[In the following excerpt, Keene examines Yoshimoto's renga advice and criticism, as well as the poetry collections he compiled.]

… The chief figure in the elevation of renga from a game to a demanding and artistically important art was Nijō Yoshimoto, a noble of the highest rank who rose in 1346 to be kampaku and head of the Fujiwara clan.¹ Yoshimoto was a waka poet of some distinction. His early training was in the conservative waka of the Nijō school, and at one time he studied under Ton'a, the leading Nijō poet of the day. Yoshimoto did not neglect waka composition, even after he became the preeminent theoretician of renga. More than sixty of his waka were included in imperial collections, and he also produced several treatises on the art of the waka. It is safe to say, however, that he would be forgotten as a poet if he had not also devoted himself to renga. He was a pupil of the renga master Kyūsei² (1282?-1376?), a jige (commoner) poet, and under Kyūsei's tutelage he acquired authority as an expert on renga. Yoshimoto saw no contradiction in composing both waka and renga, believing that renga was a “miscellaneous” form of waka³ and not an unrelated genre.

It is not clear just when Yoshimoto began the study of renga, but probably it was while he was still in his teens, under the influence of his father, an enthusiastic amateur practitioner. By the time he was in his early twenties, Yoshimoto himself was sponsoring large-scale renga sessions.⁴ In the meantime, in 1336, when he was sixteen, he had made a critical decision of a nonliterary nature that affected the rest of his life: he decided to remain in the capital rather than follow his former master, the Emperor Godaigo, into the mountains of Yoshino. When Ashikaga Takauji marched into Kyoto he brought with him the prince he had decided to install as the new emperor. The enthronement ceremony of the Emperor Kōmyō was carried out at Yoshimoto's residence, and from this time on Yoshimoto's fortunes would be closely linked with those of the Northern Court. He served six emperors of that court, four times in the highest position of chancellor or regent, and he shared its vicissitudes, fleeing or returning to the capital as the fortunes of the war dictated.

In 1345, in his twenty-sixth year, Yoshimoto completed the oldest surviving textbook of renga composition, Hekirenshō, better known in the revised version called Renri Hishō.⁵ In an afterword Yoshimoto stated that he had written the work in response to a query from someone living in the country about the nature of renga. He modestly avowed that (because of his ignorance) everything he had written was mistaken; but he had been so moved by the devotion to renga of his interrogator that he had willingly exposed himself to the ridicule of others by setting forth his views on the subject. He hoped, however, that the man in the country would soon find a master teacher and toss away these mistaken opinions.⁶

Yoshimoto here and elsewhere in Renri Hishō insisted that the ability to compose renga successfully came from two factors: the poet's inborn qualities, and the experience of composing renga with superior poets. He continued,

Renga arises from within one's heart and must be learned for oneself. There is absolutely no need to learn from master teachers. One should constantly seek out occasions for composing renga with accomplished poets. … To practice renga solely at gatherings of incompetent poets is worse than not practicing at all. This is something one must be careful about while one is a beginner. It is also why the renga of even skilled poets suffers if they live in the hinterland, for however short a time. … The only way to improve as a poet is to practice with superior poets and acquire experience at attending sessions. In addition, one should gain inspiration by perusing the three collections,⁷The Tale of Genji, Tales of Ise, books of utamakura,⁸ and suchlike works.⁹

Yoshimoto was especially concerned with the problems facing beginners in renga composition:

While one is still a beginner one should not ponder too much one's verses. As is true also for the other arts, it is better to express one's first thoughts as they come, rather than mull over the pros and cons, which can lead only to confusion. However, when a good many outsiders and other accomplished poets are present at a session, the beginner should hesitate somewhat to speak out. Even after he has become skillful at composing renga, he will find it difficult to decide on the spot whether a given verse of his own is good or bad. It frequently happens that even when the poet himself thinks a verse is poor, the judge may award it high marks for its skill. This is not a sign of incompetence on the judge's part, nor is it proof that the poet cannot tell his good from his bad verses. It occurs simply because at a certain moment a particular verse just happens to have caught the judge's fancy.¹⁰

Advice to beginners in renga appears also in Yoshimoto's later works of renga criticism. In Tsukuba Mondō (Questions and Answers on Renga), he recognized that poetic ability was likely to be inborn, quoting various Chinese philosophers on the subject,¹¹ but he was surprisingly open-minded concerning what class of people might compose renga. He himself, in a manner hardly typical of waka poets on the day, associated with plebeian poets, notably his own teacher, Kyūsei, whom he revered despite his humble origins. Yoshimoto insisted that neither high birth nor scholarship was necessary to an aspiring renga poet:

If a beginner's renga is bad, it will do him no good to worry himself about scholarship or the regulations on words to be avoided. Practice is the best way to improve one's renga. If a poet's renga is still not interesting, even after he has memorized the Man'yōshū, the Kokinshū, and all the later collections, acquiring knowledge will be like counting the jewels belonging to a neighbor. On the other hand, even if a man cannot read a single character, if his renga is competent, he will surely feel that he has obtained the jewels for himself.¹² After all, the poems of a dancer and a courtesan appear in the Man'yōshū and the Kokinshū, and there are even beggar's songs among the old verses. In all of these cases, recognition came about because their poems were admired. After one's renga has become interesting is the best time to acquire learning.¹³

Such passages are the chief attraction for modern readers in Yoshimoto's critical works, but Renri Hishō was probably read in its time mainly for its practical guidance, rather than for its philosophy. It opens with a brief account of the history of renga, beginning with an example from the Man'yōshū of a waka composed jointly by a nun (the first seventeen syllables) and Ōtomo no Yakamochi (the remaining fourteen syllables).¹⁴ This is followed by more general remarks on how one sets about learning renga, points to be observed by beginners, the language of renga, the technicalities of composition (such as the fushimono), the conduct of renga sessions, and finally, a consideration of what constitutes a link between one verse and the next. The second part of Renri Hishō gives specific directions as to which words can be used only once in a hundred-link session, which twice, which three times, and so on. Yoshimoto's prescriptions would be followed by renga poets of even much later times.¹⁵ A typical directive enumerates which words can be used only once in a hundred-link sequence:

Young shoots, wisteria, kerria roses, azaleas, and irises in the category of plants.

Deer, monkeys, song thrushes, cuckoos, fireflies, cicadas, evening cicadas, cherry shells (but cherry blossoms can be used in addition), and unknown insects in the category of animate things.

Long ago, ancient times, evening, yesterday, spring rains, evening showers, passing showers, early rain, storm winds, hiding places, water conduits, hanging bridges, morning sunlight, sunset, morning moon, evening moon. These are all words of secondary significance and should be used only once.¹⁶

Even if one recognizes that the repeated use of certain words, especially unusual or particularly vivid words, would harm a poetic sequence (or, indeed, any literary composition), Yoshimoto's designation of words that can be used only once in a hundred links is bound to seem arbitrary. Perhaps the rules of any game are likely to seem arbitrary, but Yoshimoto was clearly aiming at something more elevated than a mere game. His prescriptions would be unquestioningly followed by practitioners of renga of his day and altered in later times only after much deliberation. Yoshimoto enhanced the artistic quality of renga by the emphasis he gave to conscious artistic creation, as opposed to the flashes of wit that had earlier passed for skill in renga.

Yoshimoto's later texts of renga composition are of even greater interest. Tsukuba Mondō, written between 1357 and 1372, stands out among Yoshimoto's critical works in its literary, almost novelistic quality, both in the style and in having an old man narrate his views on renga in a conversational manner, recalling the similar device in such historical tales as The Great Mirror. Unlike his other discussions of renga, here Yoshimoto, instead of responding to questions about renga, is asking another person, an old man who knows more about renga than himself, about the art.

Yoshimoto begins with the question of whether or not renga is unique to Japan. The old man answers that it is not; the Buddhist hymns (ge) provide an Indian example of the art, and in China there is lien-chü (renku). The next questions concern the historical development of renga in Japan, and the old man responds with the usual examples from the Kojiki and the Man'yōshū, as well as from more recent collections of poetry. Another line of questioning relates to the uses of renga: does it help to foster good government or to achieve salvation for the poet in the world after death? As we might expect, the old man supplies examples that demonstrate renga is indeed of great efficacy in promoting both good government and salvation. He is sure that every syllable in a renga sequence must conform to morality and cites the numbers of holy men who devoted their lives to renga. Not only ordinary human beings, but the buddhas of past and present have all composed poetry; and of the different varieties of poetry, renga with its frequent shifts of subject and mood most closely corresponds to the mortal world itself.¹⁷

Another aspect of the religious significance of renga can be surmised from the frequency with which sequences were offered to temples and shrines. Renga manuscripts might bring recovery from illness or victory in battle. In 1471 a hokku (opening verse) offered by Sōogi 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 to assure the victory of the daimyo he served.¹⁸ In Tsukuba Mondō Yoshimoto mentioned that two of the great religious leaders of recent times, Bukkoku Kokushi (1241-1316) and Musō Kokushi (1275-1351), both composed renga “day and night” and no doubt this was of benefit to them.¹⁹ Yoshimoto himself was not a priest, but the prominence he gave in Tsukuba Mondō to the religious significance of renga indicates that he shared a belief in its special powers.²⁰

The fact that one could offer renga to the Buddha or to a Shintō divinity in the hopes of obtaining worldly benefits suggests the practical value of renga composition. Yoshimoto, unlike the typical waka poets, did not look back to some golden age of poetry; the present world was his concern. As a member of the Nijō school, he was conservative when it came to waka and followed its poetic diction, essentially the two thousand words that occur in the poetry of the Kokinshū. On the whole, Yoshimoto preferred the traditional vocabulary even in renga, but he believed that renga should not be bound by the other conventions of the waka (such as honka-dori): “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, instead of insisting on narrow prejudices, respect the leading poets of our time and current usage.”²¹ He insisted that a poem that was not of interest to the general public was worthless, regardless of how correctly orthodox it might be.²² Although he does not say so in so many words, Yoshimoto was in effect encouraging poets to take up renga, rather than waka with its constricting conventions.

He turned his attention next in Tsukuba Mondō to the flow of a renga sequence. The renga composed for the first sheet of the manuscript should be marked by quiet beauty (yūgen), but from the second sheet some liveliness was desirable, and the verses on the third and fourth sheets should contain the most striking materials of the sequence. As in Japanese music, a progression from jo (slow introduction) to ha (development) to kyū (climax) should be observed in renga; the first sheet of manuscript corresponded to jo, the second to ha, and the third and fourth to kyū.²³

Yoshimoto shifted his discussion at this point to a basic aspect of renga, the manner of combining striking verses with plainer ones within a sequence.²⁴ The compilers of the Shin Kokinshū had believed it was important to maintain a smooth flow of imagery, seasonal references, and tone from one poem to the next in the collection, even though this necessitated including quite ordinary poems to serve as bridges between the indisputable masterpieces; if only masterpieces had been included, they might not have fitted together as “links” in a chain of associations.²⁵

The Japanese language itself seems to have a preference for long sentences that seem reluctant to end,²⁶ and even when the sentences do in fact end, there is usually a smooth transition to the next one, rather than the beginning of a new paragraph. In renga, of course, transitions from one link to the next are of crucial importance; one might call renga an art of transitions. As Yoshimoto was aware, a verse that was in itself brilliant might be undesirable from the point of view of an entire sequence if, because of its brilliance, transition to the next verse was made difficult. He wrote,

In general, it must be accounted a sign of superior renga when [only] two or three striking verses are included in a session otherwise consisting of ground verses of unobtrusive character. How could every single verse be noteworthy? The people of the past used to say that one should mix impressive poems only here and there among the ground poems making up a sequence of one hundred waka.²⁷

Yoshimoto next considered the individual verses of a renga sequence. The hokku, the opening verse, was by far the most important. If the hokku was a failure, the whole sequence would be a failure, irrespective of the quality of subsequent verses. Yoshimoto did not enter into details on the desirable content of a hokku, but later men did. Mokujiki Ōgo (1536-1608) declared in his book of renga rules that the hokku should not be at variance with the scenery of the place (whether mountains or the sea dominated) and should convey its appearance at the time of composition (whether cherry blossoms or autumn leaves were falling). It should also allude to the prevailing atmospheric phenomena such as the wind, clouds, mist, fog, rain, dew, frost, snow, heat, cold, and phase of the moon. However, he added, the hokku must seem spontaneous; “it is not interesting if it seems to have been prepared beforehand.”²⁹ The wakiku, or second verse, echoed the season of the hokku and matched it in meaning, but it had to advance the progress of the sequence. The wakiku almost always ended with a noun, and if there was allusive variation in the hokku, the wakiku also had to contain one. The daisan, or third verse, marked a first shift away from the mood of the first two verses. It normally concluded with -te, the participial form of a verb. Later verses in a sequence were also governed by rules, notably that of sari-kirai, but they were not quite so demanding as the first three verses.

Yoshimoto gave attention not only to the content of a renga sequence but to the decorum that should be observed at a gathering:

Once the place of the gathering has been decided, the scribe first comes forth, kneels beside the round mat, then (after obtaining the host's permission) sits down on it, opens the writing set, takes out the sheets of paper and folds them, places them before him, and prepares the ink. Next, he takes up the brushes, examines them, wets with the ink only two of them, moistens the brush he is to use, removes the back of the brush stand, and puts it on the floor. He waits for a signal from the host, at which he writes the first character of the title. After the hokku has been produced, he should confer with the most accomplished person present with respect to the fushimono and then write it down. The scribe should begin writing the first page with the hokku, read it aloud, then intone it. He should be thoroughly informed on matters concerning things to be avoided (kiraimono), and should explain them in the event of contraventions.²⁹

The elaborate etiquette of such a gathering was a far cry from the renga sessions that had been popular before Yoshimoto's day, and which continued to enjoy popularity away from the court. Such sessions were apt to turn into gambling bouts at which participants bet on the number of points the judge would award to successive verses. At times renga gatherings were forbidden by local authorities because of the undesirable riffraff they attracted. Even when the renga sessions did not lead to open gambling, prizes were commonly awarded for the best verses.³⁰ In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when renga masters, driven from the capital by warfare, traveled to distant parts of the country to receive hospitality from local warlords, they normally followed a session of serious renga (no doubt just as painful for the renga masters as for their badly educated pupils) with more cheerful, often bawdy, renga helped along by sake. Konishi Jin'ichi commented on one session held at the Imperial Palace in 1480 in the presence of the Emperior Gotsuchimikado, the former Chancellor Ichijō Kaneyoshi, the then Chancellor Konoe Masaie, and various other notables, that it is difficult to tell whether the main object of the gathering was renga or sake.³¹

Regardless of the nature of the poetry composed, however, renga was by its very nature a group endeavor. It is tempting to imagine that the possibility of joining with other people in making poetry, on whatever level, was particularly appealing in an age of warfare when men more commonly met to kill; but even if this cannot be proved, the composition of poetry as a communal undertaking has without question continued to exert a special attraction on the Japanese, as we know not only from the haikai style of renga popular during the Tokugawa period but from the many twentieth-century associations of tanka and haiku poets who regularly meet to compose together under the supervision of an admired poet, and who publish their poems in the magazine edited by the poet. Indeed, it has been argued that all traditional Japanese literature is in some sense the literature of a group, or at least of multiple authorship. The waka addressed by a man to a woman who had attracted him was indeed his own composition, but it generally included allusions to the poetry of the past that he was sure she would recognize because she also belonged to a za (or group) of poets, which composed poetry based on a shared knowledge of that past. The woman's reply to the man's poem would not only answer it in its own terms but match it, often in such a way as to suggest a dialogue poem or even two stanzas of the same poem. Prose was also communally shared. People in one romance were often compared to those in another, and the diarists traveled mainly from one utamakura to another, associating themselves with the travelers of the past.

But of all the literary arts, the one most easily discussed as za no bungaku,³² the literature of the group, is renga. It is true that some poets composed whole renga sequences by themselves, but even when such sequences were of high literary quality, a solo renga (dokugin) forfeited the possibility of unexpected responses.³³ Yoshimoto believed that seven or eight participants was an ideal number for renga; if too few people took part the sequence was not likely to go well.³⁴ Of course, the participants could not be a random group of poets. A za was a group of poets who shared a communality of spirit that was fostered by a respect for the literature of the past. This did not necessarily involve any loss of individuality on the part of the participants, though it is true that nobody deliberately tried to be unlike the others. Yoshimoto compared renga to Nō, another art carried on by a za.³⁵ The Nō actors who performed a play belonged to the same za and were accustomed to working together, but this did not eliminate their individual, though usually unconscious, characteristics as actors; and the audiences for Nō (now as in the past) consisted largely of people who themselves had studied the singing of the texts and the performing of the dances, establishing a far closer relationship between themselves and the actors than is common in European theater. In the case of renga, too, the ideal reader was one who had actually had the experience of creating renga; only such a reader would be able to fully understand and (more important) enjoy the shifting associations.

Two styles of renga composition were practiced. The first and literarily far more important was the ushin, or serious renga, the second the mushin, or comic renga. Few examples of mushin renga survive, no doubt because the poets did not think it worth wasting paper and ink to record the quips that passed for verse; but extant manuscripts of thousands of ushin renga sessions have yet to be printed, and perhaps never will be, considering the general lack of interest in renga today.

Yoshimoto's most important work was probably Tsukuba Shū (Tsukuba Collection), compiled in 1356 with Kyūsei. It is in twenty books, the standard number for imperially sponsored collections, and was evidently intended to impart to renga the same kind of dignity that the Kokinshū had brought to the waka. He largely succeeded in this effort: in the following year Tsukuba Shū was honored by being classed as the “next after” (jun) an imperial collection of waka. The Tsukuba Shū consists of 1,993 pairs of verses arranged so as to demonstrate how the second verse successfully linked with the first. Only the authors of the tsukeku are identified, a clear sign that skill in linking onto an existing verse (of whatever quality) was more important than the intrinsic literary value of the verses. Book XIX contains twenty-four examples of wakan (Japanese verse linked to five-character lines in Chinese), and various miscellaneous poems. Book XX is devoted to hokku.

Kyūsei, Yoshimoto's collaborator, is represented by 118 verses, the largest number, followed by Yoshimoto himself with 79. The manner of the collection may be suggested by a few examples. The first bears the prefatory note, “Among the hundred links composed at a renga session held in his house when he was minister of the Right.”³⁶

… Spring in a mountain village
Where the blossoms seem so late.
… But just look at this—
Lingering in vernal mist,
Snow on the pine trees.(37)

In response to the conventional maeku, which mentions the slowness of spring flowers to reach the mountains, Yoshimoto points out the beauty of a tardy spring, when early mist hovers over the winter's lingering snow. The tsukeku shifts the mood from the forlorn aspect of a village, forgotten by the spring, to the discovery of a beauty visible nowhere else, a sight of such charm that cherry blossoms seem unnecessary. In another tsukeku Yoshimoto responded to an evocation of particular phenomena with a conceptualization:

… In the hills, the cries of deer,
In the fields, the piping insects.
… In every single thing
What sadness meets the senses
This autumn evening!(38)

Another, more complex linkage is found in Kyūsei's tsukeku to a spring maeku:

… Human life is uncertain,
But how long the days in spring!
… Rain is falling now
On the strings of white jewels—
Dew on the willows.(39)

The maeku is perhaps spoken by an old man, who contrasts the uncertainty of his life, which may end at any moment, with the unhurried calm of a spring day. In the tsukeku Kyūsei responded to the uncertainty of life by mention of tama no o (a string of jewels), a metaphor for the easily broken thread of life, and to the length of the spring days by mention of the willow, a tree whose twigs were often used by waka poets as metaphors for great length. Kyūsei's tsukeku not only continued the description of a spring scene but responded to both elements of the maeku.

In Renri Hishō Yoshimoto distinguished fifteen varieties of linkage—simple meaning, overtones, language, allusion, place-names, and so on.⁴⁰Tsukuba Shū is in a sense a series of demonstrations of exactly how these different linkages were performed. Yoshimoto naturally could not foresee that a time would come when people would stop wanting to compose renga. He was confident that Tsukuba Shū would serve as a model: “This work has been selected as an imperial collection and includes many different kinds of links. I am sure that people of future times will for this reason regard the present with awe.”⁴¹

One does not often find in the history of Japanese literature such confidence in the value of contemporary writings, but for Yoshimoto the present moment was the most important. He insisted that renga did not take into account the past or future, only the present and the challenge to compose a response to another's verse. Unlike the waka poets who attached such importance to their art that they staked their life on a single poem and were so wounded by criticism as to die of grief,⁴² renga poets were too absorbed with the task immediately before them to think of anything else.⁴³ Renga for Yoshimoto was a source of joy untroubled by the bothersome traditions that had grown up around the waka.

Nijō Yoshimoto was an extraordinary figure. Though he must have been obliged to spend most of each day dealing with official business, he somehow found time to devote long hours to poetry, especially renga. Together with Kyūsei, he compiled Ōan Shinshiki (New Rules of the Ōan Era, 1372), which served for seventy years as the standard rulebook for renga composition.⁴⁴ Yoshimoto's own renga did not rank with the finest examples of this genre, but his successors, building on his work, would make of renga one of the most distinctive genres of Japanese literature. …

Notes

1. For Yoshimoto's other literary activities, see pp. 974-76.

2. The name is more commonly read as Gusai, and Kyūsai is also found, but (as usual) I have followed Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten.

3. Text in Kidō Saizō and Imoto Nōichi, Rengaron Shū, Hairon Shū, p. 35. Yoshimoto's words were Renga wa uta no zattai nari. This has been translated by Carter in The Road, p. 9, as “Linked verse is one of the miscellaneous styles of uta.” Reference was being made to a passage in the Chinese preface to the Kokinshū. The translation by Leonard Grzanka in Laurel Rasplica Rodd, Kokinshū, p. 380, rendered the word zattai as “diverse forms.” Yoshimoto, following the Kokinshū preface, considered that renga, like the chōka or sedōka, was a variant form of waka.

4. See Kidō Saizō, Nijō Yoshimoto no Kenkyū, pp. 31-32. A headnote in Tsukuba Shū, the collection of renga compiled by Yoshimoto, says of a link by Kyūsei, “Composed at a one-thousand-link session at the house of the kampaku when he was minister of the interior.” (See Ijichi Tetsuo, Renga Shū, p. 124.) Yoshimoto served as minister of the interior (naidaijin) from 1340 to 1343.

5. Carter (The Road, p. 280) rendered Hekirenshō as “Some Warped Ideas on Linked Verse.” Renri Hishō probably meant “A Secret Selection of Renga Principles,” but renri was also used of branches that twine together, a metaphor for abiding love, and (in this context) perhaps also for the art of renga itself.

6. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 46.

7. The first three imperially sponsored collections of waka—the Kokinshū, Gosenshū, and Shūishū.

8. Places that have inspired poets of the past.

9. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 37. In Tsukuba Mondō Yoshimoto on the one hand discouraged beginners from imitating the language or events related in such ancient works as the Man'yōshū (p. 85); but he urged advanced practitioners of renga to study the Man'yōshū as “the roots of the uta” (p. 93).

10. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 38.

11. Ibid., p. 83. The Chinese philosophers included Mencius, Hsün Tzu, and Yang Chu.

12. Yoshimoto seems to be referring to persons who compose poetry orally, like the old man who composed the “first renga” with Yamato-takeru.

13. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 116. This quotation comes from Jūmon Saihishō (Most Secret Comments on Ten Questions), one of Nijō Yoshimoto's last works, written in 1383.

14. Man'yōshū 1635. For a translation of this joint effort, together with comments, see Keene, “Comic Tradition,” p. 244.

15. Yoshimoto's directives for renga usage were quoted in Renga Shinshiki Tsuika narabi ni Shinshiki Kin'an tō (The New Rules of Linked Verse, with Additions, New Ideas on the New Rules, and Other Comments) compiled in 1501 by Shōhaku (1443-1527). This work has been translated by Carter in The Road, pp. 41-72. Shōhaku's quotations from Yoshimoto's writings are mainly from Renri Hishō.

16. Text in Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 57. The last phrase (mentioning secondary words) seems to refer to words that, unlike “moon” (which can be mentioned several times), are not of primary importance; this category included such words as “morning moon” or “evening moon,” which were less important than the unqualified “moon.” See also Carter, The Road, pp. 43-44.

17. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, pp. 81-83.

18. Konishi Jin'ichi, Sōogi, pp. 18, 21.

19. Ibid, p. 82.

20. The religious associations of renga were by no means confined to Buddhism. Ise Jingū Shinkan Renga no Kenkyū by Okuno Jun'ichi is an important study of renga composed by Shintō priests at the Great Shrine of Ise.

21. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 36. This quotation is from Renri Hishō.

22. Ibid., p. 113.

23. Ibid., p. 86. In a Nō play, however, the ha section is usually the longest, often more than the jo and kyū combined. Other works of renga criticism give different proportions for the three tempi. See Carter, The Road, p. 93.

24. Miner in Japanese, p. 362, following Konishi, distinguished four grades of impressiveness in renga verse: ji or Ground; jimon or Ground-Design; monji or Design-Ground; and mon, Design. The four different varieties are discussed more fully by Miner on pp. 72-76. Nijō Yoshimoto used various terms in Tsukuba Mondō to designate the difference between verses that create a stong impression and those that provide the fundamental ground of the sequence. At this point in his discussion (p. 87) he used ji, ji renga, and ji uta for the plain verses, and shūitsu for the striking ones.

25. This matter was discussed by Konishi Jin'ichi in his article “Association and Progression: Principles of Integration in Anthologies and Sequences of Japanese Court Poetry, a.d. 900-1350.”

26. For a modern example of this tendency, see my Dawn to the West, II, p. 976.

27. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 87. For a detailed discussion of “design” and “ground” poems, see Carter, The Road, pp. 95-100.

28. From Mokujiki Ōgo, Mugonshō (Wordless Notes, 1958), quoted by Yamada Yoshio in Renga Gaisetsu, p. 49.

29. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 103.

30. The story is given in section 89 of Essays in Idleness of a priest who had won prizes in renga. For a translation, see Keene, Essays in Idleness, pp. 75-76.

31. Konishi, Sōgi, p. 76.

32. For an excellent study of this activity, see Ogata Tsutomu, Za no Bungaku. See also Tanaka Hiroshi, Chūsei Bungakuron Kenkyū, pp. 393-415, for a discussion of the formation of za. Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, “Za no Kankyō,” is especially valuable for the za of the performing arts.

33. For a discussion of solo renga, see Carter, The Road, p. 101.

34. Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 92.

35. Ibid., p. 113. Konishi, in Sōogi, pp. 105-7, called attention to the striking similarity of vocabulary in criticism concerning the two arts.

36. Yoshimoto was minister of the Right (Udaijin) between 1343 and 1347.

37. Text in Ijichi, Renga Shū, p. 149. This text differs somewhat from that given by Fukui Kyūzō in Tsukuba Shū, I, p. 40.

38. Ijichi, Renga Shū, p. 151; Fukui, Tsukuba, I, p. 116.

39. Ijichi, Renga Shū, pp. 110-11. The text given by Fukui in Tsukuba, I, p. 56, is somewhat different.

40. See Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, p. 41.

41. Ibid., p. 79. The quotation is from Tsukuba Mondō.

42. These examples refer to Minamoto no Yorizane, who prayed for inspiration in waka even at the cost of his life, and Fujiwara no Nagayoshi who, when his poetry was criticized by Fujiwara no Kintō, took ill and died. These anecdotes are related in Fukuro Zōshi. See Kidō and Imoto, Rengaron, pp. 82-83, notes.

43. Ibid.

44. See Carter, The Road, pp. 33-34. …