Paper short abstract:

How did the poems composed for and inscribed on the presentation screens for the November 2019 Daijōe conform with and depart from the precedent? In what ways are the eight poems treating topoi in the yuki and suki prefectures, Tochigi-ken and Kyōto-fu, both traditional and contemporary?

Paper long abstract:

The modern version of the ancient Daijōe ("Great Thanksgiving Assembly") has many features that have been adapted from practices that were first documented in the 10th and 11th centuries. These include the presentation of sets of poems on the four seasons and in celebration of noted places (meisho) in the selected tributary prefectures (in the 2019 Reiwa instance, Tochigi-ken and Kyōto-fu), inscribed on a pair of folding screens (byōbu). Where once court scholars and atelier artists created these offerings, noted contemporary poets and painters (still, all male) now perform in this role. As an example of a research challenge in the study of "the futures of the past," (and as a sequel to my study of Daijōe uta in my 2018 book, Waka and Things, Waka as Things) I will discuss the significance of these poems as an elusive temporal resource reflecting time and change, the revival and transformation of tradition, and the challenges of working with ritual materials that are not intended for public access in the age of the internet. I will review the origins and history of the rite and the role of screens, poems, and other tribute offerings and performances in it, and track how the rite has morphed into his modern form. Many aspects of the rite are secret—not to be observed by the public: the two screens, however, were widely seen in media at the time of the ceremony itself, while the poem texts were not released by the Kunaichō until subsequently and on special request—but thus became part of a corpus that is now over a thousand years old. What does this tell us about the place of court waka in the 21st century?

Paper short abstract:

This paper has two aims: First, it approaches renga poetry from the viewpoint of written artefacts. Second, it focuses on the question how contemporary renga positions itself towards the tradition of premodern classical renga. I will also introduce findings from research trips in 2018 and 2020.

Paper long abstract:

Although linked poetry is a comparably well-researched subject even in Western Japanese Studies, research has, with few exceptions, largely been concerned with texts, literary theory and, if the social context was considered, with the history of eminent masters.

However, renga has always been a performative art or an "art of the place" (za no bungei, ba no bungei), requiring people to meet and interact. It is from this interaction that the poems emerged as a collaborative work and were written down by a scribe. From a viewpoint of material studies, we might therefore ask: What kind of written artefacts emerged from the performances? How are they structured? Are there traces in paratexts, design or binding that allow us to infer to types of performance like, for example, sessions after a dream vision (musô renga) or sessions conducted as a prayer (kitô renga)? How were manuscripts used during and after the meetings? What is the significance of manuscripts within the cultural setting of renga poetry?

By the early 20th century, classical renga was nearly extinct with probably one exception. Beginning in the 1980s, revival movements have started to spread the practice again. What are the similarities and differences between premodern and modern or neoclassical renga? How do modern renga poets place themselves within the tradition? What are the chances of preserving the practice of neoclassical linked poetry as a cultural heritage in the future? What role do written artefacts play in the age of digitalization? Will handwriting still have a future?

Presenting the results of research trips in 2018 and 2020, the paper aims at providing some answers to these questions. I will argue that renga performances and manuscripts as objects of research challenge the traditional scientific taxonomy of knowledge that differentiates fields like literature, religion, art history, cultural anthropology, codicology etc. as well as modern and pre-modern studies. I will also argue that even if one should not naively conclude from modern to pre-modern practices, studying neoclassical renga might also open up new questions and perspectives on artefacts and practices of the pre-modern period.

Paper short abstract:

This paper reintegrates materiality and text to show meanings lost in the separation. Expanding the act usually called ‘reading’ to the hand and eye, a 1713 calligraphy book, an item typically thought to offer women a means to better themselves, will be shown to be a source of aesthetic enjoyment.

Paper long abstract:

In the early Edo period, enterprising booksellers identified women as a lucrative potential market and a range of books were targeted at them. Many works for women were aimed at their self-improvement, and this paper is concerned with those commonly understood to be manuals to help women with their writing – that is, with formulating polite correspondence, and with brushing beautiful letterforms, both signals of a woman’s cultural sophistication and social standing. Nyohitsu copybooks were a type of work that encompassed both aspects of writing, the linguistic and the material. Meaning the ‘woman’s brush’, the word signified both a publishing genre and a type of calligraphy particularly used for letters. This paper examines one particular work, Sazareishi, ‘The Sacred Rock’, first published 1713 in Kyoto and Edo, later reprinted in Kyoto, Edo and Osaka. This was from the hand of Hasegawa Myōtei, who, after retiring from the palace, became a celebrated and prolific nyohitsu calligrapher producing 23 works across a publishing career that lasted sixty years from the turn of the eighteenth century, although her style, Myōtei-ryū, did not long outlive the person herself. These three volumes of letters apparently offer the opportunity to improve one’s handwriting through imitation and reproduction.

However, this paper will argue against such a highly limited characterisation of the work, positioning Sazareishi instead as a richly complex and highly rewarding text. Not only was Myōtei’s distinctive, flamboyant hand a pleasure to the eye, it also offered the classically educated an immersive, aesthetic, and yes, literary, engagement, where the material and literary text are inseparable in the construction of meaning. And yet, as a copybook, this was intended for calligraphy practice. The act of copying emerges as a materially-focussed mode of interacting with text that is at least equal to reading. Rather than thinking of copybooks as dry manuals, and women as driven by a need to better themselves, this paper proposes the copybook as a thing of leisure and pleasure, and, at least in its own time, an object of desire.