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.