Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

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.

Paper long abstract

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.