Kokin Wakashū

The nihongo|"Kokin Wakashū"|古今和歌集, commonly abbreviated as nihongo|Kokinshū|古今集, is an early Heian "waka" Imperial anthology, conceived by Emperor Uda (r. 887–897) and ordered by his son Emperor Daigo (r. 897–930) in approximately 905. Its finished form dates to c. 920, though according to several historical accounts the last poem was added to the collection in 914. The compilers of the anthology were four court poets, led by Ki no Tsurayuki and including Ki no Tomonori (who died before its completion), Ōshikōchi Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine. Its name means "Collected Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times."

ignificance

The "Kokinshū" is the first of the nihongo|"Nijūichidaishū"|二十一代集, the 21 collections of Japanese poetry compiled at Imperial request. It was the most influential realization of the ideas of poetry at the time, dictating the form and format of Japanese poetry until the late nineteenth century; it was the first anthology to divide itself into seasonal and love poems. The primacy of poems about the seasons pioneered by the "Kokinshū" continues even today in the "haiku" tradition.

The Japanese preface by Ki no Tsurayuki is also the beginning of Japanese criticism as distinct from the far more prevalent Chinese poetics in the literary circles of its day. (The anthology also included a traditional Chinese preface authored by Ki no Tomonori.) The idea of including old as well as new poems was another important innovation, one which was widely adopted in later works, both in prose and verse. The poems of the "Kokinshū" were ordered temporally; the love poems, for instance, though written by many different poets across large spans of time, are ordered in such a way that the reader may understand them to depict the progression and fluctuations of a courtly love-affair. This association of one poem to the next marks this anthology as the ancestor of the "renga" and "haikai" traditions.

tructure

The exact number of poems in the collection is a matter of dispute. The online editionOnline edition of the [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/kokinshu/ Kokin wakashu] at the [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese UVa Library Japanese Text Initiative] .] contains 1,111 poems. The collection is divided into twenty parts, reflecting older models such as the "Man'yōshū" and various Chinese anthologies. The organization of topics is however different from all earlier models, and was followed by all later official collections, although some collections like the "Kin'yō Wakashū" and "Shika Wakashū" scaled the model down to ten parts.

The following divisions of the "Kokinshū" mention the Japanese names of the parts, their modern readingsMiner (1985), pages 186–187] McCullough] , and their English translationsBrower, pg 482] .

The compilers included the name of the author of each poem, and the nihongo|topic|題|dai or inspiration of the poem, if known. Major poets of the "Kokinshū" include Ariwara no Narihira, Ono no Komachi, Henjō and Fujiwara no Okikaze, apart from the compilers themselves. Inclusion in any imperial collection, and particularly the "Kokinshū", was a great honour.

Notes

References

* cite book
last = Saeki
first = Umetomo
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei: Kokin Wakashū
publisher = Iwanami Shoten
year = 1958
location =
pages =
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 4-00-0600087

* cite book
last = Kojima
first = Noriyuki
authorlink =
coauthors = Eizō Arai
title = Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei: Kokin Wakashū
publisher = Iwanami Shoten
year = 1989
location =
pages =
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 4-00-240005-0

* cite book
last = Miner
first = Earl
authorlink = Earl Miner
coauthors = H. Odagiri, R. E. Morell
title = The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature
publisher = Princeton University Press
year = 1985
location =
pages = 186–187
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 0-691-06599-3

* cite book
last = McCullough
first = Helen Craig
authorlink = Helen Craig McCullough
coauthors =
title = Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry
publisher = Stanford University Press
year = 1985
location =
pages =
url =
doi =
id = ISBN 0-8047-1258-1

* cite book
last = Brower
first = Robert H.
authorlink =
coauthors = Earl Roy Miner
title = Japanese court poetry
publisher = Stanford University Press
year = 1961
location =
pages =
url =
doi =
id = LCCN 61-10925