Song as Cultural History: Reading Wakan Roeishu (Texts)

Abstract

A MONG the many arts that the Japanese have refined to an impressive degree is anthologizing poetry. From the eighth century on, poetic collections of increasing complexity appeared with gathering speed. A special place among them is occupied by Wakan roeisha fn Aw t (or ffi r-%ki), now translated by J. Thomas Rimer and Jonathan Chaves into English as Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing.1 Unlike most anthologies, which tend to concentrate on poetry in either Japanese (waka) or Chinese (kanshi), this is a collection of both fragments of Chinese poetry and complete waka. Its more than eight hundred poems are grouped together in thematic categories. Wakan roeisha is a curious, fascinating, and often beautiful text. Compiled sometime early in the eleventh century by Fujiwara no Kinto VSYYEM-1 (9661041), a famed aristocratic poet and connoisseur of all things elegant, it has been treasured as a collection of poetry to be chanted, as a primer for Chinese studies, as a source book for calligraphy, and even as a dictionary. And yet today it is somewhat forgotten by most lovers and students of classical Japanese literature. The collection's obscurity is all the more odd given that it is the best preserved of all the literary classics from the Heian period. We do not have contemporaneous manuscripts of Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji or Sei Shonagon' s Pillow Book, nor of Kokinshi i (Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern, 905), but we do have exquisitely executed manuscripts from the eleventh century of Wakan roeisha.2 Wakan roeisha is known by many names. Sometimes written Wakan roeisho fn Thk, throughout the centuries it has been variously abbreviated to Wakan