Kyogoku ‘Tamekane Poetry and Politics in Late Kamakura Japan Robert N. Huey STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Stanford, California 1989 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1989 by the Boardof Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Published with the assistance of a special grant from the Stanford University Faculty Publication Fund to help support nonfaculty work originating at Stanford CIP data appear at the end of the book TO MY PARENTS Acknowledgments Inevitably, in a project like this there are many people to thank. First among them would be Susan Matisoff, my dissertation ad- viser, whose guidance, in everything from thorny scholarly issues to matters of writing style, was invaluable. Makoto Ueda and Thomas Hare also made numeroususeful suggestions in this work’s earlier stages. In addition, Melinda Takeuchi and Diana Paul gave helpful comments and encouragement. Research for this study would not have been possible without the generous support of the Japan Foundation in 1981-82, and I extend my deepest thanks to that organization, and its energetic staff in Tokyo. I would also like to thank the Center for Research in Inter- national Studies at Stanford for its logistical support, by way of the Stanford/Todai Exchange Program,andits financial assistance, in the form of a typing grant. While at Tokyo University, I was able to work with Professor Kubota Jun, and benefited greatly from his meticulous scholar- ship and kind assistance. My sincere thanks also go to two of his students, Watanabe Yasuaki and Fujimoto Munetoshi, who spent countless hours helping me unravel the intricacies of kanbun, thereby making a good portion of this book possible. I can only Viil Acknowledgments hope that in return I contributed something, however small, to their own work. I would also like to acknowledge my debt to Phillip Harries, who guided me through myearly explorations of classical Japanese po- etry, and whooriginally suggested Tamekane as a topic. I owe a large debt, too, to Jeffrey Mass, who sharpened myhistorical meth- odology. I must add that in the course of many stimulating discus- sions, Mark Harbison has taught me a great deal about scholarly integrity in general, and Japanese poetry in particular. And it was my good fortune that when Professor Konishi Jin’ichi wasvisiting Stanford in 1984, he kindly helped clear up several lingering lin- guistic and textual problems. In the later stages of this project, several people at or through Stanford Press were especially helpful. One was the anonymous reader, whose suggestions caused me to rethink many of mytrans- lations. Another was my editor, Barbara Mnookin, whoaided im- measurably in pulling everything into final form. And I must not overlook Helen Tartar (for her faultless taste!). Parts of Chapter Four andall of Appendix D previously appeared in two articles in Monumenta Nipponica, and I wouldlike to thank Michael Cooper and that publication for permission to reprint them here. In addition, that journal’s anonymous reader for the Kingyoku Poetry Contest article provided many useful comments. Finally, on a personal note, I would like to express my warmest gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Mitsuyji Inuzuka of Tokyo, who cameto myaid at a crucial time, to Marie Hewitt and Harold Stewart, who have steadfastly encouraged my work, and to my parents, who have beenthereall along. R.N.H. Contents Author’s Note xi Introduction I 1. Historical Background 9 2. Tamekane’s Life: The First Rise and Fall 19 3. Tamekane’s Life: The Second Rise and Fall 41 4. Tamekane’s Poetics 63 5. Tamekane’s Poetic Practice 76 6. An Analysis of Seven Poems 116 Conclusion 148 Appendixes 153 A. Tamekane’s Political Career 153 B. Excerpts from Contemporary Documents 155 c. A Count of Tamekane’s Extant Poems 168 bp. Tamekane’s Sixty Poems from the Kingyoku Uta-awase 170 Notes 181 Bibliography 211 Line Index 217 General Index 220 Author’s Note I have preferred the spelling ““Tamekane” as the form used in most modern reference works. However, there is evidence that the name may actually have been pronounced “Tamekanu,” and it appears this way in someindexes. In headnotes to poems, I have capitalized words or phrases when I considered them to be set topics rather than simple descriptions of the poem’s content. Admittedly, there is an element of subjectivity in such judgments, but poetry contests, whereall topics wereset, provided one guideline. Another sign of a set topic is a word or phrase written in Chinese characters and read as kambun, as in the topic AAR (awanu koi, “Love That Does Not Meet’). Ifa poem is cited more than once, the full headnoteis given only at thefirst occurrence. Square brackets are used to indicate implied headnotes. People’s official titles are given only where they are relevant. In such cases I have followed the translations given in William and Helen McCullough, A Tale ofFlowering Fortunes (Stanford, Calif., 1980), or, if not there, Robert K. Reischauer, Early Japanese History (Princeton, N.J., 1937). Dates for people mentionedin the text are given in the index. For calendar dates I have adopted the form used in McCullough and xit Author’s Note McCullough: iii 15 for third month, fifteenth day, with intercalary months designated by a hyphen (-i11 15). Readings for names, titles, and so on, differ from age to age and scholar to scholar. I have generally followed Ariyoshi Tamotsu, Waka Bungaku Jiten (Tokyo, 1982). Poemsfrom imperial anthologies are cited by their new (Shinpen) Kokka Taikan number. The new editionalso lists the old numbers and rarely is there much discrepancy. In the case of Man’yoshu poems, however, I have also provided the old Kokka Taikan num- ber in parentheses, since the most accessible editions of Man’yoshu use that numbering system,and it is in somecases substantially dif- ferent from the new one. I have used standard abbreviations on these works, plus an abbre- viation of my own for the repeatedly cited Kingyoku Uta-awase, as follows: FGS Fiagashu. Collection of Elegance GSIS Goshuaishu. Later Collection of Gleanings GYS_ Gyokuyoshu. Collection ofJeweled Leaves KKS_ Kokinshu. Collection of Ancient and Modern Times KU Kingyoku Uta-awase. The Poetry Contest of Gold and Jade KYS_ Kin’yoshu. Collection of Golden Leaves MYS_ Man’yoshu. Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves SGSS Shingosenshu. New Later Collection ShokuSIS Shokushuishu. Collection of Gleanings Continued ShokuSZS_ Shokusenzaishu. Collection of a Thousand Years Continued SIS Shuishu. Collection of Gleanings SKKS_ Shinkokinshu. New Collection of Ancient and Mod- ern Times SKS Shikashu. Collection of Verbal Flowers SZS Senzaishu. Collection of a Thousand Years KYOGOKU TAMEKANE Introduction Kyogoku Tamekane(1254-1332), the man who introduced changes in traditional waka verse form that would alter the course ofJapa- nese poetry, lived in a period of enormous upheaval and politi- cal complexity. The military government (or Bakufu; also called Kanto), located in the town of Kamakura, from whichthe period derives its name, was exhausted by its successful efforts to thwart the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281. Partly because of its in- ability to reward its loyal soldiers, it was having increasing trouble controlling the agents ( jitd) it had assigned to many land-holdings throughoutthe period in order to maintain stability in crop produc- tion and incomeflow. In Kyoto the imperial court was locked in a succession dispute between the descendants of the Emperor Go- Saga that was to culminate in an open schism in 1332. In a period that the new Buddhist sects designated as “the latter days of the Law” (mappo), matters were indeed unsettled. Tamekanewasplanted firmly in the middle of this unsettled po- litical scene, and his works can hardly be discussed—indeed, would not even exist today—apart from the political and social context in which they werecreated, for as Tamekanehimself noted, in his po- etic treatise Tamekanekyo Wakasho (Lord Tamekane’s Notes on Po- etry), an essential condition of poetryis that it be written down.' In 2 Introduction the Heian and Kamakuraperiods (794-1185; 1185-1333), poetry contests (uta-awase) and imperial anthologies (chokusenshu) were the most important outlets poets had for “publishing” (or, as Tame- kane would haveit, “writing down’) their work, and participation in either required goodpolitical and social connections. This is not to say that the content of Tamekane’s poetry is political, for with few exceptionsit is not. But thefact of it is political, and this will be a very important concern in this study. Given Tamekane’s eventful political life, it may seem surprising to Western, and even other East Asian, readers thatlittle of his po- etry overtly reflects his personal struggles. Certainly Europe and China havelongtraditions of allegorical political poetry. In Japan, waka wastreated little differently. It is not that thereis no such thing as allegorical or even didactic waka. In fact, perhaps 10 to 20 percent of any given collection—beit an imperial anthol- ogy, a poetry contest, or a hundred-poem sequence (hyakushu)— consists of poems of this nature, in the form of laments, religious poems (both Buddhist and Shinto), poems of congratulations, and so on. Someof these even found their way out of the discrete sec- tions to which they were normally confined and into the main body of collections. This study will give a few examples of such work. But for the most part waka has neverbeentreated as allegorical, as standing for something outside itself. In imperial anthologies, for example, if an originally allegorical poem was placed in the main body of the anthology (that is, among the seasonal, love, or miscel- laneous poems), it was usually either given a laundered headnote obscuring its allegorical nature or deprived of any identifying ex- planatory note whatsoever.