Paper short abstract:

The Sinitic travel poetry of a monk in the 1140s deals with various aspects of life outside the capital and offers a view of rural Japan hardly seen in contemporary sources. As such, they illustrate the importance of a hardly discussed genre in Heian literature, 'no-topic poetry' (mudaishi).

Paper long abstract:

Central to this paper is the travel poetry of a fairly unknown but prolific late Heian poet of 'kanshi' or Sinitic verse, who was known as 'the monk Renzen' or 'Lotus Meditation' (Shaku Renzen 釈蓮禅, 1082?-?). Active in the first half of the twelfth century, he has been nicknamed 'the Saigyō of Sinitic poetry' because of his extensive travels. His most substantial legacy is indeed a long sequence of poems made on a journey to Kyushu in the early 1140s.

This travel sequence is used to discuss a number of assumptions about Sino-Japanese poetic practice and poetic networks in twelfth century Japan. One is the breath of thematic freedom in in Sino-Japanese composition, a point that is directly related to the two main templates of kanshi: 'topic poetry' (kudaishi) and its supposed antithesis, 'no-topic poetry' (mudaishi). While recently 'kudaishi' have received treatment in scholarly literature, 'mudaishi' constitute a completely overlooked yet hugely popular genre category in late Heian verse.

Another assumption is a program of cultural codification of landscapes and their representations, which is related to a discernible creative interest in a world outside court society. The realm of nature was increasingly invaded by new functions and meanings of 'uncultured' (or differently cultured) landscapes, forcing court poets to address parts of Japan so long deemed peripheral.

Finally, a third assumption is that court networks of poets no longer were exclusively the privilege of those who functioned within the usual parameters of the scholar-bureaucrat-poet.

These three notions, categorial, thematic and social, provide the angles to reconsider poetic practices of the late classic age.