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Fujiwara Teika's Hundred-Poem Sequence of the Shoji

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Fujiwara Teika's Hundred-Poem Sequence of the Shoji FujiwaraTeika's Hundred-PoemSejuence of the Shoji Era by ROBERT H. BROWER Introduction I. Foreword' TUHE greatJapanese classical poet and criticFujiwara no Sadaie,or Teika,2 is bestknown to popularhistory for his littleanthology of thirty-one- syllablepoems called Hyakuninisshu,3 'One HundredPoems by One HundredPoets'. Even today,this collection is memorizedby mostcultured Japanese,if onlybecause a literarycard gameplayed during the New Year seasonis basedupon it. Moreimportant, the Hyakunin isshu has for the past three hundredyears and morebeen the chiefvehicle by whichthe Japanese have come to learnsomething of theirnative tradition of classicalpoetry, and so closelyis Teika identifiedin thepopular mind with this anthology (and often littleelse), that I mayperhaps be forgiventhis rather peculiar way of beginning: namely,by stressingthat the collectionpresented here is an entirelydifferent work. The 'Hundred-PoemSequence of theShoji Era', or Shojihyakushu4-the set of a hundredpoems we aredealing with here-is a sequenceof Teika'sown compositionwritten in 1200(the second year of the Shoji era) by commandof Ex-EmperorGo-Toba.5 This was a littlemore than two years after the young I I wish to express thanks for invaluable University.His specialcontribution is acknowl. assistancefrom the late ProfessorMizukami edged separatelybelow. An earlydraft of the Kashiz6 'J?vP- (1924-1975), who devoted translationwas presented before the Colloquium much ofhis waningstrength during the spring of the Centerfor Japanese and Korean Studies and earlysummer of 1975 to my problemsin of the Universityof California,Berkeley, in revisingmy manuscript.His prematuredeath May 1973.A grantfrom the Center forJapanese has deprived me of a cherishedfriend and Studies of the Universityof Michiganenabled irreplaceablecounselor of many years. I am me to reviseand completethe study. also indebted,as usual, to the teacher of us 2 , 1162-1241. both, ProfessorKonishi Jin'ichi 4'f:-, 3 ,fA - 4 who allowed me precioushours of time despite ff -g his many other commitmentsand heavy 5 aA&5, 1180-1239; r. 1183-98. administrativeduties at Tsukuba National This content downloaded from 128.95.155.147 on Sat, 3 Aug 2013 15:57:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 224 MonumentaNipponica, XXXI, 3 sovereignhad abdicatedand in his new-foundfreedom from the stifling cere- monialrestrictions offull imperial state, had begunto turnhis restless energies andenthusiasms tothe pursuit of the arts and the patronage of artists, particularly poetryand the poets ofthe native tradition, the vernacular waka. As for Teika's Shoji sequence,it is butone of manywhich the poet wrote during his long life-his personalcollection begins with fifteen sequences of a hundredpoems, for example. However,the ShJji hyakusha was botha landmarkin his artisticdevelopment and crucialto theadvancement of his career. It also containsa fewof hiis best poems.Compared to theHyaakunin isshu (whose value and literaryimportance I wouldnot for a singlemoment deny), Teika's Shoji kj'akushu was an individual achievementof fargreater importance both to thepoet himself and to his con- temporaries.As an exampleof the hyakushu,or 'hundred-poemsequence', the poeticgenre that became so popularduring the late twelftlh and earlythirteenth centuries,it is bothcharacteristic and seminal. I havetouched upon the Shoji hIyakushzu elsewlhere in ter-ms of its importance to Teika'slife and career-howit providedthe means of establishinghim in Ex- EmperorGo-Toba's favor, and playeda pivotalrole in consolidatinghis special positionas thepoetic heir of his father, the great Shunzei or Toshinari,6 and as poeticlawgiver in hisown time and for centuries following.7 I shall refrain from recountingmany details of thatstory again here. Rather, my primary purpose in thepages that follow is to presenta translationand commentaryofthe ShoIji hyakushuitself. However, to thebest of my knowledge, this is thefirst translation intoa Westernlanguage of a completehundred-poem sequence composed by anyindividual Japanese classical poet. Consequently,some explanation of the genreand ofTeika's particular work seems in order.8 II. The Developmentof Poetic Sequences SETSby single poets consisting offive, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, fifty, or a hundred poemsbecame increasingly common from the tenthcentury. The popularity 6 M ,) 1114-1204. rative edition with Satsukawa Sh ji lt4*)IIJL 7 See nmy'Ex-Emperor Go-Toba's Secret of Jenaga's (?1170-1234) diary, Minamoto no Teachings: Go-Toba no In gokucleni'ka&I ItOpui Ienaga nikkizenchi7kai - -fzE f8i-k AT(Yfuseido, X;, in HJAS, 32 (1972), especially pp. 14-16. 1968); the excellent study by Kubota Jun Also the translation and study by Earl Miner Ig&<EBX, Shlinkokinkajin no k-enkyilV1tf-s5Vk and myself of Teika's Kindai shl7kai4<-t: oDRF (T6kyv Daigaku Shuppankai, 1973), Fujiwara Teika's SuperiorPoems of Our Time: especially pp. 793--834; Yasuda Ayao 4F3, A Thirteenth-CenturyPoetic Treatiseand Sequence, Fujiwara Teika kenkyiiuAit*RF (Shibundo, Stanford U.P., 1967; and our Japanese Court 1967); Ariyoshi Tamotsu 7 Shinkokin- Poetry[jcP], StanfordU.P., 1961, especially Ch. wakashu7no kenkyui:kiban to kosei f a1t VI, 'The Mid-Classical Period, 1100-1241'. 0:)r E, B g g (Sanseido, 1968), especially 8 Of special value have been the following pp. 42-85; and the articles on hyakushuand Japanese secondary works: the pages devoted Shoji hyakushuby Ichimura Hiroshi $4t4t to the Shoji hyakushuin Ishida Yoshisada and Taniyama Shigeru bit, respectively,in - ;FE >, FujiwaraTeika no, kenkyiu iFW Waka bungaku (laijiten ; (Meiji ? (Bungad6 Shoten, 1957); Ishida's collabo- Shoin, 1962). This content downloaded from 128.95.155.147 on Sat, 3 Aug 2013 15:57:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Fujiwara Teika's Hundred-PoemSequence of the Sho'j Era 225 of such poetic sequences grew apace with that of the utaawase,9or poetrycontests. It also paralleled tlheincreasing tendency during the eleventhand twelfthcentu- ries to compose formal poetry on conventional topics (daiei),10as distinguished from informal poems exclhanged between individuals lords and retainers, friends,lovers-in the give and take of private social intercourse. Perhaps tlle oldest example of what became the standard lengtlh the hyakushu,or hundred- poem sequence (also, hyakushlwutaor hyakushuno uta)11-was a set presented by Minamoto no Shigeyuki12to the crown prince, the futureEmperor Reizei (950- 1011; r. 967-69), and preservedin Shigeyuki'spersonal collection.13Shigeyuki's sequence is already an example of the classical structurefor most hyakushu:it echoes in microcosm the major divisions of the firstimperial anthology, the Kokinshld4-divisionspreserved witlhminor variations in subsequent official an- thologies and in many private and personal collections. That is, the poemisare arranged in groups according to subject categories, beginningwith nature in the order of the seasons, followed by human affairs,notably love, followed in turn by 'miscellaneous' or 'mixed poemns'(ztka)15 on topics not included among the pre- ceding categories. In Shigeyuki'ssequence, the seasons predominate,with twenty poems each on spring, summer, autumn, aind winter, ten on love, and finally ten 'miscellaneous' poems. The composition of hyakushuwas greatly stimulated in fact, turned into a fashionable craze among the courtier poets of the early twelfthcentury- by the famous Horikawa hyakushu:16 hundred-poem sequences composed on two separate occasions by a number of outstanding poets on the order of Emperor Horikawa (1079-1107; r. 1086-1107). The firstseries of Horikawa sequences (known familiarlyas Tar6, or 'the eldest son') were completed by some sixteen poets around 1104. The freshnessof the Horikawa sequences-the feature that endowed them with instant popularity and an influence that lasted for centuries-was that within the general categories of spring, summer, autumn, winter, love, and miscellaneous, each poem was on a set topic prescribed in advance. To take the twenty spring poems as an example, the topics were: The Beginning of Spring, The First Day of the Rat, Spring Haze, The Warbler, Young Shoots, Remaining Snow, Plum Blossoms, Willows, Fern Shoots, Cherry Blossoms, Spring Rain, Spring Foals, Geese Returning North, The Cuckoo (yobukodori), Rice Seedlings, Violets, Iris, Wisteria, The Yellow Rose, and The Last Day of the Third Month (i.e., the last day of spring). It was not the newness of the Horikawa topics themselvesthat gave the sequences such interest,even though 9 4t /- logiesand SequencesofJapanese Court Poetry', in HJAS, 21 (1958), pp. 67-127. See especially pp. 108-09. 12 RJEt:t,,d.?1000. 14 - ', 905. 13 Konishi Jin'ichi, 'Associationand Pro- 15 J gression:Principles of Integrationin Antho- 16 A - This content downloaded from 128.95.155.147 on Sat, 3 Aug 2013 15:57:18 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 226 MonumentaNipponica, XXXI, 3 some of them appear to have been used for the firsttime in formalpoetry on this occasion. Nor was the orderingof the springand other seasonal poems according to the natural progressionof nature any new thing, for we find this principle already in the Kokinshu7and repeated in the threesubsequent imperial anthologies that had been compiled by Horikawa's time. Rather, it was the novelty of a specific topic for each poem. Such an exercise appealed to the virtuoso in- clinations of the court poets more than being told simply to compose twenty poems on Spring, say, and the Horikawa precedent immediately became
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