Paper short abstract:

Early medieval poet-scholars started to textualize parts of their waka knowledge as a result of their urge to stabilize their own line of knowledge transmission as the most legitimate one. Therefore, they produced commentaries (karon) and circulated them as advertisements of their poetic expertise.

Paper long abstract:

Transmission of poetic knowledge in Japan has been examined mainly as the realm of the "written." However, the study of early medieval (late 12th-early 13th century) poetic commentaries (karon) reveals traces of oral teachings. Even though, as pointed out by Brian Steininger, the realm of court ritual in mid-Heian (10th century) was not primarily text-based, we observe a shift in the format of teachings about waka (court poetry) from oral transmissions (kuden) to what I call "the rise of karon." This increased production of poetry criticism in the early medieval period is related to the professionalization and politicization of poetic practice, a phenomenon observed by Robert Huey. I address why and by whom some of the oral teachings about waka were recorded in writing.

By mid-Heian period, general knowledge about ancient poetry was already fragmentary; the ur-texts of some poetic collections were lost, including Man'yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, 759-785), the first extant Japanese poetic collection; those collections survived in the form of multiple manuscripts, containing numerous textual variants. Early medieval poet-scholars, like Rokujō Kiyosuke (1104-1177), Kenshō (ca. 1130-1210) and Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204), attempted to recreate parts of the lost poetic discourse and speculated on various textual and historical issues. In their activity as literary critics, we sense an urge to stabilize their own line of knowledge transmission as the most legitimate one. They produced poetic commentaries, in which they revealed those parts of oral transmissions that had never before been recorded in writing and circulated those newly compiled texts as advertisements of their expertise about waka.

As argued by Richard Okada, the written cannot exist without the oral; and while the written is more permanent, it is the oral that authorizes the written. Thus, the activity of writing about poetry presented an opportunity to establish oneself as the center of literary production and thus leader of the poetic world. The poets recognized the level of power that comes with the possession of a manuscript; by textualizing their knowledge and transforming orality into textuality, they were claiming and legitimizing their own lines of knowledge transmission.