Abutsu - Robert N. Huey (essay date 1989)
Robert N. Huey (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: “Tamekane's Life: The First Rise and Fall,” in Kyōgoku Tamekane: Poetry and Politics in Late Kamakura Japan, Stanford University Press, 1989, pp. 19-40.
[In the following excerpt, Huey discusses Abutsu's position in the conflicts between Tameie's heirs.]
To some degree Tamekane's problems were not of his own creation but repercussions of events that occurred a half-century earlier, in the days of his great-grandfather and grandfather. Tamekane's great-grandfather was the illustrious Fujiwara Teika, recognized as a poetic genius in his lifetime and practically deified by succeeding generations. His grandfather was Teika's only legitimate son, Tameie.1
Much as Teika had wished to pass on his poetic knowledge (and his land rights) to his son, Tameie at first showed little inclination for verse; he seemed to prefer kemari (a kind of kickball). Indeed, members of the...
[The entire page is 9775 words long]
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