Teika Poetry, Poetics and Politics

Review: Teika and the Others: Poetics, Poetry, and Politics in Early Medieval Japan
Reviewed Work(s): The Making of Shinkokinsh by Robert N. Huey; Fujiwara no Teika

(1162-1241) et la notion d'excellence en posie: Thorie et pratique de la composition dans le
Japon classique by Michel Vieillard-Baron
Review by: Ivo Smits
Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 359-389
Published by: Sophia University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25066307
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Teika and the Others

Poetics, Poetry, and Politics
in Early Medieval Japan
Ivo Smits
Robert N. Huey. The Making of Shinkokinshu. xxi + 480 pages. Harvard Uni
versity Asia Center, 2002. Hardcover $49.50/?31.95/ 45.00.
Michel Vieillard-Baron. Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) et la notion d'excel
lence en po?sie: Th?orie et pratique de la composition dans le Japon classique.
534 pages. Paris: Coll?ge de France/Institut des Hautes ?tudes Japonaises,
2001. Softcover 24.00.
The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
So wrote Wallace Stevens in 1940,1 but one wonders if at the beginning of

the thirteenth century the poet Fujiwara no Teika UMSSc (or Sadaie,
1162-1241) might not have thought along similar lines. At the time, the
stage of Japanese poetry had changed in terms poetic as well as political. A war
had been fought, and a dramatic power shift was in the making, with the new
military government in far-off Kamakura tentatively moving towards control
over the old court in Kyoto. Ideas about poetry and its practice, too, had been
changing rather dramatically.
In a useful article on shifts in poetic practice, Robert N. Huey has defined two
developments that point to what he calls a "medievalization process" in the his
tory of Japanese poetry.2 This process, which reached a major turning point in
The author is lecturer at the Centre for Japanese and Korean Studies, Leiden University.
1 From "Of Modern Poetry." Stevens 1972, p. 174.
2 Huey 1990, esp. pp. 651-52.
360 Monumento Nipponica 59:3
the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, had little to do with political changes
and everything with shifts in cultural attitudes. The first development was an
intensification of arguments among poets over styles of composition and differ
ent approaches to poetry. These differences grew so strong that people became
"willing to 'go public' with their disagreements." Poetry, Huey writes, "moves
from social expression, about which people in a hierarchical environment are
likely to agree, to art, about which people in a more factionalized ... setting are
apt to disagree." The second development, linked to the first, was a tendency
among poets to group themselves in factions or schools (ie W) that became
increasingly exclusive. By Teika's day, poetry had largely become the pursuit
of lesser court nobles willing to act as keepers of a body of specialized knowl
edge, as was true of Teika himself, and had established itself as a possible career
track.
The new ideal pursued by these lesser courtiers was michi 31, the "way" prac
ticed by the artist. Scholars have come to regard this as the leading principle of
the medieval arts.3 Originally denoting a specialized skill, the term michi came
to embrace any kind of expertise, ranging from the practical artisan's techniques
to the composition of poetry. Poets themselves came to speak of "the way of
poetry" (uta no michi) as the steering course of their artistic lives, and this notion
underlay the development of the specialist or expert poet. Huey's first observa
tion, that poetry moves from social expression to art, is tied to the emergence of
this concept of michi. Until then poets had been courtiers for whom poetry was
merely one of an array of social assets.
Now definitely a matter for experts, the composition of poetry was held to
require a polished dexterity acquired through long practice. As Robert H. Brower
once pointed out, waka's technical history is one of growing sophistication in
handling a steadily decreasing choice of subject matter.4 Given this background
it is not surprising that poets became increasingly tradition conscious and that
waka tended more and more to resemble other waka. As with any poetic mode
shaped by a strong sense of formal conventions, waka had always had a "script"
of sorts, and poets had worked with templates of given repertoire and themes,
molding older versions into new variations. The "new stage" that Teika and oth
ers helped set, however, was a neoclassical one in which the past became a con
scious souvenir rather than a near-tangible object. Early- and mid-Heian poets
were more free of the weight of historical perspective and its corollary, the
acknowledgment of distance.
I am not in any way suggesting that early- and mid-Heian poets lacked a sense
of poetic history. Yet for them the accomplishments of the past, however glori
ous, provided a playing field for near-equal competition. By the late Heian period
this was no longer true. It is not coincidental that by the early twelfth century
3 The literary historian Konishi Jin'ichi /hEtt? was instrumental in the development of this
notion, which he first expounded in Konishi 1956. Since then he has continued to emphasize the
importance of the idea in the development of medieval literature.
4 Brower 1983, pp. 201-204.
Smits: Teika and the Others 361
one begins to find explicit expressions of frustration at being boxed in by the

burden of poetry's past. Minamoto no Toshiyori M?M1 (10557-1129), for exam
ple, in his treatise Toshiyori zuin? ?MfMM (Toshiyori's Poetics, early 1110s)
writes: "There are no more interesting ideas left, nor does one find any words
that have not been used before. How then can we, the people in this last stage of
the world, create a novel style?"5 While the trope of a sense of saturation and
exhaustion figures in most tradition-conscious literatures, for medieval Japanese
poets, how to deal with the literary past loomed as a particularly large issue, one
to which they found a distinctive solution.
The Past as Allusion

This solution centered around the famous technique of allusive variation, or
honkadori ifW\M 0. Essentially, this involved using elements of older poems as
material for new ones. Quite a few commentators have seen the development of
honkadori as reflecting the concern of medieval poets to assert their place in an
unbroken cultural history. Living at a juncture in history marked by challenges
to traditional political authority, court poets found in the cultural and literary
codes of the aristocracy one of very few areas where something of the old world
could be salvaged and put to use. Another reading, not at all incompatible with
the first, is to see honkadori as a creative answer to the question how to deal with
the heavy weight of dead poets.6
As David Bialock points out in his important article on notions of poetic bor
rowing in late-Heian and Kamakura poetic discourse, conscious use of older
poems was already a stock technique in the mid-Heian period, but it is debatable
to what extent it was seen as commendable before Teika's day. Until then, poems
that borrowed poetic diction from older poems were mostly "momentary reex
pressions of poetic themes sanctioned by tradition" and signaled the poet's
acknowledgment of and participation in the poetic tradition. Teika embodies a
process of "deepening textuality," starting sometime in the eleventh century, in
which a small group of poet-scholars (shish? i_?) developed a discourse that
5 Yominokoshitarufushi mo naku, tsuzukemoraseru kotoba mo miezu. Ika ni shite ka wa, yo no

sue no hito no, mezurashiki sama ni mo torinasubeki ?fc&tDZ-Vfc&Whf?K^ ~3 "3 (^ fe ?> -?* <?>
mh&7L~fo l^^CtT^H 7fc?>t__<?>?<ZX tb^ZLgWzhtQfc't^'?. Toshiyori zuin?,
p. 42. David Bialock puts the cutting line for a troubled relationship with poetic tradition some
what earlier and already sees the mid-Heian views of poetic borrowing as one that exudes "a strong
sense of the poets' frustration" (Bialock 1994, p. 187). Bialock's main argument for such a mid
Heian view comes, however, from a passage in Fujiwara no Kint?'s WW>{?ii (966-1041) Shinsen
zuin? frStfIB?i (New Poetics, ca. 1001?) that I am inclined to regard as a plea for poets to stand
their own ground in the face of tradition (Bialock 1994, p. 183). Where Kint? presents being
"novel" (mezurashi) as a distinct possibility, Toshiyori, while still adhering to that mid-Heian
poetic ideal, suggests that is has become unattainable. That said, Toshiyori has become known as
a poet who actively sought innovation and indeed attempted to broaden both the vocabulary and
repertoire of waka.
6 Several scholars have connected the two arguments. See, for example, Raud 1996, p. 104;
and Kamens 1997, pp. 42-45. Robert Huey, on the other hand, stresses the element of revitaliza
tion. The neoclassicism of Teika and others was "not a reaction to loss." Huey 2002, pp. 1-2.
stressed the textual nature of poems over their orality. Poetry became something
fixed on paper, and therefore more easily subjected to dissection and restructur
ing. This was true not only of single poems but of whole anthologies as well.
The Shinkokinsh? fr~E^? (New Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems), the
early-thirteenth-century imperial waka anthology, reinterpreted poetic tradition
by selecting earlier poems that deviated from the standards of the periods in
which they had been composed but fitted in with the new poetics of this anthol
ogy. As Bialock suggests, "the Shinkokinsh? may be read as one monumental
troping of the earlier poetic tradition, a massive amplification of what poets like
Teika were achieving by troping single poems through their use o? honkadori."1
Poetry's increasingly textual nature implied that poems almost inevitably
echoed other poems. As Haruo Shirane has indicated, medieval waka were not
necessarily mimetic in the sense that a poem was not simply read as a represen
tation of a given setting or state of mind; rather, it could be "an 'open' text in
which each word or phrase refers, not to a fixed referent (a given scene), but to
other signs and signifiers."8 If waka were to be mimetic, mimesis implied "a
poem in the likeness of other poems."9 The most overt acknowledgment of this
state was the explicit grounding of a poem on the residue of an older poem.
Edward Kamens has recently discussed a fascinating but little known group of
poems by Teika that seems the extreme culmination of the honkadori technique.
Teika composed them as an offering (kuy? ?Se) to dead poets, and in this in
stance it is tempting to read allusive variation as a salutation to a past that is very
dead but can be resuscitated momentarily in a gesture of poetic acknowledg
ment. As Kamens writes, "in a sense all waka poems are devotional: they pay
homage to all others and to the practices of waka-making and reading them
selves."10
The Limitations of Waka

The preeminence of allusive variation in medieval waka underscores that only
in certain conceptual categories could poetry truly branch out. "Words" (kotoba
M) was not really one of them. Teika's slogan of "old words, new minds" sug
gests that poetry's vocabulary had indeed become a stable, if stultified, code and
that poetry was less about words than about the new meanings they might absorb.
If in poetic thinking kotoba was always in precarious balance with kokoro >b
("mind," "idea," "meaning"), then waka was more and more proving itself a "poem
of the mind." Take, for example, the opening of Teika's treatise Eiga no taigai
SkBÎS; (An Outline of Poetry Composition, 1233, or possibly before 1218):
For the idea (kokoro), one must privilege the new. (One must look for ideas not
yet drawn on by others and compose on those.) For the words (kotoba), one must
7 Bialock 1994, esp. pp. 195, 197-99.

8 Shirane 1990, p. 73.
9 Kamens 2002, p. 380.
10 Kamens 2002, p. 383.
use the old. (One must adhere to the usage of exemplary poets in the three impe
rial anthologies; one may also use poems by poets of the past contained in the
Shinkokinsh?.)11
If waka became studies of working with limitations, then Fujiwara no Teika

(1162-1241) et la notion d'excellence en po?sie, the new book by Michel
Vieillard-Baron, is a study of how these limitations were examined and presented
as artistic possibilities. Vieillard-Baron discusses Teika's ideas about honkadori
within the larger context of Teika's overall poetics. His book opens with trans
lations of three major treatises by Teika: Kindai sh?ka ifif^Sft (Superior Poems
of Our Time, 1209), Eiga no taigai, and Maigetsush? ttJ3 # (Monthly Notes,
1219?). The first two consist of an introduction by Teika, followed by a series
of poems he selected to illustrate different notions of "superior poems" (sh?ka
5f 3ft). Of these, Vieillard-Baron translates the introductions. Maigetsush? is a
longer treatise, without such poems. The appendices of Vieillard-Baron's book
contain additional translations of a portion of Toshiyori zuin? and the complete
Hie no yashiro no utaawase H ^ ttlftln (Poetry Competition at the Hie Shrine,
1235), a poem series by the Rokuj? r\$k poet Fujiwara no Tomoie m?E$?M
(1182-1258) with commentary by Teika. Of the three Teika treatises, Eiga no
taigai is written in kanbun. There is some question whether Maigetsush?, per
haps the best known of the three, is actually by Teika himself, although the gen
eral consensus veers towards authentication. The three have long been available
in English translations,12 and readers who feel ill at ease in French will proba
bly not quickly consult Vieillard-Baron's translations.
The three translations are followed by five chapters on poetic terms and ideas.
These are organized to constitute a description and analysis of Teika's poetic
legacy: (1) "Words and Sense" (discussing kotoba and kokoro); (2) "Form and
Style" (discussing sama fi, sugata ^5, and tei #0; (3) "Variations and Allusions"
(discussing honkadori and honzetsu ?fWi)\ (4) "The Topic and Its Essence"
11 Kokoro wa atarashiki o motte saki to nashi. . . kotoba wafuruki o motte mochiyubeshi. . .

tjt^?r&ft*****^^ Eiga no taigai, NKBZ 50,
p. 493. This slogan Teika inherited from his father, the equally famous poet Shunzei
Toshinari, 1114-1204). Incidentally, whether the definition of "old" here encompas
from Japan's oldest waka anthology, the Man'y?sh? Tj??tifi (Ten Thousand Leaves, m
century), is subject to debate. Fujihira Haruo ?^PÎS in the NKBZ 50 edition a
Vieillard-Baron think that it does, while Hisamatsu Sen'ichi ^f?i#-^ in NKBT 65 claim
does not. See Eiga no taigai, NKBZ 50, p. 493, note 4; Vieillard-Baron 2001, p. 83, n
Eiga no taigai, NKBT 65, p. 114, note 3. Teika may personify the neoclassical r??va
Man'y?sh? poetry, but his specification of "the three imperial anthologies" (sandais
i.e., the Kokinsh? T&^?ft, Gosensh? ?^??A, and Sh?ish? jp jjHH) seems to tally with t
remark in Maigetsush? that only advanced poets should try to emulate Man 'y?sh? poetr
an explanation lies in that Teika's treatises were intended for beginning poets.
12 The complete Kindai sh?ka, that is, both Teika's introduction and the long poem
translated in Brower and Miner 1967. The introduction to Eiga no taigai is translated
always accurately, in Tsunoda et al. 1964, pp. 178-79. A complete translation by Hiro
Eiga no taigai, including all exemplary poems, can be found in Sato and Watson 1981,
A translation of Maigetsush? is available in Brower 1985. Another English translat
getsush? is included in Izutsu and Izutsu 1981, pp. 79-96.
(discussing dai M and hoi ^M); and (5) "Excellence in Poetry." The first two
chapters deal with elementary concepts in waka poetics. "Sense" or idea (kokoro)
and wording (kotoba) were the fundamental elements that a poet needed to bring
into some sort of balance, whereas form (sugata) and style (tei, sama) were
modes of achieving that balance. Honkadori and honzetsu (basing a poem on
parts of a prose passage?such as a passage from Tales of Ise or The Tale of
Genji?or a Chinese poem) were important techniques, while dai, or assigned
topics, were so widespread in waka practice that they had become a central focus
for poetic conception and vocabulary; how well a poem interpreted a topic's
essential quality, or hoi (alternatively read honi), determined its success.
Confronted with the broad ramifications of these categories, it is easy to under
stand Vieillard-Baron' s claim that "It is not so much reality that the poet explores
as his mnemonic, linguistic, and creative resources."13
In Fujiwar a no Teika et la notion d'excellence en po?sie, Vieillard-Baron has
deliberately limited his focus to Teika's theoretical texts, which he sets off
against a number of treatises by other poets and many waka. To the extent that
different identities can be distinguished in so remote a historical figure, the book
presents Teika as teacher-poet, a role he grew into from his fifties onwards. Such
an approach is quite rare in Western studies of classical Japanese literature. The
closest in English to Vieillard-Baron's book is probably Clifton W. Royston's
1974 dissertation, "The Poetics and Poetry Criticism of Fujiwara Shunzei (1114
1204)," a study of the poetic views developed by Teika's father.14 A remote asso
ciate, in its way, is Edward Kamens's study of allusion and the rhetoric of poetic
toponyms (utamakura Bttfc). Kamens dips deeply into material mostly from the
thirteenth century, but through his analysis of the operation of poetic coding,
also provides a generic study of waka-working-in-a-tradition.15
Translations-cum-introductions aside, Western studies of late-Heian and
early-Kamakura waka, roughly the age of the Shinkokinsh? and the period lead
ing up to it, are rare. Among them, few indeed treat the poetic ideas of individ
ual poets of this age from a strictly literary rather than biographical perspective.16
This is curious, because it is a period in waka history that is generally regarded
as a highpoint. One cannot blame the scarcity of Western studies of early
medieval waka solely on the shadow of Robert H. Brower's and Earl Miner's
monumental Japanese Court Poetry, published in 1961.17 After all, although not
numerous in absolute terms, there have been significantly more post-1961 stud
ies of the Man yy?sh? and early- to mid-Heian waka, on the one hand, and of later
13 Vieillard-Baron 2001, p. 369.

14 SeeRoyston 1974b.
15 See Kamens 1997.
16 Perhaps Brower and Miner 1967, Brower 1976, and Brower 1985 combined come close to
such a study of Teika, but they are not an integrated effort. For Many?sh? poets, the Kokinsh?,
and later medieval poets there are about two handfuls of such analytical studies, but the fact
remains that Western studies of waka in general still are relatively few.
17 Brower and Miner 1961.
medieval waka, on the other, as of waka and waka discourse from the Shin
kokinsh? age.18 If, as Donald Keene asserts, "[t]he three finest anthologies of
classical Japanese poetry are, by general consent, the Man fy?sh?, the Kokinsh?,
and the Shin Kokinsh?,"19 the balance implicit in such a notion has applied pri
marily to scholarship in Japanese; it has not been reflected in Western waka stud
ies. The romantic view used to be that the poems included in the Man'y?sh? 75
H? (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, mid-eighth century) represented the
first, uninhibited blossoming of Japanese poetry, while the Kokinsh? "Ef^?
(Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems, 905) illustrated the codification of
court standards for waka?and that was about all you needed to know. Apart
from Teika, the Shinkokinsh? simply was not as interesting as an object of study.
Another factor explaining the scarcity of studies focusing on twelfth- and thir
teenth-century waka discourse is that from early on the field has leaned towards
examining poetic theory in terms of long-term developments in the history of
poetry, or in relation to specific issues such as poetic borrowing.20 Alternatively,
those who emphasize social and cultural approaches to literary history have
tended to interpret poetic treatises as works meant to position their authors and
associates within the literary field; poetry criticism is seen as a strategy for assert
ing preeminence in a literary world that put a high symbolic value on theoreti
cal texts.
Vieillard-Baron's aim is the decoding of waka, specifically the early-thirteenth
century modes of appreciation of waka. To this end he adopts a hermeneutical
approach. His starting point is that, through solid philological work, one can
reconstruct the authorial intent of a text. "The texts are there, we must make them
speak!" he declares, underscoring his primary interest in texts as coherent enti
ties in and of themselves.21 Readers of his book will learn little about Teika as
a historical figure, but much about poetic notions in classical and early medie
val Japan and the way in which Teika discussed them. Along the way Vieillard
Baron stresses an important point: treatises were intended, or at least presented,
as didactic texts. Exposure to such texts implied an initiation in a system of ideas
about a creative act. The ultimate aim was practical: to train poets.
Questions of "Style "

Poetic treatises are difficult material. A notable poetic experiment that Vieillard
Baron takes up in his discussion of "form and style" well illustrates this truism.
This experiment, conducted on the twenty-second day of the third month of 1202,
18 An exception might be made for Western studies of the relations between Buddhism and
waka, dating mostly from the 1970s and 1980s, but this is not the place to discuss these. Also, I
am not counting later articles by Brower. Even so, it is intriguing to note how little attention has
been devoted outside Japan to such massive waka treatises from the twelfth and thirteenth cen
turies as Toshiyori zuin?, Fukuro z?shi |?i?$S (The Book of Folded Pages, 1159), or Yakumo
mish? ASWP (Secret Notes on Poetry, 1220s or 1230s).
19 Keene 1993, p. 643.
20 An early, but still readable and useful example of the first approach is Benl 1951.
resulted in "Poems in Three Modes," or Santai waka HftfrUK, discussed and

translated into English a decade ago by Roselee Bundy.22 As Vieillard-Baron
and Bundy explain, Santai waka marks the first time in the history of poetic prac
tice that "style" or "mode" (tai or tei ft; occasionally sama or y? ti, or even sug
ata) was used as a prescriptive format, rather than an analytical tool. According
to the poet Kamo no Ch?mei il?^ (11557-1216), Retired Emperor Go-Toba
f?MM (1180-1239, r. 1183-1198), who initiated the poem series, requested that
poets compose not on given topics but in a given mode or style. "Compose six
poems in different modes (sugata)," he commanded,
Spring and summer poems should be made thick and large (futoku ?ki ni), au
tumn and winter should be thin and desolate (hosoku karabi), and love and travel
should be charming and gentle (en ni yasashiku). If you are not equal to the task,
explain why. This is because I wish to examine the extent to which you under
stand poetic style (uta no sama).12'
Go-Toba's request was a novel way of specifying the type of waka aimed for at
poetry meetings (utakai Sft?). Both Ch?mei and Teika confessed they found this
extremely hard to do. Two poets even withdrew from participating in the exper
iment. The problem seems to have lain less in the formulation of the three modes
(the first and third have also been translated as "expansive grandeur" and "evoca
tive loveliness")24 than in the idea that poems were to be conceived in terms of
characteristics rather than as elaborations of a concrete topic (dai). The notion
of style or mode was an old one in waka discourse, but it would appear that it
was not until the twelfth century that "style" was accorded a vital place in poetic
discussions.
Early-thirteenth-century poets would have come across the idea of "style"
(sama) in Ki no Tsurayuki's SUt? (8727-945) preface to the Kokinsh?, where
it was used in close analogy to the notion of "principle" or genre (gi ?, Ch. yi)
in Chinese poetry and seems to have been more or less interchangeable with the
notion of sugata ("form," "appearance," or "configuration"). They would also
remember it from Fujiwara no Kint?'s ?HîM? (966-1041) Shinsen zuin? Sr?ft
MM (New Poetics, ca. 10017), in which Kint? vaguely referred to "the style
(sama) of Tsurayuki and [?shik?chi no] Mitsune [?MN]l?tM (active ca. 900
920)" or tagged the use of different words with the same meaning as "a style that
must be avoided" (saru sama). But apart from two or three mid-Heian texts that
rubricized poems into "styles" (usually ten of thorn, jittei +ft),25 "style" seems
22 Vieillard-Baron 2001, pp. 176-80; and Bundy 1994. See also Huey 2002, pp. 146-49, for the
exact chronology of the event.
23 Mumy?sh? 66; pp. 77-78.
24 Bundy 1994, p. 197.
25 A seminal text in this respect is Wakatai jisshu ?n9W?+i? (Ten Types of Poetic Styles), also
known as Tadamine jittei >S^+f$. It is dated 945 and attributed to the poet Mibu no Tadamine
3r??^ (dates unknown, active ca. 905-920), but probably is a late-tenth- or early-eleventh
century forgery that builds on an earlier list of styles, Waka jittei ?PS^+#^ (ca. 1019), attributed
to Minamoto no Michinari iSJ?S? (7-1019). The text is innovative in that it actually supplies, in
until the twelfth century to have been a relatively undeveloped concept in dis
cussions of poetry. In other words, although an old term, "style" (tei) was in
many ways a novel critical concept that would provide an important addition to
the old tripartite thinking in terms of "idea," "concept," or "theme" (kokoro), "word
ing" (kotoba), and "form" (sugata). As such, it became the object of elaborate and
even?dare I say it??systematic attention in late classical and medieval poetic
treatises. Teika's are undoubtedly the best known of these, but we should remem
ber that in 1202 Teika had as yet to write the first of his treatises.
This is undoubtedly one reason for the difficulty Teika experienced in carry
ing out Go-Toba's command. The challenge we face today in delving into
Teika's explication of such issues in his treatises is perhaps of a somewhat dif
ferent nature. One problem in coming to terms with classical Japanese poetics
is the vagueness and fluidity of its vocabulary. This fluidity perhaps derives less
from waka discourse itself than from a misleading sense of compatibility with
Western poetic vocabulary. The terms tei, sama, and sugata have overlapping
semantic fields because they all deal with the conjunction of sense (kokoro) and
expression (kotoba).26 As such, all might be translated as "style." Yet, one might
also argue that sugata tends to express the overall qualities of an individual poem,
whereas tei usually is a more abstract critical category that may be illustrated by
a poem but that does not claim to capture the specifics of one particular poem
alone. Sama seems to hover between these two terms, letting itself be equated
with one or the other as the occasion arises.27
If we take Maigetsush? to be authentic, Teika launched his list of ten styles in
1219. Here is the passage that introduces them:
Those styles I regard as fundamental are the following four of the ten styles that
I have designated previously: the style of mystery and depth [y?gen y? ffl?;tl],
the style of appropriate statement [koto shikarubekiy? V pJ$M?], the style of ele
gant beauty [uruwashiki y? H ti], and the style of deep feeling [ushin tei ?p?X?].
kanbun, a short assessment of the nature of ten poetic styles with five waka as examples of each.
Some of the styles focus on diction, whereas others stress conceptual exquisiteness, and the term
"style" obviously covers a wide range in conceptual thinking. The number ten as a defining range
was borrowed from Chinese poetic manuals. See Wakatai jisshu. Personally, I would not count
Kint?'s Waka kuhon f?W? fiSh (Nine Grades of Poetry, after 1009?) as a treatise on "style," because
it is a ranking, from good to bad, of different types of poetry and not a discussion of potentially
equal if often incomparable poetic modes.
26 Vieillard-Baron 2001, pp. 173-74.
27 As Rein Raud writes, "Style is thus, for Japanese poetics, a mode of organizing and devel
oping kokoro, and not of expressing it," and "a tei does not inevitably refer to a particular usage
of the poetic language but rather to the way how the content is conceived in the first place." Raud
pairs kokoro with kotoba and f?tei fif? ( = tei) with sugata as two important axes of traditional
waka discourse. A third axis is traditional-modern. Raud 1996, pp. 98-105. Nevertheless, we
should also note that the three terms, when used to indicate a "style," are often treated as equiv
alent. The entries for both sama and tei in the glossary of poetic terminology ("Karon y?go" W(
frofflfp) in NKBZ 50, for example, refer the reader to the entry for sugata. Another point to keep
in mind is that the meaning of such terms likely shifted over time. Why should a tenth-century
poet necessarily mean the same thing as a thirteeth-century poet when he speaks about sama!
Even among these styles are occasionally to be found poems that have archaic
elements, but the general effect [sugata] is such that their archaic style is not dis
pleasing. After you have developed the ability to compose freely in these gentle
and amiable styles [sunao ni yasashiki sugata T?fiKê b^^], such others
as the lofty style [take takaki y? ft?fl], the style of visual description [miru y?
Jtfl], the style of clever treatment [omoshirokiyo?S?M], the style of novel treat
ment [hitofushi aru y? W-^?fpfS], and the style of exquisite detail [komayaka naru
y? or n? y? ?j!t?] are quite easy to learn. The demon-quelling style [kiratsu no
tei %iiL(D{if\ is the one that you will find most difficult to master . . ,28
As Vieillard-Baron points out, Teika's ten styles fall into three categories, re
flecting three successive stages in the trajectory of a poet's training. First, there
are the four "fundamental styles" (moto no sugata) that contain, in the words of
Vieillard-Baron, "elements essential to the art of poetry": y?geny?, koto shikaru
beki y?, uruwashiki y?, and ushin tei?all of which elements are, Teika writes,
"gentle and amiable" (sunao ni yasashiki) modes. In an essay tying Teika's ten
styles to the three modes of Go-Toba's experiment of 1202, Kubota Jun ;Xi?EB
W* makes the plausible argument that Teika's four "fundamental styles" largely
overlap with Go-Toba's three modes. Especially Go-Toba's "charming and gen
tle" (en ni yasashiku, echoing Teika's ideal of the "gentle and amiable") inter
sects with Teika's y?gen y?, uruwashiki y?, and ushin tei, making it a style that
characterized much of the new poetics strived at by the Shinkokinsh? editors.29
Of the "style of deep feeling" (ushin tei), one of his own creations,30 Teika stated
that it was in many ways the ultimate style, in that it "should extend over the
other nine styles," as these should also carry a "conviction of feeling," or ushin.
Indeed, Teika's poetics have become closely associated with this notion o? ushin.
The subsequent five styles are marked by an emphasis on expression. The last
style, "the demon-quelling style," is in a category of its own: it is difficult to mas
ter as it must be reigned in to produce poems that adhere to Teika's classical
ideal of "gentleness and sensibility" (yasashiku mono aware).
In a survey of the different ways in which the notion of the demon-quelling
style was used by medieval poets and noh dramatists, Paul S. Atkins remarks
that "The demon-quelling-style, like y?gen, in my view was an 'empty sign' that
could be reconfigured to suit the particular needs of an age, a genre, a literary
fiction, or an individual.... My point is precisely that the demon-quelling style
lacks an essential meaning; as an empty sign, it functioned as an element within
multiple aesthetic systems, never nearing a fixed significance of its own."31 His
remark, of course, takes into account the long history of the kiratsu tei (or oni
hishigi tei, or rakki tei), but also points to the openness of critical concepts in
medieval Japan. Focusing more exclusively on Teika, Vieillard-Baron, too,
28 Maigetsush?, p. 127; tr. Brower 1985, pp. 410-12.

29 Kubota 1994, esp. p. 103. For a gendered conception of "charming and gentle," see below,
p. 374.
31 Atkins 2003, p. 318.
makes clear that the styles were not always easily comparable concepts. In judg
ments (hanshi m%) of poetry competitions utaawase W\ r?, for example, the word
uruwashi, or uruwashiki y?, "the style of elegant beauty," could refer to the poem
as a whole or to its expression, or it could indicate the absence of certain errors,
a "correct" poem in contrast to a flawed poem.32 It makes one wonder how Teika
envisaged this as a prescriptive style. The vagueness is in part due to the terse
ness of the remarks in Maigetsush? concerning the characteristics of the styles.
No doubt it was for this reason that later treatises by Teika's descendants repeat
edly expanded on his list with examples and substyles.
Vieillard-Baron's strategy for dealing with the abrupt introduction of such
terms is to pair them with remarks by Teika in other treatises and especially with
the critical vocabulary used in judgments at poetry competitions (utaawase)?7*
In fact, one of the great strengths of Vieillard-Baron's book is that it ties the
development of critical vocabulary and thinking in poetic treatises to the prac
tice of poetry contests. Already in 1974 Clifton W. Royston argued in favor of
including judgments of poetry competitions into the evaluation of classical and
early medieval poetic discourse, but few have followed his lead.34 It is instruc
tive to see how ideas posited in treatises built on a process by which these were
developed in discussions at open albeit formal (hare B#) occasions. These con
tests had multiple legacies: they were a site to mold poetic discourse, but in
Teika's day they had also become a laboratory to produce material for antholo
gies.
The New Kokinsh?
Although all his treatises are post-Shinkokinsh?, Teika's name as a poet is invari
ably tied to the compilation of the eighth imperial waka anthology. Teika was
involved in numerous compilation projects, but the Shinkokinsh? was a collab
orative effort. This early-thirteenth-century project is the subject of Robert
Huey's new, rich book, The Making of Shinkokinsh?. At first hearing, the title
evokes images of documentaries on Hollywood productions. The parallel is per
haps not so far-fetched, for the Shinkokinsh? was just as megalomaniacal and
protracted a production as, say, Titanic or Apocalypse Now, and Huey presents
his readers with not only the occasional misgivings of director and crew but also
many a mundane detail of what happens on the set, down to the lunch menus.
The density of detail can be rather overwhelming. Huey himself professes a
fear that because of it his book may be difficult to read,35 but he obviously also
believes that the details are meaningful. The accumulation of specific points of
information reflects the "terrifying complexity" of a culture, to borrow from the
32 Vieillard-Baron 2001, pp. 210, 212.

33 The links between the critical vocabulary used in utaawase judgments and the styles set out
in Maigetsush? also indicates, Vieillard-Baron observes, that Teika did not favor any particular
style; his point was that a poet must master them all. Vieillard-Baron 2001, pp. 248-49.
34 Royston 1974a.
35 Huey 2002, p. vii.
anthropologist Clifford Geertz, and diving into detail can help to make sense of
that complexity. Huey suggests as much in stating his aim for his history of the
compilation process of the Shinkokinsh?. Noting his debt to the insights of two
important modern scholars, Kubota Jun and Ariyoshi Tamotsu #pf{?, he
declares that "if ... I could, building on Kubota and Ariyoshi, bring in a range
of other details?historical context, factional disputes, judgment styles in con
tests, Go-Toba's ability to mediate?a much fuller picture of the age would
emerge.... The results will... also reveal much about how people thought and
framed their thoughts and how they worked in medieval Japan."36
Huey's work breaks new ground in Western studies of early medieval cultural
life. His subject is not the text of the Shinkokinsh?, but the making of the text.
Invoking with approval Kubota Jun's remark that this was less "the age of
Shinkokinsh?" than "the age of Go-Toba," Huey sees the anthology as a tool for
Go-Toba to craft hegemony at a court that functioned under his wings. In essence
he provides a close, chronologically structured examination of the political back
ground and sociocultural history of the anthology's compilation. The opening
chapter is entitled "The Political Context." As Huey points out, "poetry was a
form of [court] service,"37 meaning that poetry could be a career, if a poet could
find the right backing of a powerful patron from the imperial family or the regent
house. In the first section of the opening chapter, Huey considers from this per
spective the competition for dominance in literary life at court between the poets
of the Mikohidari fP?fc house, to which Teika belonged, and the Rokuj?. The
Mikohidari poets' formidable weapon was honkadori?hence the heading
"Politics of Allusion" given this section, one assumes. In the next section,
"Politics at Court," Huey shifts his attention to a power struggle for control over
court matters and the negotiations this required with the new regime in
Kamakura. Huey connects these two constituent elements of his discussion,
poets vying for recognition of their craft and high nobility vying for dominance
at court, with the observation that "[n]ormally, one barometer of relative stand
ing in Heian and Kamakura court politics is sponsorship of poetic activity."38
The sponsorship of literary activities was a way for politically ambitious nobles
to show they were power players within the limited but symbolically important
confines of court matters. For instance, the ability to bring together at a contest
poets from rival factions demonstrated "public clout." This was, Huey argues
convincingly, an age of "notions of government in which ritual, art, and politics
are tightly bound."39
Huey seems almost reluctant to put forward this argument, however. By this
I mean that the passages formulating the essentials of his views are short and far
apart, divided by larger sections presenting historical data. In fact, this is Huey's
36 Huey 2002, pp. 8-9.

37 Huey 2002, p. 18.
38 Huey 2002, p. 31.
39 Huey 2002, p. 302.
basic approach, and it explains the mass of detail: the book aims to present as
much material as possible so as to build up the evidence for the author's case.
In itself this is a laudable object, but one wishes that at some point in this chap
ter Huey had stepped back from his material and allowed himself to reflect a lit
tle longer on the ways in which such strategic alliances between poets and patrons
ultimately frame the history of artistic discourses in terms of power. It is unde
niable that Go-Toba, imperial princes such as Shukaku Hosshinn? Î???u?
(1150-1202), or members of the regent house were political or economic heavy
weights in court society and that as patron-poets they were also players in the
cultural field. If literary life is of use in the larger field of power, then relations
between literary agents are not unrelated to larger power relations. A sociologist
sees literature as "part of the larger social order. It is not the 'expression of soci
ety' but an integral part of it."40 Certainly in medieval Japan poetry was tied to
power play and to attempts to solidify or restructure the social order of court
society?and later that outside court society as well. In crafting their art, poets
helped craft their surroundings as well. There is no particular need to invoke
Pierre Bourdieu here, but since Huey is driving at an analysis of the intersec
tions between the political and the literary domains in early-Kamakura Japan,
readers will be interested to hear more of his views on the matter. Huey's nar
rative of the Shinkokinsh? compilation as a social process amply illustrates such
intersections, but if his book is rich in detailed illustration, it is thinner in an ana
lytical structure tying the detail to the schema sketched in the first chapter.
On another level, Huey's attention to detail perhaps also reflects the two main
primary sources of this study. Huey incorporates large passages from two early
Kamakura texts into his narrative. One is a memoir in Japanese (wabun), Mina
moto no Ienaga nikki WM& B IB (Memoirs of Minamoto no Ienaga), the other is
a kanbun journal, Teika's Meigetsuki tyiBVi (Record of a Clear Moon), kept by
the poet during most of his life. Ienaga (11737-1234) was one of Go-Toba's
retainers, appointed by the retired monarch as chief recorder (kaik? MM) to the
Poetry Bureau (Wakadokoro ingKrJJr) that was installed in 1201 and was to func
tion as the headquarters of the Shinkokinsh? compilation committee. While
Ienaga's memoirs have the traits of a literary work intended to construct retroac
tively an ideal narrative, Meigetsuki for the most part shares the characteristics
of most courtier journals of classical Japan: it is a source book, albeit with often
intriguing personal asides, a careful notation of events that might one day serve
as the answer to questions of precedent. Symbolic are the diagrams of the seating
arrangements at poetry meetings found repeatedly in the pages of such diaries.41
I, for one, am often tempted to see such diagrams as charts of the intersections
40 Viala 1988, p. 565.

41 See, for example, Teika's diagram of the seating arrangements at a poetry meeting in honor
of the Man'y?sh? poet Hitomaro. Huey 2002, p. 152. In a note, not translated by Huey, Teika
comments on his diagram: "Although it is nothing important, I note this down anyway" (sashitaru
koto ni arazu to iedomo, kore o ch?-su 8t#EfSH?l?:?L). It gives us a hint of just how far courtiers
would go in capturing detail. Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 263; Kennin 2(1202).5.26.
between the literary and the political realms: as so often in rituals, the best seats
are reserved for participants of the highest rank, but the central place is given to
the performance?the writing table (bundai ;? &) for the fair copies and the
reader (k?ji ISSU) chanting the poems. The poets sit towards the back and watch
the patrons listen to their work.
Teika and other courtiers were obsessed with detail. In a telling passage, Teika
reports a visit from Regent Kuj? Yoshitsune A^S8 (1169-1206), who had
come to tell him what had happened at a banquet held at the request of Go-Toba
in 1205 to celebrate the (near) completion of the Shinkokinsh?. The plan to hold
the banquet had aroused considerable controversy, and Teika had absented him
self. In Meigetsuki he nevertheless described at length the protocol adhered to
during the banquet. His account is so minute and graphic as to make one forget
that he is recording not what he witnessed but what he heard had happened that
night.42 Protocol as a governing principle of court life seems fairly universal;
protocol is ritualized social conduct, and in ritual it is detail that makes all the
difference. If Teika and the other Poetry Bureau fellows (yoriudo WA) were
crafting a new protocol for the compilation of state anthologies, Huey's book at
times reads as an effort to retrace that making of protocol. He himself remarks
that his book is conceived in a "journal-like approach,"43 by which he means that
its organization is strictly chronological and the reader slowly progresses from
the year 1200 to 1208, when the Shinkokinsh? was more or less finished. In such
a reconstruction, very few details are unimportant. Just as Teika's descendants
continuously referred to his journal over the centuries for information about
precedents, so shall Western students of medieval waka and cultural lore turn to
Huey's book in years to come. They will be rewarded.44
At the same time, however, Huey's exhaustive diachronic approach, like
Teika's journal, somewhat obscures certain themes, apart from the relationship
between poetry and politics, that he likewise seems to wish to emphasize. These
include, for example, "women's poems," Go-Toba's desire to produce "inter
esting" poetry and the reason why poems win at preselection matches, and wakan
fttfH matters. Below follow some remarks on the issues raised by these subthemes
running through the book.
Engendering Poetry: Women's Poems

On several occasions Huey points out that Go-Toba felt it was essential to have
women participate in the process leading up to the compilation of his anthology.
The question emerges as to why. "Woman's poem" (onna uta tcWO was an
42 For further information about the banquet, see below, pp. 381-82.
43 Huey 2002, p. 352.
44 The appearance of Huey's book more or less coincides with that of an article in French, by
Michel Vieillard-Baron, that also describes the history of the Shinkokinsh?' s difficult birth by con
trasting Ienaga's and Teika's narratives. As such, the article provides a condensed version of the
plotline of Huey's book, although, by virtue of its brevity, it cannot touch on all the sources used
by Huey. See Vieillard-Baron 2003.
established critical term by the beginning of the thirteenth century and figures
as such in the assessments of poems in poetry contests. Like most critical
vocabulary, the term was a fluid one, encompassing a rather broad range of con
ceptual notions. It could mean: (1) a poem composed by a woman (referring to
the poet's biological sex); (2) a poem composed as though by a woman (what
one might call the gender of the poet's persona)?the "waiting woman" motif
would be a typical example; or (3) a poem with an expression that was some
how deemed feminine, regardless of its subject matter (the poem's gendered lan
guage or style). Obviously, these notions could easily overlap. Huey cites an
example from Sengohyakuban utaawase iEHSS^? (Poetry Contest in 1,500
Rounds), the massive enterprise that Go-Toba organized throughout 1201 and
1202. The retired emperor asked thirty poets to submit sequences of one-hundred
poems (hyakushu ~SM)', he then rearranged these into the format of a poetry con
test and selected ten judges (hanja ^J#) to evaluate three hundred poems each,
making a total of three thousand poems. The magnitude of the contest was daz
zling, befitting the scale on which the monarch wished to operate. Huey writes
that "it is obvious ... that Go-Toba saw this as a dry run for Shinkokinsh?," and,
indeed, ninety poems from the contest ended up in the anthology.45
Six female poets participated in the Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds. Three of
them, Kojij? /M#??? (ca. 1121?-ca. 12027), Nij?-in no Sanuki H^KffiK (or sim
ply Sanuki, ca. 11417-after 1216), and Gish?mon-in no Tango fiikFlgkftia
(active 1175-1208), had belonged to the poetic circle of the Kuj? regent house,
which had come to an abrupt end in 1196 when the Kuj? suffered a serious polit
ical setback with the so-called Kenky? Purge.46 These women were thus older
poets, who had been active at least a decade before Go-Toba invited them to
poetry contests. Some had even retired from court and seemed to resent, or pre
tend to resent, such invitations. The other three women were still young;
Kunaiky? K?8P (11857-1205?) and Shichij?-in no Echizen -fc^?Sf?J (or sim
ply Echizen, ?-after 1249) were in their twenties, and Shunzei-ky? no Musume
??t?cSiP?: (ca. 1171-after 1252) had only just turned thirty. They helped to con
stitute the "new blood" actively solicited by Go-Toba to contribute to his poetry
projects. Ienaga recalls how "His Majesty would often lament that there were
not many women poets around these days" and actively sought out young ladies
in-waiting who could participate in the gatherings he organized.47 Apart from
Shunzei-ky? no Musume, who was a Mikohidari poet by blood, Go-Toba seems
to have found his women poets largely through the household of his mother,
Shichij?-in -h&U (Fujiwara no Taneko, or Shokushi WWM'?, 1157-1228).48
45 Huey 2002, pp. 194, 195.

46 For the Kenky? no seihen W^tK^^&? (the "Kenky? Era Shakeup," as Huey calls it), see Huey
2002, pp. 36-42.
47 See Huey 2002, pp. 67-71, for Go-Toba's attempts to include young women poets in his cir
cle and for the pertinent passage in Ienaga's memoir.
48 Kanechiku 2002b, esp. pp. 171-84. Apart from Echizen, several other women poets served
in this household. Kunaiky?, however, seems to have been in Go-Toba's personal service.
The example from Poetry Contest in 1,500 Rounds cited by Huey is a round
in which an "old" poet, Sanuki, was pitted against a "new" one, Shunzei-ky? no
Musume. In his judgment, Shunzei commented: "We see a charm (en IE) in both
these verses that is just what we would expect of a woman's poem (nyonin no
uta ?CA(DW()"49 It was a sentiment echoed several years later by Go-Toba, when
he appraised women's poetry: "Of poets among the court ladies, Tango com
posed many poems in a style of gentle delicacy (yasashiki uta)"\ it was her "gen
tleness," he hinted, that marked her as a "court lady poet" (ny?b? utayomi tCM
HftSk*).50 Yet, while "charm" and "gentleness" were regarded as feminine qual
ities in a poem,51 Shunzei-ky? no Musume, Echizen, and Kunaiky? differed in
styles and techniques. These women were appreciated not merely for "gentle"
poems they might produce, or because their sex was considered an important
element in the poetic field's variety, but as innovators in their own right.
Kunaiky?, for example, appears to have had a knack for unusual expressions,
which she put to use immediately at her debut at Go-Toba's salon in 1200.
Among other things, it seems that her knowledge of alternative names (imy? S
?) for animals and such fit in well with an already existing interest of Go-Toba's
poets in exploring the technical possibilities of certain topics. Echizen, on the
other hand, had her own brand of honkadori technique, in which her poems were
often conceived as answers to old poems.
There is also a strong hint of competition among these women, who used the
same, or similar, material (older poems, recent poems by major poets in Go
Toba's group, or tale literature such as Sagoromo monogatari A^^Jt? [A Tale
of Narrow Robes, ca. 1070s]) to arrive at variations of each other's approaches.
In all likelihood, Go-Toba provided a setting (ba *J?) in which such rivalry was
encouraged and "women poets" (onna kajin tcW\K) were valued as a distinct
49 Sengohyakuban utaawase, nos. 435 and 436, round 218, p. 431. For a translation and com
mentary, see Huey 2002, pp. 201-202.
50 Go-Toba-in gokuden, p. 147; tr. Brower 1972, p. 38. A major theme in Go-Toba's only treatise
on poetry is the promotion of poems with "loftiness" (take). Such poems seem, however, the near
exclusive domain of male poets. All poets mentioned by Go-Toba as representative of "the lofty
style" are men. "Obviously, Go-Toba feels that 'poems in a style of gentle delicacy' (yasashiki uta)
are more suitable to the lady's femininity than the 'lofty style' would be." Brower 1972, p. 64,
note 149.
51 The notion that a poem's language or style was gendered of course implies that poems by
men might have such qualities, too. Go-Toba writes of Shunzei's poetry that it was "gentle and
charming" (yasashiku emu [ = en] ni). Go-Toba-in gokuden, p. 145. In Teika jittei /?fK+f?
(Teika's Ten Styles of Poetry), a treatise that may or may not be Teika's illustrating the styles
expounded in Maigetsush?, poems by Shunzei and the poetess Shikishi (or Shokushi) Naishinn?
A? F*3S__E (ca. 1150-1201) are paired as an illustration of "the style of elegant beauty"
(uruwashiki y?). Since in his treatise Go-Toba tends to treat "gentle" (yasashi) in conjunction
with "polished and ingenious" (momi momi to 898? ?), a quality also used to characterize
Shikishi's poems, Kubota Jun feels that the poems in Teika jittei also exemplify the "charming
and gentle" (en ni yasashiku) mode formulated by Go-Toba for Santai waka in 1202. Kubota
makes the interesting observation that the quality "charming and gentle" also seems strongly tied
to allusions to tale literature (monogatari), which would suggest that the honzetsudori technique
(alluding to monogatari or Chinese poems) was also seen as especially suited to feminine poetry.
See Kubota 1994, pp. 99-103.
entity within the larger amalgam of forces at work spiralling towards the new
anthology.52 That said, Go-Toba may well have been exceptional in this respect,
too. The position of women poets in medieval Japan was ambivalent, to say the
least. Women's poetry was somehow different in the eyes of most male poets,
and while that in itself was not seen as diminishing the value of their work,
women did not share in the symbolic capital invested in acknowledged male
poets. They were not designated as judges in poetry contests, they did not host
contests, they were not appointed as fellows of the Poetry Bureau, or as com
pilers of an imperial anthology, and they did not become heads of a "house."53
The physical presence of women at poetry meetings was another point of dif
ference. If participating female poets were actually present, they sat behind bam
boo blinds (sudare H). They passed their poems forward from behind the blind,
and these were read last. This may be because women were not really part of the
social order of male court life. Poems by (retired) emperors were read after theirs,
which may underline their equally out-of-bounds position. Whether women
actually attended poetry meetings is an issue of debate because diagrams and
descriptions in Meigetsuki often make no mention of their presence at meetings
for which we know they composed poetry.54
Another intriguing aspect of "women's poems" is that they have a particular
physical appearance, at least when written on separate poem cards (kaishi W?&).
In an article discussing specific calligraphic formats for kaishi, Kanechiku
Nobuyuki itSSflffr demonstrates that from the early thirteenth century onwards
there existed prescribed, gendered arrangements for placing the words of a single
waka on a poem card. This was the case, for example, when presenting a poem
at a poetry meeting. Men divided their poem into three more-or-less even col
umns, reserving three graphs ( ji ?) for the fourth and last column. An exception
52 See Imai 1997, who relies heavily on research by Watanabe Yumiko atailSJl?. See also
Tabuchi 2002, pp. 155-57. Regarding Sh?ji godo hyakushu lEf?f?JSHW (The Latter One Hun
dred Poem Sequence of the Sh?ji Era, or Sh?ji ninen dainido hyakushu JEf?^^Hzil?l? H\ The
Retired Emperor's Second Set of One Hundred Poem Sequences, from the Second Year of the
Sh?ji Era, 1200), which marked Kunaiky?'s and Echizen's debut in Go-Toba's poetic circles,
Huey remarks that "Kunaiky?, especially, was independent in her poetic approach, as was the
other court lady represented, Echizen." Huey 2002, p. 65. One would have liked Huey to expand
on this sentence, even if his interest in this book is in recapturing the social and historical process
leading up to the Shinkokinsh?, not in exploring notions of poetic styles. For some examples of
Kunaiky?' s poems in Sent? kudai gojisshu fillP^11:5+If (Fifty Poems on Chinese Verse Topics,
at the Retired Emperor's Palace, 1201), the product of a small-scale gathering at which poems
were composed on both Chinese poetry and monogatari, see Huey 2002, pp. 136-37.
53 Huey points out that it "is not until the end of the Kamakura period, in the Ky?goku group,
that women begin to be taken seriously as critics and scholars of waka." Huey 2002, pp. 70-71.
54 Tabuchi 2002, esp. pp. 152-53. A very different phenomenon is the fact that chieftains of the
Kuj? regent house, starting with Tadamichi J?il (1097-1164), and, in their wake, Go-Toba and
his son Juntoku J|@$g (1197-1242, r. 1210-1221), used the sobriquet "court lady" (ny?b?) when
participating in contests. This was to negate the power of their position in court life as well as the
rule that "emperors cannot lose." To temporarily become a woman enabled them to function as
poets in a setting where the social background of a poet was not supposed to influence discus
sions of art. Tabuchi 2002, pp. 157-58.
was the Asukai K$J|# school, which used five graphs for the last column. When
women wrote a poem on a kaishi, however, they not only used more columns
(often six), but their arrangements of text over the paper seems far more erratic.
Their style is a form of chirashigaki ("scattered writing") referred to as tachiki
chirashigaki ?L^dJ^Wl^ Lira", whereby the foot of each column is aligned with
the others, but the columns all begin at different heights, not unlike a row of trees
with varying heights.55
Winning the Game, or More Lasting Fame?

A good deal of Huey's book is devoted to a near-endless series of poetry meet
ings and contests, organized mostly by Go-Toba. Although the retired emperor
may not initially have had such a long-term program in mind, the contests even
tually became his medium to secure an increased production of new poetry that
could be used for the Shinkokinsh?. The lists of names and records of wins and
losses ask some concentration from the reader. A recurring question in Huey's
treatment is the importance of winning at contests. At times, this seems his def
inition of "successful" poems, but it also quickly becomes clear that such suc
cess did not necessarily translate into preservation in the anthology. In fact, on
occasion losing poems won a place in the Shinkokinsh?, too.56
One's predominant impression after reading Huey's book is that Go-Toba
attempted to create a ba where free poetic experimentation was possible, even
if his appointed judges did not always share his "standard" of interesting poetry.
Huey is convincing in presenting Go-Toba as a tireless sponsor of activities that
together fostered a legacy of positively electrifying poetic energy. Most of this
poetry was innovative in one way or another. "One begins to see a constant here,"
Huey writes. "New use of language, even at the expense of traditional approaches
to one of waka's most sacred elements, topic, is to be rewarded, although it is
not freshness or novelty per se but phraseology that stands out as striking, emo
tional, and lovely."57 The question, however, is whether the Shinkokinsh? was
the sole focus of all this energy. It seems to me that the imperial anthology con
stituted a setting different from the contests: in the editorial process that went on
in the Poetry Bureau, other rules applied, and experiment was balanced by a min
imum of decorum. The tradition of criticizing anthologies, including imperial
ones (chokusensh? ?J??H), started in the late eleventh century with Nan gosh?i
sh? If iaip??> (Faulting the Gosh?ish?, shortly after 1086) and usually took the
form of anticollections, that is, alternative anthologies. The stated motivation for
finding fault with chokusensh? tended to be decorum, or the lack of it, with regard
55 Kanechiku 2002a. Fujiwara no Kiyosuke's ?JSWfl (1104-1177) waka manual Fukuro z?shi,
p. 11, is probably the first to mention the "three lines plus three graphs" (sangy? sanji Hff H^)
rule as a calligraphic model (kakiy? H?i). Yakumo mish?, the extensive poetic treatise by Go
Toba's son Juntoku, pp. 242, 244, specifies calligraphic styles for onna uta.
56 For some observations about the relationship between contests and anthologized poems, see
Huey 2002, pp. 95, 98, 106, 126, 136, 149, 176.
57 Huey 2002, p. 129.
not only to the poems but also the social status of included poets.58 Consider
ations of this kind as well as a reflex on the part of the Poetry Bureau fellows to
keep Go-Toba in check in this matter seem to me to go a long way in explain
ing why there is no automatic connection between a poem winning a round at
one of Go-Toba's contests and a poem ending up in the Shinkokinsh?.
A "Chinese" Perspective: The Mana Preface

Another recurring motif in Huey ' s book is the interplay between writing in Japa
nese (wabun) and Chinese (kanbun), the inclination of Japanese literati towards
"an accommodation, if not a synthesis, between Chinese and Japanese modes of
expression."59 Apart from the transformations of motifs from Chinese poetry into
waka elements, Huey's interest lies in the juxtaposition of poems in Japanese
and Chinese language on different occasions marking the road to the Shinkokin
sh?. Yet this motif encompasses a number of other significant issues as well.
More and more we are coming to realize that it is not very productive to think
in binary oppositions between Japan and China when assessing cultural codes
in classical court society. Rather, the interplay resulted in what Thomas LaMarre
has called "a binary machine that could synthesize and organize multiple forms
of expression and production: the Yamato-Han or 'wa-kan' assemblage."60
LaMarre's study focuses on script and the ways in which its varieties, from mana
M? (or what we now would call kanji, or Chinese characters) to kana, are best
seen as different modes of calligraphic performance; that is, how they may visu
ally represent a text. In doing so, LeMarre attempts to steer our focus away from
an obsession with the language of texts in favor of blurring the notion of a dis
tinctly "Japanese" language and culture set in opposition to Chinese cultural and
linguistic dominance.
Script and language, however, present a somewhat different, if intertwining
set of issues, and the Japanese had long struggled with the question how to con
vert graphs (ink on paper, or wood, or pottery shards, etc.) to intelligible sound.
The answer was kundoku f Hit, or reading a sentence in Chinese in such a way
as to adapt it to Japanese grammar; in other words, to read it as Japanese.
Rearranging Chinese culture began with rearranging Chinese words. As the word
implies, though, "&im-reading" is about reading, less about writing. I find it dif
ficult to imagine that the composition of a Sino-Japanese poem (kanshi) could
be conceived of as anything other than an act of creation in a different, albeit not
alien, language with a recognizably different grammar. That said, juxtaposition
does not necessarily lead to opposition but more often to a double voice. Indeed,
as Tomiko Yoda suggests, it is more fruitful to allow for "the possibility that
multiple cultural values and logic may have operated in Heian court society with
out necessarily constituting a sharp dichotomy."61
58 Smits 2003, p. 215.

59 Huey 2002, p. 203.
60 LaMarre 2000, p. 33.
61 Yoda 2000, pp. 486-87.
In this regard we should keep in mind that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
were not only an era marked by the emergence of a new and influential style of
descriptive nature waka celebrated by the Shinkokinsh?', it was also a period
when the composition of Chinese poetry flourished once again under the patron
age of emperors and members of the Fujiwara regent house. Emperor Takakura
MM (1161-1181, r. 1168-1180), for instance, was known for his familiarity with
Chinese literature. When he died in 1181, Teika lamented that Japan had lost "a
monarch of literature" (bun '? 5C_E), and by "literature," he meant kanbun texts.62
Go-Toba's son Juntoku JB$g (1197-1242, r. 1210-1221), too, was an active host
of kanshi gatherings (sakumon fK) as well as a prolific waka poet. And Go
Toba organized not only kanshi gatherings but also literary activities in which
waka were matched with poems in Chinese, such as the Genky? shiika awase tc
ÛNr'Sta' of 1205.63 Poems in Chinese also figured in another of his famous pro
jects, the sliding doors at his new but short-lived villa-cum-monastery known as
Saish?shitenn?in iRKE^?K, built in the Shirakawa SM area just east of Sanj?
H^ in 1207. The doors were adorned with famous places (meisho 4nPJ?), pro
viding, as Edward Kamens argues, a microcosm of the monarch's realm, and
Go-Toba also commanded poems to accompany the paintings. While Huey
devotes ample attention to this project, in his focus on poems as potential
Shinkokinsh? material, he presents the Saish?shitenn?in sliding doors as a waka
project. But, as Kamens notes, Go-Toba in fact also commissioned kanshi for
them.64
The regent house of the Fujiwara, specifically the Kuj? branch, had a long
standing reputation as patrons of kanshi activities as well. Finally, and tellingly,
we easily forget that Teika himself, one of Japan's most famous waka poets, also
composed kanshi and on occasion expressed his views on waka composition in
kanbun.65 The compilation of the Shinkokinsh? thus took place against a back
ground of a complex interplay between different modes of literary expression,
62 Horikawa 1997, pp. 67-68. For Takakura, see Kokon chomonju 4:130, 131; pp. 133-34; and
Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 9; Jish? 5 ( = Y?wa 1, 1181).1.14.
63 For a description, see Huey 2002, pp. 325-29. For a longer discussion, see Obushi 1992, who
also shows that (late) Heian kanshi were as much of an influence on the participating poets as texts
from China.
64 For discussions of the project, see Kamens 1997, pp. 168-221; and Huey 2002, pp. 369-80.
Kamens (p. 176) points out the double dimensions of the sliding doors project (painting and poetry,
waka and kanshi). The kanshi are no longer extant.
65 Sato Tsuneo fi_ISfj_JI provides thirty-four of Teika's kanshi, together with an annotated
yomikudashi M^TL. Practically all of Teika's kanshi are found in Meigetsuki, including a series
of sixteen poems composed in 1217. The occasions at which Teika produced much of his Chinese
poetry tended to be formal gatherings organized by the Kuj? house. As noted earlier, Eiga no
taigai is a poetic treatise that Teika wrote in kanbun. Teika seems to have been tutored in kanshi
composition by Kuj? Yoshisuke A^?$l (1185-1218), a younger half-brother of the regent
Yoshitsune, and Sugawara no Tamenaga ?rJJ^^JI (1158-1246), a scholar who had served as tutor
(jidoku nW) to Emperor Tsuchimikado ?fPf*3 (1195-1231). Sat? 1992 and 1993.
texts written in kana and mana. And, there is one moment where the text of the
Shinkokinsh? itself is polyphonic: its prefaces.
The Shinkokinsh? has two prefaces, one written in kana and the other in kan
bun (mana). This in itself is something distinctive. In a recent article discussing
a newly discovered manuscript of the Shinkokinsh?, Tabuchi Kumiko EBSJ^H
? points out that of the previous imperial anthologies, only the Kokinsh? had
both a kana and a mana preface.66 Anthologies 2 through 7, the Gosensh? ??f?
H (Later Collection, 951) through the Senzaish? =f*WiM (Collection for a
Thousand Years, 1188), had only a kana preface. Since Go-Toba's aim from the
outset was to supplant the Kokinsh? with his New Kokinsh?, it is perhaps only
natural that his anthology should revert to the practice of including two prefaces.
But he seems to have endowed the mana preface with a larger significance as
well. For one thing, where Kokinsh? manuscripts have the mana preface tucked
away at the end of the anthology and on occasion even omit it, practically all
Shinkokinsh? manuscripts open with the Chinese preface. That several modern
editions have rearranged the original order and place the mana preface at the
back should not mislead us. The mana preface was evidently the first of the two
to be completed, as well.67
The evident weight given the mana preface would seem related to another
Shinkokinsh? innovation regarding the prefaces. Observing a distinction be
tween the role of the emperor who commissioned the collection and the com
pilers who selected and arranged its contents, the prefaces of previous imperial
anthologies had been statements in the names of the compilers. In the case of the
Shinkokinsh?, however, although others in fact drafted the prefaces, they were
presented as the words of Go-Toba himself. Obviously Go-Toba saw himself as
playing a double role: compiler as well as commissioning monarch.68 Of the two
prefaces, Regent Yoshitsune drafted the kana preface, while the kanbun one was
composed by Fujiwara no Chikatsune HHHH? (1151-1210).
A member of the Hino U if branch of Fujiwara scholars, Chikatsune had been
imperial tutor (t?g? no gakushi ^K^?) to Go-Toba as well as his son Tsuchimikado
66 Tabuchi 2003, esp. pp. 137-43. The recently publicized Tanaka-bon EB?1^, now in the Na
tional Museum of Japanese History (Kokuritsu Rekishi Minzoku Hakubutsukan HABSi?lEcfStf
fttl) in Sakura, Chiba prefecture, is one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Shinkokinsh?.
Dating from the late Kamakura period, it consists of both the mana and kana (or Chinese and
Japanese) prefaces and books 1 through 4. Another short but useful essay in reassessing the mana
preface is Horikawa 1997.
67 Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 408; Genky? 2(1205).2.21. See also Huey 2002, p. 300.
68 Apart from combining the roles of commissioner and compiler, Go-Toba also included an
unusually large number of his own poems in the Shinkokinsh?, three times more than the poems
of the commissioning monarch in any previous imperial anthology. The prefaces offer a some
what bizarre justification for this irregularity: Go-Toba claims that there were simply too many
of his poems to choose from and that it was impossible to decide which ones were really good.
Even as a token apology, this does not strike one as very persuasive. Shinkokin wakash?, NKBT
28, pp. 37, 408.
?W1 (1195-1231, r. 1198-1210) when they were still crown princes. He was
a respected scholar of Chinese learning and poetry (the two were in fact
inseparable) whom Go-Toba had referred to as his "master" (shish? BSE).69 As
a sign of his esteem, Go-Toba had promoted Chikatsune into the highest ranks
of nobility.70 He had also invited Chikatsune to participate in the Genky? shiika
awase of 1205 matching Chinese couplets with waka. On this occasion,
Chikatsune had been pitted against the retired emperor.
In the mana preface that he drafted on Go-Toba's behalf, Chikatsune took
advantage of a comparison with China to elaborate upon the implications of Go
Toba's unprecedented degree of involvement with the compilation process.
Speaking in Go-Toba's voice, he writes,
Generally, in my selection I have chosen poems that deserved praise and deeply
moved me. In the four hundred thousand years that have passed since Fu Xi's
act of regal virtue [ = invention of writing], one sees in that other realm [ = China]
instances where rulers themselves compiled bodies of writing, but in the eighty
two generations since Jinmu' s imperial accomplishments one has yet in our coun
try to hear of anthologies compiled to a monarch's personal instructions. I feel
certain that [in this anthology] the men and women of our capital sing the joy of
seeing that the way of poetry has met with good fortune.71
This passage, which has no equivalent in the kana preface, discloses a glimpse
of the nature of Go-Toba's ambitions for the Shinkokinsh?. On the one hand,
setting himself off against examples from Chinese history, as the only possible
yardstick for his achievements, Go-Toba contrasts himself favorably with
previous Japanese emperors. Since these remarks appear only in the mana
preface, perhaps their target was not solely his own court. It is tempting to think
of them, written in kanbun, the one script-language that could carry them across
the known world, as a gesture towards "that other realm" (iiki JUS), China.72 At
the same time, Go-Toba makes clear his view that the artistic success of the
Shinkokinsh? translates into good governance as well. The mana preface
describes poetry as "an excellent tool to rule over the world and calm the peo
ple." The kana preface contains a similar passage: "This way of poetry came to
69 Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 423; Genky? 2(1205).5.4.

70 In 1204 Chikatsune had been promoted to the senior third rank and was made a consultant
(sangi #H) with access to the Council of State (Daij?kan AKU), a move that elevated him to
kugy? ?5IP status. This was an exceptional honor for scholars, who as a rule seldom rose beyond
the fourth rank.
71 Shinkokin wakash?, mana jo, NKBT 28, p. 408. One of China's three mythical emperors (san
huang HJ?), Fu Xi was credited with the invention of writing. Jinmu was Japan's equally myth
ical first emperor.
72 See also Horikawa 1997, p. 69.
prosper . . . and became a way that rules the world and calms the people."73
Playing to an idea long cherished in China, that poetry can be a tool of good gov
ernment by expressing what goes on in the realm, the same notion was borrowed
as the name of a poetic mode, the "world-ruling and people-calming styles" (risei
tei, bumin tei Stfirf? ttISf?). Treatises misleadingly ascribed to Teika presented
these modes, in turn, as an elaboration of the famous ushin tei, his "style of
intense feeling."74 Poetics could be polyphonic, too.
Which Shinkokinsh??
Huey's study makes clear that there is no single Shinkokinsh?. This is true of
any premodern text and many modern texts as well. With imperial anthologies
it is often hard, if not impossible, to pinpoint the moment when a collection was
held to be "ready," but this is especially true of the Shinkokinsh?.15 Since Huey
does not really dwell on the compilation history after 1208, it is perhaps helpful
to review what we know about the overall situation. Although this may seem a
somewhat dry exercise, it should serve to remind us that we work nowadays from
versions of the Shinkokinsh? that reflect a work-in-progress rather than a fin
ished product.
Scholars today tend to demarcate four versions (ruihon H^), n?t all of which
are necessarily completely extant, of the Shinkokinsh?, reflecting four stages in
the compilation process. The first version is the text as it was presented at the
banquet held at Go-Toba's instigation on the twenty-sixth day of the third month
of Genky? 2 (1205) to celebrate the anthology's completion.76 As at this point
the anthology was far from ready, several of the Poetry Bureau fellows thought
the banquet premature. Teika even absented himself from the affair. Presumably
the inspiration for this event, at which celebratory poems were to be offered, was
the banquets held sporadically between 878 and 943 to celebrate readings of
Nihon shoki B ^lr ffi (Annals of Japan, 720). That Go-Toba viewed his own waka
anthology as comparable in significance to Japan's first Chinese-style history is
telling of his ambitions, for his own reign as well as the Shinkokinsh?. Teika,
73 Risei bumin no koki St&?K^SSfc sono michi sakari ni okori . . . y o o os?me, tami o
yawaraguru michi to seri f?S$?^tt^0, (BS) ????#)> S^t?b <%>&% ?i?0 .
Shinkokin wakash?, mana jo, kana jo, NKBT 28, pp. 406, 33.
74 Murao 1986, pp. 41-44. See, for example, Guhish?, p. 293.
75 Another example is the fifth imperial anthology, the Kin'y?sh? &MM (Collection of Golden
Leaves). In 1124 Retired Emperor Shirakawa ?W (1053-1129) ordered Minamoto no Toshiyori
to compile a new anthology, which Toshiyori submitted towards the end of that year. Apparently
this version contained too many early Heian poets, and the anthology was rejected. Toshiyori then,
in 1125, submitted a second version (nidobon H|J:;?) that contained so many contemporary poets
that it, too, was rejected. A third version (sans?bon HU?) was finally accepted by Shirakawa in
1127. By that time, however, the second version was already being passed around; it consequently
became the "circulated version" (rufubon ffif?^L) of the anthology, a situation that has continued
until today. For some twelfth-century accounts of the Kin'y?sh? compilation process, see Fukuro
z?shi, p. 64; and Ima kagami 7.66; pp. 547-48. See also Yakumo mish?, pp. 275, 278.
76 For a detailed description of the banquet and its preparations, see Huey 2002, pp. 312-20.
however, was not impressed and sourly remarked, "Well, when all is said and
done, what was the reason for this event? There was no precedent for it. It was
too hastily conceived and therefore poorly planned."77 The main practical prob
lem was, of course, what exactly might be presented that night. We know that
Chikatsune had presented Go-Toba with a draft of the mana preface a month
earlier, but Regent Yoshitsune told Go-Toba that the kana preface would not be
ready in time, and he barely managed to finish a clean copy of the poems. The
only preface read at the banquet must thus have been the mana preface.78 What
the collection looked like at this stage we no longer know.
The second version of the Shinkokinsh? reflects the further "cutting and past
ing" (kiritsugi WM) that continued for a good eleven years after the banquet.
Some scholars have called this the "editing era" (kiritsugi jidai),79 and in chap
ter 9, Huey shows how in the next few years after the presentation banquet Go
Toba and the Poetry Bureau fellows not only kept rearranging old material but
also organized new poetry contests that resulted in poems that were anthologized
in the Shinkokinsh?. By 1208 the most drastic rearranging had taken place, but
still Go-Toba was not completely satisfied, and minor changes continued to be
made. Teika's last record of a correction session dates to the ninth month of 1210.
The patience of Teika and presumably others as well was sorely tried. "At the
Poetry Bureau the Shinkokinsh? still remains a problem (we never seem to see
the end of it)" and "At His Majesty's request I started editing the Shinkokinsh?
again (the additions and deletions change continuously)" are but two sighs in
Teika's journal for the year 1207.80
The third version of the Shinkokinsh? is the one copied by Minamoto no Ienaga
and presented to the Poetry Bureau on Kenp? 4(1216). 12.26. With this, the edit
ing process came to a close and the Poetry Bureau was dissolved. This version
presumably was seen as the authorized "proof text" (sh?hon 11^), but scholars
doubt that any existing manuscript copy accurately replicates it. Ironically, it is
likely that most extant manuscript copies reflect the second stage rather than the
77 ?mtmP?mmm^ #5fc? 3_??R8??^FI?. Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 416; Genky? 2

(1205).3.27; tr. Huey 2002, p. 316.
78 See Tabuchi 2003, p. 138. In his report on what he heard had happened at the banquet, Teika
says simply that "[a] preface was read" (jo o yomu MJf). Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 415; Genky? 2
(1205).3.27. Huey translates: "read from the preface," which is possible when one assumes that
for a ceremony such as this there was no need to read the complete mana preface. Huey 2002, p.
315. Donald Keene also identifies the preface as the mana preface. Keene 1993, p. 659. Yoshitsune
was later to antedate the date of composition of the kana preface to the night of the banquet, but
this was presumably so as to preserve proprieties. Teika writes that two days after the banquet he
visited Yoshitsune at the latter's home, where he and the Tendai prelate Jien HH (1155-1225)
were shown Yoshitsune's draft for the kana preface. They both termed it "brilliant" and recom
mended that he show it to Go-Toba right away. Meigetsuki, vol. 1, pp. 415, 416; Genky? 2
(1205).3.27 and 29. Tabuchi 2003, p. 138. See also Vieillard-Baron 2003, p. 70.
79 Huey 2002, p. 324.
80 mmrftxtmm^^ ^?^; ftwxissr*^ **?**. Meigetsuki, vol. 2, PP. 13,47;
J?gen 1(1207).2.26 and 11.8. See also Vieillard-Baron 2003, p. 72, who points out that Teika's
frustration stemmed largely from the fact that all this ongoing correction work was completely
uninteresting for him as a poet.
proof copy. By extension, most major text editions used today also reproduce
the second stage of the compilation process.81
The fourth and last version is the so-called Oki-bon Rljfcfc. It was the result
of Go-Toba's ongoing revision of the anthology during his exile to the Oki
islands after his ill-fated J?ky? War of 1221 against the new Kamakura shogu
nate. Go-Toba worked on this version in the years 1235-1238, mostly because
his poetic views had changed over the years, but possibly also in reaction to news
that Teika had compiled a new state anthology, the Shinchokusensh? St????a
(New Imperial Collection, 1235).82 The fourth version of the Shinkokinsh? has
not been preserved intact, but it appears to have been based largely on the sec
ond or third version. One of its main features was the excision of some four hun
dred poems, including several of Go-Toba's own. Judging from extant, often
incomplete, Oki-bon manuscripts, the excision seems to have been virtual: in his
copy of the Shinkokinsh? Go-Toba marked the poems he wanted to delete, but
it is not clear whether he actually produced a clean copy of his Oki version in
which those poems were indeed removed. It has been suggested that Go-Toba
never had any intention of producing such a copy, but that his version was rather
intended as a discussion piece for surviving Poetry Bureau poets back in the cap
ital. Go-Toba's remark that "we do not need to abandon the original collection
right away, but it is better to have it revisited and polished," might well be seen
in that light.83
81 For instance, the teihon ??^: (the manuscript that forms the basis of a text edition) for SNKT
11 is attributed to Teika's grandson Reizei Tamesuke f?Halffl (1263-1328). It has a colophon
dated 1300 that indicates that it is based on a Teika manuscript copy of 1209.6.19, although it
includes some later editing as well. This manuscript is also used for the electronic version of the
Shinkokinsh? of the Japan Text Initiative. An Important Cultural Property, Tamesuke's manu
script reflects the second stage of the compilation process, not Ienaga's final copy of 1216. The
same is true for the KT edition (KT 1, no. 8), which uses the Kotobuki-bon 0^ manuscript of
1319 that also goes back to Teika's copy of 1209. The Komiya-bon 'h'UJf of 1475, which was
used for NKBT 28, goes back to the Omuro-gohon fP^fP*, also of 1209. NKBZ 26 (silently
reissued as SNKZ 43) is based on a manuscript copy by the renga master and early haikai poet
Yamazaki S?kan llill^^?^ (1465-1553), which lacks a colophon but likely also reflects the sec
ond compilation stage. Goto Shigeo ia?He? remarks, "The present manuscripts practically all
belong to the second version, while [extant manuscripts of] the first, third, and fourth versions are
not reliable copies of the original manuscripts." Goto 1997, p. 6.1 therefore cannot concur with
Huey's statement that "it was in fact the clean copy Ienaga himself made in 1216 that is the basis
for our modern text of Shinkokinsh?." This is reiterated by Vieillard-Baron. See Huey 2002, p.
325; and Vieillard-Baron 2003, p. 72. Since apparently no changes to the Shinkokinsh? were made
after the ninth month of 1210, the differences between Ienaga's clean copy of 1216 and Teika's
1209 version are presumably relatively small. Nevertheless, the Tamesuke-bon and other manu
scripts do contain poems that scholars think were excluded from the 1216 clean copy. See
Shinkokin wakash?, ed. Kubota Jun, 1979, vol. 1, p. 382.
82 For Teika's involvement in the Shinchokusensh?, see Smits 1998.
Oki-bon batsu iMM&f?k, Shinkokin wakash?, NKBT 28, p. 410. For this argument, see Hirota
1989, pp. 378-79, building on a theory by Tanaka Yutaka EH^?S. To the best of my knowledge,
there exist only two manuscripts of the Oki version that contain solely the poems selected by Go
Toba for his final edition. These are an (incomplete) Edo-period copy in the collection of the
Imperial Household Agency, a printed version of which was made available in 1972: Oki-bon
In his personal colophon notes to the Oki version, alternatively known in

Japanese as shikigo lii?, okugaki Mr, batsu Wi, or evenyo Ji (preface), the exiled
former monarch explained his ostensible reasons for yet another version of the
the Shinkokinsh?.,84 His tone suggests a less extravagant view of poetry than he
entertained at the height of his power. He himself suggests that this change of
perspective coincides with his exile: "In the distant past, when a gentle breeze
cooled my jade terrace, I got lost in the thickets of the fields. Now, with a calm
moon over my gate at the beach, I should be better able to make out the colors
of the treetops in the forests."85 The most striking evidence that, while perhaps
not reformed as a poet, he had matured as a critic is his admission that the
Shinkokinsh? is a very large anthology and that two thousand poems in the orig
inal version is perhaps overdoing it. It is a sobering comment from a man who
could not think small, who organized everything on a grand scale, and who set
records for poetry contests (1,500 rounds) that have never been matched.
Two books, one full of the flurry of poetry in action and the other intense in its
focus on aesthetic questions, mark the vectors of waka's artistic and social
domains in early medieval Japan. Having read them, one will readily acknowl
edge that, yes, those were interesting times to learn about poetry and what poetry
can do to its surroundings. Between them, Robert N. Huey and Michel Vieillard
Baron have redirected our attention to the many intriguing issues posed by
medieval court poetry. We may hope that their work will reinvigorate a field that
has been overly subdued in recent years.
Shinkokin wakash? (Kunaich? Shory?bu-bon). The other is the (incomplete) Oki-bon copy that
turned up in the Reizei family library in 1995 and was published in facsimile in 1997, after being
designated an Important Cultural Treasure in 1996. Oki-bon Shinkokin wakash? (Reizei-ke-bon).
See also Goto 1997. This manuscript dates from the mid-thirteenth century, that is, from very
shortly after Go-Toba finished his version. Both manuscripts have been called "a pure Oki ver
sion of Shinkokinsh?" (junsui na Oki-bon Shinkokin wakash? MfflfcM^%ft~?^fttW(M). See Goto
Shigeo in Oki-bon Shinkokin wakash? (Kunaich? Shory?bu-bon), p. 196; Akase Shingo ^fSI?b
H, in Akase 1995, p. 64. Their idea is that Go-Toba always wanted such a "purged" version to
circulate. Some colophons of other Oki-bon manuscripts suggest that Go-Toba sent a copy of his
Shinkokinsh? with his preference marks (fug? i?^) to the capital, to the important poet Fujiwara
no Ietaka ?DP^?a (1158-1237), who had remained loyal to him, and likely also one to Tanba
province, to his son Prince Masanari Jt$o (aka Rokuj? no Miya 7n^^, 1200-1255), who had
been exiled there after Go-Toba's defeat in 1221. Goto and Akase hold that Go-Toba sent copies
to these trusted men so that they might produce a definitive edition of his final version of the
Shinkokinsh?. That said, the vast majority of Oki-bon manuscripts give all the original
Shinkokinsh? poems and merely indicate the waka Go-Toba selected.
84 Convenient text editions are available in NKBT 28, pp. 409-10; NKBZ 28, pp. 600-601; and
SNKT 11, pp. 581-83. For an overview in English, see Hirota 1989, pp. 351-82. In some manu
scripts Go-Toba's colophon notes are added to the end, making it an afterword of sorts. However,
NKBT's Komiya-bon actually has it immediately following the mana and kana prefaces at the
beginning, making it a "preface," one supposes. Interestingly, several manuscripts place Go
Toba's notes after book 10, i.e., at the end of the first volume in two-volume sets.
85 NKBT 28, pp. 409-10.
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Toshio ill? fc*c and Goto Shigeo f?BWM. NKBT 28.
Shinkokin wakash? fr~?^?n*?fc (1974). Ed. Minemura Fumito *>r?XA. NKBZ 26.
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Shinkokin wakash? zenhy?shaku ???^?niftA?:f???. Ed. Kubota Jun ?U?ffl?. 9 vols.
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Shinkokin wakash? ff?^?niftlt. In Shinch? Nihon koten sh?sei fjfii? S i^?ftJtj??c. Ed.
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Shinkokin wakash? ff?^?n*H (1983). Ed. Goto Shigeo ??lilk?R and Sugito Chihiro
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Shinkokin wakash? ffEMH?lSI&A (1992). Ed. Tanaka Yutaka BB^f? and Akase Shingo
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Review: Teika and the Others: Poetics, Poetry, and Politics in Early Medieval Japan

Reviewed Work(s): The Making of Shinkokinsh by Robert N. Huey; Fujiwara no Teika

Teika and the Others

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

So wrote Wallace Stevens in 1940,1 but one wonders if at the beginning of

one begins to find explicit expressions of frustration at being boxed in by the

The Past as Allusion

5 Yominokoshitarufushi mo naku, tsuzukemoraseru kotoba mo miezu. Ika ni shite ka wa, yo no

The Limitations of Waka

7 Bialock 1994, esp. pp. 195, 197-99.

If waka became studies of working with limitations, then Fujiwara no Teika

11 Kokoro wa atarashiki o motte saki to nashi. . . kotoba wafuruki o motte mochiyubeshi. . .

13 Vieillard-Baron 2001, p. 369.

Questions of "Style "

resulted in "Poems in Three Modes," or Santai waka HftfrUK, discussed and

28 Maigetsush?, p. 127; tr. Brower 1985, pp. 410-12.

32 Vieillard-Baron 2001, pp. 210, 212.

36 Huey 2002, pp. 8-9.

40 Viala 1988, p. 565.

Engendering Poetry: Women's Poems

45 Huey 2002, pp. 194, 195.

Winning the Game, or More Lasting Fame?

A "Chinese" Perspective: The Mana Preface

58 Smits 2003, p. 215.

69 Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 423; Genky? 2(1205).5.4.

77 ?mtmP?mmm^ #5fc? 3_??R8??^FI?. Meigetsuki, vol. 1, p. 416; Genky? 2

In his personal colophon notes to the Oki version, alternatively known in

Major text editions of the Shinkokinsh?:

Shinkokin wakash? ?i~E^?Plft? (1958). Ed. Hisamatsu Sen'ichi ?MS?if-% Yamazaki

Other works cited:

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