Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper considers the role of kanbun knowledge in the innovative culture of late Heian vernacular poetics, through a comparison of commentary on poetic keywords for fidelity in romance in two educational treatises: Toshiyori zuinō (c. 1111-1114) and Waka dōmōshō (c. 1145).

Paper long abstract

This paper considers the role of kanbun knowledge in the innovative culture of vernacular poetics in the first half of the twelfth century, through a comparison of two poetics treatises: Toshiyori zuinō 俊頼髄脳 (Minamoto no Toshiyori, c. 1111-1114) and Waka dōmōshō 和歌童蒙抄 (Fujiwara no Norikane, c. 1145). Both are framed as educational texts and are heavily concerned with vernacularizing kanbun material to redefine it as part of the language of waka poetry, but the approaches they take contrast sharply in key respects: Toshiyori zuinō is eclectic in its oral and textual sources and draws mainly on vernacular models like poetry match judgements to craft a conversational narrating style that playfully dramatizes the process of scholarly interpretation, while Waka dōmōshō incorporates a variety of kanbun sources, including some rarely-cited educational works, in a more recognizable direct adaptation of Sinitic scholarly style. These two works offer distinct if overlapping visions of what writing on vernacular poetic language could look like and how it could make use of kanbun scholarship, reflecting the linguistic diversity of an era where this kind of text was still being invented and defined.

This contrast in approach emerges clearly in commentary on rare poetic vocabulary related to fidelity in romance. Across both treatises, stories of an alchemical chastity pledge made from the blood of a lizard or newt (ゐもりのしるし), and of the swallow (燕) as an exemplar of marital fidelity, illustrate multiple pathways for a rare but memorable trope to make its way from relatively unusual kanbun sources into the framework of waka romance. This comparison invites reflection both on the concept of fidelity as a point of linguistic and cultural slippage, and on the varied ways that kanbun material was adapted to expand and refine the poetic vocabulary of romance and gendered behaviour.