Paper short abstract:

Pre-modern waka poet, Tachibana no Akemi (1812–1868) in his poems mentions more than 60 varieties of plants and more than 50 varieties of animals (birds and insects included). This papers discusses the poetics of Tachibana: his emotional response and his engagement with natural surroundings.

Paper long abstract:

Pre-modern waka poet, Tachibana no Akemi (1812–1868) was discovered and introduced to a general reader in Japan by Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), haiku and tanka poet himself. Tachibana is well known for the love of makoto (sincerity) in his poems, inspired by Man’yōshū poetic diction, and for introducing new realistic subjects and fresh vocabulary to the waka poetry of 19th century. He composed many rensaku or poetic sequences and among them there are eight poems describing a silver mine in Hida province he visited and saw with his own eyes the conditions of work (which in itself was a novelty, as opposed to composing poems about meisho, famous places, one would not know from his or her own experience). He is probably the most famous for his rensaku titled Dokurakugin or Verses on Solitary Pleasures, being a sequence of reflections on his life, simple pleasures and everyday struggles with poverty.

Masaoka Shiki praised him because “No affectations of natural beauty burden his topics; instead he readily bares his innermost thoughts” (transl. R.K. Thomas), yet his poetry abounds with references to the nature. Actually, it is more than 60 varieties of plants and more than 50 varieties of animals (including birds, at least 20 varieties, 12 or more varieties of insects, and fish) that appear in his tanka and chōka poems. Although it seems that traditional plants like ume, plum, sakura, cherry blossom and matsu, pine, are the most often mentioned, there are also edible plants like rice, bamboo shoots, azuki beans or buckwheat, weeds like smartweed, water dropwort or dayflower. Animals include horses, cows, a cat, a tanuki, snakes or turtles, but it is the insects that might draw special attention: there are rensaku poems about ants and even lice which Tachibana calls his companions.

In this paper I want to analyse his references to specific plants and animals, and discuss Tachibana’s engagement with nature and his emotional response to it.