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Utaawase Judgments as Poetry Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Clifton W. Royston
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Extract

Japanese poetry has for a long time been credited with truly miraculous powers of concision, suggestion, and philosophical insight by some of its Western admirers. Other Westerners, from Chamberlain and Aston on, have been less charmed, and have criticized the classical poetry of the Japanese court in particular, for excessive artificiality, and for a lack of breadth, grandeur, and sustained power.

The court poetry which was the supreme literary genre of the Heian and Kamakura periods is indeed restricted. In mode it is confined to lyricism; in form, to the 31-syllable tanka which becomes synonymous, in these periods, with waka, or Japanese poetry. Its vocabulary is circumscribed, generally limited to that employed in the KokinshŨ of 905, first of the twenty-one imperially sponsored anthologies of verse. There are some subsequent additions, primarily from the lexicon of the great early collection, the Man'yōshŨ (ca. 759), but the admissibility of such words was hotly contested.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , November 1974 , pp. 99 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1974

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References

1 This paper was first delivered at the 1973 Association for Asian Studies convention in Chicago, and is presented here, with only slight revision and expansion, as an introductory note on this important literary subject.

2 Chamberlain, B. H., in Japanese Poetry (London, 1911)Google Scholar describes the Kokinshū standards as “a substitution ot hairsplitting puerilities for the true spirit of poetry” and adds that all the later imperial anthologies were worse (p. 5). Aston, W. G., in A History of Japanese Literature (re-printed New York and London, 1937)Google Scholar says that selection of the tanka form had “fatal conse-quences, and has been a bar to all real progress in the poetic art,” (p. 59)

3 Other themes include congratulatory verse, part-ings, mourning, personal laments, and lines from Buddhist sutras.

4 Gyoftiyō, 3 vols. (Tokyo: Sumiya Shobō, Re-print cel., 1966), II, 301. The contest is known as Udaipin Kanezane no ie no utaawase, and was judged by Shunzei.Google Scholar For a discussion of it, see my unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, “The Poetics and Poetry Criticism of Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204)” (University of Michigan, 1974), p. 250 et seq.Google Scholar

5 Boku, Hagitani, ed., Utaawase Slūt, Vol. 74 in Nihon Koten Bungafyi Taipei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), p. 7. Taniyania Shigeru, co-editor and annotator of the Chūsei-hen of this volume, states that there are over 400 utaawase from the period 1107–1242, of which about no arc extant in complete form (p. 285).Google Scholar

6 Boku, Hagitani, Heian-cho Utaawase Gaisetsu (Tokyo: Privately printed, 1969), p.Google Scholar 220 et seq. Hereafter cited as Gaisetsu, Hagitani does not link extrinsic rules to a particular period in utaawase history.

7 Yoshiaki, Minegishi, ed., Shu, Utaawase, Vol. 35 in Nihon Koten Bnngaku Zensho (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1947)« pp.Google Scholar 78. 83. Uda's com-ments on both of his poems are virtually identical.

8 Gaisetsu, p. 223.

9 Ruiju, Shinkp Gunsho (Tokyo: Naigai Sho-seki K. K., 1928–37), VIII, 651–652. Hereafter cited as GSRJ.Google Scholar

10 Gaisetsu, pp. 221–223.

11 Mincgishi, Utaawase Shū, pp. 106–107.

12 Sen‘ichi, Hisamatsu and Minoru, Nishio, eds., Shu, Karon Shō—Nōgalkuron, Vol. 65 in Nihon Koten Bungaku Taipei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1961), pp. 40–41.Google Scholar Cited in Motoo, Iwatsu, Utaawase no Karonshi Kenlyū (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku, 1963), pp. 126–127.Google Scholar

13 Wakeikazuchi no Yashiro no Utaawase (1178). In GSRJ, VIII, 699.

14 Asaji, Nose, ed., (Kahyō no Seiztū) Roppya-kuban Utaawase (Kenshō Chinjō) (Tokyo: Bun-gakusha, 1935), pp. 305–306.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 37.

l6 Iwatsu, op. cit., p. 132. This passage the Nose Asaji text.

17 Nobutsuna, Sasaki, ed.,Nihon Kagaku Taikei (reprinted Tokyo: Kazama Shobo), II, p. 304.Google Scholar

18 Tamotsu, Ariyoshi, ed., Sengohyakuban Utaawase no Kōhon to sono Kenkyū (Tokyo: Kazama Shobo, 1968), pp. 559–561.Google Scholar It should be noted that Kenshō finds it convenient to use this opinion against Shunzei's nephew and poetic follower, Jakuren.

19 Yasuaki, Nagazumi and Isao, Shimada, eds., Kokonchomonjū, Vol. 84 in Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1966), p.Google Scholar 172. The poem and the incident arc ascribed to Ki no Tom-onori and to the “Kampyo Utaawase” but it appears in neither of the two contests to which that title might refer. The poem is in the Kokinshū IV, p. 210.

20 Anonymous. Mincgishi, Utaawase Shu, pp. 306–307.

21 Quoted in Iwatsu, op. cit., p. 148.

22 Nikon Kagaku Taikei, II, p. 302.