Japanese poetry
The most popular forms of Japanese poetry outside of Japan are haiku and senryū . The classic form in Japan is more like waka . Many works in Japan were also written in Chinese , so one should speak more precisely of "Japanese-language poetry". For example, in the epic Genji Monogatari, both types of poetry are frequently mentioned. When Japanese poets first came into contact with Chinese poetry, the Tang dynasty was in its prime and Japanese poets were fascinated by Chinese culture. It took several hundred years to digest the Chinese influence, incorporate it into Japanese culture, and unite it with one's own literary culture in Japanese. This started the development of a variety of independent Japanese forms. Waka and Kanshi, Chinese poetry that included Japanese works in sometimes mangled Chinese, were two pillars of Japanese poetry. From these other forms such as renga , haiku or senryu developed .
A new trend emerged in the middle of the 19th century. Since then, the important forms have been tanka (a new name for waka), haiku and shi .
Today the main forms of Japanese poetry can be divided into experimental poetry and poetry that seeks to revive the traditional ways. Poets who write in the forms of tanka, haiku, or shi move on different levels and seldom write poetry outside of the form they choose. This does not apply to a few active poets who seek collaboration with representatives of other genres.
Important historical Japanese poetry collections are Man'yōshu , Kokin-wakashū and Shinkokin-wakashū .
antiquity
Poems in Kojiki and Nihonshoki
Before Korean scholars brought Classical Chinese texts to Japan in the 6th century, Japanese was just a spoken language. The oldest surviving work of Japanese literature is the Kojiki from the 8th century, in which Ō no Yasumaro wrote down Japanese mythology and history, as reported to him by Hieda no Are , who in turn obtained his knowledge from his ancestors. Much of the poetry in Kojiki may have been passed on from times when Japan had no script.
The Nihonshoki , Japan's oldest historical work, was completed two years after the Kojiki and also contains numerous poems. These are usually not particularly long and do not follow a specific shape. The first poem documented in both works is attributed to a kami named Susanoo (須 佐 之 男), Amaterasu's younger brother . When he married Princess Kushinada from Izumo Province , the Kami created a Uta or Waka , a poem:
- 八 雲 立 つ 出 雲 八 重 垣 妻 籠 み に 八 重 垣 作 作 る そ の 八 重 垣 を
- Yakumo tatsu / Izumo yagegaki / Tsuma-gomini / Yaegaki tsukuru / Sono yaegaki wo
- In the overcast Idzumo, / an eight-fold fence, / that the wife can be accommodated in it, / I make an eight-fold fence. / Oh, over the eightfold fence!
This is the oldest waka (poem in Japanese, not Chinese), so the poetry is later attributed to the founding of a kami, thus divine origin.
The two books contain many of the same or similar pieces, but the Nihonshoki also contains some more recent as it covers later events up to the reign of Emperor Temmu . The themes of the waka in the two books are varied, from love, worry, satire, war cries, victories in war, riddles, etc. Most of these works are considered "works of the people" although some are attributed to specific authors. Many works in Kojiki, however, were anonymous. Some were attributed to kami, emperors or empresses, nobles, generals, but also people from the common people, sometimes even enemies of the court.
Early Manyoshu Poets (Volumes I-III)
The first anthology by Waka is the 20-volume Man'yōshū . It may have been finished in the early Heian period and unites numerous older works. The sequence of its sections is roughly chronological. Most of the works of Man'yōshū follow a fixed form, which are now referred to as Chōka and Tanka. The earliest works, especially in Volume I, lack such a fixed form and these are ascribed to the emperor Yūryaku .
The Man'yōshū begins with a waka without a fixed form, this is at the same time a love poem for an unknown girl, which the poet meets by chance, and a ritual song that extols the beauty of the country. It is worth attributing to an emperor and is still part of the court ritual today.
The first three sections contain mostly the works of poets from the mid-7th century to the early 8th century. Important poets of this time were Nukata no Ōkimi and Kakinomoto Hitomaro . Kakinomoto Hitomaro was not only the greatest poet of his time and one of the most important in Man'yōshū , he is considered one of the most important poets in Japanese literature.
Chinese influences
Chinese literature was introduced to Japan in the 7th century. It was almost half a century before it took hold in Japanese literature. At the court of Emperor Temmu, some nobles made attempts to recite Chinese poetry. Proficiency in the Chinese language and script was a sign of high education, and most senior courtiers wrote poetry in the Chinese language. These works were later collected in Kaifūsō , one of the earliest anthologies in Japan from the early Heian period. Thanks to this book, for example, which is death poem of Prince Otsu preserved.
Poet of the Nara period
In 710 the Japanese capital moved from Fujiwara-kyō (now Asuka ) to Heijō-kyō (now Nara ) and the Nara period (710-794) began. It was the time when Chinese influence reached its peak. The Tōdai-ji temple was founded and the Great Buddha there was created by order of the Shōmu -tennō.
The important waka poets of this time were Ōtomo no Tabito , Yamanoue no Okura and Yamabe no Akahito . The Man'yōshū also took on some female poets from this time, who mainly wrote love poems. The poets of Man'yōshū were aristocrats who were born in Nara, but sometimes lived or traveled to other provinces as officials of the emperor. These poets wrote down their travel impressions and expressed their feelings for loved ones or children. Sometimes they also criticize the government's political failure or tyranny of local officials. Yamanoue no Okura wrote the Chōka , "A Dialogue between Two Poor Men" ( 貧窮 問答 歌 , Hinkyū mondōka ); in this poem two poor men lament their hard lives in poverty. A Hanka from it reads:
- 世 の 中 を 憂 し と や さ し と お も へ ど も 飛 び 立 ち か ね つ 鳥 に し あ ら ね ば
- Yononaka wo / Ushi to yasashi to / Omoe domo / Tobitachi kanetsu / Tori ni shi arane ba
- I feel life is / worried and unbearable / however / I cannot escape / because I am not a bird.
The man'yōshū contains not only poems by aristocrats but also some by nameless common people. These poems are called Yomibito shirazu , poems whose author is unknown. Among them is a special style of waka called azuma-uta (waka in the eastern dialect). Azuma (east) then referred to the Kantō region , occasionally also the Tōhoku region . These poems had a rural character. There was a special style among them, Sakimori -uta (soldier-waka), these were mainly poems that drafted soldiers wrote on the occasion of leaving their homes. These soldiers were drafted in the eastern provinces and required to do guard duty in Kyushu for several years .
Waka in the early Heian period
It is believed that the Manyoshu got its final form as we know it today very early in the Heian period. There are good reasons to believe that Ōtomo no Yakamochi was the editor of the final version, but some documents claim that changes were made by other poets such as Sugawara no Michizane towards the end of the Heian period .
Although contemporary tastes leaned strongly towards Chinese poetry at the time, some important waka poets were also active in the early Heian period, including the so-called " six best waka poets ".
The pinnacle of Kanshi
In the early Heian period, Chinese poetry, or Kanshi (漢詩, Chinese poetry ), was the most popular style among Japan's aristocrats. Some poets like Kūkai studied in China and were fluent in the Chinese language. Others, like Sugawara no Michizane , grew up in Japan but also understood Chinese well. When they received foreign diplomats, they did not communicate with them orally, but in writing using Chinese characters ( Kanji ). During this time, Chinese poetry reached its peak in Japan. Great Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty such as Li Po were her contemporaries. The works of important Chinese poets were very well known, and some Japanese who traveled to China to study or on diplomatic assignments also made their personal acquaintance. The most popular styles of Kanshi were 5 or 7 syllables in 4 or 8 lines. The rules of the rhyme were very strict. The Japanese poets adopted these rules and wrote numerous good poems themselves. Sometimes they also made long poems with lines of 5 or 7 syllables, these were recited in chant form and then referred to as Shigin (詩 吟) - a practice that is known to this day.
Emperor Saga himself wrote Kanshi. He ordered the compilation of three Kanshi anthologies. These were the first of the "imperial anthologies", the tradition of which continued into the Muromachi period .
Kokinshu
In the middle of the Heian period, the waka experienced a revitalization through the compilation of the Kokin-wakashū (古今 (和 歌) 集kokin (waka) shū , "collection of ancient and modern poems"). It was compiled on the order of the Emperor Daigo . About 1,000 waka, mainly from the late Nara period to contemporary works, were compiled by five poets at court. One of them was Ki no Tsurayuki , who wrote the "Foreword in Kana" (Kanajo) for the collection.
This preface to the Kokinshu was the second oldest work of literary theory and criticism in Japan. Only Kūkai's literary theory is older . While Kūkai's theory gained little influence, the Kokinshu wrote down the types of waka and thus other genres that later developed from waka.
The collection consists of twenty parts, referring to older models such as the Manyoshu and various Chinese anthologies. The division of subjects, however, differs from any of these earlier collections. It was adopted by all later official collections of poetry, although some collections, such as Kin'yōshū and shikashū , were limited to 10 parts. Parts 1–6 deal with the four seasons, followed by congratulations, farewell poems, and travel poems. The last ten sections include poems on the 'names of things', love, grief, poems on various occasions, various poems and finally traditional and ceremonial poems by the imperial 'Bureau of Poetry'.
The editors provided the author and the subject (題dai ) or the source of inspiration for each poem, if known . In addition to the editors themselves, important poets of kokinshū are Ariwara no Narihira , Ono no Komachi , Henjō and Fujiwara no Okikaze . To be included in any of the imperial anthologies, but especially in the Kokinshu , was considered a great honor.
The Kokinshū is the first of the nijūichidaishū (二十 一 大 集), the 21 collections of Japanese poetry compiled by imperial order. It was the most influential implementation of the ideas of poetry of its time and dictated the form of Japanese poetry well into the late 19th century. The predominant role of poems about the seasons, which appears for the first time in kokinshū , continues in the tradition of haiku to this day. The idea of including both old and new poetry was another major innovation that was later picked up by many prose and congregations. The poems were arranged chronologically, the love poems, for example, followed the progress of a courtly love affair. This relation of one poem to the next identifies this anthology as the ancestor of the tradition of chain poems, renga and haikai .
Imperial anthologies
After the Shin Kokinshū , which was commissioned and edited by Emperor Go-Toba , another eight anthologies followed on imperial orders. These reflect the taste of the aristocrats and were viewed as the "ideal" of a waka at the time of their appearance.
From late antiquity to the middle ages
Waka in the life of the ball
In ancient times it was customary to exchange waka instead of letters in prose form. Sometimes improvised waka were also used in the everyday communication of the high nobility. The exchange of waka between lovers was especially common. This custom is also illustrated by the fact that 5 of the 20 volumes of Kokinshū collected love- waka . In the Heian period, lovers exchanged waka in the morning when they said goodbye at the woman's house. These waka were called kinuginu (後 朝) because the ulterior motive was that the man wanted to stay with his lover and when the sun came up he had almost no time to put his clothes in order, which was on the floor instead of his mat were designed as was the custom at the time. Soon the writing and reciting of waka became an integral part of aristocratic culture. An appropriate waka was often recited to express something specific in a situation. In the pillow book it is written that a wife of Emperor Murakami knew over 1000 waka of the Kokinshū and their descriptions by heart.
Uta-ai , ceremonial waka recitation contests, arose in the middle of the Heian period. The custom began during the reign of Emperor Uda , the father of Emperor Daigo , who had the kokinshu put together. It was a "team competition" on given topics, which were grouped in a similar way to the topics of the Kokinshu . Representatives of each team recited a waka according to their given topic and the winner of the round received one point. The team with the highest overall result won the competition. Both the winning team and the best poet received an award. Holding uta-ai was expensive and therefore only possible for the emperor and very high-ranking kuge.
The scale of these competitions grew - soon Uta-ai were being played with hundreds of rounds. They motivated the refinement of the waka technique, but at the same time make it formalistic and artificial. The poets were expected to have spring waka in winter or love and mourning poems without any reference to reality.