Saigyō Hōshi

Saigyō Hōshi (Japanese: 西行法師) (1118 - 1190) was a famous Japanese poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura period.

Biography

Born Satō Norikiyo (佐藤義清) in Kyoto to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new samurai warriors. After the start of the Age of Mappō (1052), Buddhism was considered to be in decline and no longer as effective a means of salvation. These cultural shifts during his lifetime led to a sense of melancholy in his poetry. As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired Emperor Toba, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown, he quit worldly life to become a monk, taking the religious name En'i (円位). He later took the pen name, "Saigyō" meaning Western Journey, a reference to Amida Buddha and the Western paradise. He lived alone for long periods in his life in Saga, Mt. Koya, Mt. Yoshino, Ise, and many other places, but he is more known for the many long, poetic journeys to he took to Northern Honshū that would later inspire Basho in his "Narrow Road to the Deep Interior". He was a good friend of Fujiwara no Teika. Some main collections of Saigyō's work are in the Sankashū, Shin Kokin Wakashū, and Shika Wakashū. He died in Hirokawa Temple in Kawachi Province (present-day Osaka Prefecture) at age 72.

tyle

In Saigyō's time, the Man'yōshū was no longer a big influence on waka poetry, compared to the Kokin Wakashū. Where the Kokin Wakashū was concerned with subjective experience, word play, flow, and elegant diction (neither colloquial nor pseudo-Chinese), the Shin Kokin Wakashū (formed with poetry written by Saigyo and others writing in the same style) was less subjective, had fewer verbs and more nouns, was not as interested in word play, allowed for repetition, had breaks in the flow, is slightly more colloquial and more somber and melancholic. Due to the turbulent times, Saigyō focuses not just on "awaré" (sorrow from change) but also on "sabi" (loneliness) and "kanashi" (sadness). Though he is a Buddhist monk, Saigyō was still very attached to the world and the beauty of nature.

Poetry Examples

• Many of his best-known poems express the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty.waka
  願はくは花の下にて春死なむ|その如月の望月の頃
  reading = negafaku fa fana no sita ni te faru sinan sono kisaragi no motiduki no koro
  translation = I pray that I might die beneath the cherry flowers in spring, in the month of February (by the lunar calendar) when the moon is full.
  source = source neededMost monks would have asked to die facing West, to be welcomed by the Buddha, but Saigyō finds the Buddha in the flowers.waka
  心無き身にも哀れは知られけり|鴫立つ沢の秋の夕暮れ
  reading = kokoro naki mi ni mo afare fa sirarekeri sigi tatu safa no aki no yūgure
  translation = Even to the heartless this sad beauty is felt: snipe-birds rising from a stream in the autumn sunset.
  source = source neededTo be "heartless" was an ideal of Buddhist monkhood, meaning one had abandoned all desire and attachment.
• Saigyō travelled extensively, but one of his favorite places was Mt. Yoshino, famous for its cherry blossoms.waka
  吉野山こぞのしをりの道かへて|まだ見ぬかたの花をたづねむ
  reading = yosino yama kozo no siwori no miti kafete mada minu kata no fana wo tadunen
  translation = On Mt. Yoshino my path strays from last year's landmarks: onward to cherry flowers I've yet to see.
  source = source needed

Resources

*"Saigyô, Poems of a Mountain Home", translated by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, © 1991 ISBN 0-231-07492-1 cloth ISBN 0-231-07493-X pbk [233 pp.]
*Saigyô,"Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyô (1118-1190)", translated by William R. LaFleur, New Directions 1978

External links

* [http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/author/view/19 Classical Japanese Database] - has some poems by Saigyō in translations and in the original Japanese