SOURCE: Kato, Hilda. “The Mumyōshō of Kamo no Chōmei and Its Significance in Japanese Literature.” Monumenta Nipponica 23, nos. 3-4 (1968): 321-49.

[In the following essay, Katō examines Chōmei's ideas concerning poets and poetry. Some footnotes refer to appendices and tables not reprinted here.]

THE BACKGROUND OF EARLY JAPANESE AESTHETICS

Before Japan was exposed to the overwhelming influence of continental civilization, the Japanese had a language fundamentally different from the Chinese, an indigenous religion called Shinto, and a distinctive hierarchical social system. The Japanese ruling clan, aware of Chinese advanced techniques and highly developed organizations, fostered contact with the continent. Approximately from the sixth century onward, the process of adopting Chinese models of political, social and economic institutions accelerated. Together with all kinds of techniques, the arts and the writing system, there also infiltrated alien ideas—Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist—which became part of the fast-developing Japanese culture.

In the eighth century some of those institutions, ideas and techniques had already taken root and created unique circumstances which strongly influenced the course of Japanese history and culture. To mention but the most significant event in the political-economic field: in order to realize centralized administration along the Chinese pattern the government set up a uniform law and a system of territorial administration which was based on a new tax system and land-redistribution. In connection with such innovations a new bureaucratic aristocracy emerged and quickly became powerful.

The eighth century saw another important event: the first written Japanese literature appeared in the form of chronicles. The script consisted of Chinese ideographs used partly for their semantic and partly for their phonetic value. This method of transcribing Japanese, complicated though it was, permitted the recording of Japanese names, poems and grammatical particles, and represented an important first step in the development of kana, the Japanese syllabary script.

The compilation of the two early chronicles, the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan), of the first half of the eighth century, was undertaken to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Japanese ruling family, but, inspired by Chinese examples in both content and manner of presentation, they brought to the fore certain incompatibilities between the Chinese and Japanese cultures.

A possible solution to the problem of national identity was seen in the deliberate separation of the Chinese and Japanese constituents of culture, as exemplified by the two anthologies of poetry of the second half of the eighth century: the Kaifūsō, a collection of Chinese poetry written by Japanese, and the Man'yōshū, a collection of Japanese poetry covering the period from the fifth to the eighth century and the first of its kind.

The Man'yōshū represented an important landmark in the evolution of Japanese literature: indigenous poetry which had been transmitted orally from generation to generation and had withstood Chinese influence, was now collected, recorded and presented to the educated public.

Although the taste and personal considerations of the compilers certainly played a role in the choice of the poems taken into the anthology, there was a genuine attempt to cover all regions of Japan and include a great variety of authors. None of the later anthologies had such a wide range of subject matter, verse forms and styles. There were songs of peasants and fishermen at work, poems of hardship, poverty and loss, elegies, poems about nature and love, hymns to the Emperor.

The poems collected in the Man'yōshū give us an idea of the evolution of Japanese prosody: in the early poems the line length varied between three and nine syllables, but there was a marked preference for five- and seven-syllable lines. There was no apparent rule about the number of lines and rather long poems were frequent. By the time when most of the poems of the Man'yōshū were composed,¹ however, definite forms had emerged and lines were invariably made up of five or seven syllables. The tanka (short poem), also called waka (Japanese poem) or simply uta (poem)—consisting of five lines of five, seven, five, seven and seven syllables—had become the major form of poetry. The 4,173 poems in this form constituted about 90 percent of the whole anthology.

Some of the characteristics of the poetry of the Man'yōshū, in prosody as well as in aesthetics, were to provide later Japanese lyrics with these basic principles: poetry should sound natural and artless, and distinguish itself from prose only through an extreme condensation of whatever it wished to express, a necessary stipulation conditioned by the limitation in the number of syllables. In order to condense without giving the impression of artificiality, grammatical particles were used with great dexterity, and techniques to communicate through suggestion were systematically developed. The beauty of the verse was attained through alliteration, phonetic parallelism and the arrangement of syllables so as to produce a certain pattern in the sequence of consonants and vowels which would evoke a feeling either of harmony or of abrupt change in accordance with the content and mood of the poem.

The Man'yōshū poets composed in this way almost intuitively; the poets of the Heian period (794-1185) did so self-consciously, elaborating techniques, setting up rules, and defining their aesthetic theories.

The Heian period was marked by a long-lasting stability of government. The new bureaucratic aristocracy successfully handled the administration and soon occupied most of the key positions in the government. Exploiting their privileged position, the ruling families (the Imperial House and the Fujiwara) reserved for themselves the right of keeping and amassing private estates—a right which they subsequently also had to grant the temples—and increasingly monopolized the power and wealth concentrated in the capital as a result of the tax system. The provincial rulers and lower aristocracy who were put at a disadvantage, but whose loyalty to the court was vital for the regime, were either subdued by force or tethered to the ruling families by purposefully arranged marriages if court honors alone did not suffice.

The spiritual and intellectual life of the early Heian period, with Kūkai (774-835) as the dominant figure, was based on Esoteric Buddhism and Chinese learning, centering in the temples and monasteries in the region of the capital.

Kūkai's attitude towards China may illustrate the new trend of the time. No longer was everything Chinese blindly admired and accepted, even by Kūkai, whose whole education was based on Chinese learning, and who revered his Chinese teachers and himself wrote flawless Chinese. Passages like the following, taken from his writings about Chinese poetry, show a self-confidence which cannot be explained merely as a Japanese reaction to the decline of the T‘ang (618-906).

I examined the styles of various [Chinese] authors and considered what they had in common and where they differed. Although volumes and scrolls were numerous there was little that was essential and important. Often one and the same thing had various designations. There was extreme confusion and disorder. Unable to control this habit of mine I took my swordlike brush to eliminate the variety of designations and retain the single meaning. …²

Kūkai was also credited with the invention of the Japanese syllabary, which he is said to have developed after the model of Sanskrit when studying in China. He stressed the necessity of going back to the original Sanskrit texts for the study of Buddhism and questioned the reliability of Chinese translations, knowing, as he did, the geographic, cultural and linguistic differences between India and China.

The role of Kūkai was of particular significance in the realm of the arts and poetry. Painting (Mandala) and music (Shōmyō) were considered of primary importance as part of the training and rites in Esoteric Buddhism, but Kūkai, himself a great artist of calligraphy, went so far as to advance the theory that artistic and religious experiences ultimately came to a union at their highest level of achievement. Moreover his emphasis on systematic training in Buddhism may have invited the Japanese poets to take a kind of methodological approach to their own discipline. Finally, Kūkai exerted considerable influence on the development of poetry and aesthetics through his essays on Chinese poetry.³

Against this background of an awakening sense of national culture on the one hand and Chinese learning on the other, in an atmosphere of luxury and security guaranteed by the political and economic system, this concept of the importance of the arts in connection with Buddhist ideals may have served as justification for a fast-developing aestheticism which deeply penetrated Heian court life. We need only think of all those ceremonies, meticulously described in Heian literature, in which etiquettes and formalities were increasingly elaborated to satisfy the society's craving for an aesthetic order.

Aesthetic considerations guided the architects who built the palaces and gardens, taking great care to integrate every detail into a well-balanced whole which would not only be functional, but also give sensuous pleasure to its occupant: various kinds of views and perspectives were carefully planned, the sound of trickling water and rustling leaves, the smell of herbs and flowers, the texture of wood, silk and linen, all were taken into consideration.⁴

Certain aesthetic ideals also guided the sculptors who attained forms of great harmony as they idealized the human body in their wooden images of Buddha.

If we take a look at Heian prose (that is to say, specifically Japanese prose) as it developed rapidly in the tenth century in the form of diaries (nikki) and novels (monogatari) and culminated in the well-known Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) at the turn of the century, we notice the same strong concern for aesthetic ideals as in poetry and other forms of art: external beauty and order were highly appreciated and man was idealized from the point of view of his sensitivity and refined taste, with little reference to general principles, philosophic, religious, or moral. A touch of concrete reality was added to descriptive prose—and incidentally also to descriptive painting—through particular emphasis on and close examination of detail. The slight movement of a sleeve, the exact color of fabric, subtle changes in the atmosphere and mood, were valued for their own sake.

This love for detail and the almost complete absence of other than aesthetic values which was particularly striking in some of the diaries and indeed characterized all Heian literature, must be seen in the light of the society which produced it. Heian aristocrats wrote for each other. They did not feel a challenge from non-conformists within the group nor any threat from outside; hence there was no need to moralize or polemicize through literature.

What Heian society considered the function of literature may best be expressed through the words of Ki no Tsurayuki (882-945), who wrote in his preface to the Kokinshū, the first official anthology of Japanese poetry:

Poetry has its seeds in man's heart. … Men's activities are various and whatever they see or hear touches their hearts and is expressed in poetry. When we hear the notes of the nightingale among the blossoms, when we hear the frog in the water, we know that every living being is capable of song. Poetry, without effort, can move heaven and earth, can touch the gods and spirits. … It turns the hearts of man and woman to each other and it soothes the soul of the fierce warrior.⁵

At the time when this definition was given, poetry was the only literary form which was properly Japanese in origin and general feeling and accessible to all; prose was either Chinese or under heavy Chinese influence and could not be judged by the same standards as poetry. When distinct forms of Japanese prose emerged, this basic attitude (identifying literature with poetry) did not substantially change; on the contrary, the value of poetry was even further enhanced on account of its official recognition.

Prose played a subsidiary role to poetry, seen from the point of view of Heian society, but the two forms also were complementary to each other, as for example in the utamonogatari (poem tale), a distinct literary form of the early Heian period when prose was descriptive and poetry expressive. In later prose, too, poems were inserted at moments of great intensity of feeling, at moments when the situation, the atmosphere, were beyond the capacity of descriptive prose, or at moments when style was required in everyday conversation. This indicates that Ki no Tsurayuki's notion of the function of poetry still operated to define prose in a negative sense: it was not suitable for conveying feeling, mood, atmosphere; it could only describe, inform, argue.

Karon (essays on poetry) and other scholarly prose, such as historical writings, benefited from the prestige of the Chinese works in the field, and they were in fact Japanese attempts to be scholarly—sometimes successful, sometimes not. But the karon had one more advantage over other prose writings by virtue of its intricate relationship with poetry: it was expected to define the ideals of Heian society through a study of the uta and to devise methods and techniques to achieve those ideals in the uta.

During the lifetime of Kamo no Chōmei (1154-1216) certain incongruities in the political and economic system materialized: the second half of the twelfth century saw the rise of samurai power. Originally hired for the protection of the Cloistered Government,⁶ two samurai clans, the Heike and the Genji, emerged as rivals for military supremacy. The Heike were able to triumph over the Genji and, to the consternation of the court, took control of the civil government in the capital through coups d'état in 1156 and 1159. Finally, in 1167, the head of the Heike, Taira no Kiyomori, became Prime Minister. The Heike had, however, no support from the provincial samurai or any other group outside the court. The coup d'état was therefore nothing more than a palace revolution which did not bring about any basic changes in the structure of the government. In the capital the aristocratic society and its traditional culture continued as before, while the samurai from the provinces increased their military strength and political influence. These samurai were the decisive factor in the success of the counterattack launched by the Genji against the Heike in 1180. For five years civil war raged in the city, to end in 1185 with the almost total extermination of the Heike clan. In 1191, Minamoto Yoritomo, the head of the Genji, founded the shogunate in Kamakura after crushing resistance in the provinces. The Kamakura regime (1185-1338) was economically based on the income from the tax-exempt private estates confiscated from the Heike. The political and military support came from the samurai class, in particular samurai landowners in the provinces who had fought the civil war on the side of Yoritomo and had pledged to remain loyal to him. There was a gradual shift of political power from the court aristocracy to the samurai class; the centralized political system gave way to a kind of feudalism with samurai rulers in every province. This process generated social unrest and disorder, not only in the capital, but all over the country: there was civil war, rebellion, robbery, fire, famine and epidemics. The Hōjōki of Kamo no Chōmei is a moving account of the vicissitudes of human life of the time.

Such social upheavals evoked far-reaching political and cultural reactions among all sections of society.

In 1192 Eizai (1141-1215) came back from Sung China and introduced Zen Buddhism, later developed by Dōgen (1200-1253). The Zen philosophy was welcomed at once by the educated Japanese, apparently as a useful discipline for self-control in difficult situations. Adherents were numerous among the aristocrats and samurai of higher rank, but scarce among the masses, at least in the early Kamakura period.

On the other hand, Hōnen (1133-1212) started to preach Jōdo (Pure Land) Buddhism in 1175, followed by Shinran (1173-1262). The Jōdo sect tried to compensate for the misery in the world of mappō⁷ by the paradise promised after death. It became popular, particularly among the samurai of lower rank and the common people in the East Province.

In other words, the reactions of Buddhism to the social disorder at the turn of the century were of two types: an intellectual attempt to overcome the insecurity of the individual in society without consideration for the lot of the people, as in the case of Zen; or an attempt to escape from this fragile, difficult world to a paradise beyond, not through intellectual effort and hard training, as in the case of Zen, but through a faith in the Absolute such as the Jōdo sect tried to propagate on a wide scale.

The literary and artistic trends of the period may be summed up as follows:

The aristocrats at the Heian Court, politically alienated by the take-over of power by the samurai, attached themselves more firmly to the aesthetic values of the old regime. As this attachment was not only sentimental, but also a conscious one, it manifested itself in the further development and elaboration of the theories on aesthetics. We can see good examples in the works of the Cloistered Emperor Go-Toba (1180-1239), Fujiwara Toshinari (Shunzei) (1114-1204) and above all Fujiwara Sadaie (Teika) (1162-1241), who were the famous poets of the Shinkokinshū, the eighth official anthology of poetry. The tradition of poetry, enhanced through a sharp consciousness of its artistic value on the part of the poets, was still so powerful and convincing that it attracted even samurai poets, such as the priest Saigyō (1118-1190) and the third shogun Minamoto Sanetomo (1192-1219) himself.

Kamo no Chōmei, who belonged to the circle of poets of the Shinkokinshū, was neither an aristocrat nor a samurai. His position enabled him to observe with greater objectivity than the aristocrats the decline of the old regime and its aesthetic world; he was at the same time more acutely aware than any other literary figure of the misery of the people in the streets of the capital.

In contrast to the aestheticism of the Shinkokinshū, which shows no trace of the new samurai spirit, another type of literature made headway. There were popular songs, such as were collected in the Ryōjin hishō by Emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127-92), and battle stories like the Heike Monogatari (mid-thirteenth century), inspired and even to some degree penetrated by the spirit of the samurai society. This type of literature was transmitted orally, usually accompanied by music, to a large and for the most part illiterate public; it went far beyond the limits of Heian court literature in language, subject matter and sentiments.

As for the visual arts of the transition period we notice the presence also of the Heian and Kamakura cultures and their basically different concepts of life and art. Scroll painting flourished and covered a wide range of subject matter: scenes from famous novels, scenes of miracles, pilgrimages, battles—even hell, portraying the nobility posing gracefully, warriors fighting fiercely, common people experiencing fright and despair.

Just as subject matter varied so did the style, from an emphasis on abstract patterns of lines and colors derived from Heian aestheticism, to the new realistic style which concentrated on the portrayal of individual characteristics. Scroll painting, and sculpture too, reflected to some extent the samurai society where strong personality and individual ability were the ideals of manhood.

KARON AND OTHER ESSAYS

The appearance of theories on arts and literature in the Heian period marked a distinct phase in the evolution of Japanese culture in general: a phase of national unity, of self-consciousness by the artists and recognition of Japanese arts by society as a whole.

The idea of theoretical writing had been introduced to Japan through certain types of Chinese essays, ron (Chinese lun). These types of writing never ceased to influence various aspects of the development of art and literature in China and in Japan.

Calligraphy, an old, well-defined and theoretically elaborated art in China, abstract and therefore easily accessible to people of a different cultural background, was introduced to Japan together with the writing system. It was soon practiced and studied by educated Japanese. Passages on calligraphy are found in the writings of Kūkai and Fujiwara Yukinari (972-1027), both great calligraphers themselves, who in their essays closely followed traditional Chinese concepts (while writing, of course, in Chinese).

The few essays on music that have survived to the present day are of the late Heian period. They deal with technical matters, the scales, koto and instrumental music; essays on bugaku (dance with musical accompaniment) describe the origin of bugaku and its instruments and episodes and legends connected with it. These essays are however not concerned with aesthetic theories in the strict sense of the term.

Prose literature has not been discussed in a specific literary form in the Heian period, although there are passages of literary criticism in diaries and novels. The reason for the absence of essays on prose may be found in the function Heian society ascribed to prose, as already mentioned above. The famous passage of the Genji monogatari in which the purpose of prose fiction is discussed, for example, is merely a reflection of the author's indignation about the stereotyped traditional opinion of Heian society about the artistic value of novels.⁸ As the Genji monogatari did however enjoy great fame in the latter part of the Heian period, it became the subject of criticism of the only ‘essay on the novel’ before the time of Motoori Norinaga (1730-1817): the Mumyōzōshi.⁹ In the Mumyōzōshi the characters of Murasaki's novel are criticized for their immoral behavior and lack of religious devotion, and certain passages are praised for their heart-rending sadness. Aesthetic notions are not elaborated as in the karon and none of the chapters of the Genji monogatari are discussed in an analytical way or on the basis of theoretical concepts.

Apart from the karon, the most important discourse on aesthetic topics may be the Sakuteiki, an essay on the construction of gardens from the late twelfth century. Although the Sakuteiki does not develop any general theories, it affords a clear picture of the aesthetic principles of garden architecture through the description of the traditional rules of construction which center around the three elements: nature (the conditioning factor), architecture (the functional), and man (the observer, who is at the same time part of the whole) and the relationship of those elements to each other. According to the Sakuteiki, nothing is put anywhere without reason, everything is arranged with a view to the whole—two principles which are also valid for the karon.

It was through the karon, which developed faster than other essay writing and which took a course different from the Chinese, that the aesthetic principles underlying the Weltanschauung of Heian Japan were exposed in the most articulate way, offering a frame of reference for later generations of Japanese artists.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE KARON UP TO THE END OF THE HEIAN PERIOD

CHINESE ESSAYS ON POETRY AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE

The earliest Chinese attempts at a critical evaluation of poetry are found in the Great Preface to the Book of Odes, possibly written by Wei Hung in the first century a.d. The differentiation of styles of poetry and prose after the Han period (206 b.c.-220 a.d.) resulted in the formation of literary camps and stimulated the critical spirit of the writers. In contrast to the later Japanese writers, however, these Chinese seldom formulated a reasoned explanation of their opinions. Theoretical writing on poetry remained confined to the categorization of styles, the so-called ‘poem-diseases’¹⁰ and rules of composition, all of which played an important role in early Japanese karon writing.

The first comprehensive theoretical work on Chinese poetry grew out of a bitter controversy over literary styles which had already been very marked during the T‘ang period (618-906) and had come to a climax during the Sung period (960-1279). A great part of this work, Tsang Lang's Discourse on Poetry by Yen-yü¹¹ written around 1200, is therefore devoted to criticism of literary periods and poets without explanation of the basis for the judgments. Thoughts about poetry consist in an enumeration of rules whose validity is not critically examined, but considered self-evident. Yen-yü's work cannot compare with the contemporary works in Japan¹² in scope of imagination and thought, poetic sensitivity and sophistication, or in strength of logical argument.

After the end of the missions of the Japanese government to T‘ang China,¹³ the inflow of Chinese influence into Japan decreased until the end of the Heian period. It was during this period of nearly four hundred years that Japan went her own way, moving culturally away from China, elaborating the form of the Japanese short poem (the uta), and developing more and more sophisticated theories of poetry that were based less on Chinese patterns than on indigenous Japanese practices and forms. The Japanese poem, in contrast to the Chinese, was characterized by extreme frugality of expression and modesty of poetic perception. It became even more restricted in the course of those four hundred years, so that poetry could not expand and diversify, but only modify itself in a process of ever-increasing refinement.¹⁴

KūKAI'S LEGACY

Kūkai, a man of many talents, was one of the most important initiators of the karon. His extensive works on Chinese poetry, the Bunkyōhifuron and the Bumpitsu ganshinsho, established a standard for the Chinese poem in Japan that challenged the Japanese poets, whether they composed in Chinese or Japanese. Before Kūkai's time the distinction between Japanese-style and Chinese-style poetry had already been clear, as was demonstrated by the contrast between the Man'yōshū and the Kaifūsō.¹⁵ These two anthologies were different, not only in syntax and vocabulary, but also in imagery and subject matter and in the social background of the poets.

Kūkai discusses only Chinese poetry, draws from Chinese sources,¹⁶ and his theoretical principles are applicable only to the shi (Chinese poem) and not to the uta.¹⁷ This however does not imply that he and his work did not open the way for the further development of Japanese-style poetry and its theories. Kūkai showed, for the first time in Japanese history, how one could approach poetry in a systematic and analytical way, and invited the Japanese poets to apply his principles to their writing. It might be argued that the Japanese would never have developed their special self-consciousness about their own language and poetry if Kūkai had not confronted them with the need to think about their own language and poetry in terms of an alien one—something the Chinese were never forced to do.

Japanese poetry seems to have both suffered and benefited from this awareness on the part of the poets about the nature of their task. On the one hand it led to a certain formalism with regard to the attitude of the poet, the subject matter and poetic diction; on the other hand it was the pre-condition for the elaboration of poetic theory, without which Japanese poetry would not have developed its unique characteristics.

THE FOUR JAPANESE NORMS OF POETRY

In the early Heian period the Japanese started to apply the Chinese-derived rules of poetic composition to Japanese-style poetry. The first attempts of this kind are to be seen in the four Japanese norms which enjoyed great prestige all during the Heian period and whose influence can be traced in most of the karon writing of that time.

The earliest and most extensive of these norms was the Kakyō-hyō-shiki by Fujiwara Hamanari (733-99); the other three were of a later date: the Kisen-saku-shiki by Kisen (9th century), and the Hikohime-shiki and Iwami-no-jō-shiki, both of unknown authorship.

The Kakyō-hyō-shiki is not as voluminous and systematic as Kūkai's work, and shows little concern for a theoretical approach to poetry. It is however an important step in the process of Japanization of Chinese ideas on poetry. Although written in kambun¹⁸ and in many respects showing its dependence on its Chinese models, it adapts Chinese literary concepts to the Japanese poem. It is concerned only with the Japanese poem, and draws on early Japanese material, especially the Kojiki, for examples.

Hamanari starts with a preface, a forerunner of the famous preface to the Kokinshū of Ki no Tsurayuki, in which he explains the nature and purpose of poetry and his wish to inform his contemporaries of the notions of rhyme and ‘poem diseases’, which although essential in the composition of poetry, are unknown to most poets. He quotes seven ‘poem diseases’¹⁹ in which he has transformed the Chinese tone and rhyme into a Japanese equivalent—a strong rhyme, in which a whole syllable is repeated at the end of a line of the poem. Hamanari insists on this rhyme for the third and fifth line of the uta, a postulate that has hardly ever been followed. His seven style-groups (satai)²⁰ point out mistakes of the most elementary kind, such as no poet is likely to have committed. Those seven style-groups are probably Hamanari's own creation, while the ten refined styles (gatai)²¹ which he discusses at great length, outwardly resemble the ten styles of Ts‘ui Jung,²² but in content have little in common with the Chinese model.

A discussion of ‘poem-diseases’ makes up the major part of the other three norms. The Kisen-saku-shiki and Iwami-no-jō-shiki describe only four ‘diseases’,²³ and the Hikohime-shiki has eight.²⁴ Those later norms already show a great degree of independence from their Chinese models. Their ideals seem to correspond to the much later work by Yen-yü mentioned above, Tsang Lang's Discourse on Poetry, rather than contemporary or earlier Chinese works.

All four norms show a tendency to try to restrict the repetition of syllables and eliminate rhyme except in very special cases. Considering the nature of the Japanese language, few poems could claim to be perfect according to the four norms. At the poetry contests then becoming popular the norms provided the judges with a tool to reject poems as unacceptable whenever they wanted to. On the other hand new criteria had to be found to make an even imperfect poem acceptable if it had some outstanding qualities (or was composed by a person of the highest rank!).

THE OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF POETRY

The development of the karon in the Heian period was not only due to the influence of Chinese ideas and their elaboration, but also to the fact that a wide range of activities concerned with the composition of poems had become institutionalized. The imperial court became the official guardian of poetry and with it the high aristocracy became seriously involved. The first step of the court was to hold poetry contests (uta-awase)²⁵ under the auspices of the emperor or high officials. The first known was held during the Ninna era (885-8). The second step was to have anthologies compiled under imperial order. The Kokinshū, ordered by Emperor Daigo and completed in 905, was the first of its kind; other anthologies followed at intervals of about fifty years, until they became more frequent in the twelfth century. The third step was the official recognition of the Bureau of Japanese Poetry that had in practice already existed during the compilation of the Kokinshū, but became formally established as a court office in 951 under the Emperor Murakami. Poets employed by this office were entrusted with the selection of poems for anthologies and the arrangement of poetry contests.

The duties connected with the Bureau of Japanese Poetry called for a new type of official: he had to be a recognized poet, a man of extensive knowledge and a good diplomat. Needless to say, he was an aristocrat. The importance of poetry and the prestige of its official recognition seemed to increase during the development of Heian culture in the same degree as the power of the old aristocracy declined.

The judges not only faced the difficulties arising from the differences of opinion between the judge and the judged at poetry contests, but often had to give a written justification of their decisions. Their personal reaction was not an officially acceptable criterion, nor did the notion of ‘poem-diseases’ provide a satisfactory standard of quality. New notions had to be introduced and ideas about poetry had to be elaborated. Thus a systematic body of literary analysis and criticism began to crystallize into what became the karon.

KI NO TSURAYUKI AND THE KOKINSHū

The poet Ki no Tsurayuki (882-945), who is considered the first thinker with truly Japanese background and concepts, worked with Japanese material and revealed his ideas not only through his Kana Preface to the Kokinshū,²⁶ but indirectly also through the criteria he used in the selection of the poems for the Kokinshū and the manner in which he arranged those poems. The influence of the Kokinshū on later generations as a standard of good poetry has been so great that it merits a detailed description.

Tsurayuki closely follows his Japanese forerunner, Hamanari, in the organization of his preface. He does not concentrate, however, on the classification of styles or poem-diseases. He only mentions briefly six principles (rokugi)²⁷ which are partly borrowed from Chinese literature, and serve him as criteria for the classification of uta. He discusses the nature and purpose of the Japanese poem, stressing the characteristics of the uta as opposed to the Chinese poem. A critical evaluation of famous Japanese poets illustrates the artistic taste and ideals of the author.²⁸ The fact that according to Tsurayuki even these very best poets, whom he must have chosen in view of their tremendous prestige during the early Heian period, are not perfect, may have created problems for later generations of poets. The poetic terminology of the preface and especially the pairing of terms was accepted without question in later karon writing.

The anthology itself represents a break with the past (as exemplified in the Man'yōshū) and the establishment of a future standard for judging poetry as well as criteria for its composition. Tsurayuki and his co-compilers excluded all forms of poetry other than uta from their anthology and set up categories (such as the four seasons, love, and travel) into which the poems were classified, thus narrowing down the subject-matter of poetry. This had a great influence on the scope of poetry in general, for soon the poetry contests followed these categories and in the meetings only such titles were composed as might fit into an anthology. The Kokinshū, by its exclusion of all poems that did not conform to the refined culture at the Heian court, was historically the most important step in creating the so-called court poetry and its aesthetic world.

The problem of language deserves special mention in connection with the Kokinshū. This anthology is remarkable for its linguistic skill. All the possibilities of the Japanese language were carried to the limit.²⁹ Because the technical accomplishment of the poems was taken for granted, criticism could only be directed at small details and their elaboration, a fact which led to a more and more analytic approach to poetry. Later karon writing took up this problem of language, usually with reference to the Kokinshū.

MIBU NO TADAMINE

After Ki no Tsurayuki, his disciple and co-compiler of the Kokinshū, Mibu no Tadamine (868-965), went one step further in the attempt to create a truly Japanese theory of poetry. He established ten poetic styles which he discussed and illustrated with examples from Japanese poetry.³⁰ He wrote in kambun and used Chinese models for some of his style names, but his way of classifying poetry by its emotional content and the attitude of the poet is already typical of the karon. Among the ten styles, Tadamine gives preference to those which emphasize feeling that reaches beyond words (yojō). In the explanation of the sixth style he introduces the term yūgen³¹ for the first time into Japanese writing on literature.

FUJIWARA NO KINTō

Fujiwara no Kintō (966-1041), who was famous as a composer of Chinese and Japanese verse as well as music, may be credited with having produced the first systematic karon work.

His Wakakubon (Nine Steps of Waka) defines—as the title suggests—nine steps with regard to the appreciation of the Japanese poem.³² Kintō evaluates each step on the basis of its richness in certain ideals, the most important of which are beautiful and refined diction and amari no kokoro (more kokoro than can be expressed in words). The word kokoro may be best translated literally as ‘heart’ though it is usually translated by ‘content’ or ‘feeling’. Kokoro and kotoba (word) or sugata (form), as the main elements in poetry, are important notions in all Japanese karon writing. Kintō also ranks poems with intellectual appeal (omoshiroki tokoro aru) among the best. A good poem should avoid extravagances, should be deeply felt and well expressed, and should sound smooth.

In the Shinsen-zuinō Kintō quotes a number of ‘poem-diseases’³³ which deal mainly with the problem of rhyme and repetition, not only of syllables and words, but also of meaning. He wants to eliminate from poetry all words that destroy the harmony of a poem, either because they are obsolete and do not conform to the language of the time, or are vulgar and unsuited to the aesthetic world of court poetry. These ideals, which are characteristic of court poetry and received in Kintō's writing a theoretical basis, were taken up again in most of the later karon works.

Kintō has often been called the first conservative in Japanese poetics and has been blamed for the formalism and ‘stagnation’ of the poetry that came under the influence of his ideas. This is however a simplification of the facts. He was not a conservative, but he analyzed the poetic forms of his time which had already a strong inclination towards formalism. He may have accelerated this tendency by giving it theoretical confirmation, but his role in a later developing conservatism was a passive one: he could not protest against those poets who for almost 200 years after his death clung stubbornly to his theories to justify their own mediocre poetry.

THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Poets and theoreticians of the 12th century drew on the traditional ideals of poetry as Tsurayuki and Kintō had developed them, but in the course of the composition of so many thousands of poems the poetic devices from the early Heian period seemed to become exhausted; repetitions of already used phrases multiplied in spite of the strict rules about ‘borrowing’ (honkatori) from other poems and it became more and more difficult to compose an original and good poem.

The twelfth century was also the time when, through the impending decline of the aristocratic culture, the poets became strongly aware of their cultural past, which they studied with great interest in order to elucidate and confirm their own standing in history. Declining in political power, many of the old aristocrats liked to see their true profession as poetry-writing.

The attention of the theoreticians was focused again on the question of kokoro and form. In Kintō's time kokoro had been emphasized, not because a strong discipline concerning the selection of words and good form was considered unimportant, but because a certain level of technical accomplishment had been taken for granted since the Kokinshū. With the increasing popularization and vulgarization of the art of composing—a consequence of the spreading fashion of poetry contests through all ranks of the aristocracy—it was not feeling that was deficient so much as knowledge of the discipline; and so the formal aspects of poetry began to be taken again into consideration.

The poetic ideals prevailing were expressed in the notion of aware, a term much used in the monogatari and diary literature, meaning ‘impressive’ or ‘moving’, usually referring to an emotion initiated by a person's sensitivity to what he can see, hear, feel, smell and taste. There existed a number of words for beauty, each with a slightly different nuance (such as delicate beauty, refined beauty, and the like) which were used for the formal aspects of poetry, while for kokoro such attributes as ‘deep’, ‘genuine’, ‘with an intellectual appeal’ were considered ideal.

MINAMOTO TOSHIYORI

Minamoto Toshiyori (1057-1129), who reached almost legendary fame as a poet during his lifetime, has recorded in his Zuinō his thoughts about poetry and the rules he wished to transmit to his successors. In it he gives an explanation of the various forms of poetry and describes various techniques for the composition of poems, such as the mawashibumi, in which a poem can be read forwards or backwards, both ways in exactly the same wording. The Zuinō gives many an example of such monstrosities, which were a consequence of the ever-increasing formalism in poetry. Toshiyori, however, does not comment critically on such abuses, but is mainly concerned with the technical aspects chat interested him as a poet.

Toshiyori lists four ‘poem-diseases’, which closely follow his models, the Kisen-saku-shiki and the karon of Kintō, and deal mainly with the avoidance of repetition of syllables. His twenty-seven styles of poems may be regarded as a synthesis of the ten styles of Hamanari and Mibu no Tadamine and the nine steps of waka by Kintō. He emphasizes the importance of beauty and dignity, an intellectual appeal that is not related to the personality of the poet, and freshness of tone. Toshiyori does not mention yūgen, nor was he very conscious of kokoro and form as controversial issues of poetics.

Toshiyori was in the first place a poet and his karon is mainly confined to descriptions of evident facts. Formal matters attracted his attention because they appealed to his senses rather than to his intellect, and he did not try to systematize what he saw and heard, but simply wrote it down. He loved to experiment with poetic devices in his poems—the Mumyōshō of Kamo no Chōmei records several such cases—but did it with such good taste and skill that even the products of his playful mind still retained a poetic quality. His remarks on technical matters with regard to composition were taken up by his successors, Kamo no Chōmei and Fujiwara Sadaie, who interpreted them and integrated them into their theories on poetry.

FUJIWARA TOSHINARI

Fujiwara Toshinari (1114-1204) was the first Japanese poet to have an intellectual perception of the evolution of culture and literature. His tremendous prestige as a poet gave him the power to convince his contemporaries and the generations to come of the validity of his theories.

In his Korai-fūtaishō, Toshinari demonstrates with a series of well-chosen examples the historical evolution of the styles of poetry, explaining the change of style as a consequence of the changing tastes and needs of the times. He distinguishes three historical periods, ancient, middle and final.³⁴ Of the poems of the ancient time Toshinari says that they were composed with genuine feeling and sincerity, but without particular awareness of formal standards. The Kokinshū represents for Toshinari a carefully selected anthology, containing all the essentials of poetry and establishing a standard never reached by later anthologies. In the period after the Kokinshū he detects a tendency to artificiality and an unconcealed desire to be striking in poetry and gives this as the reason why he went back to the principles of the Kokinshū in the compilation of his own anthology, the Senzaishū. He speaks of the need for reform of the language of poetry and in particular turns against the use of word-plays, that are a product of the intellect and not of taste and feeling. He emphasizes the ideal of the natural flow of language, which is obstructed by the insertion of obsolete words, such as people like Toshiyori in their new appreciation of the Man'yōshū liked to use. Language, he says, must be alive, and the content must have appeal and come within the range of human experience.

Toshinari demanded greater freedom in matters of poetry and wanted to break with the conventional formalism of his time. He felt the pressure of the more fundamental social and political changes that were already in the making with the decay of the Heian court. In his study of history he discovered that a break with tradition had once occurred at the beginning of the Heian period, that Ki no Tsurayuki was actively connected with it, and that the Kokinshū was the result. He studied the principles of the Kokinshū and adapted them to his work. He was fortunate in the choice of his spiritual ancestor, for the prestige of Tsurayuki, unbroken in three hundred years, was an important factor in the acceptability of his theory. Toshinari made it clear that he wanted to use the principles of the Kokinshū, not its vocabulary and content, and he criticized those poets who had turned to the Man'yōshū in search of a model that would allow them greater freedom and had ended up with sheer imitation of its formal aspects—an anachronism in Toshinari's eyes.

Toshinari opened the way for a new approach to poetry. He did not go very far however in the analysis and elaboration of his ideas and their consolidation into a comprehensive theory; this task he left to his son, Sadaie, and his contemporary, Kamo no Chōmei.

FUJIWARA SADAIE (TEIKA)

Fujiwara Sadaie (1162-1241) was one of the most famous poets of his time, the highest authority on the uta and an eminent scholar of Heian literature in general. He had received an excellent education in Chinese classics. His three karon works, Kindaishūka (1203), Eika-taigai (1223) and Maigetsushō (1219)³⁵ are the most concise and probably the most logically constructed of all the karon works of the Heian period. The Shinkokinshū, whose compilation he supervised, is certainly the most important Imperial anthology after the Kokinshū, establishing a new style at the end of the Heian period.

Sadaie was apparently not a modest man by nature and was rather arrogant and cynical in his outlook. Living as an aristocrat at a court which was no longer the center of power, he identified himself not with the hopelessly declining political power but with the brilliant cultural tradition of the court poetry and literature. Extremely conscious of his vocation as a poet, Sadaie was sometimes so aggressive that his attitude caused bitter resentment among his literary colleagues, especially the Ex-emperor Go-Toba.

In the Maigetsushō Sadaie follows the line of his father Toshinari, seeing the uta in relation to the era that produced it. He does not elaborate on his father's theory of the historical evolution of poetry—this task is left to Kamo no Chōmei—but he transfers the principle of evolution to the disciplining of a poet: a person who wishes to become a poet must submit to training under a master for many years. The training consists of a thorough study of literature and frequent practice in composing in styles that are easily manageable for the student. As his skill improves, he can try more difficult styles. The master must guide him without destroying his natural talent. To improve the physical fitness of the student he is advised to become accustomed to endurance, so that he may be able to sit through a poetry contest of the strictest etiquette without showing a sign of physical or mental fatigue. After a poet's natural talent has thus been disciplined and shaped and the discipline has become part of him, he may start to compose spontaneously and the impulses of the heart will naturally transform themselves into poetry.

A good poem must contain kokoro. Sadaie emphasizes this in his discussion of ten styles, which he classifies according to their relative values and the difficulties they represent for the poet. This kokoro cannot be put into a poem by the will of the poet, for if this is done the poem will invariably reveal this intention, which is worse than if there were no kokoro at all. A poem without kokoro however cannot be considered a true poem. All the ten styles are acceptable styles, provided only that the poem composed contains kokoro.

With regard to poetic diction Sadaie advocates modesty, especially for the beginner. The use of word-plays is the privilege of the master, for it demands great skill. Cheap effects should be avoided, crude and vulgar words eliminated and the custom of ‘borrowing’ from other poems should be subject to strict rules.

Sadaie's approach to the composing of poetry was intellectual. The screen which existed between the poet and his product, and which had in former times been provided by the self-confident Heian court culture, he gave into the hands of each individual poet who had to improve himself through discipline. The disciplining was a conscious act through which the poet developed his individualism and separated from the conventions of society. The kokoro he emphasized was not just simple feeling about something, but was the greatest accomplishment of a professional poet.

Sadaie's karon seems to be an indictment against the conventions of his time. He saw no way out of the increasing corruption of the court, a corruption that went along with the vulgarization of poetry. He bitterly resented the commonly held view that it was easy to scrape thirty-one syllables together for a poem. There was no longer a standard of poetry which was generally understood and Sadaie's compilation of the Shinkokinshū may be regarded as the work of an individualist who stood at the threshold of a new time.

KAMO NO CHOMEI

The personality and work of Kamo no Chōmei reflected the conflicting value-systems of the Kyoto court and the Kamakura culture with its new ethical principles. His two major works, the Mumyōshō (Nameless Essay) and the Hōjōki (Accounts of my Ten-foot-square Hut), demonstrate dramatically how strongly attached he was to the traditional culture whose social conventions he abhorred and whose artistic decline he deplored. He saw no hope for the old regime and its parasites, the disaster was already approaching with visible signs; but the uta he thought to save, not, like Sadaie, by making it inaccessible to the masses and artificially elevating its standards, but by adapting it to the requirements of the changing times. He, like Toshinari, saw poetry as a product of historical evolution which could be understood, and the style of his own times as something that was to a great extent determined by the will of the poets. Holding such views he felt it should be possible to give poetic expression the freedom it needed to carry its traditional values into the new world that had to come.

He was a solitary figure by virtue of his social status and his extraordinary genius which permitted him to see the world as it was: ugly and beautiful, vain and full of tenderness, frivolous and yet lovable, characterized by the mixture of comedy and tragedy that is the lot of ordinary humanity.

KAMO NO CHōMEI'S LIFE AND WORK

Kamo no Chōmei was born in 1154 into a family which had for generations held the position of Warden of the Kamo Shrine. Chōmei's father Chōkei died early, leaving his two sons to fend for themselves when they had not yet established their careers. About the mother we know nothing. The elder brother became a minor civil servant, while Chōmei remained an aristocrat of low rank without office.

At the age of 27 Chōmei already enjoyed a reputation as a poet and musician, when for the first time a collection of his poems was published. Later he was made a member of the Bureau of Japanese Poetry and belonged to the literary circle around the Ex-emperor Go-Toba, who recognized Chōmei's talent and wanted to promote him. At the age of 48 he was about to receive the post his father had held at the Kamo Shrine, but at the last moment the position was given to someone else who had better connections with the government. Go-Toba wanted to create a position for Chōmei by reclassifying the Kamo Shrine into a higher rank and enlarging the staff, but Chōmei had suddenly lost interest in such a career.

At the age of 53 Chōmei officially renounced the world and became a Buddhist monk. He went to live in a small mansion in the Ohara mountains, but a few years later he built his famous ten-foot-square hut on Mount Hino where he wanted to spend the rest of his life. He left his retreat only once to visit Kamakura upon the invitation of the Shōgun Tanetomo. He died in his little hut on Mount Hino in 1216.

Kamo no Chōmei's major works are the Hōjōki, the Mumyōshō and the collection of his poetry. The Hōjōki was written during the last four years of his life; the date of the Mumyōshō cannot be determined with certainty, but judging from the variety of experiences described and certain dates mentioned, it must have been written after 1211. There exists another karon work of Chōmei, the Eig yoku-shū, which is short and unfinished but reveals his thought about poetry with clarity. He collected, probably after the Hōjōki, anecdotes of Buddhist faith and conversion under the name of Hosshinshū. Another work of his, the Iseki (Accounts of Ise), a travelogue, has been lost.

Kamo no Chōmei was a social oddity: he moved in the highest aristocratic circles where he was accepted almost, but not quite, as an equal insofar as poetry was concerned. Only as a poet was he permitted to participate in the court life; he was excluded from all other activities, perhaps even the polite games, in which the court ladies had to take the social status of their partners into consideration. It should not have taken him long to realize that he did not miss much, considering the shallowness of court life. He was constantly torn between the ideal world he imagined and the reality around him.

He had no family life. He did not associate with his relatives and remained unmarried. As he says of himself in the Hōjōki, there was nothing to tie him to this world, neither possessions nor personal affiliations, and he was not sorry for it; ‘possessions bring many worries’. From the few relatives he had he was separated through his life at court, and this fact soon widened the intellectual and emotional gap between him and the world to which he belonged by birth. He was a lonely man long before his retirement to the mountains. When he took the tonsure he tried to escape the only world he knew, the Kyoto court and its literary tradition. He hoped to find an absolute value in Buddhism, but even this Buddhism was part of the Heian culture, including the style of his hermit life. Reading the Mumyōshō one cannot fail to understand the basic problem of Chōmei: how to reconcile himself to the artificial world in which he lived.

In order to judge the literary importance of Kamo no Chōmei it is necessary to take all his work into consideration. This task has however often been neglected, for the fame he received through the Hōjōki has overshadowed his other achievements as a poet and thinker. The qualities for which the Hōjōki has been appreciated are also inherent in the Mumyōshō—his skill in handling the language, an excellent gift of perception, an objective approach to the subject; and of course in addition to this the Mumyōshō reveals his artistic taste and ideas about poetry.

Chōmei thought of himself as a poet, and his contemporaries must have appreciated his poetry, otherwise he would never have made his way into the highest aristocratic circles. Whether he was a first-rate poet or not, he certainly developed his talent for writing while he was engaged in the business of composing poems. The Hōjōki was the culmination of his life as a poet. He could never have denounced the world so passionately if he had not once loved and accepted it.

THE MUMYOSHO

The Mumyōshō consists of 78 chapters of varying length and content. All of them concern the uta: anecdotes dealing with old customs and incidents out of the lives of poets; information about technical and historical details; discussions of poems and styles of poetry on the basis of the aesthetic ideals of Chōmei and theoretical elaboration of his ideas on poetry.

The Mumyōshō is written from the point of view of an observer who watches with detached interest and draws rational conclusions. Only occasionally does the author betray his personal concern directly, mainly on matters dealing with the decline of the aesthetic world and the deterioration of the character of its supporters, or in passages depicting his own position as a poet at court. Chapters like ‘Disorderliness at Poetry Contests in Recent Years’, which are a sweeping condemnation of the superficiality of the aristocratic society with regard to practices concerning the uta, have a strong resemblance to the Hōjōki in subject matter, style and manner of presentation. Apart from such passionate outbursts the author shows remarkable consistency in his apparently objective approach. Needless to say, Kamo no Chōmei, like every writer, used this objectivity to give his own personal opinion the backing of a kind of scientific truth, and no less important, he used his own judgment in the selection of the anecdotes and opinions he wanted to describe.

The Mumyōshō is not constructed in any logical order, but seems to follow the author's psychological associations of ideas and words. There are usually groups of chapters with related subject matter, connected loosely with one another. Each chapter is however carefully designed to bring together all the facts related to the title of the chapter, a habit which Chōmei has adapted from the rules of the composition of poetry. In cases where all the author knows about the title can be said in one sentence, the chapter consists of just one sentence. Other chapters, especially theoretical passages, cover several pages.

Chōmei wrote the Mumyōshō in the conversational style typical of the karon writing of the late Heian period. The matter-of-fact tone gives the reader the feeling of being taken into the author's confidence. This is not peculiar to Chōmei's style, but is characteristic of the whole genre of karon, which is in theory written for the benefit of disciples who were personally very close to the author. It seems that Chōmei chose his words with great care, in accordance with the principles he accepted for poetry. His dislike for pomposity and rhetorical tricks and his love for natural, clear language qualifies the Mumyōshō as excellent lucid prose. In this respect Chōmei is much more effective in conveying his ideas clearly than his predecessors were.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MUMYOSHO AS THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF POETRY

KAMO NO CHōMEI'S THEORY OF THE HISTORY OF THE UTA

In the Mumyōshō Kamo no Chōmei tries to explain the historical evolution of styles in the Japanese poem. He follows in the footsteps of Fujiwara Toshinari, whose ideas on the subject he systematizes and elaborates. Chōmei's explanation of the evolution of poetic styles may be considered the most comprehensive among all the karon works up to his time and it has not lost its validity even today.

THE ANCIENT PERIOD

For Kamo no Chōmei Japanese literature starts with the Man'yōshū. He has no interest in Shinto mythology or primitive songs and never refers to such things in the Mumyōshō. Even the Man'yōshū, which had often been highly appreciated before him, is acceptable to him only for some of its best poems. He characterizes the literary period of the Man’yōshū as belonging to a distant past, when the hearts of the people were pure. It was this purity of heart that permitted the poets to communicate their intimate feelings without restraint, an ability which was of such value in itself that shortcomings in formal aspects could be overlooked. The poems of the Man'yōshū can be admired but not imitated, for all the conditions have changed since then and one cannot go back in time. The Man'yōshū should be studied in order to extend one's knowledge of literature and to elaborate one's taste and perception.

Chōmei sees the time of the Kokinshū (ca. 905) as the golden age of Japanese poetry. Its value lies in the extraordinary wealth of good poems of various kinds, including even comic poems. In the Kokinshū there is for the first time in Japanese poetry a differentiation of styles which initiated the development of critical writing about poetry on the basis of analysis of the elements of poetry, such as, for instance, sugata and kokoro, or ka and jitsu.³⁶ Chōmei advocates extensive study of the Kokinshū as the source of any style a poet might wish to learn, and as a standard by which one might measure one's own product.

The anthology that followed the Kokinshū, the Gosenshū (951), suffered in Kamo no Chōmei's opinion from a lack of good poems. The Kokinshū had used up all the creative forces and the compilers were forced to accept mediocre poems that lacked either kokoro or good form. Since in the Kokinshū kokoro had been emphasized, the compilers of the Gosenshū thought it best to follow this attitude and less attention was paid to good form. The Gosenshū did not contribute anything new.

By the term ‘ancient period’ Chōmei means a time which was emotionally and intellectually inaccessible to the people of the late Heian period, a time whose poets were almost legendary figures, some being already worshipped as gods.

THE MIDDLE PERIOD

The period following the ‘ancient period’ Kamo no Chōmei calls ‘middle period’. It is characterized by the style established by Fujiwara no Kintō in his Shūishū (ca. 1005-7), a style which was faithfully followed by the later anthologies. Poets tried to compose in accordance with the ideals of the Shūishū and thus subject matter and expression did not change with the times. Anything outside the scope of the Shūishū was considered vulgar and unacceptable for poetry. The same expressions were used over again and lost their freshness. Poets were anxious to create something but afraid to leave the beaten path, and the result was that poems that aimed to be original sounded merely pompous and strained.

By the time of the Kin'yōshū (1127) poems had become more and more superficial, their concern being to attract attention. It looked as if all the possibilities of the thirty-one syllable poem, restricted by the rules of the Shūishū, had been exhausted. Conventional phrases were repeated and rearranged and one could predict from one verse what the other would be. It was very easy to become a poet just by learning the conventional phrases and the rules about composition, but it was extremely difficult to produce a good poem. Chōmei mentions Kiyosuke, Yorimasa, his own teacher Shune, and Tōren as exponents of this style whose creativity was not obstructed by formalism, and he sees this as a proof of the fact that true genius will make its way whatever the circumstances might be.

There is no clear division between the style of the ‘middle period’ and that of the final period because non-conformists had existed for a long time and the controversy over styles was not a sudden occurrence.

THE FINAL PERIOD AND THE ‘CONTEMPORARY STYLE’

Many poets became conscious of the stagnation caused by the exclusion of other styles during the middle period and they tried to find a way out. They turned again to the sources of the ancient period and discovered in the Kokinshū the ideal of depth of feeling and the meaning that reaches beyond what words can say, the ideal called yūgen, and they elaborated it into a yūgen style. This style represents to Kamo no Chōmei the most characteristic element of the ‘contemporary style’.

Chōmei's discussion of yūgen is, as he says, a cautious attempt to do what nobody had done so far and he emphasizes the difficulties of trying to say in words what cannot be said. He discusses yūgen in connection with the character of the poet—he must be an extremely cultured and sensitive person in the right state of mind—and describes the atmosphere which facilitates the growth of yūgen. In a word, he talks about everything around it, but does not define it, true to his preliminary statement that yūgen cannot be stated in words but will emerge naturally if certain conditions are fulfilled.

Because of this elusive quality of yūgen the contemporary style presents great difficulties for the student who wants to learn it, but if he masters that style, he possesses an excellent means to produce good poetry. Yūgen permits many possibilities of interpretation and may thus be the device to break the stagnation of the middle period. It also presents in itself an absolute value, for through it the reality of daily life, whether it be beautiful or ugly, dignified or vulgar, is transformed into poetry.

Kamo no Chōmei is concerned about the hatred that had developed out of the controversy over the style of the middle period and the contemporary style, and his purpose is to end the quarrel. He therefore maintains that the two styles are not at all contrary things but actually have much in common, namely, the same literary source, the Kokinshū. The middle period was a consequence of the Kokinshū and the contemporary style developed out of the middle period. In Chōmei's opinion there is no point in arguing whether the one or the other style is better, or whether the new is better or worse than the old, for what really counts is the quality of a poem, in whatever way it may have been created.

CHōMEI'S IDEAS ABOUT POETRY

Kamo no Chōmei's ideas about poetry develop from his theory of the historical evolution of the uta. Poetry must fulfill two basic requirements: to communicate an experience, an idea, a feeling; and to please the audience. In order to fulfill these requirements the poem—with very few exceptions—has to be the product of a cultured and trained poet who is of course the product of his time. The poem thus reveals the poet's feeling and taste which are closely linked to the reality of the world in which he lives. He cannot escape his own background through his will power, nor can he deny tradition. The most important ideals of poetry, ‘to emphasize what is rational and to sound familiar to the ear’, can only be achieved when the poem is truly a product of its time, and they make sense only if the poem is presented to and judged by the audience of the time.

Chōmei defines poetry not only with regard to its purpose and its historical significance, but also as one of the forms of literature opposed to kambun literature and ordinary descriptive prose.

Among the literary forms that are written on the basis of the Japanese language, that is to say using kana syllabary, the Mumyōshō quotes four besides the uta: prefaces in kana to poetry, of which the Kokinshū preface is the best; diaries, which may be modelled after the Ookagami;³⁷ introductory words to poems after the style of the Ise monogatari³⁸ and Gosenshū; and monogatari, among which the Genji monogatari is unsurpassed. In all these literary forms the kana script is of the utmost importance because it follows the natural development of ideas and language of the society and does not, like kambun script force the writers to accept the limited scope of classical Chinese. The use of kana script makes it possible to bring literature close to the realities of Japanese life. The writer should be aware of this and should discard together with the Chinese language also the elements characteristic of Chinese style, such as pair phrases, pompous words (in fact all words of Chinese origin wherever possible) and subject matter that is removed from the setting of Japanese life. Chōmei is thus aware of the flexibility of language in its function as means of communication and the importance of the literary language's relation to it.

What distinguishes poetry from descriptive prose is depicted in the Mumyōshō from the point of view of communication between the poet and the audience and from the point of view of verbal technique which results from the shortness of the poem.

In a poem the poet stimulates the curiosity and imagination of the audience through suggestions and not fully formulated ideas. The personality of the poet does not impose itself on the audience, thus allowing everybody to interpret the poem according to his own inclination. In prose, experiences are described as faithfully as possible, leaving nothing to the imagination of the reader, who is always aware of the writer. The poem originates out of the most intimate personal experiences, moods, feelings, and should give the impression to the audience of being objective and universally valid. Prose, however, convinces through arguments stated in blunt words.

The uta, being confined to thirty-one syllables, is a difficult means of communication. Chōmei stresses this point. The restriction of words forces the poem to develop its own techniques different from those of prose, and this Chōmei regards as the most important part of the discipline, or ‘way’, of the uta. In an uta the meaning has to be revealed in very few words; therefore the poet has to abstract his ideas and be very careful in the selection of his words. Furthermore the word chosen has to accord with the aesthetic principles of the time; that is to say, it should not be obsolete and sound strange, and it must be in harmony with the other words used in the poem. Each word in a poem thus carries much weight, but should sound as light and natural as possible. In prose there is not so much need for abstraction; the process of thinking and feeling can be described and explained; the single word does not have much importance.

HOW TO BECOME A POET

Chōmei holds basically the same opinion on this subject as Fujiwara Sadaie, who wrote his Maigetsushō a few years after Chōmei's death. Chōmei is however not so strict about the training of the poet as Sadaie; he is much more willing to put up with minor shortcomings than his arrogant aristocratic colleague, provided the resulting poem has some good points.

His opinion on the subject may be summarized as follows. Good poetry can be the result of either a strong emotional experience of a sensitive person, or the conscious act of a master-poet. Poems of the first type are few and since they are completely subjective and unpredictable, they can be enjoyed but not analyzed, and therefore are uninteresting from the point of view of the theoretician. It is the second type which is important, because it can be studied and understood and because it constitutes the greater part of all serious poetry.

To become a master-poet a long period of apprenticeship is necessary. The young poet has to select a master with whom he enters an ‘alliance’, and the opinion of the master, as well as of other authorities, should be respected, not so much as an absolute truth, but as the point of departure for the young poet to develop his own taste and ideas: ‘There is always something in what old people say.’ Since knowledge of the discipline of the uta is transmitted orally from the older to the younger generation of poets, respect for the old masters implies respect for the discipline, and this is of course an important requirement of a poet.

The disciplining of a poet consists of the study of literature in order to acquire taste and knowledge, to realize his own limitations and possibilities and find his own way into the literary world; it consists of practice in composition and the adaptation of the whole personality of the poet to the aesthetic principles of poetry. The accumulation of knowledge is a prerequisite for the composition of acceptable poetry, because it functions as a means to keep the poem within the realm of human experience. For this reason no pains should be spared to increase one's knowledge about poetry itself and also about everything concerned with it.

After the period of apprenticeship the poet may participate in official contests, but he should be careful not to exhaust his talent or fall victim to flattery. He should stick to the discipline and check his own poems over again, when his sound judgment is not impaired by the excitement and splendor of official contests. In order to prepare himself for a contest, the poet must live enveloped in the poetic atmosphere that will agree with his own poetry. If he cannot get into the right mood, he may start practicing with colorful sequences of words and rearrangements of old poems, until ideas come naturally to the mind and the words flow with ease. All the prerequisites for the composition of an excellent poem are thus fulfilled.

GOOD POETS AND SOCIETY

Kamo no Chōmei cites several cases where outstanding poets suffered neglect during their lifetime because of their social standing or because they did not conform to the moral standard of their time. In one chapter he passionately defends the cause of the poetess Izumi Shikibu,³⁹ whom he considers one of the greatest poetic geniuses, and whose outstanding talent had not been recognized by the judges and the audience of the time because their judgment was impaired by moral considerations. Chōmei admires her rich imagination and the beauty of language which she skilfully used to create an interesting association of ideas. He also mentions Sone no Yoshitada,⁴⁰ who had a difficult start as a poet because of his social background (he belonged to the lower aristocracy) and whose unconventional poetry disturbed the public.

The genius of both poets was recognized by later generations, and Chōmei illustrates with these examples and some accounts of his own experiences the difficulties he himself had to overcome and how he was still hampered in his artistic career by his social status.

In Chōmei's view the reason why it is so important that the best poets should be recognized during their lifetime is that only the very best are qualified to judge over others. If taste is dictated by mediocre and conceited aristocrats, this will definitely lead to a decline of the uta. Chōmei reveals in several passages the inadequacy of the judges and the corruption that brought the poetry contests into disrepute, and he puts the blame on the aristocratic society which had lost its ethical standards.

Chōmei admits, however, that poetry contests, especially good ones, still function to create an average standard of good poetry. Because good poetry, in Chōmei's opinion, is not the work of a genius but of a professional poet, the contest serves as his workshop. The poet needs an audience, and the more critical the audience, the better the poet can develop his skill. Honest and fair criticism is necessary to keep the intellect of the poet alive and to enlarge his vision of the world.

THE GOOD POEM

According to Kamo no Chōmei there is no absolute standard of good and bad in poetry, for the elements of poetry (kokoro and sugata) may be realized more or less successfully in the poem and these two elements are again made up of various components. Moreover, since the evaluation of the poem depends on the taste and knowledge of the judge, the judgment must necessarily be arbitrary, and good and bad are thus relative. Chōmei stresses the need for a personal approach to poetry because of the lack of an absolute standard of quality and because of the inadequacy of most of the judges of his time.

A good poem can only be achieved when the discipline of the uta is respected and the poet has accumulated enough knowledge. Then he can free himself from the influence of tradition and the authority of the court, which directed all the activities of the poets, and find his own way while relying on his own judgment.

The ideal of a good poem is best described in Chōmei's own words:

Only when many ideas are compressed in one word, when without displaying it you exhaust your mind in all its depth and you imagine the imperceptible, when commonplace things are used to display beauty and in a style of naiveté an idea is developed to the limit, only then, when thinking does not lead anywhere and words are inadequate, should you express your feelings by this method, which has the capacity to move heaven and earth and the power to touch the gods and spirits.⁴¹

Notes

1. The seventh and first half of the eighth century.

2. Kōbō Daishi zenshū, Tokyo, 1910, viii, p. 2.

3. See p. 330 and Appendix.

4. See Sakuteiki, p. 18.

5. Adapted from G. Bownas and A. Thwaite, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, Bungay, Suffolk, 1964, p. 60.

6. Founded by Emperor Shirakawa in 1086 in an attempt to curb the power of the Fujiwara.

7. The last of the three periods of Buddhist law, the age of degeneration and destruction.

8. ‘A Wreath of Cloud’, in the translation by Arthur Waley, pp. 253-7.

9. Attributed to Fujiwara Toshinari (1114-1204), whose other prose (see also Introduction, pp. 33-5) is however quite different in style and general mood; or to his granddaughter (c. 1171-1254), whom he adopted as his daughter and who is mentioned in the Mumyōshō, ch. 65.

10. ‘Defects in poems’ were classified in China from the fifth century; see App. Tables i, iv, v, viii, ix, xiv for their adaptation into karon.

11. A comprehensive study of this work was undertaken by G. Debon, Ts‘ang-Lang's Gespräche über die Dichtung, ein Beitrag zur chinesischen Poetik, Wiesbaden, 1962.

12. The karon of Kamo no Chōmei and Fujiwara Sadaie.

13. The last Japanese mission returned from T‘ang in 839.

14. For an illuminating picture of Heian society see G. B. Sansom, A History of Japan, Stanford, 1958, i, ch. vi-xvii: for a study of Heian court poetry see R. H. Brower and E. Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, London, 1962.

15. The authors of the Kaifūsō were princes, high officials, scholars of Chinese, and monks. None of the poems are anonymous. The subject matter, in contrast to the Man'yōshū, is ceremonial and on the whole removed from daily life. Taoist, Buddhist and Confucianist motives are frequent in the Kaifūsō, but are rare in the Man'yōshū. Some of the poems of the Kaifūsō appear in Japanese version in the Man'yōshū. See also p. 323 [in Katō, Hilda, Monumenta Nipponica 23, nos. 3–4 (1968): 321–49].

16. See App. Table i.

17. See App. Tables ii, iii, iv.

18. Chinese written by Japanese.

19. See App. Table v.

20. See App. Table vi.

21. See App. Table vii.

22. See App. Table i.

23. See App. Table viii.

24. See App. Table ix.

25. uta-awase, ‘poetry contest’. A matching of poems composed on stated titles. These titles were either sent out in advance (kenjitsu) or were announced at the meeting (tōza). The poets were divided into two sides, left and right; the contest consisted of a number of rounds (ban), in which two poems were read, usually by a reciter (kōshi). One or more judges (hanja) decided on win, lose and draw. The judges had to justify their decisions and when they did so in writing, records of their statements (hanshi) are available to us. Such meetings were at first held under the auspices of high court nobles, the emperor himself, or famous poets. The oldest recorded poetry contest is the Sai-Mimbukyō-ke-uta-awase of the era Ninna (885-8), which was held at the residence of the Mimbukyō Ariwara Yukihira (see GR, viii, p. 435). The oldest poetry contest with justification of judgments is the Teishiin uta-awase of the year 913. It was held at the palace Teishiin of the Cloistered Emperor Uda (867-931) (see GR 8, p. 466). Similar competitions were the e-awase (picture contest), the shi-awase (Chinese-poem contest), the shika-awase (Chinese- and Japanese-poem contest), the jika-awase (one poet setting his own poems against each other) and contests of flowers, perfumes, roots, etc.

26. The Kokinshū has two prefaces, one in kana, written by Ki no Tsurayuki, the other in kambun, whose authorship cannot be determined with certainty. The two prefaces deal with the same subjects and are largely identical. For further information see E. B. Ceadel: ‘The Two Prefaces of the Kokinshū’, Asia Major, 1959, ‘The Ooi River Poems and Preface’, 1952.

27. See App. Table x.

28. See App. Table xi.

29. Epitheton ornans (makurakotoba), a qualifier describing, by tradition, certain nouns and concepts; pivot-word (kakekotoba) a word put between two clauses in such a way that it is construed in two different senses, and while linking the two clauses it also becomes part of each; introductory word (jo) preceding the body of the poem and linked to it through various methods; word-association (engo).

30. See App. Table xii.

31. See translation, ch. 68 and n. 250.

32. See App. Table xiii.

33. See App. Table xiv.

34. Ancient (jōko), the age of the gods and the Man'yōshū; middle (chūko), Kokinshū to Shūishū; final (matsudai), up to his time. (See App. Table xv.)

35. The Eika taigai is partly translated in R. Tsunoda, et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition, pp. 183-4.

36. Ka is the beautiful outward appearance, jitsu the substantial core. Kajitsu (also pronounced hanami) became a technical term later, standing for ‘formal aspect’ and ‘content’.

37. Japanese historical narrative of the late 11th or early 12th century, dealing with the time from 850 to 1025.

38. Poem tale of the tenth century (see p. 9) attributed to Ariwara no Narihira. (See F. Vos, A Study of the Ise-monogatari with the Text According to the Den Teika-hippon, Gravenhage, 1957.)

39. (?970-?1033); one of the 36 geniuses of poetry of the Heian period, author of the Izumi Shikibu nikki (1003). Her private collections of poetry: Izumi Shikibu-shū and Zoku Izumi Shikibu-shū. She had a reputation for being a very passionate and unconventional woman.

40. Active around 985; one of the 36 geniuses of poetry of the Heian period.

41. See translation, p. 409.

Abbreviations

GR: Zoku Gunsho ruiju Gunsho ruiju kanseikai Tokyo, 1923.

KT: Kokka taikan, Matsushita Daisaburō and Watanabe Fumio, comp., Tokyo, 1958, 2 vols.

NKBT: Nihon kotembungaku taikei, Iwanami-shoten, Tokyo, 1957.

NKT: Nihon kagaku taikei, Sasaki Nobutsuna, ed., Tokyo, 1941.

ZKT: Zoku kokka taikan, Matsushita Daisaburō, comp., Tokyo, 1958, 2 vols.