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A reexamination of the Tōhoku-in shokunin utaawase (1214?), a craftspeople's poetry contest often read as a social document, to argue this work is a sophisticated experiment in medieval poetic pedagogy for a readership of emerging cultural and linguistic literacy.

Paper long abstract

The shokunin utaawase (poetry contest among craftspeople) is a genre crucial for understanding medieval poetics in relation to commoners, craft, and cultural knowledge. This presentation examines the earliest shokunin utaawase, set in 1214 at the Tōhoku-in temple in the capital. This five-round contest gathered a diverse group of poets—including a diviner (onmyōji), a carpenter (banjō), and a shaman (miko)—to compose waka using the specific lexicon of their trades. Consequently, scholars have long treated the work as a historical document of little literary merit, mining it instead for insights into medieval society, gender, and sexuality. My analysis, however, foregrounds the work’s integrated design, in which poetic complexity escalates gradually, moving from straightforward verses to learned allusion and parody. The carefully wrought interplay between the poems, the judge’s critiques, and the accompanying illustrations suggests a pedagogic goal, in which the tools that appear next to each poet index the poem’s rhetoric for a reader with only emerging waka literacy. I reinterpret this work not merely as a source for social history, but as a sophisticated literary experiment: a reworking of the aristocratic utaawase for a readership still learning the poetry of the court.

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This presentation explores the intertextuality of the Genji hinagata, a kimono pattern book printed in 1687, and the larger genre of 17th century popular literature aimed at women through close reading of the depictions of the Somedono Consort and Kyōgoku Consort.

Paper long abstract

This presentation explores the intertextuality of a kimono pattern book titled the Genji hinagata printed in1687 that features twenty-seven patterns inspired by famous women from classical Japanese literature and history. Each of these patterns is accompanied by a short passage introducing the woman. These passages make sartorial puns and give sales points along with an explanation of who the woman was. Though the title of the book is derived from The Tale of Genji, sixteen women from other tales and historical figures are also depicted.

Recent scholarship has considered the ways Edo period townspeople read, rewrote, illustrated, and subverted the classical Japanese literary canon (Moretti, 2016: Mostow, 2024). Moreover, Moretti (2013) established that the Onna enshi kyōkun kagami is an erotic re-writing of the Onna genji kyōkun kagami (Women's mirror of Genji lessons) and Bugno (2018) demonstrated how the Meijo nasake kurabe (Famous Women: Comparisons of Affection) was utilized as a source for erotic art. The mining classical literature for content to produce erotic re-imaginings is clearly documented. Many early Edo kimono patterns are likewise confirmed to be inspiried by classical literary themes. However, the text of the Genji hinagata, rather than the patterns, has not yet been discussed in the context of the larger genre of 17th century popular literature aimed at women and girls.

To illustrate the intertextual allusions between the Genji hinagata, Usuyuki monogatari (The Tale of Light Snow), Meijo Nasake Kurabe (Famous Women: Comparisons of Affection), as well as the Genpei Seisuiki (The Rise and Fall of The Genji and The Heike), this presentation will discuss the stories of the Somedono Consort and Kyōgoku Consort. These two women’s stories can only be deciphered in conjunction with other 17th century texts. This presentation will position the Genji hinagata not simply as a sartorial text, but firmly in the genre of “deportment manuals” (ōraimono) for women.

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This paper explores the poetic imagination surrounding the Japan-Silla relationship, as reflected in Silla-related verse of Kaifūsō and Man’yōshū. What emerges is the political and lyrical centrality of the poet’s homeland, alongside a depiction of Silla as a hazardous, poetryless realm.

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To ancient Japan, the kingdom of Silla, just across a perilous sea, stood as an ever-present counterpart. An ally of Tang China, Silla frequently opposed Japan and its associate, the Paekche kingdom, at times inflicting disastrous defeats upon them; at the same time, this southeastern region of the Korean peninsula had long been one of the principal conduits through which continental culture and technology reached the archipelago. By the eighth century, although there was no open warfare, this long and alternating history of antagonism and exposure was still unfolding.

This paper aims to disclose the poetic imagination surrounding such delicate relationship through a reading of the Sinitic and vernacular verse composed by Japanese authors of the eighth century. The textual body under consideration includes some shi written in honor of Silla delegations at Prince Nagaya’s residence and preserved in the Kaifūsō, as well as a selection of uta attributed to Japanese envoys departing for Silla, found in Book Fifteen of the Man’yōshū.

In the Man’yōshū sequence, spatial imagination is shaped through well-established vernacular tropes – such as makurakotoba and jokotoba – which present the archipelago as a place where the kami may grant protection when invoked; the lands across the sea, by contrast, are depicted as lying beyond the reach of this power, and designated through a variety of exotic toponyms or, metonymically, by referencing fauna, flora, or everyday objects associated with continental culture. In the Kaifūsō sequence, we find a strategic use of Chinese place names, whereby Heijō is at times equated with the Chinese imperial capital, and Silla relegated to the status of a distant province, thus counterbalancing the emphasis on friendship and parity among Japanese and Sillian literati gathered at the poetic event.

Common to both corpora is the theme of farewell to the poet’s land, whose centrality is not only geographical and diplomatic, but also sentimental. The outbound journey is portrayed as a reluctant act of parting, whose anguish must be eased, and fear dispelled, through a collective act of poetry – one that is only possible on the archipelago.

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The paper discusses key aspects of Sanjōnishi Sanetaka’s pilgrimage as recorded in the "Kōya sankei nikki", focusing on its religious dimension, his networks of provincial contacts, and the role of poetry in shaping the cultural and sacred landscape of late Muromachi Japan.

Paper long abstract

During the turmoil and political instability of the late Muromachi period, Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) — a high-ranking court aristocrat, esteemed poet, and prominent scholar and promoter of Japan’s classical literary heritage — emerged as a go-between for the imperial court and the shogunate. He enjoyed the trust of a remarkably broad spectrum of society, from artistic elites and successive emperors’ circles to the samurai class and the Buddhist clergy. His "Kōya sankei nikki" (Diary of a Pilgrimage to Mount Kōya) is not just an account of his 1524 pilgrimage to the principal center of the Shingon Buddhist tradition, but a detailed record of a multi-stage journey through a number of other sites of religious and cultural significance in the provinces of Settsu, Izumi, and Kii, with the stay on Mount Kōya serving as the culmination of the entire itinerary — Sanetaka had a particularly important reason for reaching Kūkai’s mausoleum there. The diary further illustrates the connections Sanetaka maintained with provincial figures. At the same time, it serves as a medium that preserves poetic compositions, demonstrating the interweaving of the sacred sphere with poetic practice, the significance of poetry in religious life, and the mapping of a route through places that have been the spiritual heart of Japan for centuries. The aim of this paper is to introduce Sanetaka's travel diary and to discuss several key aspects of his journey.