SOURCE: "The Kokinshu Prefaces: Another Perspective," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1983, pp. 215-38.

[In the following essay, Wixted explains how the prefaces to the Kokinshu, while largely modeled on those of earlier Chinese works, affirm a new value attributed to Japanese poetry.]

Literary anthologies are compiled for a variety of ends.¹ They can be made for pragmatic / didactic purposes, as was the Shih ching (Classic of Songs); for the sheer diversionary pleasure of the material, as was the Yüt' ai hsin-yung (New Songs from the Jade Tower); or for a more complex mix of motives. The compilation of the most famous Chinese anthology, the Wen hsüan (Literary Selections), was prompted by considerations that were literary as well as didactic and pragmatic. The first imperially commissioned anthology of Japanese verse, the Kokinshū (Kokin waka shū) (A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern), also served more than one end, the most important doubtless being that it marked, in the minds of its compilers, a coming of age of Japanese poetry.

Making an anthology is perforce a critical act, an implicit assertion of value: underscoring what is to be learned from the past, determining what styles of writing are to be emulated, or setting a standard of what is to be deemed literary. Many of the most famous anthologies in China and Japan are accompanied by critical pronouncements in the form of a preface which serves to explain or justify the compilation. The preface to an anthology is implicitly part of a discourse with previous critical statements.² As such, it is more likely to be counterstatement, the assertion of something new, the promise of a new program (even if it is one rejecting what has become new), than simply the restatement of earlier assertions. The thoughts expressed therein are less likely to be carefully developed ideas intended to be taken as ends in themselves than they are to be rhetorical vehicles. What is significant is the intended shift in direction. This is not to deny the importance of the restatement of earlier-held notions; such restatement can serve as a crucial means of legitimizing one's stand. But the restatement of earlier ideas inevitably transforms them by putting them in a new context.

This article will focus on the two prefaces to the Kokinshū (completed between A.D. 905 and 917), the one in Chinese, the manajo attributed to Ki no Yoshimochi, the other in Japanese, the kanajo, by Ki no Tsurayuki. The Kokinshū appears in the wake of a more than century-long vogue during which Japanese who were à la mode wrote poetry in Chinese. Several anthologies of Chinese verse written by Japanese had appeared in the previous two centuries, the most famous being the Kaifūsō (comp. 751), but only one major anthology of Japanese verse had been compiled, and it was written in a Japanese that appeared quite different from that of the Kokinshū.3 The prefaces to the Kokinshū stress the importance of Japanese poetry. In all likelihood the very fact that the value of Japanese poetry is strongly asserted reflects a distrust of that value—at least a distrust of the acceptance of that value at the time.

Like most critical tracts, the prefaces to the Kokinshūi have a Janus-faced quality to them. On the one hand, they look to the past, to China, for arguments to justify and give authority to their position. At the same time, while marking an important transition point, they usher in a new age of literature written in Japanese by Japanese. Only one face of the Kokinshū prefaces, however, came to be viewed, for the prefaces themselves became the terminus a quo for most later Japanese discussion of poetics. The context of the original discourse was generally ignored.

It is the aim of this article to point out features of the Kokinshū prefaces that were devised in implicit interaction with earlier Chinese critical theory; to clarify the background of the discourse used by the authors of the prefaces; and, in the process, to note both the changed thrust of the resultant critical configuration, and at least one feature unique to it. Considerable light can be thrown on the Japanese poetic tradition by examining this topic.

Three main points are developed in this article. Chinese critical theory was modified by early Japanese critics in such a way that the expressive function of literature was stressed. Chinese critical discourse, sometimes in truncated form, was used to give intellectual legitimization to the unprecedented undertaking of an anthology of poetry in Japanese being compiled by imperial commission. At the same time, much of the critical vocabulary and imagery used to characterize Japanese poets, unlike the theory that was propounded, was decidedly non-Chinese in cast.

In examining the Chinese sources for and influences on the Kokinshū prefaces, one must look to the corpus of Chinese critical opinion familiar to a ninth-century Japanese educated in Chinese. Such works would include the following:

The "Ta hsiu" ("Major Preface") to the Shih ching, formerly attributed to Pu Shang (507-400 B.C.), but in more likelihood written by Wei Hung (dates uncertain) in the first century A.D.⁴

The "[Tien-lun] Lun-wen" ("Essay on Literature [in Classical Treatises]"), written by Ts'ao P'i (187-226) early in the third century.⁵

The "Wen fu" ("Rhymeprose on Literature") by Lu Chi (261-303), composed nearly a century later.⁶

The Shih-p'in (Poetry Gradings) by Chung Hung (469-518). Its three prefaces offer comments on literary theory and outline the history of Chinese poetry; the body contains characterizations and evaluations of more than 120 earlier poets, ranking them according to categories roughly equivalent to A, A-/B+, and B gradings.⁷

The preface to the Wen hsüan by Hsiao T'ung (501-31).⁸ It is clear that this anthology was popular in Japan,⁹ It contains all of the above-mentioned works on criticism, except the Shih-p'in.

The preface to the Yü-t'ai hsin-yung, written by Hsü Ling (507-83).¹⁰

One is tempted to add to this list the greatest work of Chinese criticism, one (like the last three mentioned works) written in the sixth century, the Wen-hsin tiaolung (The Heart of Literature: Elaborations) by Liu Hsieh (465?-523?).¹¹ However, that work seems to have been overlooked in Japan, just as it was in China for over eight hundred years, even though short passages from it do appear in the Bunkyō hifuron (A Literary Mirror: Discussions of Its Secret Store) by Kūkai (774-835).¹²

Critical concepts introduced in the Kokinshū prefaces become clearer when explicated in terms of antecedent Chinese models. The manajo opens as follows:

Japanese verse takes root in the soil of one's heart and blossoms forth in the forest of words. While a man is in the world, he cannot be inactive. His thoughts and concerns easily shift, his joy and sor-row change in turn. Emotion is born of intent, song takes shape in words. Therefore, when a person is pleased, his voice is happy, and when frustrated, his sighs are sad. He is able to set forth his feelings, to express his indignation. To move heaven and earth, to affect the gods and demons, to transform human relations, or to harmonize husband and wife, there is nothing more suitable than Japanese verse.¹³

Poetry is said to find its origin in the heart. The source for this statement is the "Yüeh chi" ("Record of Music") chapter of the Li chi (Record of Rites):

Emotion stirs within, then takes form in sound.… Poetry gives words to one's intent. Songs give music to one's voice. Dance gives movement to one's manner, and all three originate from the heart.¹⁴

In the "Major Preface" to the Shih ching, poetry is described in similar terms:

Poetry is the outcome of intent. In the mind it is intent; expressed in words, it becomes poetry. Emotion stirs within and forms into words. As the words are inadequate, one sighs them. As the sighing is inadequate, one sings aloud. As the singing is inadequate, without knowing it, the hands start to dance, and the feet beat in time.¹⁵

The manajo passage combines elements that are pragmatic (the poet can "move heaven and earth, affect the gods and demons, transform human relations, and harmonize husband and wife"), as well as expressive (he "sets forth his feelings" and "expresses his excitement"). What is stated as simple fact by Yoshimochi concerning the pragmatic end of literature is presented in a more carefully argued form in the "Major Preface" to the Shih ching. There, as noted above, emotion is said to be expressed in sound: in sighing, humming, and the dancing of hands and feet. Wei Hung develops his argument from this point:

When sounds are accomplished with artistry, they become a theme. The theme heard in a well-ordered time is one of contentment, whereby joy is expressed at the government being in harmony. The theme heard in a disordered time is one of resentment.… The theme heard in a state of ruin is mournful.… Therefore, to give proper recognition to success and failure, to move the powers of Heaven and Earth, to promote responses amongst ghosts and supernatural spirits, there is nothing like poetry.¹⁶

Here the implication is that a poet responding to external stimuli cannot but reflect those stimuli; he cannot but reflect the environment in his poetry. (It was for this reason that the Shih ching is said to have been collected, as a record or mirroring of the feelings and concerns of the people.)¹⁷ A good environment produces songs of contentment, just as elsewhere in early Chinese critical theory it is stated that the music of a disordered state expresses disaffection and anger.¹⁸

The further implication, unstated in the "Major Preface," but found in the I ching (Classic of Change) and beautifully elaborated in the opening chapter of Wenhsin tiao-lung, "Yuan tao" ("On Tracing the Tao"), is that patterned words, i.e., poetry or literature, are a manifestation or correlate of a cosmic tao (or Way), a correlate that acts in sympathetic harmony, or mutual resonance, with the cosmos.¹⁹ Hence the "Major Preface" states that there is nothing like poetry to give proper recognition to success and failure, to move the powers of heaven and earth, and to promote responses among ghosts and supernatural spirits.

Chung Hung in the opening section of the Shih-p 'in presents a similar formula:

Life-breath²⁰ moves the external world, and the external world moves us. Our sensibilities, once stirred, manifest themselves in dance and song. This manifestation illumines heaven, earth, and man and makes resplendent the whole of creation.

That is to say, poetry, the extension of song and dance, is a cosmic correlate that reflects and adumbrates the manifold glory of the cosmos. He continues:

Heavenly and earthly spirits depend on it to receive oblation, and ghosts of darkness depend on it for secular reports.

Poetry is said to be an instrument whereby man communes with his two complements in the universe, heaven and earth. He does this by deferentially reflecting their manifold interworkings in his poetry; in so doing, he communicates with the supernatural, just as in the "Great Preface" eulogies are said to be a "means whereby successes are reported to supernatural intelligences."²¹ To this, Chung Hung then adds:

For moving heaven and earth and for stirring ghosts and spirits, there is nothing better than poetry.²²

Heaven and earth, and the spirits, each in turn, react to literary patternings in sympathetic harmony.

These sources—the "Yüeh chi," the "Major Preface," the I ching, and the Shih-p 'in—form the background to Ki no Yoshimochi's statement:

To move heaven and earth, to affect the gods and demons, to transform human relations, or to harmonize husband and wife, there is nothing more suitable than Japanese verse.

Interestingly enough, of the functions of poetry that he enumerates, the latter pair, the transforming of human relationships and the harmonizing of husband and wife, are more indebted to the didactic/pragmatic attitude toward literature found in Confucius' Analects than to the "Major Preface."²³ Ki no Tsurayuki in his kana version of the preface adds an interesting twist to the formula:

It is poetry which, without effort, moves heaven and earth, stirs the feelings of the invisible gods and spirits, smooths the relations of men and women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors.²⁴

The concept that poetry is able to calm fierce warriors' hearts, one should add, is quite un-Chinese.

E. B. Ceadel argues that the Chinese preface to the Kokinshū was written before and served as the basis for the Japanese preface.²⁵ Pointing to several passages from Chinese critical sources that appear in the Kokinshū prefaces, with but slight modification in the Chinese version and with greater change in the Japanese text, he argues that Tsurayuki wrote the kana version by modifying the manajo text (the latter being the mediator of Chinese critical principles). This view is open to question. Tsurayuki himself wrote a Chinese preface of his own to the Shinsen wakashū (An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Newly Selected). Although he was not the master in the writing of Chinese prose that Yoshimochi was, it is likely that they were both familiar with the same Chinese sources.²⁶ Moreover, there is one passage in particular that appears in the Japanese preface to the Kokinshū (with no counterpart in the Chinese preface) and seems clearly indebted to a Chinese model. I refer to the listing (virtually a litany, in a nonreligious sense) of circumstances under which the anthology's poets are said to have expressed themselves; the opening paragraph in the following passage from the kanajo has its equivalent in the manajo,27 but not the listing the follows:

Whenever there were blossoms at dawn in spring or moonlit autumn nights, the generations of sovereigns of old summoned their attendants to compose poetry inspired by these beauties. Sometimes the poet wandered through untraveled places to use the image of the blossoms; sometimes he went to dark unknown wilderness lands to write of the moon. The sovereigns surely read these and distinguished the wise from the foolish.

Not only at such times, but on other occasions as well:

the poet might make comparison to pebbles,
or appeal to his lord by referring to Tsukuba
Mountain;
joy overflowing, his heart might be filled
with delight;
he could compare his smoldering love to the
smoke rising from Fuji,
turn his thoughts to friends when he heard
the voice of the pining cricket,
think of the pines of Takasago and Suminoe
as having grown up with him,
recall the olden days of Otoko Mountain,
or protest the swift passage of the maiden
flowers' beauty;
seeing the blossoms fall on a spring morn,
hearing the leaves fall on an autumn
 evening, he sighed to see the drifts of
snow and ripples in the mirror
 increase with each passing year;
he was startled to realize the brevity of his
life when he saw the dew on the
 grass or the foam on the waters;
he who had prospered yesterday lost his
influence;
falling in the world, he became estranged
from those he had loved;
he might invoke the waves on Matsuyama,
dip water from the meadow spring,
gaze upon the underleaves of the autumn
bush clover,
count the flutterings of the wings of the
snipe at dawn,
or bemoan the sad lengths of the black
bamboo;
alluding to the Yoshino River, he
complained of the ways of the world of
love;
or he might hear that there was no smoke
rising from Mount Fuji,
or that the Nagara bridge had been rebuilt.

At such times, it was only through poetry that his heart was soothed.

Each of the circumstances mentioned above (indicated by a new line in the indented run-on passage) refers to a specific poem or group of poems in the Kokinshū. There is no such listing by Yoshimochi in the Chinese preface.

Chung Hung in the Shih-p'in, after making a somewhat different prefatory statement, had provided a similar listing of circumstances prompting poetic expression:

Vernal breezes and springtime birds, the autumn moon and cicadas in the fall, summer clouds and sultry rains, the winter moon and fierce cold—these are what in the four seasons inspire poetry. At an agreeable banquet, through poetry one can make friendship dearer. When parting, one can put one's chagrin into verse.

When a Ch'u official is banished;
When a Han consort must leave the palace;
When white bones are strewn across the
 northern plain,
 And souls go chasing tumbleweed;
When arms are borne in frontier camps,
 And a savage spirit overflows the border;
When the frontier traveler has but thin
 clothing,
 And in the widow's chambers all tears are
 spent;
When, divested of the ornaments of office,
 one leaves the court,

 Gone, no thought of return;
When by raising an eyebrow a woman wins
 imperial favor,
 And with a second glance topples the state.

These situations all stir the heart and move the soul. If not expressed in poetry, how can such sentiments be presented? If not expanded in song, how can these emotions be vented?²⁸

Although Chung Hung's work was not an anthology, the situations he describes (each beginning with an indented line and concluded by a colon) refer to a specific poet or group of poems that he treats in his critical scheme.²⁹ What makes this so unmistakably the source of Tsurayuki's list is the latter's tag at the end: "At such times, it was only through poetry that his heart was soothed." He speaks of the same expressive catharsis referred to by Chung Hung at the end of his listing.

Both Kokinshūi prefaces contain an important passage from the "Major Preface" to the Shih ching which is incomprehensible without discussion of early Chinese critical theory. The excerpt is only slightly reworded in the Japanese preface (with sample poems appended), while being cited virtually verbatim in the Chinese preface:

Japanese verse embodies six principles. The first is the Suasive (feng) [principle of the Airs (feng) (of the States) section of the Shih ching], the second is Description (fu), the third is Comparison (pi), the fourth is Evocative Image (hsing), and the fifth and sixth are the principles exemplified in the Elegantia (ya) and Eulogia (sung) [sections of the Shih ching].

Of the six terms,³⁰ three refer to aspects or principles of poetry. Hsing, pi, and fu—Evocative Image, Comparison, and Description—are best thought of as specifying three rhetorical modes. Chung Hung in his work expounds succinctly on them:

Poetry has three aspects: Evocative Image (hsing), Comparison (pi), and Description (fu). When meaning lingers on, though writing has come to an end, this is an Evocative Image. When an object is used to express a sentiment, this is Comparison. And when affairs are recorded directly, the objective world being put into words, this is Description. If one expands these three aspects and uses them judiciously, backing them up with lively force and lending them beauty of coloration so that those who read a work find it inexhaustible and those who hear it are moved, this is the perfect poetry.

If only Comparison and Evocative Image are used, writing will suffer from density of thought; and when ideas are dense, expression stumbles. If only Description is employed, writing will suffer from superficiality; and when thought is superficial, language becomes diffuse. Further, if one carelessly drifts back and forth among these, his writing will be without anchoring and will suffer from prolixity.³¹

The other three terms—-feng, ya, and sung, here translated as the Suasive principle of the "Airs of the States" section and the principles exemplified in the "Elegantia" and "Eulogia" sections of the Shih ching—had a different import before the writing of the "Major Preface" and are sometimes understood differently by later Chinese critics as well. These terms first appear in the Chou 1i (Rites of Chou) in reference to music, where they differentiate melodic tempos, and by extension, poetic rhythms.³² In the "Major Preface," however, they are used to stress primarily the pragmatic, and secondarily the mimetic, functions of literature. The aim of the Suasive is oblique criticism: "The one who speaks out does so without incriminating himself, and the one who is criticized hears enough to be warned." The Elegantia songs serve the mimetic and didactic purposes of "tell[ing] of the causes for the decay or the rise of the royal government." The Eulogia are also mimetic and pragmatic, for they "are descriptions of flourishing virtue and are the means whereby successes are reported to supernatural intelligences."³³

If these latter three terms are taken in their original sense of melodic tempos and hence poetic rhythms, all six terms form a nuclear technical vocabulary for poetry—one according with a technical orientation that is objective (or work oriented). Three of the terms, in any case, are so oriented. Alternatively, the other three can be seen to serve more pragmatic / didatic ends—a preferable view, for that is how they were traditionally understood.

An attempt at the application of these critical terms was made by Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki. Variously interpreted and inconsistently applied by Chinese commentators to the Shih ching,³⁴ the terms had become in China a sacrosanct formula invoked for the purposes of legitimizing one's critical stand. Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki employed them in much the same way.

There is another theme in the Kokinshū prefaces that deserves attention because of its Chinese model: the view that one gains immortality through literature. As Yoshimochi writes:

The vulgar contend for profit and fame, and have no need to compose Japanese verse. How sad! How sad! Although one may be honored by being both a minister and general, and though his wealth may be a bounty of gold and coin, still, before his bones can rot in the dirt, his fame has already disappeared from the world. Only composers of Japanese verse are recognized by posterity.

The same theme is developed by Tsurayuki in his preface.³⁵

The celebrated locus classicus in Chinese criticism for discussion of the gaining of immortality through writing is the "Essay on Literature" by Ts'ao P'i, in which he says:

Our life must have an end and all our glory, all our joy will end with it. Life and glory last only for a limited time, unlike literature (wen-chang) which endures for ever. That is why ancient authors devoted themselves, body and soul, to ink and brush and set forth their ideas in books. They had no need to have their biographies written by good historians or to depend upon the power and influence of the rich and mighty: their fame transmitted itself to posterity.³⁶

There are other areas in which comparison between the Kokinshū prefaces and antecedent Chinese critical works is fruitful. One is the general structuring of the works. In the prefaces by Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki, as well as in those by Chung Hung, a few general formulations of critical theory are stated, a history of antecedent poetry is outlined, and each (including Chung Hung's first preface) ends with a beautifully worded but rather forced encomium for the reigning Chinese or Japanese sovereign.

Another interesting similarity lies in the nature of the critiques of individual poets. In the Kokinshū prefaces, as in Chung Hung's work, writers are given a pedigree that is strained and formulaic: "The poetry of Ono no Komachi is of the school of Princess Sot riō of antiquity,"³⁷ or "The poetry of tomo no Kuronushi follows that of the Illustrious Sarumaru."³⁸ This is like Chung Hung's saying that "Hsieh Ling-yün's poetic origins go back to Ts'ao Chih,"³⁹ or "T'ao Ch'ien's poetry derives from that of Ying Chü."⁴⁰

Furthermore, in both of the Kokinshū prefaces and in Chung Hung's Shih-p'in, a writer's style is often first described in a terse phrase that may be followed by a concrete analogy meant to sum up the writer's work. For example, Ono no Komachi's poetry is first said to be "seductive and spiritless";⁴¹ to this is added the analogy that it "is like a sick woman wearing cosmetics." The form of Ōtomo no Kuronushi's poetry is said to be "extremely rustic"; it is "like a field hand resting before flowers."⁴² And of Fun'ya no Yasuhide it is said, he "used words skillfully, but the expression does not suit the content. His poetry is like a tradesman attired in elegant robes."⁴³ Compare Chung Hung's description of Fan Yün and Ch'iu Ch'ih: "Fan Yün's poems are bracingly nimble and smooth-turning, like a flowing breeze swirling snow. Ch'iu Ch'ih's poems are quilted patches charmingly bright, like fallen petals lying on the grass."⁴⁴

Another area of similarity between these works is the authors' penchant for setting up a hierarchy of greats. Thus, Tsurayuki calls Hitomaro the "sage of poetry," which is like Chung Hung's terming Ts'ao Chih and Liu Chen "the sages of literature."⁴⁵

Women writers fare poorly in these critical treatises. Speaking of Li Ling and Lady Pan, Chung Hung states that "together they spanned roughly a century; but discounting the [one as a] woman, there was only one poet for the period."⁴⁶ When Yoshimochi describes the decline of earlier Japanese poetry, he states pejoratively, "it became half the handmaid of women, and was embarrassing to present before gentlemen." And Tsurayuki says of Ono no Komachi, "Her poetry is like a noble lady who is suffering from a sickness, but the weakness is natural to a woman's poetry."

It had been common in the Chinese critical tradition to make the "fruit" (or substance) of literature stand in opposition to its "flower" (or beauty of expression).⁴⁷ Yoshimochi adopted the terminology whole, using it to decry the decline of poetry after Hitomaro, "who was unrivalled in ancient and modern times":

Then, when the times shifted into decline and men revered the lustful, frivolous words arose like clouds, and a current of ostentatiousness bubbled up like a spring. The fruit had all fallen and only the flower bloomed.

The idea of decline (especially in recent times) from some antique ideal is a pervasive one in Chinese thought. It had been used by Chung Hung,⁴⁸ and is echoed in the Kokinshū prefaces. In the following passage, Tsurayuki uses somewhat different language to couch the thought expressed above by Yoshimochi:

Nowadays because people are concerned with gorgeous appearances and their hearts admire ostentation, poems poor in content and related only to the circumstances of their composition have appeared.

The critical orientations of the Kokinshū prefaces differ in emphasis. Yoshimochi's Chinese preface is more explicitly pragmatic than is Tsurayuki's kana piece. Both prefaces supply a similar listing of the pragmatic functions of poetry (those of moving heaven and earth, transforming human relations, etc.), and both prefaces state that it is through poetry that the feelings of sovereign and subject can be seen, the qualities of virtue and stupidity distinguished, and so forth. But Yoshimochi has an additional passage unparalleled in the Japanese preface. He says approvingly of the poems of high antiquity: "They had yet to become amusements of the eye and ear, serving only as sources of moral edification."

More significantly, there is no counterpart in the Chinese preface to Tsurayuki's list of the circumstances which give occasion to the writing of poetry in general and which, in fact, gave rise to specific Kokinshū poems. The expressive orientation of the Japanese preface is explicit here;⁴⁹ when Tsurayuki delineates pragmatic ends, he does so more to illustrate poetry's hallowed origins than to prescribe its goals.

Both authors supply additional kindred statements about the expressive nature of poetry. Yoshimochi says of Japanese verse:

It is like an oriole in spring warbling among the flowers, or like a cicada in autumn humming high up in a tree. Though they are neither harassed nor disturbed, each one puts forth its song. That all things have a song is a principle of nature.

And there are the similar opening words of Tsurayuki's preface:

The seeds of Japanese poetry lie in the human heart and grow into leaves of ten thousand words. Many things happen to the people of this world, and all that they think and feel is given expression in description of things they see and hear. When we hear the warbling of the mountain thrush in the blossoms or the voice of the frog in the water, we know every living being has its song.

But the expressive orientation of Tsurayuki's view is underscored by other passages of a sort which do not appear in the Chinese preface. After ascribing the beginning of thirty-one syllable verse to Susanoo no mikoto, he remarks:

Since then many poems have been composed when people were attracted by the blossoms or admired the birds, when they were moved by the haze or regretted the swift passage of the dew, and both inspiration and forms of expression have become diverse.

And Tsurayuki says of the poems being anthologized:

We have chosen poems on wearing garlands of plum blossoms, poems on hearing the nightingale, on breaking off branches of autumn leaves, on seeing the snow. We have also chosen poems on wishing one's lord the lifespan of the crane and tortoise, on congratulating someone, on yearning for one's wife when one sees the autumn bush clover or the grasses of summer, on offering prayer strips on Ausaka Hill, on seeing someone off on a journey, and on miscellaneous topics that cannot be categorized by season.

What one should note in reference to these two passages, as well as the important list cited earlier, is that the writing of poetry is linked to an occasion. This suggests much about Japanese attitudes toward the social function of poetry. An occasion which initially may have prompted poetry of an expressive nature became a de rigueur demand for versification serving the more pragmatic end of social display. Notwithstanding the development of this tendency in the Japanese poetic tradition, it is important to keep in mind that Tsurayuki's words came to be taken as the classic statement legitimizing the expressive nature of poetry. The earliest critical statement written in Japanese, the kanajo later served as the revered source for this view of poetry.

If Tsurayuki's approach is more obviously expressive, Yoshimochi's is more subtly or circuitously so. One can point to the fact that Yoshimochi makes more references to the pragmatic ends (including the didactic) of literature, or that he offers no counterpart to Tsurayuki's list of occasions that prompt poetic expression, but Yoshimochi, like Tsurayuki, was writing a statement to introduce and justify an anthology of poetry written in Japanese.

A preface like the manajo, written in Chinese out of regard for the custom in Japan of writing prefaces to important works in that language, could scarcely avoid the accrued referential baggage of classical Chinese. Its argument is couched in terms of Chinese cultural values; Yoshimochi says all of the right things about the nature and function of poetry, as he understood the Chinese critical tradition. But for which poets does he express the highest admiration in his preface? They are Hitomaro and Akahito, authors said to be without peer in all poetic history. Their work scarcely embodies the pragmatic ends of literature repeatedly paid lip service in the manajo.

And what of Yoshimochi's discussion of poets of modern times? He echoes a Chinese view of history: alas! poetry has fallen from an earlier ideal state. Yoshimochi enumerates poets' strengths and weaknesses in pithy fashion, but, interestingly enough, not in terms of the abstract normative statements about the nature and functions of poetry made elsewhere in the preface. Bunrin, Ono no Komachi, and Ōtomo no Kuronushi, he says, are among the few poets who understand the poetry of the past. They may not be perfect, but they are acceptable.

Although Yoshimochi earnestly repeats Chinese views (be they of literature or of the nature of things), in the final analysis the message behind his words is that Japanese poetry not only has its sages, but a few greats as well. All of them partake in the immortality that goes with outstanding writing. Ultimately, the Chinese preface is an exercise in verbal bowing to venerable Chinese concepts, and a polite statement of collective self-deprecation for imperfect, yet immortal, Japanese verse. The message is clear: "Only composers of Japanese verse are recognized by posterity.… Alas! Hitomaro has died! But is not the art of Japanese verse contained here?"

In terms of critical theory, it is the expressive elements of literature that are stressed in Japan, the pragmatic / didactic elements being given a place that is definitely secondary. Chinese theorists of the third through sixth centuries who were seriously interested in literature, such as Ts'ao P'i, Lu Chi, Chung Hung, and Liu Hsieh, were far more concerned with grounding that interest in a theoretical framework that encompassed the universe and legitimized a pursuit that still seemed to serious-minded men perilously close to being frivolous. The backdrop to all Chinese consideration of literature, from earliest times until today, has been the primacy of its pragmatic ends.⁵⁰ In contrast, the Kokinshū prefaces, especially the Japanese preface, while paying homage to pragmatic ends, pointed the direction to a more expressively oriented literature. These in turn became the classic earliest source for later Japanese views of poetry. With such a venerable authority as the Japanese preface behind them—its recondite Chinese references misunderstood or ignored—later Japanese writers and theorists (unlike their Chinese counterparts) were spared having to concern themselves with justifying the expressive / lyrical function of literature. This has had profound implication for the later course of Japanese literature.

Notwithstanding their borrowings from Chinese models, the Kokinshū prefaces have a remarkable integrity of their own. The creative part of the Japanese transformation of the Chinese critical tradition, however, lies in the area of a different sensibility, a different way of looking at the world, which is reflected in the ways critical views are expressed in concrete language.

One example is the analogies devised by Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki to embody, as it were, the work of the writers they were commenting upon. It is curious how little overlap there is with the Chinese tradition in this regard. Chung Hung, for example, quotes with approval the characterization of two writers: "Hsieh Lingyün's poetry is like lotus flowers coming out of the water; Yen Yenchih's is like a mix of colors with inlays of gold."⁵¹ Yoshimochi, on the other hand, could say of Ōtomo no Kuronushi's poetry that it "is like a field hand resting before flowers." And Tsurayuki said of the same poet's songs: "they are like a mountaineer with a bundle of firewood on his back resting in the shade of the blossoms."⁵² There are simply no similar analogies used in earlier Chinese criticism. And few Chinese metaphors characterizing writing are adopted by the Japanese, even in the Chinese-language preface by Yoshimochi.⁵³ The same difference in sensibility is apparent in the lists of contrastive examples used by Tsurayuki and Chung Hung to make concrete the circumstances or occasions that prompt poetic composition.

In sum, one can say there is no new critical theory in the Kokinshū prefaces; it is all based on Chinese models, but with an emphasis that highlights the expressive function of literature. At the same time, the concrete vocabulary of the applied criticism in the prefaces evidences a sensibility that is not subject to Chinese models. Chinese critical discourse is used in the prefaces to legitimize the compilation of the anthology in intellectual terms. The need to affirm the value of poetry written in Japanese is underscored by its repeated assertion; such affirmation forms the main rhetorical thrust of the prefaces.

Notes

¹ Discussion of critical theory here follows the terminology devised by M. H. Abrams to distinguish orientations of literary theory. The expressive, pragmatic, mimetic, and objective refer respectively to theories concerned with the artist, the audience, the subject (or universe), and the work itself; see The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953; rpt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 3-29. (The didactic, although subsumed under the pragmatic, is noted so as to stress that area of pragmatic concern.)

Concerning anthologies in China, see Adele Austin Rickett, "The Anthologist as Literary Critic in China," Literature East & West, 19 (1975), 146-65.

² The ideas expressed in the remainder of this paragraph are developed from ones voiced in another context by Prof. Stephen Owen of Harvard University, when acting as discussant at the ACLS-sponsored conference, "Theories of the Arts in China," in York, Maine, 10 June 1979.

³ The Many'yōōshū itself an anthology of anthologies, had been compiled in the latter half of the eighth century; but the Kokinshū was the first of twenty-one imperially commissioned anthologies of Japanese poetry. Being in hiragana (and using kanji mostly for their kun readings), Kokinshū poems were written in a vernacular that was quite different from that of the man'yōōgana (i.e., Chinese characters used partly for their meaning and partly to transcribe Japanese sounds) employed in the earlier work.

⁴ For text and complete translation, see James Legge, The She King, or the Book of Poetry, in The Chinese Classics, rev. ed. (1893-95; rpt. Taipei: Wen-hsing shutien, 1966), IV, 34-37. Text also found in Wen hsüan (Hu K'o-chia edition, 1809; rpt. Taipei: Cheng-chung shu-chü, 1971), 45.20b-22a. An additional complete translation appears in Ferenc Tökei, Naissance de l'éélgie chinoise: K'iu Yuan et son epoque (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), pp. 85-87. Important partial translations include those by Donald Gibbs, "M. H. Abrams' Four Artistic Co-ordinates Applied to Literary Theory in Early China," Comparative Literature Today: Theory and Practice (Procedings of the 7th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, Montreal and Ottawa, 1973) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979), pp. 675-79; and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 64, 69, 111-12, 119-20.

For a succinct discussion of this and the following critical works listed here, see James Robert Hightower, "Literary Criticism Through the Six Dynasties," Chap. 6, Topics in Chinese Literature, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 42-48.

Full citation of relevant Western-language studies of early Chinese poetics (which often, in turn, cite important Chinese- and Japanese-language studies) is provided here for the convenience of interested readers.

⁵ For text, see Wen hsüan 52.6a-8a. Note that although composition of the "Major Preface" postdated the compilation of the Shih ching by several centuries, it served as an important explanation and justification of the anthology. The preface appears in three complete English translations: Donald Holzman, "Literary Criticism in China in the Early Third Century A.D.," Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques, 28.2 (1974), 128-31; Ronald Miao, "Literary Criticism at the End of the Eastern Han," Literature East & West, 16 (1972), 1016-26; E. R. Hughes, "A Discussion about Literature by Emperor Wen of the Wei Dynasty (third century A.D.," Appendix I of The Art of Letters: Lu Chi's "Wen fu," A.D. 302 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1951), pp. 231-34.

For an informative study of the background to Ts'ao P'i's work, in addition to the Holzman article cited immediately above, see Burton Watson, "Literary Theory in the Eastern Han," in Yoshikawa hakase taikyū kinen Chūgoku bungaku ronshū … (Studies in Chinese Literature Dedicated to Dr. Yoshikawa Kōjirō on His Sixty-fifth Birthday) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shob, 1968), pp. 1-13 (separate pagination).

⁶ For text, see Wen hsüan 17.1a-10a. This work appears in complete Western-language translations by five different scholars. Those by the first two are especially recommended: Achilles Fang, "Rhymeprose on Literature: The Wen-fu of Lu Chi (A.D. 261-303)," HJAS, 14 (1951), 527-66; rpt. in Studies in Chinese Literature, ed. John L. Bishop (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 3-42; Chen Shih-hsiang, "Essay on Literature," in Literature as Light against Darkness, National Peking University Semi-centennial Papers, 11 (Peking: College of Arts, 1948), pp. 46-71; a later version appears in Essay on Literature, Written by the Third-Century Chinese Poet Lu Chi, Translated by Shih-hsiang Chen in the Year MCMXLVIII (Revised 1952) (Portland, Maine: Anthoensen Press, 1953), pp. xix-xxx; rpt. in Anthology of Chinese Literature, From Earliest Times to the Fourteenth Century, ed. Cyril Birch (1965; rpt. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1967), pp. 222-32; E. R. Hughes, The Art of Letters, pp. 94-108 (cf. review by Achilles Fang, HJAS, 14 [1951], 615-36); Georges Margouliès, Le "Fou" dans le Wen-siuan: étude et textes (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1926), pp. 82-97 (cf. Erwin von Zach, "Zu G. Margouliès' Uebersetzung des Wen-fu," TP, 25 [1928], 360-64); a considerably revised version appears in the author's Anthologie raisonnée de la littérature chinoise (Paris: Payot, 1948), pp. 419-25; B. M. Alexéiev's Russian rendition appears in the Bulletin de l'Académie des Sciences de l'URSS (Classe des sciences littéraires et linguistiques), 3.4 (1944), 143-64.

Note also the following four Western-language studies of the "Wen fu": Chen Shih-hsiang, "Lu Chi's Life and the Correct Date of His 'Essay on Literature,'" and "Some Discussion of the Translation," in Literature as Light against Darkness, pp. 1-21, 22-45; Chou Ju-ch'ang, "An Introduction to Lu Chi's Wen Fu," Studia Serica, 9 (1950), 42-65; Sister Mary Gregory Knoerle, "The Poetic Theories of Lu Chi, with a Brief Comparison with Horace's 'Ars Poetica,'" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 25.2 (Winter 1966), 137-43.

⁷ For text, see Ch'en Yen-chieh, Shih-p'in chu (Poetry Gradings Annotated) (1927; rpt. Taipei: T'ai-wan K'aiming shu-tien, 1960). The three prefaces and two of the three sections of gradings in the work are translated in full by John Timothy Wixted, "A Translation of the Classification of Poets (Shih-p 'in) by Chung Hung (469-518)," Appendix A of "The Literary Criticism of Yüan Hao-wen (1190-1257)," Diss. Oxford 1976, pp. 462-91 (q.v. for an earlier version of the translations offered in this study).

Western-language studies of the Shih-p 'in include the following: Hellmut Wilhelm, "A Note on Chung Hung and His Shih-p'in," in Wen-lin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities, ed. Chow Tse-tsung (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 111-20; E Bruce Brooks, "A Geometry of the Shr pĭn," in ibid., pp. 121-50; Cha Chu Whan, "On Enquiries for Ideal Poetry: An Instance of Chung Hung," Tamkang Review, 6.2 & 7.1 (Oct. 1975-Apr. 1976), 43-54; Yeh Chia-ying and Jan W. Walls, "Theory, Standards, and Practice of Criticizing Poetry in Chung Hung's Shih-p'in," in Studies in Chinese Poetry and Poetics, Vol. 1, ed. Ronald C. Miao (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1978), 43-79; John Timothy Wixted, "The Nature of Evaluation in the Shih-p'in (Gradings of Poets) by Chung Hung (A.D. 469-518)," in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983).

For Japanese-language translation and annotation to the Shih-p'in, see Takagi Masakazu Shō Kō, Shihin (Chung Hung, Poetry Gradings) (Tokyo: Tōkai Daigaku Shuppankai, 1978); Kōzen Hiroshi, "Shihin" in Bun-gaku ronshū (A Collection of Discussions of Literature), by Arai Ken and Kōzen Hiroshi (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1972), pp. 1-260 (hereafter cited as Kō, zen); and Takamatsu Kōmei (Takaaki) Shihin shōkai … (Detailed Explication of Poetry Gradings) (Hirosaki: Chūgoku Bungakkai, 1959).

⁸ For text, see Wen hsüan, Hsü la-3a. The preface is discussed and translated by James R. Hightower, "The Wen hsüan and Genre Theory," HJAS, 20 (1957), 512-33; rpt. in Studies in Chinese Literature, pp. 142-63. An abridged form of the Hightower article (including the complete translation) appears as the "Introduction" to Erwin von Zach, Die Chinesische Anthologie: Übersetzungen aus dem Wen hsüan, ed. Ilse Martin Fang (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), pp. xiii-xvii. Additional translations appear by David R. Knechtges, tr., Wen xuan or Selections of Refined Literature by Xiao Tong (501-531), Volume One: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982); Margoulies, Le "Fou" dans le Wen-siuan, pp. 22-30; Basil Alexéiev, La Littéature chinoise: Six conférences au Collège de France et au Musée Guimet (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1937), pp. 31-33 (partial).

⁹ As noted by Konishi Jin'ichi, "The Genesis of the Kokinshū Style," tr. Helen C. McCullough, HJAS, 38.1 (June 1978), p. 66: "Among the anthologies of Six Dynasties verse known to the early Heian Japanese were the Wen hsüan and Ku-chin shih-yüan ying-hua, both compiled by Prince Chao-ming (Hsiao T'ung; 501-31), and the Yü-t'ai hsin-yung, compiled by Hsü Ling (507-83).… The Wen hsüan, in particular, enjoyed the very highest esteem, and no man unable to quote from it was considered educated. Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu (775-826), the grandfather of Emperor Montoku, is said to have committed the entire anthology to memory."

¹⁰ For text and translation, see James Robert Hightower, "Some Characteristics of Parallel Prose," in Studia Serica Bernhard Karlgren Dedicata, ed. Søren Egerod and Else Glahn (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1959), pp. 77-87; rpt. in Studies in Chinese Literature, pp. 125-135.

¹¹ For text, see Wen-hsin tiao-lung hsin-shu fu t'ungchien (Index du Wen sin tiao lung, avec texte critique), ed. Wang Li-ch'i (1952; rpt. Taipei: Ch'eng-wen ch'upan-she, 1968). The work appears in a complete translation by Vincent Yu-cheng Shih, The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1959), and in a partial translation (five chapters) by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, "Carving a Dragon at the Core of Literature," Chinese Literature, (June 1962), pp. 58-71.

Western-language studies of the work include the following: Vincent Y. C. Shih, "Classicism in Liu Hsieh's 'Wen-hsin tiao-lung,'" Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques, 7 (1953), pp. 122-34; Liu Shou-sung, "Liu Hsieh on Writing," Chinese Literature, (June 1962), pp. 72-81; Donald A. Gibbs, "Literary Theory in the Wenhsin tiao-lung, Sixth Century Chinese Treatise on the Genesis of Literature and Conscious Artistry," Diss. Univ. of Washington 1970; Donald A. Gibbs, "Liu Hsieh, Author of the Wen-hsin tiao-lung," MS, 29 (1970-71), 117-41; Ferenc Tökei, Genre Theory in China in the 3rd-6th Centuries (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1971), pp. 81-177; Chi Ch'iu-lang, "Liu Hsieh as a Classicist and His Concepts of Tradition and Change," Tamkang Review, 4.1 (Apr. 1973), pp. 89-108; Vincent Y. C. Shih, "Liu Hsieh's Conception of Organic Unity," Tamkang Review, 4.2 (Oct. 1973), 1-10; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, passim.

Discussion of the title of this work and how it should be translated into English is found in James R. Hightower's review of Vincent Shih's translation, HJAS, 22 (1959), 284-86; in Achilles Fang's unsigned review of the same work, The Times Literary Supplement (London), 4 Dec. 1959, p. 713; in Gibbs, "Literary Theory in the Wen-hsin tiao-lung," pp. 84-85; and in James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 146-47. These and numerous additional renderings of the title are listed in Wixted, "Nature of Evaluation in the Shihp'in," n. 2.

¹² From the early-eighth until the mid-sixteenth century, Liu Hsieh's work goes virtually unmentioned in Chinese texts, except, for example, its being praised by Huang T'ing-chien (1045-1105) together with the Shih-t'ung (Generalities on History) by Liu Chih-chi (661-721), which latter work had been greatly influenced by the Wen-hsin tiao-lung. See Mekada Makoto, Bungaku geijutsu ronsh (A Collection of Discussions of Literature and the Arts) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1974), pp. 504-5, and Kōzen Hiroshi, Bunshin chōryū (The Heart of Literature: Elaborations) (the second part of a double volume, the first part being by Ikkai Tomoyoshi, Tō Emmei (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1968), pp. 479-80.

In Japan, although passages of the work are cited in Kūkai's influential work, and although the title of the work is listed in the Nihonkoku genzaisho mokuroku (Catalog of Works Extant in Japan), completed in the period 889-97, no Japanese edition of the work appeared until 1731.

For a study and translation (of three of the six sections) of the Bunkyō hifuron, see Richard Wainwright Bodman, "Poetics and Prosody in Early Mediaeval China: A Study and Translation of Kūkai's Bunkyō hifuron," Diss. Cornell 1978. For Japanese studies of the work, see the titles he cites (pp. 501-2), as well as the useful text of the work edited by Chou Wei-te, Wen-ching mi-fu lun … (Peking: Jen-min wen-hsüleh ch'u-pan-she, 1975).

¹³ This and other citations from the Chinese preface to the Kokinshū are from an unpublished translation by Leonard Grzanka (cited with permission); see n. 24.

¹⁴ "Yüeh-chi," Li chi (Shih-san-ching chu-su ed. [1815; rpt. Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan yin-hang, n.d.]), 37.4a, 38.12b. Translation by Donald Gibbs, "Literary Theory in Early China," unpublished paper presented to the University Seminar on Traditional China, Columbia Univ., 19 Feb. 1974, p. 10 (cited with permission). Cf the translations by James Legge, Li Chi: Book of Rites, ed. Ch'u Chai and Winberg Chai (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967 [rpt. of the Oxford 1885 two-vol. edition entitled The Li Ki]), II, 93, 112; and Chow Tse-tsung, "The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry)," in Wen-lin, ed. Chow Tse-tsung, p. 158.

¹⁵ Translation by Gibbs, "M. H. Abrams' Four Artistic Co-ordinates," p. 678 (with modifications). For another translation of this passage (different from those cited in n. 3), along with citation of numerous earlier classical texts wherein some form of "Poetry is the outcome of intent" is stated, see Chow Tse-tsung, "Early History of the Chinese Word Shih," pp. 152-53, 155-58. For the earlier source for the rest of the quotation, note the following passage in the "Yüeh chi" chapter of the Li chi (39.23a-b): "Hence, singing means the prolonged expression of the words; there is the utterance of the words, and when the simple utterance is not sufficient, the prolonged expression of them. When that prolonged expression is not sufficient, there come the sigh and exclamation. When these are insufficient, unconsciously there come the motions of the hands and the stamping of the feet" (tr. Legge, Li Chi, II, 131).

¹⁶ Translation by Gibbs, "M. H. Abrams' Four Artistic Co-ordinates," p. 678.

¹⁷ The source of this tradition is found in the Li chi: 11.27a-30a (cf. Legge, Li Chi, I, 216; or Legge, She King, pp. 23-24).

¹⁸ See Li chi 37.4b (cf Legge, Li Chi, II, 93).

¹⁹ I ching, Trigram 22; cf. The I Ching or Book of Changes, tr. Richard Wilhelm, rendered into English from the German by Cary F. Baynes (1950; 2nd ed., New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), p. 97.

"Yüan tao," Wen-hsin tiao-lung, Chap. 1. Translated into English, with a helpful commentary, by Gibbs, "Literary Theory in the Wen-hsin tiao-lung," pp. 42-57, 179-93. Cf. the translations (complete) by Vincent Shih, The Literary Mind, pp. 8-13, and Hughes, The Art of Letters, pp. 236-40; and the translations (partial) by Alexéiev, La Littérature chinoise, pp. 24-27; L. Z. Ejdlin, "The Academician V. M. Alexeev as a Historian of Chinese Literature," tr. Francis Woodman Cleaves, HJAS, 10 (1947), 51; and James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 21-25, 146-48.

²⁰ For discussion of this crucial term in Chinese critical theory, see David Pollard, "Ch 'i in Chinese Literary Theory," in Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch 'i-ch 'ao, ed. Adele Austin Rickett (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 43-66; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 12, 70-72; and Yeh and Walls, "Theory, Standards, and Practice," pp. 61-62.

²¹ "Great Preface" excerpt, as translated by Gibbs, "Literary Theory in Early China," p. 15.

²²Shih-p'in chu, p. 1 (for the above three excerpts); cf. Takagi, pp. 31-35; K zen, pp. 22-25; and Takamatsu, pp. 1-2. For discussion of the relation between critical theory and early Chinese poetry, see Chen Shih-hsiang, "In Search of the Beginnings of Chinese Literary Criticism," in Semitic and Oriental Studies, A Volume Presented to William Popper on the Occasion of His Seventy-fifth Birthday, University of California Publications in Semitic Philology, 11 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1951), pp. 45-63; Chow Tse-tsung, "The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih," pp. 151-209; Chow Tse-tsung, "Ancient Chinese Views on Literature, the Tao, and Their Relationship," Chinese Literature. Essays, Articles, Reviews, 1.1 (Jan. 1979), pp. 3-29; and James J. Y. Liu, "Metaphysical Theories," Chap. 2, Chinese Theories of Literature, esp. pp. 16-26. For a clear summary of the metaphysical dimension to some of the texts referred to in the present study, see the beginning of the "Critical Introduction" by Pauline Yu, The Poetry of Wang Wei (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 2-8.

²³ Although Confucius does not use these exact examples, in one famous Analects passage (Lun yü 17:8) he does state that the study of the Shih ching can teach one how to serve one's father and how to serve one's sovereign. For citation and discussion of the Lun yü passages that deal with literature, see the following: Donald Holzman, "Confucius and Ancient Chinese Literary Criticism," in Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, pp. 21-41; Vincent Y. C. Shih, "Literature and Art in 'The Analects,'" tr. C. Y. Hsu, Renditions, 8 (Autumn 1977), pp. 5-38; Ma Yau-woon, "Confucius as a Literary Critic: A Comparison with the Early Greeks," in Essays in Chinese Studies Dedicated to Professor Jao Tsung-i (Hong Kong, 1970), pp. 13-45; Hsin Kwan-chue, "Confucius on Art and Poetry," Chinese Culture, 16.3 (Sept. 1975), 31-62; Zau Sinmay, "Confucius on Poetry," T'ien Hsia Monthly, 7.2 (Sept. 1938), pp. 137-50; James J. Y. Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 104, 107-111, 118.

²⁴ This and other citations from the Japanese preface to the Kokinshūi are from an unpublished translation by Laurel Rasplica Rodd (cited with permission). Her complete translation of the Kokinshū (with the collaboration of Mary Catherine Henkenius), together with the complete kanajo and manajo translations referred to in this note and in n. 13, will be published in a forthcoming volume by the Princeton University Press.

²⁵ "The Two Prefaces to the Kokinshū," AM, NS 7 (1959), 40-51. Ceadel's article contains much useful information, notably his listing of arguments for and against the prior authorship of one or the other of the prefaces, as well as his bibliographical references to Japanese studies of the subject. Among the latter, note the articles by Ozawa Masao: "Kokinshū jo to Shihin," Heian bungaku kenkyū, 19 (Dec. 1956), 6-13, and "Kokinshūi no jo to Monzen no jo," Kokugo kokubungaku hō, 5 (1955), 1-9.

²⁶ See ta Hy zabur, "Rikuchō shiron to Kokinshū jo," Nihon Chūgoku Gakkai hō, 2 (1950), 128, for a listing of references to Chinese sources made by Tsurayuki.

²⁷ Whereas the kanajo paragraph ends with a nodding reference to pragmatic ends, the manajo passage is couched centrally in such terms: "On each fine day of a beautiful season, the emperors of antiquity would summon their ministers and have the officials taking part in the banquet offer up Japanese verse. The feelings between sovereign and subject could be seen by this, and the qualities of virtue and stupidity were then distinguished one from the other. This is how one may accord with the desires of the people, and select talent from among the courtiers."

²⁸Shih-p'in chu, pp. 4-5; cf. Takagi, pp. 72-78; Kōzen, pp. 49-53; and Takamatsu, pp. 13-15.

²⁹ For the putative poets being referred to here, see this passage as quoted in Wixted, "Nature of Evaluation in the Shih-p'in," sect. 4 (where the attributions are based on the commentaries cited in n. 28 above).

³⁰ For informed Western-language discussion of these terms, see the following: Hightower, "Wen hsüan and Genre Theory," p. 519; Knechtges, Wen xuan, I, note to lines 29-36 of the "Preface" translation; Joseph Roe Allen III, "Chih Yui's Discussion of Different Types of Literature: A Translation and Brief Comment," in Two Studies in Chinese Literary Criticism, by Joseph Roe Allen III and Timothy S. Phelan, Parerga, 3 (Seattle, 1976), pp. 9-11; C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum: Shih Ching as Formulaic Poetry in an Oral Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1974), pp. 3-4; Chen Shih-hsiang, "The Shih-ching: Its Generic Significance in Chinese Literary History and Poetics," CYYY, 39.1 (Jan. 1969); rpt. in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. Cyril Birch (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1974), pp. 8-41, esp. pp. 14-25; William McNaughton, "The Composite Image: Shy Jing Poetics," JAOS, 83 (1963), 101-3 (an abridgement appears in the author's The Book of Songs [New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971], pp. 105-6); Pauline Yu, "Metaphor and Chinese Poetry," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 3.2 (July 1981), 213-17.

For an excellent discussion of the term feng, see Donald Gibbs, "Notes on the Wind: The Term 'Feng' in Chinese Literary Criticism," in Transition and Permanence: Chinese History and Culture, A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. Hsiao Kung-ch 'üian, ed. David C. Buxbaum and Frederick W. Mote (Hong Kong: Cathay Press, 1972), pp. 285-93. For helpful translations of four early Chinese critical texts that discuss the development in the meaning of the word fu (including a translation of Wen-hsin tiao-lung, Chap. 8, "Elucidating the Fu"), see Burton Watson, "Early Critical Statements on the Fu Form," Appendix I of Chinese Rhyme-Prose: Poems in the Fu Form from the Han and Six Dynasties Periods (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 111-22. For useful translated examples of fu, pi and hsing in Chinese poetry, see Brooks, "Geometry of the Shr Pĭn," pp. 136-38. Note also Ying-hsiung Chou, "The Linguistic and Mythical Structure of Hsing as a Combinational Model," in Chinese-Western Comparative Literature: Theory and Strategy, ed. J. Deeney (Hong Kong: The Chinese Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 51-78.

One should comment on the statement by Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner that "we need not take too seriously the 'Six Genres' (Rikugi) of Japanese poetry mentioned by Tsurayuki in the Preface to the Kokinshū, Tsurayuki's six categories were an obvious attempt to produce equivalents for the six genres distinguished in China since the time of the Classic of Songs (Shih Ching), and they were not only meaningless in terms of Japanese poetic practice but also, like the pronouncements of our Renaissance critics, conveniently ignored by the poets" (Japanese Court Poetry [Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1961], p. 178). The rikugi, it should be pointed out, are not genres but critical principles; and they were first formulated in the Rites of Chou (see n. 32). Makoto Ueda in his Literary and Art Theories in Japan (Cleveland: The Press of Western Reserve Univ., 1967, p. 9) states that "Tsurayuki uses the term 'form' for classifying poems into six categories," which too is quite misleading (cf. n. 34). Note also in this regard the article by Matsuda Takeo, "Kokinshū rikugisetsu no riyō kachi" ("The Usefulness of the Six Principles' Statement in the Kokinshū'), Heian bungaku kenkyū, 19 (Dec. 1956), 14-19.

³¹Shih-p'in chu, p. 4; cf. Takagi, pp. 67-72; Kōzen, pp. 44-49; and Takamatsu, pp. 11-13.

³²Chou li (Shih-san-ching chu-su ed. [1815; rpt. Taipei: I-wen yin-shu-kuan yin-hang, n.d.]) 23.13a; translation by Édouard Biot, Le Tcheou li, ou Rites des Tcheou, 2 vols. (1851; rpt. Taipei: Ch'eng-wen ch'u-pan-she, 1969), II, 50. C. H. Wang, The Bell and the Drum, p. 3.

³³ "Great Preface" excerpts, as translated by Gibbs, "Literary Theory in Early China," pp. 14-15. In reference to the Suasive, see Gibbs, "Notes on the Wind."

³⁴ As Hightowr notes ("Wen hsüan and Genre Theory," p. 519) in reference to the citation of the six terms in the Wen hsüan preface: "Three of the six items (feng, ya, sung) are the names of the chief divisions of the present Classic of Songs, and while there is no general agreement about their significance there, they are certainly not the names of tropes. Fu, pi, and hsing are variously interpreted and inconsistently applied by the commentators on the Classic of Songs." See Pauline Yu, "Metaphor and Chinese Poetry," pp. 215-16, for the most systematic attempt to harmonize selected later interpretations of fu, pi, and hsing.

³⁵ Cf. the kanajo: "Hitomaro is dead, but poetry is still with us. Times may change, joy and sorrow come and go, but the words of these poems are eternal, endless as the green willow threads, unchanging as the needles of the pine, long as the trailing vines, permanent as birds' tracks."

³⁶ Translation by Holzman, "Literary Criticism in China in the Early Third Century," p. 131. Note the similar passage in a letter written by Ts'ao P'i's older brother, Ts'ao Chih: "There are only two ways of attaining immortality: the better way is to establish one's virtue and become famous; the next best method is to write books" (tr. Holzman, ibid., p. 122).

³⁷ From the manajo; cf. the kanajo: "Ono no Komachi is a modern Princess Sotō ri."

³⁸ From the manajo.

³⁹Shih-p'in chu, p. 17; cf. Takagi, p. 171; Kōzen, p. 133; and Takamatsu, pp. 38-40.

⁴⁰Shih-p'in chu, p. 25; cf. Takagi, pp. 252-54; Kōzen, pp. 170-71; and Takamatsu, pp. 66-67. The work of most poets treated in the Shih-p 'in is ascribed a literary lineage deriving either directly from the Shih ching or the Ch 'u tz 'u (Songs of the South), or indirectly from one or the other through a family tree of inheritances. A chart of these literary filiations is provided by Brooks, "Geometry of the Shr Pǐn," p. 140 (as well as by Takagi, p. 15; Kōzen, p. 16; and Takamatsu, pp. 161-62). The following provide Western-language discussion of the subject: Brooks, passim; Wilhelm, "A Note on Chung Hung and His Shih-p'in," pp. 115-16; Yeh and Walls, "Theory, Standards, and Practice," pp. 45-48; and Wixted, "Nature of Evaluation in the Shihp'in," sect. 5. The Kokinshū prefaces, one might note, offer but an echo to Chung Hung's elaborate scheme.

⁴¹ Cf. the kanajo: "She is full of sentiment but weak."

⁴² From the manajo; cf. the kanajo. "Ōtomo no Kuronushi's songs are rustic in form" (see also the excerpt cited below, at n. 52).

⁴³ From the kanajo.

⁴⁴Shih-p'in chu, p. 29; cf. Takagi, pp. 286-87; Kōzen, p. 192; and Takamatsu, pp. 77-78.

⁴⁵Shih-p'in chu, p. 8; cf. Takagi, pp. 115-16; Kōzen, pp. 71-73; and Takamatsu, pp. 83-85.

⁴⁶Shih-p'in chu, p. 2; cf. Takagi, pp. 40-42; Kōzen, pp. 28-30; and Takamatsu, pp. 2-4.

⁴⁷ Early classical texts like the Tso chuan, the Analects, and Mencius generally speak of "substance" and "artistry" in terms of chih and wen: see the discussion of Analects passage 6.18 in the works cited in n. 23; for the Tso chuan and Mencius texts, see Chow Tse-tsung, "Early History of the Chinese Word Shih," p. 156. Although the contrastive use of shih and hua for "substance" and "beauty" of expression appears in the Wen hsüan (3.34b), the source for the pairing is the Lao-tzu (Tao-te ching 38):

Those who are the first to know have the
  flowers (appearance) of Tao but are the
  beginning of ignorance.
For this reason the great man dwells in the
  thick (substantial), and does not rest
  with the thin (superficial).
He dwells on the fruit (reality), and does not
  rest with the flower (appearance).
Therefore he rejects the one, and accepts the
  other.

(Tr. Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963], p. 158.)

⁴⁸ Note the following Shih-p'in passage:

Among gentry and commoners nowadays, the fashion of verse-writing has reached a feverish pitch. No sooner can a child manage to dress himself, than he begins school, hellbent on the pursuit. The upshot of this is that everyone, with mediocre rhymes and a mix of styles, has pretences to being a poet.

Slicked down, fatty sons from noble families, embarrassed lest their compositions not come up to par, spend all day fiddling with revisions and half the night crooning. In their estimation, their verses are outstanding; but a consensus of opinion finds them flat and pedestrian.

(Shih-p'in chu, p. 5; cf. Takagi, pp. 78-82; Kōzen, pp. 53-55; and Takamatsu, pp. 15-17.)

⁴⁹ Although inspired by the example of the Shih-p'in, Tsurayuki's list differs from its model in that it omits reference to the Analects quotation (17.8) which immediately follows the long passage by Chung Hung cited above: "Poetry teaches the art of sociability; it shows how to regulate feelings of resentment" (tr. James Legge, Confucian Analects, in The Chinese Classics, I, 323). The Analects citation modifies the expressive thrust of the original statement by Chung Hung.

Both Tsurayuki and Chung Hung couch their arguments in terms of the affective (and hence pragmatic) benefit that the expression of feeling has on the one giving such expression. Thus, both speak of poetry in terms that are genetic (i.e. the occasions that prompt it) and affective (i.e., the effect on the author, at least), as well as expressive.

⁵⁰ See the comments of James J. Y. Liu, "Pragmatic Theories," Chap. 6 of Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 106-16; cf. the review by J. T. Wixted, MS, 33 (1977-78), 466-71.

⁵¹Shih-p'in chu, p. 26; cf. Takagi, pp. 263-64; Kōzen, pp. 173-75; and Takamatsu, pp. 67-68.

⁵² Note the two additional examples cited earlier on p. 232.

⁵³ It is probably best to think of such statements, so popular in the Chinese critical tradition, as poetically expressed approximations—concrete in language but vague in reference—of traits perceived in a writer's work. Note the discussion of this by the following: Maureen Robertson, "… To Convey What Is Precious': Ssu-k'ung T'u' s Poetics and The Erh-shih ssu Shih P'in," in Transition and Permanence, pp. 332-33; Yeh and Walls, "Theory, Standards, and Practice," pp. 67-71; and Wixted, "Nature of Evaluation in the Shih-p'in," sect. 5.