Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the Kaifūsō collection (Verses Recollecting Old Customs, 751) as a negotiation between the historical reality of the practice of Sinitic poetry before and during the early Nara period (710-784) and its ideal representation as a prestigious and continued form of cultural capital.

Paper long abstract:

As the oldest extant collection of Sinitic poetry in Japan, the Kaifūsō (Verses Recollecting Old Customs, 751) constitutes a precious window into the literary culture of the Nara period (710-784), and as such it has attracted a fair degree of scholarly attention. On the one hand, the collection can be read as a narrative about the evolution of Sinitic poetry from the idealized reign of Emperor Tenji (r. 668-672) to its gradual decentralization from the imperial court in the early Nara period, a representation that is seemingly supported by the scarcity of documentation about court poetic practice during that time. This paper, however, seeks to move away from an understanding of the Kaifūsō as a repository of historical poetic practice to instead rethink it as a strategically imagined literary environment. Specifically, I aim to present the Kaifūsō as a site of negotiation between the historical reality of Sinitic poetry before and during the Nara period and the ideal role that the anonymous compiler envisioned for it as an uninterrupted court practice as well as a form of cultural capital that could support and legitimize an individual’s socio-political status. By reading the structure of the Kaifūsō as a strategy to complement and expand the poetic culture of the court, I thus argue that the collection was conceived of not so much as a representation of what poetic practice was, but instead of how it was imagined it should be. In this way, I suggest, the Kaifūsō imagination anticipates the gradual rise of Sinitic poetry from the end of the eighth century and can be thought of as an early precursor of the discourse surrounding poetic literacy and practice that fully bloomed at the beginning of the Heian period.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the compilation of seasonal poetry in Volume VIII of the Man’yōshū merges the natural world with imperial chronology, constructing a narrative about literary practices in the mid-eighth century court that privileged the Ōtomo lineage and their allies.

Paper long abstract:

Japan has a longstanding tradition of compiling vernacular poetry (waka) in accordance with the seasons. Yet in Western scholarship, little consideration has been given to seasonal poetry recorded in the Man’yōshū (“Collection for a Myriad Ages”), even though this vernacular poetic collection contains some of the earliest extant books organized by season. When scholars discuss seasonal poems recorded in the Man’yōshū, they usually evaluate them as prototypes to later works gathered in imperial anthologies such as the Kokin wakashū (“Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Songs,” c. 906), rather than consider these works within the specific literary and social contexts of the Nara period (710-794).

Taking the Man’yōshū on its own terms, this paper is an exploration of how seasonal poetry is presented in Volume VIII, a book distinguished by the inclusion of authors’ names alongside its chronological organization. It considers the ways in which poetic constructs of the natural world, derived much in part from Sinitic literary traditions, interact in the space of the text with those of the imperial realm and imperial chronology. These elements are brought together through the efforts of the compiling hand, believed to have been Ōtomo no Yakamochi and possibly his aunt, Lady Sakanoue, as they are the most represented poets in Volume VIII. Considering this possibility along with other structural elements, I contend that the world as imagined in the space of Volume VIII is constructed from the perspective of the Ōtomo lineage in order to create an idealized literary community with their family and political allies at its center.

Paper short abstract:

Examining a Sinitic prose-poem (fu) by Sugawara no Michizane, I investigate how literary meaning is constructed through the deployment of natural, literary, and social environments in two different anthologies: Michizane's own "Kanke bunsō" and the 11th-century collection "Honchō monzui."

Paper long abstract:

Sometime in the late ninth century, the Heian scholar-official Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903) composed a prose-poem (fu 賦) in Sinitic titled the "Fu on an Autumn Lake" (Shūko no fu 秋湖賦). The text describes how a weary rider reaches a lake at nightfall and, as he admires the view before him, affirms that human experience is rooted in interaction with the surrounding world, before declaring his own intellectual and spiritual shortcomings. "Shūko no fu" survives in two early collections: the author’s 900 personal collection "Kanke bunsō" 菅家文草 ("Literary Drafts of the Sugawara House") and the mid-eleventh century kanshibun 漢詩文 (Sinitic prose and poetry) collection "Honchō monzui" 本朝文粹 (The Literary Essence of Our Court"), which was compiled by Fujiwara no Akihira ca. 1066.

Because of its generic complexity, its rich seasonal language, and the twofold transmission history, "Shūko no fu" presents stimulating material for exploring how literary meaning was constructed through different categories of “environment.” First of all, the natural environment plays a key role in this text, both in the creation of a literary world and in the conceptualisation of human experience. Secondly, Michizane’s fu bridge the divide between metred, rhyming shi and rhymeless prose, urging an exploration of the dialectic with other genres in its vicinity. Finally, the inclusion in two different collections suggests it was considered differently meaningful in different textual environments. "Kanke bunsō," on the one hand, may be read as a strategic positioning of the author in his social environment, thus urging us to interpret "Shūko no fu" through a self-representational lens. "Honchō monzui," by contrast, is more concerned with defining proper literary language and sketching a cultural canon: as one of the oldest fu in "Honchō monzui," this text’s installation into its new textual landscape recasts it as a link to continental practice and local literary precedent.

By highlighting various aspects of this prose-poem’s construction of meaning through interactions with its various natural, social, and textual contexts, I will explore how environments could inform, and in turn be formed by, the process of poetic production in the case of Heian Sinitic composition.

Paper short abstract:

Two waka prefaces, one written by and the other for a former rival of regent Fujiwara no Michinaga, are examined to investigate the role waka practices may have played in negotiating and maintaining a peaceful political environment.

Paper long abstract:

In the late tenth and early eleventh century, Fujiwara no Michinaga 藤原道長 definitively established the regency system, and came to hold sway over politics at the Ichijō 一条 court. Michinaga was also a kanshi poet, frequently participating in composition gatherings at the Royal Palace as well as inviting poets to his estate to join in kanshi gatherings he organised there. Even a hundred years after the compilation of Kokin wakashū, kanshi were still the major medium of public literary production, being used in the praise of the sites and sponsors of poetry banquets and thus helping to maintain a social status quo between courtiers and those in power.

Despite kanshi's undiminished importance, Michinaga's sphere also witnessed the writing of a great number of waka prefaces (wakajo 和歌序), short prose texts written at waka banquets to record the circumstances under which composition had taken place. Among these survives a waka preface for the celebration of a prince born to Ichijō tennō and the Queen-Consort, Michinaga's daughter Shōshi 彰子, on the occasion of the hundredth day after the new prince's birth. This preface was written by Fujiwara no Korechika 藤原伊周, a former rival of Michinaga's who had lost his standing at court. Similarly, there also exists a waka preface for a gathering at which Michinaga had entertained Ko-Ichijō-In 小一条院, a former crown prince who had stepped down under pressure from Michinaga himself.

Waka prefaces such as these were carefully written with attention to choice of expression, taking into account particularly the political status and position of the poets who had composed waka at these occasions. Whereas kanshi were an official medium, in which political overtones could be strong and unfelicitous expressions might sour social relationships, waka by contrast were less politically coloured and could therefore be employed in expressing a sense of intimacy. As such, they were well suited as a means of expressing empathy or offering consolation to people in Michinaga's sphere of influence, suggesting that their accompanying prefaces, too, provided a site for negotiating and maintaining both Michinaga's political power and the peaceful political environment that he oversaw.