ikuta", a famous and picturesque woodland attached to the Ikuta Shrine of Settsu Province, modern-day Kobe; it was famous for being a battlefield between the Minamoto and Taira clans, as well as for its scenic beauty^[51]) was rejected by Go-Toba; not because it was a bad poem, but because it was a "poor model", as Keene puts it.^[52] Teika, already annoyed by the minimal notice for the contest and the lack of time for composing the poems (he had to turn them in two days after he was first informed of the contest), began complaining about Go-Toba and attacking his poetic judgement, both with regard to the Shin Kokinshū and the poems selected from the screens.^[53] Nothing came of this incident, but nevertheless, the damage had been done.^[39]

The second incident took place in the second month of 1220 and is described in a preface to the two poems concerned as recorded in Teika's personal anthology, the Shū gusō; during the 6-year period covering such events as Teika's banishment from Go-Toba's court and Go-Toba's participation in the Jōkyū War of 1221, Teika's diary is silent.^[54] Teika was asked to participate in a poem competition on the 13th of the second month; Teika declined, citing as a reason the anniversary of his mother's death 26 years previous, in 1194. Go-Toba and his officials sent several letters to him, strongly urging him to come, and Teika eventually gave in, arriving with only two waka. The headnote to the two poems reads:

"Having been summoned to the palace for a poetry gathering on the thirteenth day of the second month in the second year of Shokyu [1220], I had begged to be excused because of a ritual defilement, it being the anniversary of my mother's death. I thought no more about it, but quite unexpectedly in the evening of the appointed day, the Archivist Iemitsu come with a letter from the ex-emperor, saying that I was not the hold back on account of the defilement, but was to come in any case. I continued to refuse, but after the ex-emperor had sent two more letters insisting on my presence, I hastily wrote down the following two poems and took them with me."^[54]

The first waka was critical of Go-Toba but otherwise fairly innocuous, but the second was quite pointed, obliquely attacking Go-Toba both for forcing Teika to attend Go-Toba's contest when Teika was memorializing his mother and also for insufficiently promoting Teika (the final line is a variation on a phrase dealing with "double griefs"):

Go-Toba saw this attack as both ingratitude of the rankest sort and the culmination of a series of affronts, this latest being petty resentment at what Go-Toba would have seen as a flimsy pretext for attempting to get out of the poetry competition. Accordingly, he banished Teika from his court, a banishment that would last for more than a year; this feud distressed devotees of poetry.^[56]

Teika in the ascendancy[link]

Possibly another a factor in this estrangement was politics - Teika had had the good fortune of being selected in 1209 as a poetry teacher to the new and young shogun, Minamoto no Sanetomo; the Shogunate was a rival and superior authority to that of the Emperors and the Imperial court. It was probably to the unhappy Sanetomo that Teika addressed the prefatory essay to his didactic collection, Kindai shūka ("Superior Poems of Our Time"), and his treatise on poetry Maigetsusho ("Monthly Notes"). Go-Toba would become an enemy of the then-bedridden Teika. Fortunately for Teika, Go-Toba would be exiled by the Kamakura shogunate in 1221 for the rest of life to the Oki Islands after Go-Toba led a failed rebellion against the Shogunate (the Jōkyū War) which Go-Toba had long hated;^[57]

Teika's political fortunes improved in this period, as it was after Go-Toba's exile that Teika was appointed compiler of the ninth imperial anthology, the Shinchokusen Wakashū ("New Imperial Collection"; completed c. 1234). While it was a great honor, it was poorly received except by conservatives. According to Donald Keene, Shunzei's Daughter"declared that if it had not been compiled by Teika she would have refused even to take it into her hands." (From a letter sent to Fujiwara no Tameie, Teika's son).^[58] She and others also criticized it for apparently deliberately excluding any of the objectively excellent poems produced by the three Retired Emperors exiled in the aftermath of the Jōkyū War^[58] This absence has been variously attributed to vengefulness on the part of Teika, or simply a desire to not potentially offend the Kamakura shogunate.^[59]

In 1232, Teika was advanced at the age of 70 to the court rank of "Gon Chūnagon" (Acting Middle Counselor.^[60]

But even Teika's improved fortunes could not insulate him entirely from the various famines and disasters that wracked the country in this period, and which greatly exacberated his illnesses:

"Today I had my servants dig up the garden (the north one), and plant wheat there. Even if we only grow a little, it will sustain our hunger in a bad year. Don't make fun of me! What other stratagem does a poor old man have?" (Meigetsuki, 13th day of the 10th month, 1230)^[61]

"Starving people collapse, and their dead bodies fill the streets. Every day the numbers increase....The stench has gradually reached my house. Day and night alike, people go by carrying the dead in their arms, too numerous to count." (Meigetsuki, 2nd day of the 7th month, 1231)^[61]

During the later portions of his life, Teika experimented with refining his style of ushin, teaching and writing it; in addition to his critical works and the manuscripts he studied and copied out, he experimented with the then-very young and immature form of renga- "They are an amusement to me in my dotage."^[62] He died in 1241, in Kyoto, and was buried at a Buddhist temple named "Shokokuji".

Rival descendants[link]

One of his 27 children by various women^[63] (and one of two legitimate sons), Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275; he is remembered as a reluctant heir, in youth inclining rather to court football at the encouragement of Go-Toba^[53] than to poetry), would carry on Teika's poetic legacy. Tameie's descendants would split into three branches: the conservative elder Nijō branch (founded by Tameie's elder son, Nijō Tameuji (1222–1286); the middle branch of the Kyōgoku founded by Fujiwara no Tamenori (1226–1279), which, before it went extinct in 1332 with the death of Fujiwara no Tamekane, merged with the Reizei at the prompting of Nun Abutsu; and the younger, more liberal Reizei branch, founded by Tameie' younger son Fujiwara no Tamesuke (b. 1263) by Abutsu (d. circa 1283; a poet and a great diarist, especially remembered for her diary Isayoi Nikki ("Diary of the Waning Moon") chronicling her legal battles to get the Kamakura shogunate to stop Tameuji from disinheriting Tamesuke of the Hosokawa estate near the capital that Tameie had left Tamesuke).^[64]

It is a testament to Teika's importance that the poetic history of the next centuries is in large part a story of the battles between the rival branches; indeed, it is this rivalry that is chiefly responsible for the great number of forgeries attributed to Teika. When the Reizei lost a court case concerning possession of the Hosokawa estate Tameie had willed to Tamesuke, they were ordered to hand over the valuable manuscripts and documents inherited from Teika and Tameie over to the Nijō; they outwardly complied, but along with the few genuine documents whose existence the Nijō had already learned of, they mostly included forgeries which the Nijō had little choice but to accept. In retaliation, the Nijō manufactured a number of forgeries of their own, the better to buttress their claims.^[65][66]

After a period of Reizei ascendancy under Rezei no Tamehide (great-grandson of Teika) (b. 1302?, d. 1372), they suffered a decline and a consequent rise in the fortunes of the Nijō, as Tamehide's son, Iametuni, became a Buddhist monk. However, the Nijō soon suffered setbacks of their own under the wastrel Nijō no Tameshige (b. 1325, d. 1385), whose promising son, Nijō no Tametō (b. 1341, d. 1381), died comparatively young, killed by a brigand.

In a further disaster for the Nijō, Tametō's son, Nijō no Tamemigi was killed by a brigand as well in 1399 (?), effectively wiping out the Nijō as an organized force. Under the grandson of Tamehide, Tanemasa (b. 1361, d. 1417), the Rezei achieved temporary victory in the time of Shōtetsu.^[67] Ironically, the once-liberal Reizei would become associated during and after the Meji Era with the ultra-conservatives of the "Palace School".

Teika's grave site.

Poetic achievements[link]

"In this art of poetry, those who speak ill of Teika should be denied the protection of the gods and Buddhas and condemned to the punishments of hell." -Shōtetsu^[67]

Teika selected the works for the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, an anthology of a hundred poems by a hundred poets. His Ogura Hyakunin Isshū was later thought to be a book of waka theory in which all types of ideal waka and all techniques were laid out; disputes over specific style and whether to be conservative or liberal that divided his descendants into a number of feuding schools/clans like the Reizei, Kyogoku, and Nijō.

Teika made many^[68] manuscript copies of Japanese classics, including such landmarks of Japanese literature as The Tale of Genji, The Tales of Ise and the Kokinshū anthology.^[69] In his days, the ancient Japanese pronunciations were lost or difficult to understand, rendering the orthography of kana confused and uncertain. Teika researched old documents and recovered the earlier system of deciding between interpretations of kana, and developed a systematic orthography which was used until the modern Meiji period. He applied his kana system to his manuscripts, which were known for their accuracy and general high quality and called Teika bon ("Teika text"). Using his method he was able to document the accurate pronunciation of earlier waka like the ones in the Kokin Wakashū. His manuscripts were also appreciated for his eponymous distinct and bold style of calligraphy. The Adobe font "Kazuraki SPN", released in 2009, is based upon the calligraphic style of Fujiwara Teika.

A manuscript in Teika's hand of "Superior Poems of our Time", showing his calligraphic style.

Teika is also remembered, like his father, as being something of an innovator- the Encyclopædia Britannica says:

"Teika employed traditional language in startling new ways, showing that the prescriptive ideal of "old diction, new treatment" [kotoba furuku, kokoro atarashi] inherited from Shunzei might accommodate innovation and experimentation as well as ensure the preservation of the language and styles of the classical past."

Sōgi and his friends honor Teika's grave with a poetry party.

The "old diction" here are phrases and words from the "Three Collections": the Kokinshū, the Gosen Wakashū, and the Shūi Wakashū, but not much older than that (for instance, the diction of the Man'yōshū was considered too old).^[70] Teika wrote in his Maigetsusho that the best poems were spontaneous and original, but nevertheless traditional:

"But such a notion is quite erroneous. For if we were to call such verses as that superior, then any poem at all we might write could be a fine one. No, first the powers of invention must be freed by reciting endless possibilities over and over to oneself. Then, suddenly and spontaneously, from among all the lines one is composing, may emerge a poem whose treatment of the topic is different from the common run, a verse that is somehow superior to the rest. It is full of poetic feeling, lofty in cadence, skillful, with resonances above and beyond the words themselves. It is dignified in effect, its phrasing original, yet smooth and gentle. It is interesting, suffused with an atmosphere subtle yet clear. It is richly evocative, its emotion not tense and nervous but sensible from the appropriateness of the imagery. Such a poem is not to be composed by conscious effort, but if a man will only persist in unremitting practice, he may produce one spontaneously."^[71]

The following is an example of how Teika used old and classic imagery such as Takasago and Onoe, as well as pine and cherry trees, in fresh ways:

His poems were described as remarkable for their elegance and exemplars of Teika's ideals, in his early and later years (respectively; Teika considerably modified his personal beliefs during his 40s, after the death of Shunzei, and simplified his style of composition), of the styles of yoen- one of the ten orthodox styles Teika defined and defended in his poetic criticism, with some of the others being the onihishigitei ("demon-quelling force") style, the style of sabi or "loneliness" (closely related to mono no aware), the style of yugen, or "mystery and depth"; the yoen style was concerned with "ethereal beauty", and ushin ("deep feeling" or "conviction of feeling". This shift in style from yoen to ushin was intended to achieve a certain sort of makoto, or integrity;^[73] Teika sometimes referred to his aim as ushin ("deep feeling"), which confusingly was also the name of one of the ten styles. The yoen style was one of the most popular in his time due in no small part to Teika's of it (yoen had first been described by Fujiwara no Mototoshi in the 1150s, but had been only marginally successful); years later, the Symbolists would admire and emulate (to a degree) his use of language to evoke atmosphere in his brief poems in the yoen style. An excellent example (and one later chosen for an Imperial anthology) is the first poem below:

Partial bibliography[link]

• Shoji hyakushu (1200; "Hundred-Poem Sequence of the Shoji era")
• Gotoba-in Kumano Gokō Ki (1201; "The Visit of the Cloistered Emperor to Kumano"). A diary Teika wrote about a trip to Kumano he took with Go-Toba and Michichika; like his other diary, it is written in classical Chinese, except for the wakas along the way to the shrines there that Go-Toba was so devoted to that this trip was but one of more than thirty. Teika seems not to have enjoyed the trip; his diary often records concern over his health and matters of decorum such as the proper clothes to wear.^[75]
• Eiga taigai^[76] or Eika no Taigai (c. 1216,^[76] 1222?; "Essentials of Poetic Composition"). Besides normal advice and criticism of poetry such as pedantic rules on honkadori - poems used as a base in honkadori should always be old poems and from either the Kokinshū, Shūi Wakashū, or the Gosen Wakashū with no more than two and a half lines borrowed from the originals; similarly, borrowed elements were to be moved within the new poem and the new poem should have a different theme), Teika also tellingly recommends certain classic works for aspiring poets to study: the Tales of Ise, Sanjurokkasen (or "Poems of the Thirty-Six Immortals") and the first two portions of The Collected Works of Po Chü-i. Portions of the Eiga taigai have been translated into English^[77]
• Hyakunin isshu (c. 1235 "Single Poems by One Hundred Poets"; this collection became the foundation of the modern Japanese New Year game karuta.)
• Hyakunin Shūka (1229-1236?; an 101 poem anthology arranged at the request of Utsunomiya Yoritsuna to be copied onto 101 strips of paper and pasted onto the walls of his villa; it has 97 poems in common with Hyakunin isshu, suggesting that perhaps it is a misidentified and variant version of the Isshu.)
• Kindai shūka (c. 1209; "Superior Poems of Our Time"; a collection of poems Teika felt to be excellent models, with a preface dealing with his critical philosophy, sent to Sanetomo to instruct him in how his poems should emulate the great ancient Japanese poets- teaching by example. This sequence was constructed when he was 47, after the death of Shunzei, which depressed Teika, as evidenced by his writing in the Kindai shūka that he had "forgotten the color of the followers of words; the well-springs of inspiration have run dry.")^[78]
• Maigetsusho (c. 1219; "Monthly Notes"; an epistle of corrections of one hundred poems, sent to a student of Teika's. Besides the corrections, it bore a preface which is a major source of information regarding Teika's view on the aesthetics of poetry; Shōtetsu states that it was sent to Minamoto no Sanetomo; Ton'a holds rather that it had been sent to the "Kinugasa Great Inner Minister", or Fujiwara no Ieyoshi.)^[77]
• Matsura Monogatari ("The Tale of Matsura"; an experimental novel believed to be written by Teika, though Teika's manuscript claims that he was merely copying it.)
• Meigetsuki ("The Record of the Clear Moon"; sometimes called "Diary of the Clear Moon"^[79] or possibly "Chronicle of the Bright Moon";^[80] as the second translation suggests, this was a diary Teika kept in classical Chinese between the ages of approximately 18 (in 1180) to just before his death, around 1241; the entries for 1180 and 1181 may have been written when Teika was an old man,^[81] but the bulk of the diary covers the 47 years between 1188 and 1235. As its comprehensiveness might suggest, it is an extremely valuable resource for understanding the court and Teika's place in the Imperial court, even despite its incompleteness- available extant versions consist of 56 scrolls (the Reizei family possesses in its family library holographs of 56 and copies of two more), while scholars estimate that the original consisted of over 180 scrolls.) Among its many interesting passages (some quoted previously) about Teika's career and life is a famous passage from the ninth month of 1180 about Teika's indifference to political or military advancement, in which he aristocratically remarked that "Reports of disturbances and punitive expeditions fill one's ears, but I pay them no attention. The red banners and the expeditions against the traitors are no concern of mine." (Here, "red banners" probably refers to the Imperial standard; the last line is possibly a reference to a poem by Po Chu-i in which he tells of how he has been effectively exiled and passes his time playing Go).
• Nishidaishū (Anthology of 1811 poems from the first 8 Imperial anthologies.)
• Shuka no daitai ("A Basic Canon of Superior Poems")
• Teika Jitte (1207–1213; an anthology of 286 poems, chiefly derived from the Shin Kokinshū; long believed a forgery, but some modern scholars contend that it is a genuine work.)
• Shū gusō (?); Teika's personal anthology of poems. It is of interest as one of the more complete sources of Teika's poems- for instance, the two poems which offended Retired Emperor Go-Toba so much and caused the rift between Teika and him are preserved here only.^[53]

See also[link]

• Shikishi

References[link]

• Mostow, Joshua S., ed. (1996). Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
• Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10-ISBN 0-674-01753-6; 13-ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 58053128

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Fujiwara no Teika

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Fujiwara no Teika

• Hyakunin isshu-(Public domain translation online)
• Brief biography of Teika and links to ~41 translated poems.
• Entry at Encyclopædia Britannica
• Page on the Meigetsuki
  • Picture of a portion of a hand-scroll of the Meigetsuki
• Article on Teika and a supernova he witnessed