[In the following essay, Keene provides a history of Japanese linked verse, credits Yoshimoto with expanding the range of allowable words in poetry, and commends his keen appreciation of the present.]

Renga (linked verse) was the most typical literary art of the Muromachi period. The many court poets of the traditional waka undoubtedly believed that their chosen form of poetry possessed greater dignity, and even the renga masters would probably have concurred in this opinion, not only because of the great antiquity of the waka but because of the miraculous powers with which it was credited, even to moving the gods and demons. However, it is surely significant that the twenty-first and last imperial anthology, the Shin zoku kokin shū (1439), now totally forgotten, appeared between two important collections of renga that were accorded the unprecedented privilege of being ranked “immediately after” (jun) the imperial anthologies. A few waka poets of the Muromachi period still command our attention, notably Shōtetsu (1381-1459), who excelled also as a critic of poetry. Some poets like Nijō Yoshimoto (1320-1388) or Shinkei (1406-1475), though accomplished in both waka and renga, are remembered today only for their renga, another indication of the decrepit state of the waka at the time. It is clear that, even at the court, renga composition had come to occupy the place of importance formerly reserved for the waka. Elsewhere in the country, as the result of the dispersion of the bearers of the court culture during the Ōnin War, major and minor magnates eagerly sought to attract renga poets to their castles.

The prose writings of the period are of more interest than the waka, whether they are cast in the pseudoclassical manner adopted at the court in imitation of Heian models or in the more vigorous (if often inartistic) popular and religious tales, but we know nothing about their authors, and the works themselves attracted little attention from the literary men of the day. The only form comparable in literary importance to renga during the Muromachi period was nō. The texts, especially those by Zeami, include masterpieces, and the painstaking care with which they were composed is revealed in Zeami's critical writings. In translation, moreover, they are certainly more appealing than any renga sequence. But even though these plays are by our standards the supreme literary works of the age, in their own day they were considered hardly more than the libretti for sung and danced performances and belonged only indirectly to the established literary traditions. In this sense, if not necessarily in terms of absolute worth, renga was the representative literary art of the period. Innumerable manuscripts of renga have been preserved, too many ever to be printed, and the number of “links” composed at sessions for which the records have been lost must be staggering.

Long neglected even by scholars of Japanese literature, renga has attracted wider attention in recent years.¹ In the West too there has been a surprising awakening of interest in renga composition, especially in the basic principle of a group of poets submerging their own identities for the sake of a larger composition produced by the confluence of different poetic insights.² What for long had been the chief stumbling block in the path of appreciating renga even in Japan—its lack of a unifying theme or even of any overall structure—has come to appeal to poets seeking to transcend the limitations of isolated experience by engaging in a formally organized but free conversation with other poets at the highest level of receptivity. Although modern examples of renga (certainly those composed in the West) do not observe the traditional codes of composition, in spirit at least they resemble the works of the Japanese poets of the Muromachi period who, living in an age of conflict and uncertainty, sought comfort in the creating of works of art that revealed complex textures of mutual stimulation and response. Octavio Paz, who has himself composed renga, wrote, “We are witnessing the end of the idea of art as aesthetic contemplation and returning to something that the West has long forgotten: the rebirth of art as collective action and representation, and the rebirth of their complementary opposite, solitary mediation.”³

Renga, almost from its inception, was composed in two distinct moods: as a lighthearted, often indecorous, literary game and as an artistic expression of what might be called a multiple stream of consciousness. In terms of the quantity of verses composed, those of the mushin (inelegant) style must have far outnumbered those of the ushin (elegant) style, but the triumphs of ushin poetry are usually recorded as if they constituted the entire history of renga. Certainly, judged in terms of literary worth, the ushin style is incomparably superior, but the mushin style led directly to the formation of what would prove to be the most popular of all varieties of Japanese poetry, the haiku, known originally as haikai no renga. Sōchō (1448-1532) was a central figure in the development of this comic form of renga. Though neither so celebrated nor so accomplished as some of his predecessors—notably Sōgi (1421-1502), the supreme master of the art—Sōchō is an exceptionally interesting poet, both because of what he revealed of himself in his writings and because of his immediate connection with the creation of haikai poetry.

By way of introduction to my account of Sōchō I have briefly described the early history of linked verse, then devoted attention to two commanding figures, Nijō Yoshimoto and Sōgi. Much of this material will be familiar to those who have read the studies in renga by contemporary Japanese scholars, but I felt it was desirable to make some such presentation in view of the almost total lack of any descriptions of renga in English. I have not, however, gone into the technicalities of composing renga, intriguing though they are, since my interest here lies in tracing the comic tradition of renga through history into Sōchō's work and beyond.⁴

EARLY HISTORY

It was long traditional to trace the origins of renga to an exchange of poems recorded in the Kojiki. The hero Yamato-takeru-no-mikoto asked an old man by the road a question in the form of a poem:

… How many nights
Have I slept since passing
Niibari and Tsukuba?

The old man demonstrated he was equal to the test by replying in verse:

… The days put together
Make of nights nine
And of daytimes ten.(5)

Mention of the place-name Tsukuba later gave rise to the term “the way of Tsukuba” as an elegant manner of referring to the art of renga, but this pair of verses bears no resemblance, even of the most rudimentary kind, to mature renga. It consists of two kata-uta, the first somewhat irregular, in lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Together they make a sedōka, an archaic poetic form, but the question and answer do not really make a single poem except in the sense that they have a certain number of syllables and lines. Singly or together, the utterances of the prince and the old man are devoid of literary value, but the renga poets of later times revered these compositions not for their beauty but for their antiquity, which enabled the court poets to compose renga with confidence in its pedigree.

A more suitable candidate for the oldest extant example of renga is poem 1635 in the Manyōshū. A note before the poem states, “A nun wrote the ‘head’ Yakamochi, responding to the nun's challenge, completed a waka by adding a ‘tail’ verse.”

… The one who dammed up
The waters of the Saho River
And planted the fields.
Should be the only one
To eat the harvested rice.

Many explanations have been offered for this cryptic poem, including the allegorical interpretation that the nun's daughter, whom she had carefully reared, was taken possession of by Yakamochi as his “harvest.”⁶ Whatever the true meaning of these verses, they marked a first stage in the creation of a short renga—a single waka composed by two people. This is the only example of a renga in the Manyōshū, but the absence of others does not necessarily mean that the renga was a rare form of poetic expression; there is evidence to suggest the contrary, including the use of the word hokku to designate the first three lines of a waka.⁷

During the Heian period the short renga developed into a kind of social pastime. Often a riddle was presented in the maeku (first verse) and the poem was completed by another person with a tsukeku (added verse) of wit and ingenuity. The more complicated or absurd the situation described in the maeku (“a deer is standing in the middle of the sea”), the greater the achievement of the person who could make sense of the whole by adding a cleverly explicative two lines (“the reflection of the mountain is cast on the waves”). The short renga tended to be a demonstration of wit rather than poetic depth, though the tone is occasionally moving, as in the episode in Ise monogatari which describes how a maeku written by a woman was completed by a man, apparently with romantic intentions:

… Since ours was a relationship no deeper
Than a creek too shallow
To wet a foot-traveler's garb …

The last two lines were missing, and with a bit of charcoal from a pine torch he supplied these:

… I shall surely again cross
Ōsaka Barrier.(8)

Such examples of renga did not go beyond the composition of a single waka by two people. No attempt was made to impart to the maeku (in seventeen syllables) an independence of content, and the tsukeku (in fourteen syllables) merely completed the thought, without any special overtones of association.

The first imperial anthology to contain a section of renga poetry was Kïnyōshū (1127), compiled by Minamoto Toshiyori (d. 1125), who has been styled the “perfecter” of the short renga.⁹ Toshiyori insisted on the integrity of each “link” of renga. A short renga could be started either with the “main verse” (in three lines) or the “subsidiary verse” (in two lines), but “within each verse one must express completely the sense of whatever is to be said. It is bad to leave it to the next man to complete a thought.”¹⁰ The insistence on the integrity of each link disassociated his short renga from the previous ideal of two people creating what appeared to be a waka composed by a single person. The renga, especially after it broke the confines of the thirty-one syllables of the waka and was prolonged to one hundred or even more links, was compelled by “codes” to preserve the completeness of each link, and even to change the season and subject repeatedly so as to avoid giving the impression of a single, unified poem. In this respect the Japanese renga differed most conspicuously from its closest Chinese equivalent, lien-chü, which sought unity rather than diversity.¹¹

In another important respect Toshiyori's renga differed from the waka, even when the two links seemed to form a single short poem: unlike the normal waka, the expression tended to be cerebral rather than emotional. Toshiyori's short renga usually had for their central point a pun, related word (engo), or some other variety of verbal play, often comic in effect. It is true that there was a haikai (comic) section of waka in the Kokinshū, but in Toshiyori's short renga verbal play was not merely a rare possibility but the raison d'être of the composition. One example of his ingenuity will suffice:

… The moon can be seen
In daytime, and the sun
Even at night.(12)

The surface meaning of these lines is a paradox, if not an absurdity, but when read together with the prefatory note (“Composed by the weir at Uji when the moon was bright”) we become aware of puns that yield a quite different meaning: at the weir the whitebait (hio) can be seen swarming (yoru) because tonight the moon is as bright as day.

Toshiyori devoted similar ingenuity to his tsukeku, which often echo the puns or wordplays in the maeku. When read together, the two lines often suggest less a waka than parallel couplets of an epigram. The short renga having reached this point, it was a small step to break down the original limitations of the thirty-one syllables of a waka and create a poem comprising a series of indeterminate numbers of links.

Fukuro zōshi (1159), a work of poetic criticism by Fujiwara Kiyosuke (1104-1177), includes a section on the principles of the renga. At one point the author states that the hokku (opening verse) of “chain” (kusari) renga must be in seventeen syllables and not in fourteen,¹³ a clear indication that chain renga (that is, renga in more than two links) was being composed commonly enough to require rules. Only two examples of twelfth-century chain renga have been preserved, in Ima kagami and Kokon chomonjū. The example found in Ima kagami, apparently written before 1130,¹⁴ concludes with a remark indicating that this kind of renga was already popular with the aristocracy.

… My thoughts go out
To the capital at Nara.

To this the general added the lines:

… The double-petaled cherry
And the red leaves of autumn—
How are they now?

Echigo no Menoto added:

… Every time the rain sweeps down
The colors grow the brighter.

This was praised for years afterward. Such things often happened.

The links in this sequence in no way recall the cleverness of Toshiyori's renga, but the prevailing tone is nevertheless intellectual rather than emotional, and it is clear that the aptness of the response was more highly prized than the depth or intrinsic beauty. The way had been opened for the development of renga as a distinct poetic art, but as yet it had not achieved its characteristic tone.

The example from Kokon chomonjū describes a renga sequence of 1165 which required the participants not only to respond appropriately to the link composed by the previous poet but to begin each successive link with the next in order of the i-ro-ha syllabary. This clearly implies that by this time renga sequences in forty-seven links (the number of kana in the i-ro-ha syllabary) were being composed.¹⁵

By the early thirteenth century, when the Retired Emperor Go-Toba gathered the best poets at his court, renga chains in fifty or one hundred links, apparently modeled on waka sequences of those lengths, were frequently composed. In Yakumo mishō, the work of poetics by Emperor Juntoku written mainly before 1219, it is stated, “In the past there was no such thing as composing fifty or one hundred links … The creation of chains in the present manner originated in middle antiquity. I imagine that the fushimono also originated about that time.”¹⁶

Presumably “middle antiquity” (chūko) referred to the period of a hundred years earlier, though no extant evidence indicates that either the chain renga or the fushimono existed at that time. The fushimono (prescribed themes) were an important, even indispensable feature of the early renga and were retained in vestigial form well into the Muromachi period. The use of fushimono represented a first stage in the creation of rules of renga composition; without rules, renga could never have become more than a game. Originally the fushimono were topics that had to be mentioned in the two links of a short renga. Fujiwara Teika in Meigetsuki listed about forty varieties of fushimono such as “fish and birds,” “things that float and things that sink,” etc. In almost every instance the fushimono consisted of two associated objects or concepts. The person who composed the maeku had to mention the first of these two topics, and the writer of the tsukeku the second. The skill with which the participants responded to the challenge of composing verses on prescribed themes was evaluated by the judges, who declared the winners. Before long it had become customary to award prizes at renga sessions, and bets on the lucky verses were placed by participants. Indeed, renga sessions resembled gambling parties and were accompanied by wine, women, and song.¹⁷ Renga and gambling continued to go together for centuries, and at times renga gatherings were prohibited because of the undesirable riffraff they attracted.

The importance of the fushimono is apparent from the earliest surviving rules of renga composition, listed in Yakumo mishō. Most of the fifteen articles are concerned with the fushimono; the remainder elucidated the principle of sarikirai, the restrictions on the repetition of words or themes in a chain renga.¹⁸ As time went on, more and more complex regulations developed and the fushimono lost their importance. The masterpiece of renga, Minase sangin, bears the fushimono of nanibito (what kind of man?), and the presence in the hokku of the word yama (mountain) satisfied the technical requirement of the fushimono because it could be combined with the word hito to form yamahito (mountain man). But by the time of Minase sangin, 1488, there were so many other rules that the fushimono were the least of the poets' problems. Indeed, the rules had proliferated so much that not even the poets could be expected to know them all. Instead, it was left to a referee (shuhitsu) to determine if a link observed exactly all the regulations; if not, it was sent back for correction.¹⁹

The evolution of codes of composition may have been intended mainly to make the game more challenging to experts, but the result was to raise the level of renga, if only because participation became restricted to poets capable of complying with the complex rules and of catching the allusions to classical literature and ancient customs, the basic materials of composition. Entertainment, however, was still the main reason for holding renga sessions. At Go-Toba's palace there were two distinct groups of poets, the ushin and the mushin, and competitions between the two were held frequently between 1206 and 1217. Almost all the surviving examples are in the ushin manner associated with Teika's lofty conception of poetry, but the mushin renga continued to be composed by way of diversion, even though generally not recorded. The collection of edifying anecdotes, Shaseki shū, compiled between 1279 and 1283 by the priest Mujū (1226-1312), contains various examples of short renga which the compiler himself characterizes as being clever or witty.²⁰ After Sōgi has spent several painful hours composing serious renga with a not especially gifted baron and his entourage, probably all the participants were delighted to turn to informal composition promoted by generous libations of sake. Professor Konishi Jin'ichi has written concerning one renga session held at the Imperial Palace in 1480 and attended by Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado, the former Chancellor Ichijō Kanera, the then Chancellor Konoe Masaie, and other notables that it is difficult to tell whether the main object of the gathering was the renga or the sake.²¹ No doubt the renga composed on that occasion verged on the mushin style.

The main stream of renga composition, however, was directed toward evolving a poetic form marked by the kind of elegance and seriousness that characterized the waka. The composition of formal codes (shikimoku) made of renga a demanding and ultimately satisfying art. Some sort of code apparently existed even in Go-Toba's day, but the earliest surviving one dates from 1278. It in turn served as the prototype for the later, more complicated codes. From the fourteenth century on the ushin renga dominated, not only at the court but among the commoners, whose activities in renga became steadily more pronounced. The combination of the poetic skill of a commoner poet and the authority of a nobleman poet created the mature art of renga.

NIJō YOSHIMOTO (1320-1398)

Yoshimoto, the son of a chancellor (kampaku), belonged to the highest rank of the nobility. Extraordinary honors were accorded him, even as a child, thanks to his birth. At seven he became a captain of the Left Palace Guard (sakon shōshō) and two years later was appointed an Acting Middle Counsellor. His rise in rank and position, though the honors were usually hollow, continued without break through the crises of the day—Go-Daigo's unsuccessful revolt and exile, his restoration to power, and his flight to Yoshino. Yoshimoto, an adherent of the Northern Court, became Minister of the Right in 1343, and in 1346 became Chancellor of the Northern Court, retaining this position until 1358. His brilliant career probably owed less to his political ability than to his birth and his decision not to follow Go-Daigo into the mountains of Yoshino. At a time when the Imperial Court was virtually without power, the duties even of a chancellor or regent were more a matter of appearance than of reality, but to people of the time appearances were of the highest importance. Yoshimoto was learned in court ceremonials and precedents and seems to have spent his days in such studies rather than in practical politics. Late in life he became the adviser of the youthful shogun Yoshimitsu and wrote at his request a manual of court ceremonial.

Yoshimoto's absorption with precedents and rules is apparent also in his writings on renga. He was esteemed as a waka poet too, but his poems, derived from the conservative traditions of the Nijō school, are lifeless and conventional; by contrast, his renga poetry and criticism are still of interest, though he never freed himself from the traditions. His mentor in renga, the priest Kyūsei (1284-1372),²² belonged to the commoner poets known as hana no moto (“under the blossoms”), who may have been the source of such originality as Yoshimoto's renga possesses. Yoshimoto bestowed the highest praise on Kyūsei's poetry, describing it as “beautiful and skillful, evocative and bewitching.”²³ Although he himself was a dōjō, or aristocrat poet, in his writings on renga he did not consider it necessary even to mention the names of other dōjō poets.

Yoshimoto's willingness to associate with persons of a distinctly inferior social class was not confined to renga. Recently discovered documents show that the boy Zeami, twelve years old at the time, first visited Yoshimoto's mansion in 1375. Enchanted by the boy's precocious talents and good looks, Yoshimoto bestowed on Zeami the name Fujiwaka, apparently taking the fuji from the name of his own clan, the Fujiwara.²⁴ The boy subsequently participated in renga sessions with Yoshimoto and other masters, holding his own so successfully that at one gathering in 1378 his tsukeku to a maeku by Yoshimoto was pronounced “truly outstanding.”²⁵

The close relationship between the arts of renga and nō, discussed at length by Professor Konishi,²⁶ is confirmed by the striking similarity in the vocabulary of criticism of the two arts. Moreover, although both were dominated by aristocratic preferences in literature—the imperial anthologies of waka, Genji monogatari, Ise monogatari, and the most familiar Chinese poems—the chief practitioners were commoners, some of extremely humble origins. Sōgi, whose position in renga is analogous to that of Teika in waka, is said by some to have been the son of a gigaku performer, though there is virtually no information on his antecedents. Nevertheless, he associated on familiar terms with such members of the high nobility as Sanjōnishi Sanetaka and with daimyos all over the country, even on occasion serving as the judge of renga written by the Emperor himself. His disciple Sōchō, though acutely aware of his base birth (as he conceived it), did not hesitate to mingle with the great political and military figures of the day. Of course, the fact that Kyūsei, Sōgi, and Sōchō were (in appearance at least) Buddhist priests made it easier for them to move in aristocratic circles, but priestly garments would not have easily won them a place in the court society of a previous age.

Although Yoshimoto stated his conviction that “renga is one of the many forms of waka,”²⁷ he clearly recognized that its potential was different. His discussion of the language appropriate to renga suggests this awareness: “The poet should seek in his language to find the flower among flowers, the jewel among jewels. But among beginners there are always those who try to make their language as elegant as possible, even when the thought is absolutely trivial, supposing that the use of such phrases as ‘a spring dawning’ or ‘an autumn evening’ is proper in renga even today … It is true that in general the language of renga should be confined to the vocabulary of the successive imperial anthologies of waka, but there is no objection in renga to the use of neologisms or even of vulgar words … It is the closeness in correspondence between one verse and the next that determines excellence in renga, and it therefore does not necessarily seem a fault even if the language is somewhat ugly.”²⁸

Yoshimoto's reluctant tolerance in renga of words not found in the standard poetic diction opened to renga areas of experience impossible to describe in the waka. He also recognized the importance of the present, as opposed to the waka poets' belief that perfection had been achieved in the past. He wrote, “As the times change, so styles also change, and there is no need to defend the old ways. One should accept the common preferences and, without insisting on narrow prejudices, respect the leading poets of our time and current usages.”²⁹ Many years later (in 1491) Sōgi, in most respects a highly conservative poet, also stated, “In general it is true that a work is unlikely to succeed, no matter how respectful it is toward the past, unless the present is also included.”³⁰ The elegant phraseology with which Yoshimoto and Sōgi clothed their compositions makes it difficult for us today to detect the contemporary touches, but close examination reveals them. Yoshimoto's contact with poets of the commoner class enriched his renga, though not his waka. Even at its most exalted the renga would not lose a touch of this-worldliness.

Yoshimoto distinguished fifteen different ways of linking renga verses, including the straightforward continuation of the thought of the preceding verse, the link established by plays on words and other verbal elements, and the link that catches the faint associations thrown off by the preceding verse.³¹ The more remote the link the more highly it was esteemed by such poets as Shinkei (1406-1475), but a judicious combination of closely and remotely associated links was necessary for balance in a long sequence.³²

Yoshimoto's most complete statement of his theories of renga was presented in Tsukuba mondō (1372), a set of seventeen questions with responses ostensibly given by an old man well versed in renga lore. Most questions were specific, e.g., on the nature of the hokku or the wakiku (second verse) or on the ideal number of participants in a session, but one question asked if renga is of help in governing a country, and another if renga leads to enlightenment. The old man answered both these questions affirmatively, explaining that every syllable in a renga sequence must conform to morality and citing the numbers of holy men who had devoted their lives to renga. Not only men, but the buddhas of past and present had all composed poetry; and, of the different varieties of poetry, renga with its perpetual shifts of subject and mood corresponded most closely to the mortal world itself.³³

The religious aspect of renga composition, irrespective of content, is apparent from the frequency with which sequences were offered to temples and shrines. Renga sequences were composed by way of prayer for recovery from illness or for victory in war. In 1471 a hokku offered by Sōgi to the Mishima Shrine in Izu was credited with having effected the miraculous cure of a child; and in 1504 Sōchō offered at the same shrine a renga sequence in a thousand links in order to assure the victory of the daimyo he served.³⁴ The elevation of the “dignity” of renga from the level of an after-dinner entertainment to an art credited with miraculous powers was largely the work of Buddhist monks who readily found parallels between renga and the teachings of the Buddha. Yoshimoto himself was not a priest, but such men as Shinkei compared the Three Bodies of the Buddha, assumed to save men of different capabilities, to the different levels of renga composition practiced by poets ranging from beginners to masters of the art.³⁵ Such writings contributed to the enormous prestige enjoyed by renga, making it a medium suitable for expressing the loftiest sentiments.

The daimyos in different parts of the country, eager to learn about the kind of poetry most in vogue in the capital, often asked the guidance of the masters. In 1376 Yoshimoto wrote Kyūshū mondō for Imagawa Ryōshun (1325-1420), the tandai of Kyushu and himself a distinguished poet. In 1379 he wrote Renga jūyō at the request of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. Yoshimoto declared in this work that he had held back no secrets or oral traditions but, as if to contradict this statement, his last work of renga poetics, presented in 1383 to Ōuchi Yoshihiro (1356-1399), bore the title Jūmon saihi shō (Ten questions: A most secret selection). These critical works reveal Yoshimoto's increasing independence of views on renga. He seems to have left behind his master Kyūsei, perhaps as the result of his study of Sung poetics.³⁶ The following brief passage suggests this influence:

Question. What should the style of renga be?

Answer. It is stated in Yü-hsieh, a work dealing with Chinese poetry, “Avoid all vulgarity of meaning, language, or tone.” The same holds true of renga.³⁷

Yoshimoto contributed to renga not only his own compositions and criticism but his compilation (with the collaboration of Kyūsei) of the renga anthology Tsukuba shū (1356). The compilers clearly intended to make a classic anthology of renga that would proclaim its importance, much as the Kokinshū had done for the waka. In this effort they largely succeeded: thanks apparently to pressure exerted on the court by Yoshimoto and Sasaki Takauji (Dōyo, 1306-1373, high-ranking military adviser of the Ashikaga shogunate, and an enthusiastic amateur poet), Tsukuba shū was in 1357 officially ranked as “immediately after” the imperial anthologies of waka.³⁸

Tsukuba shū consisted of 2,170 verses, arranged for the most part in pairs of maeku and tsukeku, though some single hokku were also given. This arrangement indicates that even though renga sequences in a hundred or more links were appreciated as integral works with a form of their own, the heart of renga composition still remained the skillful catching of the overtones of a maeku with an effective tsukeku. In this collection the writers of the maeku are normally not identified, no doubt because the emphasis was so heavy on the skill of the response. Kyūsei is represented by the largest number of tsukeku, followed by Yoshimoto. The following may suggest Yoshimoto's characteristic renga techniques:

… In the hills the cries of deer,
In the fields the chirping insects.
In everything
What sadness is apparent
This autumn evening(39)

The maeku tells of the mournful cries of deer yearning for their mates in the late autumn (a familiar waka subject) and the last feeble chirps of the insects before winter comes. In the tsukeku Yoshimoto stated the significance of these sounds: it is in the nature of an autumn day for everything to seem heartrendingly sad.

Yoshimoto was entirely confident about the future reputation of Tsukuba shū. He wrote, “I imagine that men of future times will look up to our day because Tsukuba shū was chosen as an imperial collection and preserved many different forms of poetry.”⁴⁰ It was much more common for Japanese writers to look back to some distant golden age than to congratulate themselves on being alive in their own time, but Yoshimoto evidently felt quite sure that Tsukuba shū would arouse the envy of yet unborn poets.

Yoshimoto's mention of the different forms of poetry in the collection may be a reference to the haikai poems in the nineteenth book of Tsukuba shū, a reminder that the mushin tradition was not dead. The humor in these poems is often strained and is unlikely to provoke laughter, but after eighteen books of overwhelmingly ushin poetry the haikai poems provided a welcome change of style. Most often the humor revolved around puns or even double puns, as in this tsukeku by the former Major Counsellor Tameie (1179-1275) composed in response to a maeku associating a horse and some carp:

… I wonder what kind
Of spots there might be
On the horse's back.(41)

The point of this lame poem is the puns on se (“back” but also “shallows of a river”) and on fuchi (“spots” but also “pools”), giving an underlying river imagery that matches that of the maeku.

A somewhat more interesting example bears the title, “When I called somebody's aunt who was in the public bath.”

… I called his aunt
Inside the public bath.
She was in the water
At the bathhouse his father runs
On Elder Sister Lane(42)

The humor here involves the play on ane (elder sister) of the man's father and the street-name Ane-no-kōji in Kyoto; it is appropriate for the person's aunt (his father's elder sister) to be in the bathhouse on that street. Beyond the rather childish humor of the play on words, there is some interest in the subject itself: no one ever mentioned a public bath in ushin poetry.

A better example, anticipating the haikai style of the sixteenth century, had a tsukeku by Kyūsei:

… They laugh, it is true,
But they never mock.
The flock of crows
In the treetops of the wood
Where a hawk lurks.(43)

The maeku along leads the reader to suppose that the unexpressed subject must be human beings, but Kyūsei interpreted it instead as a nonhuman creature which laughs. He wrote therefore about a flock of crows noisily cawing (“laughing”) at a hawk but too afraid of being seized to make fun of him. This was precisely the kind of haikai response found in the collection of Inu tsukuba, compiled about 1542. …⁴⁴

Notes

1. Masaoka Shiki's curt dismissal of renga as not being “literature” was certainly one important factor in the demise of renga during the Meiji period, but it had been in a state of marked decline for years.

2. The volume Renga published in 1971 contains poetry by four poets—Octavio Paz (Mexican), Jacques Roubaud (French), Edoardo Sanguineti (Italian), and Charles Tomlinson (English)—each composing in his own language according to a special code of renga.

3. Octavio Paz, Alternating Current, trans. Helen R. Lane (New York, 1973), p. 21.

4. The mechanics of renga composition are illuminatingly discussed by Konishi Jin'ichi in his Sōgi (Tokyo, 1973), pp. 178-242.

5. See also Donald Philippi, trans., Kojiki (Tokyo, 1968), p. 242.

6. Shimazu Tadao, Renga shi no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1969), p. 8. Omodaka Hisataka, Manyōshū chūshaku (Tokyo, 1957-68), 8: 289-293, gives many ingenious explanations of this poem. Nose Asaji, Renku to renga (Tokyo, 1950), pp. 70-71, interpreted hitori as hi (water pipe) and tori (take), as well as hitori (one man).

7. Manyōshū, no. 1657; Omodaka, 8: 320.

8. Translation by Helen Craig McCullough in Tales of Ise (Stanford, 1968), p. 117. The main point of the response was the pun mata au (we shall meet again) imbedded in Ausaka.

9. Kidō Saizō, Rengashi ronkō (Tokyo, 1971-73), 1: 83-103.

10. Minamoto Toshiyori, Toshiyori zuinō, in Nihon kagaku taikei (Tokyo, 1956), 1: 124.

11. The lien-chü (renku) dates back as far as the Han dynasty. In the early examples, poets each contributed one “link” on a set topic, but there was no suggestion of response to the “link” of the preceding poet. Later examples, such as the dialogue between one Chia Ch'ung and his wife, a work of the fourth century a.d. (translated in Donald Keene, Japanese Literature [New York, 1955], p. 34), reveal the distinct voices of the participants, but there are few poetic overtones. The height of the lien-chü was reached in the mid-T'ang, when poets joined efforts to produce a poem that might have been the work of one man; an example is given in Cyril Birch, Anthology of Chinese Literature (New York, 1965), p. 265. The Japanese renga, as will be clear from the above, was not inspired by Chinese example.

12. Kidō, 1: 86. I have departed from my usual romanization in order to make the puns between hi wo ba and hio wa more evident.

13. Quoted in Shimazu, p. 31. Fujiwara Kiyosuke's Fukuro zōshi (text in Nihon kagaku taikei, 2) is hard to date; the particular section quoted (p. 10) may have been added toward the end of his life. See Kidō, 1: 118.

14. Kidō, 1: 115-116.

15. See Nagazumi Yasuaki and Shimada Isao, eds., Kokon chomonjū, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo, 1966), 84: 151-152.

16. Quoted in Shimazu, p. 41.

17. Ishida Yoshisada, “Chūsei shoki renga no fushimono,” Kokugo to kokubungaku, March 1959, p. 34.

18. Kyūsōjin Hitaku, Kōhon yakumo mishō to sono kenkyū (Tokyo, 1960), pp. 17-20.

19. Konishi, Sōogi, pp. 72-73.

20. Watanabe Tsunaya, ed., Shaseki shū, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo, 1960), 85: 242-246.

21. Konishi, p. 76.

22. The name is pronounced Gusai by some authorities, including Ijichi Tetsuo in Renga shū, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo, 1960), p. 29.

23. Kidō Saizō and Imoto Nōichi, Rengaron shū: Hairon shū (Tokyo, 1961), p. 242.

24. Fukuda Hideichi, “Zeami to Yoshimoto,” in Geinōshi kenkyū, no. 10, p. 51.

25. Ijichi Tetsuo, “Higashiyama Gyobunko-bon ‘Fuchiki’…,” Kokubungaku kenkyū 35 (1967): 39.

26. Konishi, pp. 105-107.

27. Kidō and Imoto, p. 35.

28. Ibid., pp. 40-41.

29. Ibid., p. 36.

30. Quoted in Konishi, p. 40.

31. Kidō and Imoto, pp. 50-52. See Konishi, pp. 124-133, for an analysis of the different varieties of links, together with examples by Kyūsei illustrating each.

32. See Konishi, p. 124.

33. Kidō and Imoto, pp. 81-83.

34. Konishi, pp. 18, 21.

35. Kidō and Imoto, p. 201.

36. Shimazu, pp. 83-84. See also Konishi Jin'ichi, “Yoshimoto to Sōdai shiron,” Gobun, no. 14 (1968), for a study of the influence of Sung poetics on Nijō Yoshimoto.

37. Kidō and Imoto, p. 111. The Chinese work mentioned was the collection of shih-hua, or talks on poetry, Shih-jen yü-hsieh (Jade chips from the poets), edited in 1244 by Wei Ching-chih. See Yoshikawa Kōjirō, An Introduction to Sung Poetry, trans. Burton Watson (Cambridge, Mass., 1967). p. 183.

38. Ijichi, Renga shū, p. 20.

39. Fukui Kyūzō, Tsukuba shū, in Nihon koten zensho (Tokyo, 1951), 1: 116.

40. Kidō and Imoto, p. 79.

41. Fukui, 2: 273.

42. Ibid., p. 280. This tsukeku was written by the priest Jūbutsu, who was otherwise known as the author of Daijingū sankeiki (1341).

43. Ibid., p. 265.

44. I am thinking of such riddles as kiritaku mo ari kiritaku mo nashi. See Suzuki Tōzō, Inu tsukuba shū (Tokyo, 1965), p. 76, where three different tsukeku are given for this maeku. …