An Early Edo History of Sino-Japanese Poetry Ivo Smits Discontinuities In

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MInding the Gaps: An Early Edo History of Sino-Japanese Poetry

Ivo Smits

Discontinuities in Japanese kanshi writing

One enigma in the history of Japanese literature is the frequent occurrence of discontinuities in the tradition of Sino-Japanese poetry (kanshi). Where the written word is concerned, pre-modern and early modern Japan was a “biscriptual” and arguably bilingual country; as for poetry, Japanese have since the beginning of writing in Japan composed it in both Japanese (waka) and in Sino-Japanese.1 However, where it is relatively easy to write a history of waka that quite correctly suggests a strong continuity and his- torical awareness within its own tradition, the history of kanshi writing in Japan seems to be one of fits and starts. From the very beginning, it is as if after every few generations, Sino-Japanese poets reoriented themselves and ignored whatever came before. This contrast with the waka tradition is conspicuous and raises the question why kanshi as a dominant literary form that, more or less continuously until the dawn of the twentieth century, was regarded as one of the most esteemed genres, never really forged a consciously indigenous tradition. To a large extent, a factor in the disruptiveness of kanshi’s history must have been the role of classi- cal, and at times contemporary, poetry from China. After all, poetry from China was a continuous frame of reference for kanshi poets in Japan, yet pointing to “China” seems an insufficient explanation for the splintered nature of Japanese kanshi writing. In other words, there is not one history of Sino-Japanese poetry; rather, there are multiple histories of kanshi in

1 Since the late nineteenth century, the terms kanshi 漢詩 and kanbun 漢文 in Japan refer to any text in Chinese, usually from China. In keeping with a not entirely logical tradition among Western scholars, I use them here exclusively in the sense of poems and prose in Chinese, or Sino-Japanese, composed by Japanese. Japanese scholars commonly refer to “Japanese kanshi” (Nihon kanshi). When I write “bilingual,” I am aware that the “performance” of any kanbun text in a Japanese setting would have been in a form of the Japanese language (kundoku, yomikudashi, etc.). However, I contend that, especially in the composition of kanshi, Japanese authors produced a text that also functioned accord- ing to rules outside the Japanese language (rhyme, tone, etc.). 94 ivo smits

Japan that seem to begin again and again, with little or no acknowledge- ment of the kanshi traditions that immediately preceded the time of their articulation. Equally remarkable is that little has been written about these discontinuities.2 Japan’s very first anthology of Chinese poetry, Kaifūsō 懐風藻 (Fond Recollections, 751), contemporaneous with Japan’s oldest waka collection, the Man’yōshū 万葉集 (Collection of Ten Thousand Ages, after 759), was as good as ignored throughout the Heian (794–1185) and Kamakura periods (1185–1333). The early ninth century witnessed the compilation, in quick succession, of three imperial kanshi anthologies that were relatively vague about the history of Chinese verse in Japan. This feeling was reinforced by later Heian kanshi histories that associated the beginning of kanshi composition in Japan with the court of Emperor Saga (786–842, r. 806–809). However, the three imperial kanshi anthologies of the early Heian period, although quickly recognized as an important milestone in literary history, also seemed to have very little actual impact on later generations.3 With the rise of the Zen institutions in Kamakura and Kyoto that were supported by the new shogunate and are collectively known as Gozan 五山 or “the five mountains (i.e. monasteries),” and with the pivotal role in this development of Zen monks from China, connections with the courtly kanshi tradition seemed lost.4 Again in the early seven- teenth century, yet already before the definitive fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, several Chinese refugee scholars fled mainland China and came to Japan; they sustained a renewed and diverse Japanese interest in, among other things, Chinese poetry, intellectual writings and painting.5 The mon-

2 Ōsone Shōsuke is one the very few to remark briefly on this discontinuity in Japanese kanshi traditions; Ōsone 1998a, p. 364 (first published in 1979). See also my observations in Smits 2007, pp. 108–9. 3 In late Heian Japan, on the other hand, the history of kanshi apparently was the history of Chinese poetry only after it regained a place on the map following the imperial patronage of waka at the end of the tenth century. This a view that was still endorsed by the Kyoto scholar and kanshi poet Emura Hokkai 江村北海 (1713–88), who in his Nihon shishi 日本詩史 (A History of Kanshi in Japan) of 1771 devotes curiously little space to Kaifūsō, skims over the three imperial anthologies, but dwells considerably on post-900 kanshi production. 4 Gozan literature is seriously understudied, both in and outside Japan. Helpful in Eng- lish is the chapter “‘Chineseness’ and ‘Japaneseness’ in Early Medieval Zen: Kokan Shiren and Musō Soseki” in Pollack 1986. 5 Representative of this is, perhaps, the famous Shisendō 詩仙堂, or “Hall of the Poetry Immortals,” the retreat built in Kyoto by the poet and former warrior Ishikawa Jōzan 石川丈山 (1583–1672). Jōzan was an admirer of the learned monk and kanshi poet Fuji- wara Seika 藤原惺窩 (1561–1619) and intimate friend of the famous neo-Confucian thinker