All of us who study Japan will no doubt have at least some vague idea of the all-important role the seasons play in so many different areas of Japanese culture. The great virtue of Haruo Shirane's Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons is that it enables us, for the first time in English, to gain a comprehensive, systematic and authoritatively scholarly view of how very pervasive this seasonal culture is and has been since the Nara and Heian periods. The book's central argument is also original and thought-provoking: that the supposedly close relation to nature and the seasons in waka and the manifold other arts, crafts and cultural practices influenced by that classical poetic tradition has actually been a relation not with nature-in-itself but with a man-made ‘secondary’ nature. This argument, sustained throughout the book, certainly provides an interesting new perspective from which to rethink the whole important issue of Japanese culture's relation to nature. But I also think it is a deeply problematic argument, both from a philosophical and a literary-critical perspective.

Philosophically it merely states a truism applicable to all poetry. From an ontological point of view, all poetic imagery of nature is secondary – or indeed, if one is a Platonist, tertiary, since Plato thought that even visible nature is but a shadow of reality. Therefore it makes no sense, philosophically at least, to single out any one particular poetic tradition as representing nature on a more ‘secondary’ level than any other poetic tradition. Is, for instance, Wordsworth's daffodil more ‘ primary’ than Basho's frog? If that were a Zen kōan, one might answer: ‘Croak! Croak!’

Furthermore, even as a literary-critical term of convenience, ‘secondary nature’ is unsustainable in the long run – for instance, once we move from Heian to Muromachi and Edo poetry. Yes, Heian court poets like Ki no Tsurayuki and Fujiwara no Shunzei had a rather restrictive view of the aspects of nature that were appropriately ‘poetic’, and generally preferred to use natural imagery that was ‘graceful and elegant’ and gave rise to feelings of pleasure and harmony. But, as Shirane himself points out, one of the defining characteristics of later medieval and early modern poetry was precisely the breaking down of these restrictions. The puzzled reader might well ask, then: at what point does nature in this new poetry become primary rather than secondary?