Hitomaro - Poet as God

Hitomaro

Brill’s Japanese Studies Library

Edited by

Joshua Mostow (Managing Editor)Chris Goto-Jones

Caroline RoseKate Wildman-Nakai

VOLUME 31

Hitomaro

Poet as God

By

Anne Commons

LEIDEN • BOSTON2009

Cover illustration: Fourteenth-century portrait of Hitomaro (ink and colors on silk, 121.4 × 82.9 cm), Tokyo National Museum. Image: TNM Image Archives. Source: http://TnmArchives.jp/

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Commons, Anne. Hitomaro : poet as god / by Anne Commons. p. cm. — (Brill’s Japanese studies library ; v. 31) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17461-0 (acid-free paper) 1. Kakinomoto, Hitomaro, fl . 689–700. I. Title. II. Series.

PL785.Z5C66 2009 895.6’114—dc22

2008055177

ISSN 0925-6512ISBN 978 90 04 17461 0

Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

For Sue and Bernard Commons

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ..................................................................... ix

Map of Japan Showing Sites Mentioned in the Text ............... xi

Introduction ................................................................................ 1

Chapter One Hitomaro and the Man’yōshū: The Birth of a Legend ................................................................................. 9

Chapter Two Hitomaro in Heian Texts: A Sage of Poetry ... 39

Chapter Three Worshipping Hitomaro: From Text to Image ...................................................................................... 91

Chapter Four Medieval Reception: Poetic Deities in the Secret Commentaries .............................................................. 127

Chapter Five Hitomaro in the Early Modern Period: Poetic Icon and Popular Deity ............................................... 175

Bibliography ................................................................................ 205

Index ........................................................................................... 213

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of many friends, colleagues, and teachers, past and present, not all of whom can be mentioned here.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my dissertation adviser Haruo Shirane, without whose astute guidance, endless patience, and unfl agging support and encouragement none of this would have been possible. While at Columbia, I was also the recipient of much useful advice and warm encouragement from Ryūichi Abe. In Japan, I was extremely fortunate to benefi t from the incredibly generous and thought-ful guidance of Ii Haruki and Araki Hiroshi at Osaka University.

I am very grateful to Stefania Burk, Cheryl Crowley and Christina Laffi n for their constructive criticism of parts of the manuscript, and to David Lurie for his guidance on things Man’yōshū-related. I am particularly indebted to Mikael Adolphson, who gave unstintingly of his time as an insightful reader of the manuscript and an invaluable source of support and advice.

Special thanks go to Joshua Mostow for his trenchant editorial advice, and to Patricia Radder at Brill; also to Winifred Olsen, for her clear and careful editing. Finally, I am very grateful to the Shinchō Founda-tion for the Promotion of Literature, whose generous fi nancial support enabled me to carry out two years of research in Japan.

I’d like to think that Hitomaro—in his capacity as a deity of learn-ing—has been guiding my endeavors; any errors remaining in the text, however, are entirely mine.

1. Masuda (site of Takatsu Kakinomoto shrine)2. Akashi3. Heian-Kyō / Kyoto4. Heijō-Kyō / Nara5. Yoshino6. Sumiyoshi7. Tamatsushima8. Edo / Tokyo

Map of Japan Showing Sites Mentioned in the Text

INTRODUCTION

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl . c. 690) is today generally regarded as one of the three greatest poets in the Japanese classical canon, frequently held up alongside the medieval poet-recluse Saigyō (1118–1190) and the early modern haikai poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) as an outstand-ing exponent of premodern Japanese poetry. Most modern Japanese readers know Hitomaro from his poems in the eighth-century anthol-ogy Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, c. 759), and many were introduced to his poems as part of their high school education. However, those living near one of the shrines dedicated to Hitomaro will also know him as a benevolent deity whose favor may be requested for such things as safety in childbirth, safety while traveling, and success in academic endeavors. Meanwhile, the amount of scholarly writing produced annually in Japan on Hitomaro’s poetry is enormous, and there is also an enduring interest in his life and legend today, as refl ected in the numerous popular publications available on the subject.

Rather than a detailed discussion of Hitomaro’s works, the present study is concerned with what may be better described as his afterlife, the centuries-long process of his reception and canonization as a court poet and as an enshrined deity worshipped for non-poetic purposes. This is a process which begins with Hitomaro’s treatment in the Man’yōshū and continues today. However, this study is primarily concerned with the fi rst thousand years of Hitomaro’s reception, leading up to a major milestone in his canonization, namely his imperially-sponsored recogni-tion as a deity in 1723, when he received the title Great Bright Deity Kakinomoto (Kakinomoto daimyōjin) and a posthumously-awarded court rank. In seeking to illuminate the history of Hitomaro’s reception, this study examines his role as a symbol of the Japanese court-poetic (waka) tradition, whose canonization is carried out under existing cul-tural paradigms but then becomes itself a model for the treatment of poets. The process of Hitomaro’s canonization is considered within both literary and religious contexts, with attention given to the uses he served as a poetic icon and legitimizing symbol of poetry’s antiquity and authority, as well as poetry’s relationship to larger developments in religious thought. These two forms of canonization—literary and

2 introduction

religious—are intimately linked, their integration refl ected in the devel-opment of modes of thought in which poets could become deities and poetry itself came to be regarded as sacred, as the equivalent of Bud-dhist incantations (dhāranī ).

If the story of Hitomaro’s canonization is that of the increasing religious dimension of poetic discourse in medieval Japan, it is also the story of the transmission and authorization of court-poetic orthodoxy. Hitomaro’s elevation in the early part of the Heian period (794–1185) to a quasi-supernatural “sage of poetry” and then to divine status as an ancestral deity of Japanese poetry had from the outset a political element; his potency as a symbolic embodiment of the court-poetic tradition led to his appropriation as a legitimizing fi gure by parties eager to reinforce their own poetic and political authority. Later, in the medieval (1185–1600) and early modern (1600–1868) periods, his presence in the poetic commentaries as a deity of Japanese poetry emphasized the divine nature of poetry in general, and gave further authority in particular to the jealously-guarded secrets enclosed in the teachings passed down by competing poetic houses. This study analyzes the central role played by the court-poetic canon in Hitomaro’s recep-tion, as his canonization as the fi gurehead of Japanese poetry was not only contingent on his valorization in highly-regarded texts such as the Kokinwakashū (Collection of Old and New Japanese Poems, c. 905), but was, paradoxically, accompanied by relatively little interest in his actual poems preserved in the Man’yōshū.

A recurring feature of literary canonization in Japan is the construc-tion of a genealogy or line of descent.1 Hitomaro evolved from a great poet of the past (as presented in the in the Man’yōshū and Kokinshū) to an ancestral poetic deity, and fi nally the tutelary deity of the Way of Japanese poetry as a whole. That evolution is directly connected to the development of schools or houses of Japanese poetry, for whom the question of origins—and thus authenticity, authority, and pres-tige—was of central importance. Members of the poetic houses were concerned in this-worldly terms with their descent—by bloodline or scholarship—from great originating fi gures such as Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) and Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241). The derivative titles

1 Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, eds., Inventing the Classics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 3.

introduction 3

of the imperially commissioned anthologies compiled in the medieval period—the Shinkokinshū (New Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry, 1205) and Shinshokukokinshū (New Continued Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry, 1439), for example—refl ect the drive of these poets to construct a genealogy of texts as well, texts that trace their line of descent back to the Kokinshū and thus take on some of its symbolic authority. The poets of the medieval schools also sought other-worldly parallels in the origins of their own texts about poetry, particularly the Kokinshū, which include a genealogy of poetic divinities. These divini-ties, and Hitomaro is among them, are described as the originators of particular poetic or commentarial works, whose subsequent route of transmission is carefully documented. For the medieval schools, these genealogies were of great importance as instruments of legitimization for their own poetic practice.

In this sense the process of Hitomaro’s canonization can be seen as analogous to that of the texts with which he is most closely associated, the Man’yōshū and Kokinshū, all three being imbued with great symbolic value in the context of court-poetic discourse. In broader terms, his canonization can be situated within the context of the canonization of the genre of Japanese court poetry as a whole, refl ecting its appropria-tion of modes of thought and practice from other cultural spheres, such as Chinese studies or Buddhism.

Hitomaro’s canonization does not only take place in texts, however: it was also effected through portraiture, ceremonies, and, later, the dedica-tion of shrines. By examining the process of Hitomaro’s reception across a range of periods, genres, and contexts, this study illuminates the ways that Hitomaro the historical fi gure is appropriated to become a symbol to which a variety of meanings are appended; he is re-imagined and (re)constructed to meet the needs of a given time, place, and discourse. It is a process that involves different modes of canon-formation and their complex and dynamic interaction, and reveals the mechanisms at work in the canonization and transmission of the court-poetic tradition. The central position of Hitomaro in pre-modern Japanese court-poetic discourse means that the issues raised by his personal canonization are germane to the larger process of the reception of Japanese poetry, the most highly valued pre-modern literary genre.

4 introduction

Background

Virtually nothing is known of Hitomaro’s life, other than that he appears to have served at court in some capacity and to have composed poetry for offi cial events such as imperial excursions and state funerals in the last decade of the seventh century. He is at best a shadowy fi gure, with neither the detailed historical biography nor the forceful personality evi-dent in the case of Tenman Tenjin (Sugawara no Michizane, 845–903), perhaps the most prominent example of a person (and poet) who later became a deity. The paucity of factual information on Hitomaro’s life has contributed to the extraordinary malleability of his image, which was formed and reformed according to the time, place, and context in which it appeared.

Hitomaro is known to history—as opposed to literature—only through the poems attributed to or connected with him in the Man’yōshū, along with their editorial notes. The Man’yōshū is in fact the only text dating from around Hitomaro’s supposed lifetime in which his name appears. His complete absence from the historical record, despite the prominence of his poems in the Man’yōshū, is generally attributed to his low court rank.2 There is slightly more material available which mentions the Kakinomoto clan itself, beginning with the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712), where in the section on the legendary Emperor Kōshō (475–393 B.C.E.) there is a reference to Ameoshitarashihiko-no-mikoto, the ancestor of the Kasuga no omi.3 And according to the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720) “Ametarashihikokunioshihito-no-mikoto was the ancestor of the Wani no omi, and others.”4

From these two items, the Kakinomoto seem to have been a sub-clan of the Wani, a powerful clan based in the southern part of Sōnokami district, Yamato Province (present-day Ichinomoto-chō, Tenri City, Nara Prefecture). The Kasuga, the fi rst clan mentioned in the Kojiki entry, were based near the Wani, and from references to “Kasuga Wani no omi” in the record of the fi rst year of the Yūryaku emperor’s reign in the Kojiki, it is thought that the clans eventually merged and became known as the Kasuga no omi. A number of these Wani sub-clans, including the Kakinomoto, received the kabane or clan title of

2 Sakurai Mitsuru, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron (Ōfūsha, 1980), 24.3 Yamaguchi Yoshinori and Kōnoshi Takamitsu, eds., Kojiki, Shinpen nihon koten

bungaku zenshū 1, Shōgakukan, 1997, 169.4 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 27.

introduction 5

Asomi (replacing their earlier title of Omi) in the Eleventh Month of Temmu 13 (685).5

The connection with the Kasuga clan is also mentioned in the account of the origins of the name Kakinomoto which appears in the genealogical record Shinsen seishiroku (Newly Selected Record of Names, 815):

The Kakinomoto no Ason have the same ancestor as the Ōkasuga no Ason and are descendants of Ametarashihiko kunioshihito no mikoto. In the reign of Emperor Bidatsu there was a persimmon tree at the gate to their house, on account of which they came to be [called] the Kakinomoto no Omi clan.6

The Shinsen seishiroku sets the origins of the name in the sixth century, during the reign of Bidatsu (r. 572–585); a similar etymology for the name Kakinomoto appears repeatedly in later accounts of Hitomaro’s origins, in which he is said to have appeared at the foot of a persimmon tree (kaki no moto). However, although the Shinsen seishiroku dates from the ninth century, the absence of kaki (persimmon) as a plant name in early texts such as the Kojiki, Nihon shoki, Fudoki, and Man’yōshū makes it diffi cult to see how it could have been involved in such an early account, and has led to suggestions that the Shinsen seishiroku etymology was also a later legend.7

As noted earlier, there is no mention of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro in historical records; a member of the Kakinomoto clan who does appear, however, is Kakinomoto no Ason Saru, who is one of ten people men-tioned in the Nihon shoki on their receipt of the rank of Lesser Brocade, Lower Grade (shōkinge, equivalent to the Fifth Rank under the ritsuryō system) in the Twelfth Month of the tenth year of Temmu’s reign (682). According to the Shoku nihongi (Continued Chronicles of Japan, 797), Saru died on the twentieth day of the Fourth Month of Wadō 1 (708),8 and held the Junior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade, at the time.

5 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 27. Asomi was the second-highest of the eight titles ( yakusa no kabane) introduced by Emperor Temmu in 684, which were assigned to clans based on the proximity of their ancestors to the imperial line.

6 Quoted in Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 27, and in Aso Mizue, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, rev. ed., (Ōfūsha, 1998), 173.

7 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 27–28.8 For the Shoku nihongi entry on Saru’s death, see Aoki Kazuo et al. ed., Shoku nihongi

(1), Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei 12 (Iwanami, 1989), 138–9. Saru’s death in this entry is described by the character sotsu, which indicated the death of a holder of the Fourth or Fifth Rank under the ritsuryō system.

6 introduction

Various theories have been posited regarding the relationship between Kakinomoto no Saru and Hitomaro (father-and-son, brothers, same person), but no corroborating evidence exists for any of them.

There are three main theories regarding Hitomaro’s life and role at court: Hitomaro as an offi cial (toneri ), as a court poet (kyūtei shijin), and as a wandering entertainer ( jun’yū shijin).9 The theory of Hitomaro as a toneri goes back to Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769), who based it on a passage in the Nihon shoki and suggested in his Man’yō kō (Thoughts on the Man’yōshū, 1768) that Hitomaro had served Princes Hinamishi and Takechi,10 for both of whom he composed banka or elegies. Theories positing Hitomaro as a court poet suggest that he was an offi cial (in other words, a professional) poet called upon to compose the poems that were an indispensable part of many court events. This approach, which accounts for the large proportion of Hitomaro’s works which were composed at offi cial events such as imperial processions or impe-rial funerals, was strongly opposed by the twentieth-century poet Saitō Mokichi, who deplored the depiction of Hitomaro as merely a poetic craftsman.11

The third theory regarding Hitomaro’s role at court is that which casts him as a traveling entertainer. It has been suggested that “Hitomaro” was not in fact the name of an individual, but rather a semi-proper name which could be used in reference to any member of a clan of wandering entertainers.12 Hito and maro were both typical elements of male names, both meaning “man,”13 and both serving to signify that the word in question was a male given name. In this light, “Hitomaro” as a name seems strangely generic: literally meaning “man-man,” it could possibly be translated as “Everyman.” It has also been suggested that the hito element in names such as Hitomaro, Akahito or Kurohito derives from terms for groups like jinnin, representatives of the deities, or reijin, entertainers who served at shrines, performing music, poetry and dance.14

9 Yoshimura Teiji, “Hitomaro ron no kanōsei,” in Gomi Tomohide ed. Jōdaihen. Kōza nihon bungaku no sōten 1. Meiji shoin, 1969, 201.

10 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 988.11 Yoshimura, 208.12 Nishimura Tōru, Uta to minzokugaku, Minzoku, mingei no sōsho 6, Iwasaki bijut-

susha, 1966, 30: he is referring to Origuchi Shinobu, “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro,” (Origuchi Shinobu zenshū, vol. 9).

13 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 29.14 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 29–30.

introduction 7

Given the basic lack of material on Hitomaro’s life, however, there is nothing to say that any of these theories apply; it may be better to consider that aspects of all of them are possible, that Hitomaro could have served the court as a toneri or in a similar offi cial capacity and composed poems or otherwise functioned as a court entertainer when the occasion demanded.15 Needless to say, after his valorization in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as a “sage of poetry,” Hitomaro was canonized in court-poetic discourse as a court poet, and as one in particularly close attendance on his sovereign. This idealized view of his position stems from the fact that his canonizers were themselves court poets, seeking to enshrine him as one of their own. Apart from the basic premise supportable by the headnotes to his poems in Man’yōshū, namely that Hitomaro served at court in some capacity that included to some degree the composition of poems at public events, the lack of informa-tion about his life allowed later readers and writers much freedom in constructing a biography appropriate to a poetic god.

15 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 23.

CHAPTER ONE

HITOMARO AND THE MAN’YŌSHŪ: THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND

The long process of Hitomaro’s reception and canonization begins in the text in which his most reliably attributed poetry is preserved, the eighth-century anthology Man’yōshū. Disparate images of Hitomaro are presented in the Man’yōshū: Hitomaro the court poet; Hitomaro the traveler, dying alone in the wilderness in the distant western province of Iwami; and Hitomaro the great poetic fi gure of the past. This last version of Hitomaro, found in Ōtomo no Yakamochi’s (717?–785) letter to his cousin Ikenushi (the preface to Man’yōshū XVII:3969), foreshadows his treatment as a poetic ancestor in the late Heian period.

This chapter focuses mainly on the initial stages of Hitomaro’s legend, as represented by the two sequences of poems by or about him which are set in the province of Iwami (modern Shimane Prefecture), namely the so-called Iwami sōmonka (Iwami love poems, Man’yōshū II:131–140) and the Iwami banka (Iwami elegies, Man’yōshū II:223–227). The account of Hitomaro’s death given in the Iwami banka can be situated within the poetic sub-genre known as kōroshinin no uta, poems recited on the discovery of a dead traveler by the wayside. The conventionalized lit-erary account of Hitomaro’s death given in the Iwami banka sequence refl ects not only the infl uence of the kōroshinin no uta genre but also the fact that even by the time of the compilation of the fi rst two volumes of the Man’yōshū (thought to be the oldest in the anthology), Hitomaro had already attracted suffi cient interest for such a legendary treatment of his death to be preserved.

The Man’yōshū is the earliest anthology of Japanese poetry, and consists of 4516 (or by some counts 4540) poems arranged in twenty volumes. Its latest datable poem is from 759, but its editing process seems to have stretched over many years, with some volumes regarded as considerably later compilations than others. The fi rst and second volumes are thought to be the oldest, possibly compiled as an anthol-ogy in their own right in the early Nara period (early eighth century);1

1 Shinada Yoshikazu, “Man’yōshū no kankan,” in Man’yōshū jiten, ed. Inaoka Kōji (Gakutōsha, 1993), 396.

10 chapter one

they are regarded as the core of the Man’yōshū, and at their heart are poems by and associated with Hitomaro.2 The Man’yōshū includes 88 poems attributed directly to Hitomaro, 19 chōka (long poems) and 69 tanka (short poems). There are also approximately 370 poems, almost all tanka, whose source is given as the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro no kashū (Poetry Collection of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro), a text in whose composition or compilation Hitomaro appears to have played some role. The total of attributed poems regarded as Hitomaro’s com-positions and Hitomaro kashū poems comes to approximately a tenth of the entire Man’yōshū, a contribution exceeded among the named poets only by the 479 poems of Ōtomo no Yakamochi, who is regarded as one of the compilers of the text and whose poems dominate the last four volumes. The poems attributed to Hitomaro are concentrated in the fi rst three volumes, while the poems from the Hitomaro kashū appear in the greatest numbers in volumes VII, IX, X and XII.3 As will be discussed in more detail below, the prominent placement of Hitomaro kashū poems in these volumes further suggests the high regard in which he was held by the anthology’s compilers.4 There is relatively little overlap between the volumes in which Hitomaro’s attributed poems are concentrated and those in which poems from the Hitomaro kashū appear en masse.5

A signifi cant proportion of the poems directly attributed to Hitomaro are court-related, composed on offi cial occasions such as imperial excur-sions to the detached palace at Yoshino6 or as elegies for members of the imperial family.7 The earliest of Hitomaro’s poems for which the date is known is his banka on the occasion of the temporary enshrine-ment of Hinamishi no mikoto, who died on the thirteenth day of the Fourth Month of 689 (Man’yōshū II:167–9), and the latest is that on the temporary enshrinement of Asuka no himemiko, who died on the fourth day of the Fourth Month of 700 (Man’yōshū II:196–8). It may thus be surmised that Hitomaro’s period of activity at court was centered around the last decade of the seventh century, during the

2 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 151.3 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 16–23.4 Watase Masatada, “Maki nana Hitomaro kashū no tanka”, in Man’yōshū o manabu,

ed. Itō Haku and Inaoka Kōji, vol. 2 (Yūhikaku, 1977), 4.5 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 24.6 Man’yōshū I:36–37, 38–39.7 Man’yōshū II:167–169, 194–195, 196–198, 199–201.

hitomaro and the MAN’YŌSHŪ 11

reigns of Empress Jitō (645–702, r. 690–697) and Emperor Mommu (683–707, r. 697–707). There is a poem on Tanabata drawn from the Hitomaro kashū (Man’yōshū X:2033) which is thought to date from the reign of Temmu (r. 673–686),8 suggesting—if it is accepted as Hitomaro’s composition—that he was active as a poet considerably earlier. From the poems directly attributed to Hitomaro, however, his activity does appear to have been concentrated in the period 689–700.9

In addition to such obviously “public” pieces as imperial banka, the poems directly attributed to Hitomaro also include some works com-posed on topics unrelated to the court and the imperial family, poems with what appears to be more personal content, such as the Iwami poems and also the poems mourning the death of his wife (II:207–209, 210–212). However, as will be seen below, the issue of “public” and “private” subject matter in Hitomaro’s poetry is an extremely problem-atic one; indeed, the placement—or misplacement—of the dividing line between the public and the private plays a key role in the formation of later legends concerning Hitomaro’s life.

The three basic categories according to which the poems of the Man’yōshū are arranged are sōmonka, banka, and zōka, or miscellaneous poems. These categories are derived from the Wen xuan ( J. Monzen), the vast sixth-century Chinese classifi ed anthology which was widely read in Japanese literary circles in the Nara and Heian periods. The fi rst two volumes of the Man’yōshū complement each other in terms of their categories: Volume I consists of zōka, and Volume II has a section of sōmonka followed by one of banka. These two volumes thus include between them all three of the major Man’yōshū categories, and within each category the poems are arranged in chronological order, covering the courts at Ōmi (667–672), Asuka-no-Kiyomihara (672–694) and Fujiwara (694–710).10

8 A note following X:2033 describes it as being composed in the “elder-brother-of-metal dragon year” (kanoe tatsu no toshi ); this could indicate either Temmu 9 (680) or Tempyō 12 (740), but is generally thought to refer to the earlier date.

9 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 24–25. Sakurai also notes that although Jitō died in 702, her banka is not preserved, in the Man’yōshū or elsewhere.

10 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 18–19.

12 chapter one

The Iwami Poems

The Hitomaro poems concerned with Iwami are positioned as the fi nal, climactic poems of the sōmonka and banka sections of Volume II of the Man’yōshū,11 and this is thought to indicate the high regard in which the compilers held Hitomaro.12 The arrangement of the Iwami poems within the groups, and the headnotes which accompany them, however, also refl ect clear editorial intent to construct a narrative on Hitomaro’s life and death. These texts are the only materials linking Hitomaro to Iwami,13 yet their infl uence on later versions of his biog-raphy was remarkably persistent, and the Iwami narrative is one of the more prominent forms in which Man’yōshū-based images of Hitomaro manifested themselves in his reception in later periods both within and outside court-poetic discourse.

The Iwami sōmonka are the fi nal poems of the sōmonka section which makes up the fi rst half of Volume II. The sequence consists of two chōka-hanka (long poem-envoy poem) sets (II:131–134, 135–137) and a variant of the fi rst set (II:138–139), attributed to Hitomaro, followed by a single tanka attributed to “Hitomaro’s wife, Yosami no otome” (II:140), which is presented as a response to the preceding poems.

By Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, when parting from his wife in the province of Iwami to come up to the capital, two poems with tanka14

Man’yōshū II:131

Iwami no umi The Bay of Tsunotsuno no urami o on the Sea of Iwami:ura nashi to people see no good harbor there,hito koso mirame people see no good sandbar there.kata nashi to But even ifhito koso mirame there is no harbor,yoshieyashi even ifura wa naku to mo there is no sandbar,

11 The seven poems following the Iwami banka at the very end of Volume II, under the heading “The Nara palace,” Nara no miya (II:228–234), are generally regarded as later additions to the text (a similarly-appended poem appears at the end of Volume I) (Shinada, 396).

12 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 22.13 Yagi Satoko, “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro no shi ni kansuru utagatari,” Senshū

kokubun 14 (9/1973): 57.14 The poem texts followed are those in Inaoka Kōji ed., Man’yōshū zenchū, v. 2.

(Yūhikaku, 1985), 127–183.


yoshieyashi approaching the shorekata wa naku to mo where whales are hunted,isana tori by the wild strandumibe o sashite of Watazuwatazu no is the greenly-growingariso no ue ni jewel-weed of the offi ng.ka aonaru The wind draws nigh,tamamo okitsumo like wingbeats at morning;asa ha furu the waves come near,kaze koso yorame like wingbeats at evening.yū ha furu like jewel-weednami koso kiyore which draws in, which draws neartamamo nasu with the wavesyorineshi imo o was my girl, lying next to me.tsuyu shimo no Leaving her behindokiteshi kureba like frosted dew, I’ve come;kono michi no at each of this road’syasoguma goto ni countless corners,yorozu tabi a myriad timeskaerimi suredo I’ve looked back, and yetiya tō ni further and furthersato wa sakarinu that village so distant,iya taka ni taller and talleryama mo koe kinu these mountains I’ve crossed;natsugusa no my thoughts miserable,omoi shinaete like withered summer grass,shinouramu longing to see the gate of my girlimo ga kado mimu who surely thinks of me.nabike kono yama O mountains, lie down!


Iwami no ya Did my girl seetakatsuno yama no the sleeves I wavedko no ma yori from between the treeswaga furu sode o on Takatsuno mountainimo mitsuramu ka in Iwami?


Sasa no ha wa Bamboo-grass leavesmiyama mo saya ni rustle in disarraymidaru to mo on the mountain;ware wa imo omou how I long for the girlwakare kinureba I have left behind.

A certain text has this hanka

14 chapter one


Iwami naru Did she see, I wonder,takatsuno yama no the waving of my sleevesko no ma yu mo from between those treeswaga sode furu o on Takatsuno mountainimo mikemu ka mo in Iwami?


Tsunosau On the Sea of Iwamiiwami no umi no of sprout-stopping rocks,15

kotosaeku at the Cape of Karakara no saki naru of unintelligible tongues,16

ikuri ni so out on the reeffukamiru ouru deep-sea miru-weed grows;ariso ni so on the wild shore,tamamo wa ouru the jewel-weed grows.tamamo nasu my girl, who swayed in sleep against me,nabiki neshi ko o like swaying jewel-weed,fukamiru no I deeply loved,fukamete omoedo like deep-sea miru-weed.sa neshi yo wa But nights we lay thusikudamo arazu have not been so many;hau tsuta no like vines unentwinedwakare shi kureba I have left her and come.kimo mukau This pain in my heart,kokoro o itami lodged in my innards;omoitsutsu while longing for her,kaerimi suredo I turn and look back,ōbune no but amidst all the fl urrywatari no yama no of yellow leaves fallingmomijiba no on Watari mountain,chiri no magai ni crossed like a great shipimo ga sode I cannot see clearlysaya ni mo miezu the sleeves of my girl.tsumagomoru As the moon is hiddenyakami no yama no Crossing cloud-gaps overkumoma yori spouse-concealing

15 Tsunosawau, a makurakotoba which is here attached to Iwami. Its meaning is unclear, but it has been suggested that it refers to the obstruction of growing sprouts (Inaoka, Zenchū, 156).

16 Kotosaeku, a makurakotoba meaning “foreign words which cannot be understood,” which attaches in general to Kara (referring to China or the Korean peninsula), and here to the place name Kara no saki (Inaoka, Zenchū, 156–157).


watarau tsuki no Yakami mountain,oshikedomo regretful the whilekakurai kureba I lost sight of her and came;ama tsutau so as the evening sunirihi sashinure has crossed the heavens,masurao to even I, who prided myselfomoeru ware mo on being a strong manshikitae no have soaked throughkoromo no sode wa the sleevestōrite nurenu of my hempen robe.


Aokoma ga My grey horseashigaki o hayami is fl eet of foot,kumoi ni so and I have come awayimo ga atari o from the place of my girl,sugite ki ni keru distant as the clouds.


Akiyama ni Cease your scatteringotsuru momijiba just for a while,shimashiku wa yellow leaves fallingna chiri magai so in the autumn hills,imo ga atari mimu that I may see my girl’s house.

One poem with tanka, from a variant text


Iwami no umi On the Sea of Iwamitsu no ura o nami there are no bays or harbors;ura nashi to people see no good harbor there,hito koso mirame people see no good sandbar there.kata nashi to But even ifhito koso mirame there is no harbor,yoshieyashi even ifura wa naku to mo there is no sandbar,yoshieyashi approaching the shorekata wa naku to mo where whales are hunted,isana tori by the wild strandumibe o sashite of Nikitatsunikitatsu no is the greenly-growingariso no ue ni jewel-weed of the offi ng.ka aonaru The waves draw neartamamo okitsumo when daylight comes,akekureba the wind draws near

16 chapter one

nami koso kiyore when evening falls.yū sareba like jewel-weedkaze koso kiyore which draws in, which draws nearnami no muta with the waves,ka yori kaku yoru swaying in sleep,tamamo nasu the outstretched armsnabiki waga neshi of my girl;shikitae no leaving them behindimo ga tamoto o like frosted dew, I’ve come;tsuyu shimo no at each of this road’sokiteshi kureba countless corners,kono michi no a myriad timesyasoguma goto ni I’ve looked back, and yetyorozu tabi further and furtherkaerimi suredo that village I’ve left,sato sakari kinu taller and talleriya taka ni these mountains I’ve crossed.hashikiyashi My girl of a wife,waga tsuma no ko ga so longed-for when parted,natsugusa no her thoughts miserable,omoi shinaete like withered summer grass,nagekuramu must surely be grieving;tsuno no sato mimu I long to see Tsuno village—nabike kono yama O mountains, lie down!


Iwami no umi Did my girl seeutsuta no yama no the sleeves I wavedko no ma yori from between the treeswaga furu sode o on Utsuta mountainimo mitsuramu ka by the sea of Iwami?

By the wife of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, Yosami no otome, when she was parted from Hitomaro, one poem


Na omoi to Don’t pine for me,kimi wa iedomo you said, and yetauwamu toki since I know notitsu to shirite ka when we next may meet,waga koizaramu I can’t but long for you.

These texts—both the poems and their headnotes, the latter added by the now-unknown compilers of this volume of the Man’yōshū—place Hitomaro in Iwami, describe him as having a wife there, and describe his regret on leaving her to return to the capital. Both II:131 and


II:135 begin with extended prefatory sections or jo, in which the vibrant natural scenery of the Iwami coast is described. The metaphorical jo of the fi rst chōka describes both its rich animal and plant life and its inaccessibility; that of the second concentrates on the seaweed on the reef and the shore. In both cases, the jo ends with seaweed imagery, and modifi es the speaker’s wife, yorineshi imo, “my girl lying next to me” (II:131); nabiki neshi ko, “my girl who swayed in sleep against me” (II:135). This comparison of swaying seaweed to the speaker’s wife is also seen in the banka II:207, “When lamenting, weeping tears of blood, after the death of his wife,” which includes the lines okitsumo no / nabikishi imo, “my girl who swayed/like weed in the open sea.” The latter part of both chōka involves the speaker’s journey away from his wife, his increasing distance from her evoked by descriptions of the “countless corners” of the road, kono michi no yaso kuma (II:131), and by descriptions of the wife as unseen behind the falling leaves and Yakami mountain. The fi rst chōka ends with the speaker’s anguished appeal to the mountains to bow down, out of his line of sight: nabike kono yama, “O mountains, lie down!” (II:131), and the second with a description of the speaker’s overwhelming emotion: although he thought himself a strong man (masurao), the sleeves of his robes are soaked through [with tears], koromo no sode wa / toorite nurenu.

As mentioned above, the position of the Iwami sōmonka at the end of the sōmonka section of volume II is paralleled by that of the Iwami banka at the end of the banka section of the same volume. The Iwami banka sequence consists of fi ve thirty-one-syllable tanka:

By Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, bemoaning his fate as he lay dying in the land of Iwami, one poem17


Kamoyama no Not knowingiwane shi makeru that I lie pillowedware o kamo on Kamoyama’s boulders,shirani to imo ga my girl must bemachitsutsu aruramu awaiting me.

When Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro died, by his wife Yosami no otome, two poems

17 The poem texts followed are those in Inaoka, Zenchū, 445–463.

18 chapter one


Kyō kyō to You for whom I waitwaga matsu kimi wa today and again today,ishikawa no do they not saykai ni majirite you lie amongari to iwazuyamo the shells of Stone River?


Tada no ai wa It seems that we can neveraikatsumashiji again meet face to face—ishikawa ni rise up, o clouds,kumo tachiwatare and cover Stone River,mitsutsu shinowamu that I may see and remember.

By Tajihi no Mahito (personal name missing), assuming the feelings of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, one poem in response


Aranami ni Who would have toldyorikuru tama o that I am here,makura ni oki taking as my pillowware koko ni ari to the shells and stonesdareka tsugekemu borne in by raging waves?

A certain text has this poem


Amazakaru Leaving you behindhina no arano ni in these wild and lonely fi eldskimi o okite far from anywhere—omoitsutsu areba thinking upon it,ikeru to mo nashi I feel no longer alive.

The author of the above poem is unknown. However, this poem follows the preceding one in an old text.

The fi rst poem in the sequence is presented as Hitomaro’s death poem ( jiseika), and seems to describe a sudden death in the mountains of Iwami, far from home. This is followed by two poems by Hitomaro’s wife, named in the headnote as Yosami no otome, and then comes a poem in response to hers, attributed to an unnamed member of the Tajihi clan. This poem is from Hitomaro’s point of view, and reprises the image of the speaker lying in the wilderness, although here the scene is the coast rather than the mountains. The use of coastal or marine imagery in some of the poems and mountain imagery in others is the


major textual problem of this sequence and will be discussed in more detail below. Finally comes a poem from an unspecifi ed “old text” (kohon), which has been taken as being from the point of view of Hitomaro’s wife.18 The sequence is thus presented as a dialogue between the dying man and his wife waiting at home, and is understood as being in the voices of Hitomaro and Yosami no otome even though other authors, Tajihi no Mahito and the anonymous author of II:227, are credited with the compositions of the poems themselves. In addition, the note following II:227, if it is to be believed, suggests that the sequence, in whole or in part, was extant in another text before being incorporated into the Man’yōshū.

Historically, the literal interpretation of these texts has dominated, and the later legends associating Hitomaro with Iwami are based on readings of the texts as referring to real events, as being transparently representative of Hitomaro’s life. However, it must be stressed that in the later construction of Hitomaro’s legend from these texts, the role of the unidentifi ed compiler and/or author of the headnotes of this volume of the Man’yōshū is as important as that of the poet himself. The crucial settings for the poems are provided in the headnotes (in the case of Hitomaro’s death poem, II:223, the headnote provides the sole link with Iwami); it is possible to grasp the plot of the narrative unfolding in these texts through reading the headnotes alone. These layers of editorial mediation—the arrangement and annotation of the Iwami poems within the Man’yōshū—clearly demonstrate that the mythologizing process based on a literal interpretation of their content was well under way by the time Volume II was compiled. The editorial treatment of these poems has ensured that the reception and assimilation into legend of the sōmonka has been very closely linked to that of the banka, due to their common setting in Iwami and their common cast of characters, Hitomaro and Yosami no otome, identifi ed as his wife.19

The infl uence of the Iwami poems is seen in a number of later Hito-maro-related texts. These include the earliest account of Hitomaro’s life and career, that found in the excerpt from the Iwami no kuni fudoki (Record of the Province of Iwami) included in Yūa’s (1291–?) com-mentary Shirin saiyō shō (Notes on Leaves Taken From the Forest of

18 Itō Haku, “Hitomaro shūenka,” Man’yōshū no kajin to sakuhin, Kodai wakashi kenkyū 3. Hanawa shobō, 1975, 328.

19 Itō Haku, “Hitomaro no shōgai: sono ‘shi’ ni tsuite,” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 38:12 (9/1973): 9.

20 chapter one

Words, 1366), which records Hitomaro as being appointed Governor of Iwami in 675.20 Hitomaro’s death in Iwami is mentioned in texts such as the origin account (engi ) of the Hachiman Hitomaro shrine in Yuya-chō, Nagato Province, included in the Bōchō fudo chūshin’an (Report on the Record of the Provinces of Suō and Nagato, n.d.),21 and in the biography of Hitomaro presented to the Kakinomoto shrine at Takatsu in 1652 by Kamei Koremasa.22 However, it does not appear in the Heian-period Sanjūrokunin kasenden (Biographies of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals, c. 1094).23

A further development of the Iwami legend is seen in texts where Iwami is identifi ed not only as the site of Hitomaro’s death, but also as his birthplace. This may be seen in a number of medieval commentaries within the court-poetic tradition, some of which describe not merely his birth, but refl ect Hitomaro’s divinized status through their depictions of his miraculous appearance in Iwami; he is not simply born in Iwami but rather appears suddenly as a splendid youth aged about twenty at the foot of a persimmon tree. (The medieval accounts of Hitomaro’s origins will be discussed in detail in Chapter Four.)

In a similar vein, the standard early-modern and modern biographical interpretation which came to be applied to the Iwami poems was that Hitomaro was posted to Iwami as a provincial offi cial late in life;24 he subsequently returned to the capital, and at some point, either on that journey or a later one to or from Iwami, died suddenly while traveling. This theory fi rst appears in Kamo no Mabuchi’s Man’yō kō (Thoughts on the Man’yōshū) (in the bekki or appendix, 1768), in which he postu-lates a posting to Iwami very late in life for Hitomaro, who was then summoned to the capital for a meeting of offi cials25 on the fi rst day of

20 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 170.21 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 180–181.22 “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro denki.” Shintō taikei: jinja hen 36: Izumo, Iwami, Oki no

kuni, ed. Shintō taikei hensankai, 501–503. Shintō taikei hensankai, 1983.23 Gunsho ruijū v. 283, ed. Zoku gunsho ruijū kanseikai, 372–383. Zoku gunsho ruijū

kanseikai, 1930.24 Inaoka Kōji describes this as an “accepted theory” (tsūsetsu) relating to Hitomaro’s

biography (Inaoka Kōji, “Hitomaro no Iwami ni okeru shi wa denshō ka,” Kokubungaku 25:14 (11/1980): 107).

25 Chōshūshi, messengers dispatched by provincial offi cials under the ritsuryō sys-tem to present the annual report on the government of the province to the central administration.


the Eleventh Month, the beginning of which journey is described in the Iwami sōmonka.26

Irrespective of their views of Hitomaro as mortal or divine, the later texts which include legends placing him in Iwami refl ect an acceptance of the Iwami poems and headnotes at face value, as being representa-tive of actual events. Belief in the biographical accuracy of accounts linking Hitomaro and Iwami has led to much commentarial attention being directed toward resolving the perceived inconsistencies in the Iwami narrative as it is presented in the Man’yōshū. Some of the more prominent debates are those concerning the identity of the Iwami wife, the identity of Tajihi no Mahito, and the exact location of the places mentioned in the poems, particularly the Kamoyama and Ishikawa mentioned in the banka.27 Most theories place Kamoyama and Ishi-kawa in Shimane Prefecture, the former Iwami Province; currently, the most widely supported theory seems to be that put forward by Saitō Mokichi, who suggested in his Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (1940) that they correspond to the upper reaches of the Gōnokawa, Yukakae, Ōchi-chō, Ōchi-gun, Shimane Prefecture.28 Other commentators, however, have opted for sites nearer the capital, with Kamoyama identifi ed as a peak in the Kazuraki range in Yamato Province (modern Nara Prefecture) and Ishikawa identifi ed as a river in Kōchi Province (modern Ōsaka Prefecture).29 This latter interpretation is based on the identifi cation of Hitomaro’s wife based on the appellation given her in the Man’yōshū, “Yosami no otome.” This is not a specifi c name, but, like other refer-ences in the Man’yōshū to individuals identifi ed as “[clan/area name] no otome,”30 may indicate merely that the person so designated was

26 Inaoka Kōji, “Iwami sōmonka to Hitomaro den: sakuhinron ni yoru denki no saikentō,” Man’yō 103 (3/1980): 5.

27 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 216.28 Mokichi erected a poem-stone on the spot he believed to be the site of Hitomaro’s

death: Hitomaro ga / tsui no inochi o / owaritaru / Kamoyama o shi mo / koko to sadamemu, “I wish to confi rm/that this is Kamoyama/where Hitomaro/met his fi nal end” (Nakanishi Susumu, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, Nihon shijin sen 2, Chikuma shobō, 1970, 210).

29 The latter theories placing Kamoyama and Ishikawa in or near Yamato are described in Tsuchiya Bunmei, Man’yōshū shichū, and Kanda Hideo, Hitomaro kashū to Hitomaro den (Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 216).

30 Such as, for example, Izumo no otome (III:329), Tamba ōme no otome (IV:711–13), Hitachi no otome (IV:521) or Hijikata no otome (III:428).

22 chapter one

a woman of the clan specifi ed, in this case, the Yosami, whose home territory lay in Kōchi.31

The identity of the “Yosami no otome” presented as Hitomaro’s wife in the headnotes to II:140 and II:224–225 is thus seen by some as a key to determining the location of the events which the texts describe. A further point of debate concerning the identity of Yosami no otome, however, is the question of whether she is the same person as the Iwami wife (tsuma) referred to in the headnote to the Iwami sōmonka (II:131–139). Despite the fact that the Iwami wife is not specifi cally identifi ed as Yosami no otome, it seems clear from the arrangement of poem II:140 in the Man’yōshū that the compilers did assume that Yosami no otome and the Iwami wife were the same individual,32 thus casting these poems as an exchange between the traveling poet and the wife left behind.

Fictionality in the Iwami sōmonka

As noted above, the traditional reception of the Iwami sōmonka and Iwami banka held them to be representative of events in Hitomaro’s life, and these interpretations refl ected and amplifi ed legends linking Hitomaro and Iwami. There are, however, aspects of both sets of the Iwami poems that resist the transparent readings of these texts which enabled them to become the stuff of Hitomaro’s legend.

One argument that has been advanced to refute the interpretation of the Iwami sōmonka as referring to events late in Hitomaro’s life is based on textual analysis of the poems: Inaoka Kōji notes an increasingly complex use of parallelism and makurakotoba in Hitomaro’s poetry in the later poems (those dating from after 691), and speculates that having made this transition, Hitomaro would be unlikely to return to an earlier style of composition.33 He thus regards the Iwami sōmonka as works from earlier rather than later in Hitomaro’s life.

Another aspect of Hitomaro’s biography that may be reconstructed from the Iwami sōmonka is that concerning his role at court, as extrapo-

31 Proponents of this theory have found further supporting evidence in the fact that the Tajihi clan, an unidentifi ed member of which is credited with the composition of II:226, was based near the Yosami, in the kinai region (Inaoka, “Denshō,” 106).

32 Inaoka, Zenchū, 182.33 Inaoka, “Iwami sōmonka to Hitomaro den,” 12.


lated from the possible circumstances of the poems’ composition. Both the Iwami sōmonka and Iwami banka include variant texts, identifi ed by such terms as “a certain text” (aru hon) or “an old text” (kohon), textual features which have formed the basis of subsequent theories on the circumstances of composition for both sequences. The main and variant texts of the Iwami sōmonka sequence can be summarized as follows:

First chōka-hanka set II:131–133Variant of II:132 II:134Second chōka-hanka set II:135–7Variant of II:131–2 II:138–9Yosami no otome poem II:140

The two main approaches taken to the problem of the textual vari-ants within the Iwami sōmonka sequence are those according to which they are understood either as variants arising from multiple lines of transmission of the texts, or as drafts, earlier versions of the poems by the poet himself, included in the Man’yōshū along with the later, revised versions. The positing of these variants as drafts, however, necessitates consideration of the circumstances under which the poems may have been composed. Itō Haku has advanced the theory that Hitomaro was a poet-performer at court, composing not only offi cial, public poetry such as elegies for members of the imperial family or commemorations of the sovereign’s excursions, but also poetry on apparently personal topics for performance as entertainment for others at court.34 Itō has suggested that the Iwami sōmonka (and possibly the Iwami banka) were composed under such circumstances.35 He characterizes the major dif-ferences between the main text (II:131–3) and the variant (II:138–9) as being too localized and specifi c to have arisen through independent lines of transmission of the poems.36 Itō sees the structure of the poetic sequence II:131–7 as centripetal in nature, with II:135–7 functioning as a close-up, as another angle of view, more confi ned in scope, on the same moment of parting depicted in II:131–133.37 This line of argument runs counter to the established theory, fi rst put forward by Kamo no Mabuchi, that the content of II:135–7 is thought to occur

34 Itō, “Hitomaro no shōgai,” 12.35 Itō, “Hitomaro no shōgai,” 12. He suggests that the popularity of the Iwami

sōmonka led to the composition of the Iwami banka as a sequel.36 Itō Haku, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō to keisei,” Man’yōshū no kajin to sakuhin, book

1, Kodai wakashi kenkyū, volume 3, Hanawa shobō, 1975, 286.37 Itō, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō,” 291.

24 chapter one

later in time than that of II:131–3, refl ecting the changing position of the speaker as he progresses on his journey.38 Arguing against the chronological sequencing of the texts as outlined by Mabuchi, Hashi-moto Tatsuo sees the Iwami sōmonka as dialogic in nature, as views of the same scene from the points of view of the wife (II:131–3) and the departing husband (II:135–7).39

While the Mabuchi theory allows for, but does not exclusively imply, an interpretation of the texts as a chronologically arranged account of actual events, readings such as those presented by Itō or Hashimoto refute the poems-as-chronicle approach which has facilitated their use as source material for Hitomaro’s legendary biography, and stress the texts’ fi ctive quality. Itō accounts for the fi ctionality of the texts by positing Hitomaro as a poet-performer (uta haiyū) at the heart of a literary salon at the court of Empress Jitō. He proposes the following sequence of composition for the Iwami sōmonka: Hitomaro composes the fi rst set, II:138–9, in response to demands from his audience, and their success is such that he is then pressed to compose further on the subject, in response to which he composes II:135–7. Hitomaro later revises his initial compositions and adds the sasa no ha tanka (II:133) to create the sequence II:131–3, and this sequence is completed by the addition of II:140, composed either by Hitomaro or an enthusiastic member of his audience.40 The poems are thus the joint product of the poet and his audience, a result of the dynamic interaction of Hitomaro and his admirers.41

Whether or not one accepts the fi ner details of Itō’s argument (including, for instance, his supposition that the poems, however fi ctional their specifi c content as dictated by the demands of the salon, were nonetheless based on an actual journey Hitomaro made to Iwami),42 as applied to the Iwami sōmonka, the theory is persuasive for a number of reasons. It seems not unreasonable to imagine that the recognition of his talents evident in the commissioning of Hitomaro’s compositions for offi cial events might lead to requests for unoffi cial performances as

38 Shioya Kaori, “Iwami sōmonka no kōsei: wakare to kyozetsu no juyō,” in Man’yōshū: Hitomaro to Hitomaro kashū, ed. Misaki Hisashi. Nihon bungaku kenkyū shiryō shinshū 2 (Yūseidō, 1989), 71.

39 Shioya, 74. She is referring to Hashimoto Tatsuo, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō,” Nihon bungaku 26:6 (6/1977).

40 Itō, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō,” 294–296.41 Itō, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō,” 295, 298.42 Itō, “Iwami sōmonka no kōzō,” 298.


well. The poems-as-performance theory also breaks down the distinc-tion that is often drawn in discussions of Hitomaro’s poetry between the obviously public and the ostensibly private poems, as even poetry with what appears to be intensely personal content—such as the Iwami sōmonka—could have been publicly presented. As can be seen in the case of the Iwami poems, the role that the apparently private poems plays in Hitomaro’s reception is signifi cant in that they are the texts through which attempts are made to discern the details of his personal life. This public/private (hare/kei ) distinction is a problematic one, complicated by such issues as the (now unknown) original context in which the poems were presented, the mediation of textual features such as headnotes and anthologization (by individuals other than the poet), and by overtly literary elements in the poems themselves, suggesting elements of fi ctionality ignored by later hagiographers. Comparisons have been drawn, for example, between the Iwami sōmonka (II:131–7) and a set of poems by Lu Ji (261–303) with a similar theme—leaving home and traveling to the capital—and a similar double structure, found in the Wen xuan.43

Two Poems Composed on the Road to the Capital44

Lu Ji

[204]Taking the reins, I climb the long road;in sorrow I bid my family farewell.When they ask where I am going,I am caught in the net of worldly affairs.Sighing, I follow the northern shore;leaving my longings, I reach the southern ford.Going and going, how far I have come;the fi eld road runs to the distance, and no-one is there.Mountains and swamps twist and turn;trees and thickets are dark in the gloom.Tigers roar on the deep valley fl oors;chickens call from tall tree tops.A sad wind fl ows in the middle of the night;a lone beast moves ahead of me.These things bring feelings of sorrow;

43 Inaoka, Zenchū, 164–165.44 This text is from Uchida Sennosuke and Ami Yūji eds., Monzen (shihen) ge, Shin-

shaku kanbun taikei 15, Meiji shoin, 1964: 417–418.

26 chapter one

deep thoughts enfold me in misery.Standing still, I gaze toward my home;looking back at my shadow, I feel sorry for myself.

[205]Traveling far, I cross mountains and rivers;the mountains and rivers are long and are broad.Waving my whip, I climb gentle slopes;relaxing the reins, I follow level grasslands.At evening I rest, and sleep holding my shadow;at morning I move on, and go bearing my thoughts.Stopping the reins, I lean on soaring crags;listening hard, I hear the sad wind’s echoes.White light falls onto the clear dew;how bright the full moon shines!Slapping my pillow, I cannot sleep;arranging my clothes, alone in lengthy longings.

Like the Iwami sōmonka (II:131 and II:135), the fi rst poem here describes the speaker turning to look back at the village left behind; the second poem, like the latter part of II:131, stresses the great distance covered by the speaker.45 Like II:135, the second poem ends with a reference to clothing. It is signifi cant in this context that similar suggestions of possible Chinese models have been made regarding another set of ostensibly “private” poems by Hitomaro, those bearing the headnote “When lamenting, weeping tears of blood, after the death of his wife” (Man’yōshū II:207–212). These poems, consisting of two chōka with accompanying hanka, represent a dramatic departure from the poetic norm in their application of a “public” genre of verse, the banka, to a “private” topic, the death of a spouse. Hashimoto Tatsuo has argued for the infl uence on Hitomaro of Wen xuan poems by Pan Yue (247–300) (like Lu Ji, a Chinese poet familiar to Japanese readers at the time)46 entitled “Lamenting Her Death,” on the death of his wife,47 itself an uncommon—and thus distinctive—topic of early Chi-nese poetry.48 As a further hint as to the fi ctional and conventionalized nature of Hitomaro’s poems mourning his deceased wife, Hashimoto

45 Inaoka, Zenchū, 165.46 Inaoka, Zenchū, 165.47 Hashimoto Tatsuo, “Kakinomoto Hitomaro kyūketsu aidōka,” in Man’yōshū o

manabu, volume 2, ed. Inaoka Kōji and Itō Haku (Yūhikaku, 1977), 243–4.48 C.M. Lai, “The Art of Lamentation in the Works of Pan Yue: Mourning the

Eternally Departed,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.3 (1994): 411.


also claims that the distribution within the Man’yōshū of the place name Karu, described in Man’yōshū II:207 as the home village of Hitomaro’s wife, shows a pattern of association between Karu and the topos of the “secret wife”, the clandestine affair.49 Thus in situating his wife in Karu, Hitomaro may be hinting at the nature of their relationship by evoking a conventional cultural association.

Another interpretation through which the Iwami sōmonka may be understood as “public” rather than “private” despite their ostensible personal content examines them within the context of Hitomaro’s sup-posed career as a bureaucrat. Mabuchi’s suggestion in Man’yō kō that Hitomaro was summoned from his posting in Iwami to the capital on offi cial business is noted above. Gary Ebersole has suggested that the description of the pain of separation in these poems serves to indirectly indicate Hitomaro’s devotion to his masters, in that the “public recita-tion of poetry of longing and separation provided an opportunity to display one’s nobility, including a higher sensibility and sense of duty, through the social renunciation of private desires”;50 he situates the Iwami sōmonka within a larger pattern of “Man’yōshū poems of separa-tion and longing in chōka form often involving performance of offi cial duties in obedience to imperial commands.”51

Fictionality in the Iwami banka

The structure of the Iwami banka sequence can be summarized as follows:

Hitomaro death poem II:223 (mountain imagery)Yosami no otome poems II:224 (mountain imagery) II:225 (mountain imagery)Tajihi no Mahito poem II:226 (sea imagery)Anonymous poem II:227 (mountain imagery)

As mentioned above, the reception and canonization of the Iwami sōmonka and Iwami banka were closely intertwined, and the “plot” of the narrative traditionally read into these two sets of texts construed

49 Hashimoto, “Kakinomoto Hitomaro kyūketsu aidōka,” 243–4.50 Gary Ebersole, Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan, Princeton: Prince-

ton University Press, 1989, 50.51 Ebersole, 50.

28 chapter one

the banka as a sequel to the sōmonka. Itō Haku suggests that the compo-sitional circumstances for the banka were similar to those for the sōmonka, that the banka too were composed by Hitomaro the poet-performer in the context of a literary salon at Jitō’s court,52 and were composed as sequels to the sōmonka in response to audience demands. Itō sees their composition as an “inevitable” development in the course of the recep-tion of the Iwami sōmonka, as the completion of Hitomaro’s “Iwami drama.”53

However, the nature of the various texts in the banka sequence means that they defy the kind of categorization as drafts and fi nal revisions that seems possible in the case of the Iwami sōmonka. While the Iwami sōmonka form a fairly coherent and integrated sequence, with recognizable similarities in terms of content and imagery, and com-paratively minor differences between the “main” texts (II:131–3) and the variants (II:138–139), the Iwami banka are much more diverse, the sequence—such as it is—more disjointed. A major division has been drawn between the texts that involve mountain imagery and those which involve sea imagery. Hitomaro’s putative death-bed poem, II:223, and the fi nal, anonymous poem, II:227, clearly belong to the fi rst type, and the Tajihi no Mahito poem, II:226, to the second. It is less clear to which category the poems by Yosami no otome, II:224 and II:225, belong. The varied imagery of the poems in the Iwami banka group has led to suggestions that they were a later accretion of poems based on legends about Hitomaro, legends which included multiple traditions regarding his place of death.54

In discussing the fi ctional qualities of Hitomaro’s putative death poem, II:223, Itō Haku notes that this poem can be situated within a tradition of such poems written by those who die while traveling, beginning with Yamato Takeru and his death poem in the Kojiki, and also including the Man’yōshū poems composed by Arima no miko shortly before his execution (II:141–142). Itō draws this comparison by way of proof that the death poem was composed as part of a fi ctional

52 Itō, “Hitomaro shūenka,” 332.53 Itō, “Hitomaro shūenka,” 333.54 In other words, there may have existed a traditional version of Hitomaro’s death

as occurring in the mountains, and another traditional account according to which it took place by the sea. Inaoka Kōji has suggested that the original form of poem II:224 included the phrase tani ni majirite, “in the valley,” but that this was changed to kai ni majirite, “amongst the shells,” during the transmission of the poem, possibly as a result of association with the Iwami sōmonka, in which sea images feature prominently.


narrative by Hitomaro, but this approach is also perfectly compatible with the theory that the poems were an accumulation of later texts based on traditions concerning Hitomaro’s death. In either case, this would run counter to the interpretation of the poem and its headnote as refl ective of historical fact. As an archetypal death-while-traveling poem, one could equally argue that it is exactly the sort of poem that one would expect to be composed about Hitomaro’s death by others, and not necessarily by the poet himself. As later compositions, the texts themselves can be seen to represent a stage in the reception of the Iwami sōmonka, as they build on the connection established therein between Hitomaro and Iwami. They also of course form a stage in the reception of Hitomaro himself, in whom suffi cient interest was appar-ently taken for such a poetic narrative or uta monogatari to be composed about his death and subsequently anthologized in one of the earliest volumes of the Man’yōshū.

Poems for Dead Travelers

Another clue to the generic quality of the Hitomaro death poem and the poems which follow it may be found in their placement within the Man’yōshū, directly after this set of poems: by Hitomaro:

A poem with envoys by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, on seeing a dead man amidst the stones on Samine Island in Sanuki


Tamamo yoshi The land of SanukiSanuki no kuni wa of the jewelled weed—kunikara ka is it for its naturemiredomo akanu that gazing on it, we do not tire?kamukara ka Is it for its divinitykokoda tōtoki that we revere it thus?ametsuchi Perfect and completehitsuki to tomo ni like the heavens and earth,tari yukamu like the sun and the moon,kami no miomo to it is surely the face of a god.tsugikitaru From the port of Naka,Naka no minato yu come down from the age of the gods,fune ukete when we launch our boatwaga kogikureba and row it out,tokitsu kaze as the tide-windkumoi ni fuku ni gusts through the clouds,

30 chapter one

oki mireba when we look to the offi ng,toi nami tachi the rolling waves rise;he mireba when we look to the shore,shiranami sawaku the white waves clamor.isana tori In fear of the seaumi o kashikomi where whales are hunted,yuku fune no we strained on the oarskaji hikiorite of our traveling boat.ochikochi no Though there are many islandsshima wa ōkedo scattered here and there,naguwashi on the rocky strandSamine no shima no of Samine island,arisomo ni so beautifully named,iorite mireba when we made our shelter and looked:nami no to to taking as your pillowshigeki hamahe o of hempen clothshikitae no this shoremakura ni nashite where waves roar constantly,aratoko ni you lie fallenkorofusu kimi ga on this rough bed.ie shiraba If I knew your houseyukite mo tsugemu I would go and tell the news;tsuma shiraba if your wife knew,ki mo towamashi o she would come asking for you.tamahoko no But not knowing even the road,michi dani shirazu straight as a jewelled spear,ōhoshiku with troubled mind,machika kouramu she must be waiting and longing for you,hashiki tsumara wa your beloved wife.


tsuma mo araba Were your wife here,tsumite tagemashi she would have plucked and eaten them—sami no yama but the season has already passed,no no e no uwagi of the herbs in the fi eldssugi ni kerazu ya on Sami Mountain.


okitsu nami Taking as your pillowkiyosuru ariso o of hempen clothshikitae no this wild strand wheremakura to makite waves of the offi ng draw near,naseru kimi ka mo you lie sleeping.

This poem with envoys on the discovery of a dead man on the island of Samine can be situated within the sub-genre of banka known as


kōroshinin no uta, poems on fi nding a dead person by the roadside. There are about a dozen such poems in the Man’yōshū, where they are identifi -able by their headnotes detailing the circumstances of the discovery of the body.55 Two of the best-known examples are the following, from Volume III of the Man’yōshū, the fi rst attributed to Prince Shōtoku (574–622) and the second to Hitomaro:

Man’yōshū III:415

A poem composed by Prince Shōtoku when he was visiting Takahara-no-i and grieved at the sight of a dead man on Mount Tatsuta

ie naraba Were you at home,imo ga te makamu your girl’s arm would be your pillow;kusamakura how pitiful this travelertabi ni koyaseru fallen on the journey,kono tabito aware pillowed by the grass.


A poem by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, grieving over a corpse seen on Mount Kagu

kusamakura Lodging on a journeytabi no yadori ni with grass for your pillow,taga tsuma ka whose husband are you,kuni wasuretaru your country forgotten,ie matamaku ni your family waiting at home?

Kusamakura, “grass for pillow,” is a conventional image in travel poetry, but from its context in these two poems it is clearly being used here in a similar way to images typical of kōroshinin no uta, in which the deceased is often depicted as sleeping in the open, much as a living traveler would. Kōroshinin no uta tend to feature images such as rocks or crags for pillows, in the case of death in the mountains, and waves and rocky shores as pillows, in the case of a death at sea,56 both of which motifs appear in the Iwami banka.

These poems for the homeless dead have an important pragmatic and ritual aspect: they were viewed as a means to pacify the restless spirit of the deceased, for whom the appropriate funeral rites were

55 Kevin Collins, “Seizing Spirits: The Chinkon Ritual and Early Japanese Literature” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1997), 97.

56 Sakurai Mitsuru, “Kōroshinin no uta to otome aishōka no nagare,” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 35:8 (7/1970): 48.

32 chapter one

not being carried out.57 Encountering a dead individual for whom the proper rites had not been performed was an extremely dangerous experience for a traveler, who risked both defi lement from the corpse and spiritual danger from the unpacifi ed ghost of the dead person. Travel itself was a hazardous undertaking, and the dangers it posed were amplifi ed considerably by an encounter with an agitated spirit. In such a situation, the kōroshinin no uta was a crucial part of the traveler’s ritual response to this spiritual danger.58

A key characteristic of kōroshinin no uta was the anonymity of the dead: with no way to send word to the family, who could then perform the proper commemorative rites, the discoverer of the body would respond with a poem intended to both placate the spirit of the deceased (tama-shizume) and appropriate positive aspects of the spirit’s energy (tama-furi ).59 Images of the wife and the home feature prominently, to calm the spirit by reinforcing the bond between the deceased and his family, as seen in the Prince Shōtoku (Man’yōshū III:415) and Hitomaro (Man’yōshū II:220–222, III:426) examples above.60 The image of the wife waiting at home is conspicuous in the Iwami banka (in II:224–225), and it has been suggested that this poetic sequence was a later compilation intended to pacify Hitomaro’s spirit.61 Spirit pacifi cation (chinkon or irei ) has been identifi ed as an essential quality of banka,62 and the nature of banka in the Man’yōshū in particular, where it has been noted, for instance, that the poems at the beginning of volumes II, III and IX are all death poems by princes who were victims in succession disputes, whose dispossessed spirits would be in need of consolation.63 In terms of their placatory role, banka can be compared to the genre of travel poems, the essential qualities of which have been identifi ed as longing for home and tamuke, offerings made to roadside deities for protection while traveling.64 Both traveling away from home and death can be described

57 Kōnoshi Takamitsu, “Kōroshinin no uta no shūhen,” in his Kakinomoto no Hitomaro kenkyū, Hanawa shobō, 1992, 386.

58 Collins, 118.59 Collins, 150.60 Kōnoshi, 380.61 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 164.62 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 42.63 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 43. The poems are those by Arima no miko

(II:141–142), Ōtsu no miko (III:416) and Uji no waki iratsuko (IX:1795).64 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 45.


as experiences involving separation from family,65 and both involve the crossing of boundaries (sakai ), whether between geographical areas or between the worlds of the living and the dead. Kōroshinin no uta can be seen as a nexus where travel and death intersect, as the original form taken by tamuke was the offering of clothing to placate the spirits of dead travelers one has encountered while on a journey.66

The placement of Hitomaro’s death poem in the Man’yōshū directly after his chōka and envoys on the discovery of a dead man on the island of Samine (II:220–222) also hints at its own position within the genre of kōroshinin no uta, although here the perspective is that of the dying man himself. It seems quite feasible to interpret II:223, Hitomaro’s purported death poem, as a text based on or to some extent inspired by readings of Hitomaro’s other banka, particularly II:220–222, as well as his III:426 on fi nding a dead man on Kaguyama. In other words, Hitomaro’s death poem can be interpreted as the application by a later author of the kōroshinin no uta mode to what were thought to be the facts of Hitomaro’s life. A death while traveling alone in the mountains would certainly have left Hitomaro’s spirit in need of placation, and to II:223 were added Tajihi no Mahito’s II:226, similarly composed from the dead man’s point of view and similarly lamenting his death in the wilderness, and II:224–225 by Yosami no otome, whose identifi cation as Hitomaro’s wife makes clear the position of the Iwami banka as a continuation of the story begun in the Iwami sōmonka.

The Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro no kashū

The regard in which Hitomaro was held by the compilers of the Man’yōshū is also evident in the placement within its various volumes of poems from the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro no kashū, a collection of 369 poems, consisting of 332 tanka, 35 sedōka, and 2 chōka.67 Modern scholarly opinion is divided as to the nature and extent of Hitomaro’s involvement with the Kashū;68 although one theory advanced is that it

65 Kitano Satoshi, “Tabi no minzoku,” in Sakurai Mitsuru ed., Man’yōshū no minzo-kugaku, 101. Ōfūsha, 1993.

66 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 44.67 Itō Haku, Man’yōshū no kōzō to seiritsu (2 v. Hanawa shobō, 1974), v. 1, 203.68 For an eminently readable summary of scholarly treatment of the Kashū, see

David Lurie, “On the Inscription of the Hitomaro Poetry Collection: Between Literary History and the History of Writing,” Man’yōshū kenkyū 26 (2004): 4–50.

34 chapter one

was a collection of poetry which he recorded, rather than composed, during the reigns of Temmu and Jitō.69 However, from the collection’s title, it seems likely that the Man’yōshū compilers considered it to be Hitomaro’s work, and their treatment of its poems can thus be inter-preted as an indication of their admiration for Hitomaro. The Kashū poems in the Man’yōshū are distributed as follows:70

Table 1: Distribution of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kashū poems in the Man’yōshū

Volume II III VII IX X XI XII XIIINumber of Kashū poems 1 1 56 49 68 161 27 3

As can be seen from the above data, the poems from the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kashū poems are concentrated mainly in volumes VII, IX, X, XI, and XII. Numbers, however, do not tell us the whole story: what is truly signifi cant about the Kashū poems in the context of the Man’yōshū is the way that they are arranged within these volumes. In volume VII, for instance, the fi rst to make use of the Kashū as a major source, the placement of Kashū poems is conspicuous in the two main parts, Miscellaneous Poetry (zōka) and Metaphorical Poetry (hiyuka).

The Kashū poems are placed at the beginning of several of the topic-defi ned sections of miscellaneous poetry.71 The sections “Com-posed on Clouds” (VII:1087–1089) and “Composed on Mountains” (VII:1092–1098), for example, begin with Kashū poems and continue with anonymous poems.72 Indeed, some of volume VII’s topic sec-tions—including the fi rst, “Composed on Heaven” (VII:1068)—consist solely of Kashū poems. The special status accorded Kashū poems is made even more overt in the sections of metaphorical poetry. This poetry is also organized into topic-based sections; however, where the miscel-laneous poetry has Kashū and anonymous poetry together in a single section, the metaphorical poetry is arranged with six separate sections

69 Inaoka Kōji. “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.” Kokubungaku 30:13 (1985): 46.70 Itō, Man’yōshū no kōzō to seiritsu, v. 1, 203.71 Watase Masatada, “Maki nana Hitomaro kashū no tanka,” 1.72 Watase, “Maki nana Hitomaro kashū no tanka,” 2. The Kumo o yomu section

consists of three poems, the fi rst two of which are from the Kashū; Yama o yomu has seven poems, the fi rst three of which are from the Kashū.


for Kashū poems placed ahead of sections with identical topics but non-Kashū poems.73 A similar pattern of distribution of Kashū poems occurs in volumes XI and XII.74 Itō describes this as an “Old and New Japanese Poetry Collection” (kokin yamatouta shū) structure, in which parts of the Man’yōshū were assembled in pairs, the fi rst part consisting of old poems (from the Hakuhō Period, 645–710) and the second of new poems (from the Nara Period, 710–784).75 According to this analysis, the Kashū poems represent the “old” type of poetry, and are followed by anonymous “new” Nara-Period compositions. It can thus be argued that the reverence felt by the Man’yōshū compilers towards the Kashū poems is demonstrated by their selection as the representative “old” poems,76 serving as models for the later poems.

To put the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kashū in context, it should be noted that it is one of a number of personal and other poetry collec-tions partly incorporated into the Man’yōshū. The most conspicuous other such sources include the Ruijū karin (Forest of Classifi ed Poems, thought to have been compiled by Yamanoue no Okura), the Kasa no Kanamura shū, the Takahashi no Mushimaro shū, the Tanabe no Sakimaro shū, as well as other earlier collections referred to simply as consisting of “old poems” (koka shū).77 These collections are crucial intertexts for the Man’yōshū, not simply sources but essential structural elements of the larger anthology due to the extensive sequences of their poetry incorporated into Man’yōshū (the position of the Kashū poems in volume XI being a prime example of this).78 Thus the Kashū is not unique in being a personal poetry collection assimilated into the Man’yōshū; what is distinctive, however, is the prominent position given to many of its poems. This has particular signifi cance in light of the fact that many of these collections—including the Kashū—no longer exist as independent texts outside of the Man’yōshū; thus the re-contextualization of these poems and their sources through their placement in the Man’yōshū has important implications for their later reception.

73 Watase, “Maki nana Hitomaro kashū no tanka,” 3.74 Itō, Man’yōshū no kōzō to seiritsu, v. 1, 205–206.75 Itō identifi es volumes III and IV as having this kind of binary structure, and also

sees it underlying the arrangement of the Kashū poems in vols. VII, IX, X, XI, and XII, 252 (Man’yōshū no kōzō to seiritsu, v. 1, 176.)

76 Murase Norio, “Maki jūni Hitomaro kashū no uta,” in Man’yōshū o manabu, ed. Itō Haku and Inaoka Kōji (Yūhikaku, 1977), vol. 6, 86.

77 Hisamatsu Sen’ichi, “Man’yōshū to sono genshiryō,” 264.78 Hisamatsu Sen’ichi, “Man’yōshū to sono genshiryō,” 272.

36 chapter one

Further evidence of the high regard in which Hitomaro’s poetry was held by the Man’yōshū’s compilers may be found in volume XV, where travel poems attributed to Hitomaro earlier in the Man’yōshū are recited in what may be interpreted as a prophylactic manner by envoys dispatched to the Korean peninsula in 736. These poems will be dis-cussed in more detail in the next chapter, in connection with legends regarding Hitomaro’s journey to the continent.

The Gate of the Mountain Persimmon

From the examples above, it is clear that the Man’yōshū demonstrates an implicit interest in Hitomaro as an individual and admiration for his skill as a poet on the part of at least some of its compilers. There is one further instance of Man’yōshū admiration of Hitomaro, one with particular signifi cance in light of his treatment in later texts: the Man’yōshū also includes the fi rst explicit reference to Hitomaro as a great poet of an earlier age, a role in which he would be decisively canonized by the later Kokinshū.

The following passage in classical Chinese by Ōtomo no Yakamo-chi was written as the preface to a chōka (Man’yōshū XVII:3969) in the Third Month of 747, while Yakamochi was serving as governor of Etchū. Yakamochi had been seriously ill in the spring of that year, and when he began to recover in the Second Month he exchanged several letters with his cousin Ōtomo no Ikenushi, assistant vice-governor of the same province. Man’yōshū XVII:3969–3972 were composed on the third day of the Third Month in response to a poem-letter received from Ikenushi the previous day.

Man’yōshū XVII:3969 (preface)Also sent, one poem with tanka79

[Your] great virtue in showing such kindness to one as lowly as mugwort, your immeasurably deep feeling, has answered and soothed this unworthy heart. Receiving your favor, my joy is without compare. However, when I was young, I did not enter the garden of artistic pursuits, hence [writing like] waterweed spills from my brush, and my nature and technique are meagre. In my younger years, I came not to the gate of the mountain persimmon, and when composing poetry, I lose my diction in the forest

79 Text from Hashimoto Tatsuo ed., Man’yōshū zenchū, v. 17 (Yūhikaku, 1985), 148.


[of poems]. Here I gratefully [receive] your words, “To follow brocade with wisteria,” and have again recorded poems, stones which mingle with the jewels. Being originally vulgar and a fool, I have [bad] habits, and am unable to stay silent. Accordingly I present many lines, responding before I become a laughingstock. The words are as follows:

The phrase translated above as “gate of the mountain persimmon” reads sanshi no mon in the original. It appears in no other known text, Japanese or Chinese;80 its only other use in the Man’yōshū comes in Ikenushi’s response to Yakamochi’s letter and poem, in which he seems to echo Yakamochi’s use of the term as representing a poet or poets of the past. Various theories have been advanced as to whom this phrase refers. The earliest interpretation to emerge is that found in the Nishihonganjibon (late Kamakura period) and Onkodōbon (late Muromachi period) texts of the Man’yōshū, in interlinear notes which identify Hitomaro and Yamabe no Akahito (fl . ca. 724–736) as the poets referred to by sanshi no mon. The oldest commentary to make this identifi cation is Kitamura Kigin’s (1624–1705) Man’yō shūsuishō (Notes on Gathered Grain of the Man’yōshū, 1682–1690).81 The infl uence of Ki no Tsurayuki’s (c. 868–c. 945) Kokinshū Kana Preface (905) seems clear in the choice of Hitomaro and Akahito as the referents of sanshi no mon, and although this seems to have been the dominant interpreta-tion during the medieval and early modern periods, modern scholars have raised the possibility of alternatives, including the suggestion that sanshi no mon may even have referred to Hitomaro alone.82

However, similar—though not identical—phrases found in Chinese sources seem to refer to two people, identifi ed by the fi rst character of their names, rather than one. Examples include Cao Liu, referring to Cao Zhi (192–232) and Liu Zhen (?–217), found in the Six Dynasties poetic treatise Shipin (Classifi cation of Poems), by Zhong Hong (fl . ca. 483–513), and Pan Lu, referring to Pan Yue and Lu Ji, in Wen xuan.83 Ikenushi’s comparison of Yakamochi’s poetic talents to those of Pan Yue and Lu Ji (in the preface to XVII:3973) seems to be based on a phrase

80 Ono Hiroshi, “Sanshi no mon,” in Jōdai bungaku kenkyū jiten, ed. Ono Hiroshi and Sakurai Mitsuru, Ōfū, 1996, 292.

81 Ono, 292.82 This suggestion was fi rst made by Origuchi Shinobu in 1933, in his Kakinomoto no

Hitomaro (Man’yōshū kōza 1) (Ono, 292).83 Kojima Noriyuki. Jōdai nihon bungaku to chūgoku bungaku. Hanawa shobō, 1962,

163.

38 chapter one

from Shipin,84 suggesting both the text’s availability to poets at the time and its desirability as a model. In addition to its use by Man’yōshū poets, the infl uence of Shipin seems likely in Ki no Tsurayuki’s evaluation in the Kokinshū Kana Preface of the work of the poets who later came to be known as the Rokkasen or Six Poetic Immortals.85

Thus it seems likely that sanshi no mon refers to two poets rather than just Hitomaro. Rather than relying on textual evidence and attempt-ing to make a concrete identifi cation of the individual poets, however, the term may be understood in a more general sense as referring to the great waka poets of the past, who were to be looked up to in an abstract way rather than concretely emulated in one’s own poetry.86 According to such a reading, Hitomaro and Akahito become symbols; the specifi c distinctions between them are unimportant, as their signifi -cance lies in the fact that they collectively represented a waka tradition of which Yakamochi was extremely conscious after his work on the Man’yōshū.87 It has been suggested that Yakamochi’s use of Hitomaro as a symbol of the tradition of waka poetry is indicative of his own tendency toward classicism (koten shugi ), expressed in his admiration for the poets and poetry of the past; this can be situated within clas-sicism as a more general trend running through the Tempyō period (729–749).88 His use of the term sanshi no mon, invoking Hitomaro as an embodiment of the poetic past, can be taken as a refl ection of his literary and historical consciousness at the time, in the spring of 747. It also prefi gures Tsurayuki’s similarly symbolic use of Hitomaro (and Akahito) in the Kokinshū Kana Preface, from which subsequently devel-oped the image of Hitomaro as poetic ancestor that was central to his role in the eigu ceremonies held in his honor and to his treatment as a divinity in many medieval texts.

84 Kojima, 161.85 Helen Craig McCullough, Brocade by Night: Kokin Wakashū and the Court Style in

Japanese Classical Poetry, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985, 314–315.86 Takagi Ichinosuke, “Okura to Tabito” (Man’yōshū taisei 9, ed. Shimonaka Yasaburō,

25–54. Heibonsha, 1953) (Nakagawa Yukihiro, “Sanshiron,” in Jōdai bungakukai ed., Man’yō no sōten. Kasama shoin, 1982: 98).

87 Nakagawa, 98 (citing Saigō Nobutsuna, Nihon kodai bungakushi, 1963).88 Nakagawa, 94.

CHAPTER TWO

HITOMARO IN HEIAN TEXTS: A SAGE OF POETRY

Following a period of intense enthusiasm in the eighth century for Chinese genres, the Heian period (794–1185) saw the rise of Japanese poetry to a canonical status comparable to that of poetry in Chinese (kanshi ). The decisive development in this process was the compilation of the fi rst imperially commissioned anthology (chokusenshū) of Japanese poetry, the Kokinshū, in the early tenth century. The Kokinshū was initially legitimized as a poetic authority by its imperial commission, and its status as a repository of poetic norms was confi rmed by its canonization as such by Fujiwara no Shunzei in the late twelfth century. Its com-pilation was not only a crucial development in Japanese court poetry, but also an event of paramount importance for the canonization of Hitomaro. In addition to poetry, the Kokinshū includes prose prefaces (one in Japanese, one in Chinese) which set out in some detail the illus-trious history and essential qualities of Japanese poetry. The Japanese or Kana Preface (Kanajo) in particular was canonized as the founding text of Japanese poetic theory and criticism, and Hitomaro is lionized therein as a “sage of poetry” (uta no hijiri ), a quasi-supernatural fi gure presented as the representative poet of a glorious—but only vaguely defi ned—past age. As described in the previous chapter, Hitomaro had been similarly singled out as an ancestral poetic fi gure by Ōtomo no Yakamochi in the Man’yōshū (as part of the “Gate of the Moun-tain Persimmon”), but it was his treatment as such in the prestigious Kokinshū (as opposed to the less canonical Man’yōshū) that cemented his place at the apex of the court-poetic tradition. This identifi cation of Hitomaro as a special category of poet, a “sage of poetry,” was the fi rst important development in his canonization in the Heian period; the second was the Hitomaro eigu (portrait-offering) ceremony in 1118, which will be discussed in the next chapter and which was instrumental in Hitomaro’s transition from a sage to a deity of poetry.

The Kokinshū was not the only Heian-period text to fi gure prominently in Hitomaro’s canonization, though it was by far the most signifi cant; indeed the Kokinshū is probably the single most infl uential text in the entire history of Hitomaro’s reception. Other poetic texts, both public

40 chapter two

and private, also had important roles to play in developing Hitomaro’s image in the Heian period. Signifi cant editorial attention is paid to Hito-maro in the third imperially commissioned poetry anthology, Shūiwakashū (Collection of Gleanings of Japanese Poetry, 1007), in which he is presented as a traveler and exile. This can be seen as a continuation of Hitomaro’s treatment in the Man’yōshū, but may also be understood in the context of poems composed by envoys to the continent and in relation to the archetypal narrative of “the exiled noble” (kishu ryūritan), a trope which is found in prominent Heian texts such as Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise). In a further paral-lel with the protagonists of these texts—particularly Ise monogatari—it has also been argued that Hitomaro is presented as a gifted lover as well as a gifted poet in the Shūishū through the selection of love poems attributed to him there. In addition, the early Heian Period saw Hito-maro canonized as one of a group of outstanding poets, the so-called “Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals” (sanjūrokkasen) fi rst gathered together by the prominent poet and critic Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041) in his collection of exemplary poems and poets, Sanjūrokuninsen (Selection of Thirty-Six Persons, 1009–1012).

Hitomaro in the Kokinshū prefaces

We see in the careful construction of the Iwami sōmonka and banka sequences of the Man’yōshū the fascination that Hitomaro held for the compiler or compilers of volumes I and II of that anthology. Hitomaro’s recognition by later Man’yōshū poets is indicated implicitly by the place-ment of poems from his putative personal collection and explicitly by Ōtomo no Yakamochi in his reference to the “gate of the mountain persimmon.” In the Kokinshū, however, Hitomaro is no longer merely an object of fascination or respect but one of reverence, accorded a semi-divine status. Hitomaro makes his fi rst appearance in the Kokinshū in its Kana Preface, where he is described in glowing terms as holding high court rank and being in close attendance on the emperor. Here we see a further development of the trend set in the legendary version of Hitomaro’s death described in the Iwami banka, in which Hitomaro’s constructed image becomes detached from the poems most defi nitely ascribed to him: the Hitomaro of the Kokinshū is no longer directly dependent on or supported by the poems which bear his name, but has become an autonomous image, a semi-divine poetic fi gure whose

hitomaro in heian texts: a sage of poetry 41

actual poetry is of less importance than his aura of poetic greatness, a greatness clearly evident in the terminology used to describe him in the Kokinshū.

The Kokinshū Kana Preface, written by its chief compiler, Ki no Tsurayuki, is the fi rst critical statement on the nature of Japanese poetry, and became a seminal text of court-poetic discourse. Its famous opening line defi nes Japanese poetry as that which “takes the human heart as seed, and is composed of a myriad leaves of words.”1 This is followed by an account of the divine origins of waka with the deity Susano-o-no-mikoto, to whom is attributed the fi rst thirty-one-syllable poem. Presented next is an outline of the six types of poetry, or rikugi, which, like a number of other elements of the Kana Preface’s critical structure, is based on a Chinese model. The textual antecedent here is the enumeration of the liuyi which appears in the Great Preface to the Shijing ( J. Shikyō; Classic of Poetry, ca. 600 B.C.E.).2 Tsurayuki then laments the decline of Japanese poetry in recent times: neglected, “it has become like a buried log, unknown to people” (mumoreki no, hito shirenu koto to narite).3 He goes on to contrast this sorry state of affairs with an idealized earlier age of waka, when emperors commissioned poems from their courtiers, and people freely composed poetry on all manner of elegant topics. The poet presented in the Kana Preface as most representative of this golden poetic age is Hitomaro:

Even as [ Japanese poetry] was being thus passed down from the earliest times, it spread during the reign of the Nara emperor. Perhaps it was that [the Nara emperor] understood the heart of poetry. In that age there was a sage of poetry of the Senior Third Rank called Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. [That such a poet should live during such a reign] may be said to be a case of lord and subject in perfect union. The red leaves fl owing on the Tatsuta River on an autumn evening looked like brocade to the eyes of the emperor; the cherry blossoms of Mount Yoshino on a spring morning were realized as clouds in the heart of Hitomaro. There was also a person called Yamabe no Akahito. His poems are extraordinarily

1 Yamato uta wa, hito no kokoro o tane to shite, yorozu no koto no ha to zo narerikeru (Arai Eizō and Kojima Noriyuki eds, Kokinwakashū, Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei 5, Iwanami shoten, 1989, 4).

2 The relevant passage in the Great Preface is as follows: “Thus there are six prin-ciples ( yi ) in the poems: 1) Airs ( feng); 2) exposition ( fu); 3) comparison ( pi ); 4) affective image (hsing); 5) Odes ( ya); 6) Hymns (sung)” (Stephen Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, 45).

3 Arai and Kojima, 9.

42 chapter two

skilful. It is diffi cult to stand Hitomaro above Akahito, or to stand Akahito below Hitomaro.4

This passage has a number of problematic points, the fi rst being the identity of the “Nara emperor” (Nara no mikado) during whose reign Hitomaro is here supposed to have lived. Although sometimes taken as a reference to an emperor who reigned at the Heijō capital (mod-ern Nara City), such as Shōmu (r. 724–749) or Mommu (r. 697–707), the Nara no mikado can also be identifi ed as Heizei (r. 806–809), the second emperor of the Heian period, whose posthumous title uses the same characters as Heijō and whose tomb lies in what is now Nara. Support for the identifi cation of the Nara no mikado as Heizei is found elsewhere in the Kana Preface, in a passage that comes almost directly after the one quoted above:

Since that time, there have been over a hundred years, and ten reigns have passed.5

“That time,” kono ōmutoki, refers to the time of the compilation of the Man’yōshū, which, it is implied, took place in the reign of the “Nara emperor.” This connection is made more explicit in the Kokinshū’s Chi-nese preface (Manajo), by Ki no Yoshimochi (d. 919):

Long ago, Emperor Heizei issued an edict to his retainers and ministers, and commanded them to compile the Man’yōshū. Since then, ten reigns have elapsed, and a hundred years have passed.6

The tenth reign back from that of Daigo (885–930; r. 897–930), com-missioner of the Kokinshū, is that of Heizei; counting back a hundred years from 905 brings one to the Daidō era (806–810), under Heizei. However, this was over a hundred years after Hitomaro’s period of greatest activity at court (as dated from the headnotes to his poems in the Man’yōshū). This discrepancy led some early commentators to express doubt over the apparent placement of Hitomaro in the reign of Heizei in the Kana Preface. One such was the Rokujō poet Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1104–1177), who addressed the issue of the identity of the Nara no mikado in the “Hitomaro kanmon” (Report on Hitomaro) included in his Fukurozōshi (Bag Manuscript), a collection of anecdotes and poetic lore dating from 1157. A kanmon was a report prepared by a

4 Arai and Kojima, 11–12.5 Arai and Kojima, 13.6 Arai and Kojima, 346–7.


scholar, priest, diviner, etc., in response to questions asked by superiors at court, providing answers by fi nding precedents and other informa-tion. The range of topics covered in kanmon is extremely wide, but the “Hitomaro kanmon,” dated 1153, is the oldest extant poetry-related kanmon. Its purpose is indicated in a prefatory note: “An investigation of doubts as to whether Hitomaro was a minister at the court of Daidō and whether the Man’yōshū was compiled at that time, as mistakenly [said] by a certain person.”7 After examining various texts, including the Man’yōshū, the Kokinshū, the Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato, 951) and the Wen xuan, Kiyosuke ultimately concludes that “Hitomaro was a minister of Shōmu, and the Man’yōshū was probably selected by the same emperor. Regarding the matter of Daidō, I have seen no proof [to place Hitomaro or the Man’yōshū in that reign].”8

From the above we may gather that the date of the past age in which Tsurayuki places Hitomaro in the Kana Preface is unclear, and was so even to the earliest commentators. However, in terms of the process of Hitomaro’s canonization, the actual historical date is unimportant: the salient features of the “reign of the Nara emperor” described by Tsura-yuki are, fi rstly, that it is well in the past, thus establishing the antiquity of Japanese poetry, and, secondly, that it was a time when Japanese poetry fl ourished in the hands of “poetic sages” and their sovereign. The “reign of the Nara emperor” thus served to set a precedent for the enthusiastic and skilful composition of poetry in Japanese by members of the uppermost echelons of society, by describing an enviable state to which Japanese poetry at the time of the Kokinshū’s compilation should strive to return. Indeed, the very vagueness of Hitomaro’s historical position here only adds to his charisma as a remote and venerable fi gure from the poetic—rather than simply historical—past.

Hitomaro’s Rank

In the Kana Preface passage on Hitomaro in the “reign of the Nara emperor,” Tsurayuki describes Hitomaro as holding the Senior Third Rank (ōkimitsu no kurai ). It seems to be extremely unlikely, however,

7 Fujioka Tadaharu et al. eds., Fukurozōshi kōshō: kagaku hen. Izumi shoin, 1983, 288.

8 Fujioka et al., 350.

44 chapter two

that this was ever the case.9 The circumstances of the composition of Hitomaro’s purported fi nal poem are described in the headnote to Man’yōshū II:223 as follows: Iwami no kuni ni arite, shi ni nozomu toki . . ., “when in the province of Iwami, facing death . . .”. Inaoka Kōji notes that the use of the word shi for “death” suggests that the person involved was of the Sixth Rank or below;10 the deaths of higher-rank-ing individuals were referred to with terms such as sotsu (for holders of the Fourth and Fifth Ranks) or kō (for holders of the Third Rank and above). Furthermore, holders of the uppermost three ranks in the court hierarchy were among those collectively termed kugyō, “high nobility,” and the Senior Third Rank was typically held by such eminences as Major Councillors (dainagon), ranking only one step below ministers of state. It would have been unthinkable for a holder of such high rank to be completely absent from the historical record, as Hitomaro is. Doubts over Tsurayuki’s claim for precisely this reason are evident in the eleventh-century Sanjūrokunin kasenden, which provided biographical information for the thirty-six outstanding poets selected by Fujiwara no Kintō in his Sanjūrokuninsen. The Sanjūrokunin kasenden is thought to be the work of Fujiwara no Morifusa (governor of Higo, d. 1094?). The entry on Hitomaro is the fi rst to appear in the Sanjūrokunin kasenden, and includes the following passage:11

As for this person, every year in the appointment and promotion rounds, he received a bureaucratic position, [but] when one seeks [a record of ] his advancement, it is nowhere to be seen. However, in the Man’yōshū of old, it says that he composed a poem at the time of an imperial excur-sion to the province of Ki in the fi rst year of Taihō.12 It says that he followed the imperial palanquin. Thinking on this, those that followed the palanquin on the day of the excursion in question would have been sure to have been of the Fifth Rank and above. As it [says] in the pref-ace to the Kokinwakashū, the wise man of former times is recorded as the Kakinomoto offi cial [tayū]. It can probably be said that he was of the

9 Nakanishi Susumu, “Botsugo no Hitomaro,” in Kakinomoto no Hitomaro: hito to sakuhin, ed. Nakanishi, Ōfūsha, 1989, 232.

10 Inaoka, Zenchū, 455.11 Text here appears in Gunsho ruijū, vol. 65, 372.12 This seems to be a reference to Man’yōshū II:146, which is preceded by the head-

note, “A poem on seeing the tied pine at the time of the imperial excursion to the province of Ki in Taihō 1, younger-brother-of-fi re-ox (from the poetry collection of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro).” Taihō 1 was 701, and the sovereign making the excursion is thought to have been Jitō, now retired.


Fifth Rank. In the preface to the Kokinkingyokushū,13 it says that in the reign of the Nara [sovereign], there was great popularity of Japanese poetry. That emperor surely understood the interest of poetry. In that same reign was Kakinomoto no Hitomaro of the Senior Third Rank. He was a sage of Japanese poetry. When one considers the passage in question, one can say that there are many discrepancies. From the Daidō era [this sovereign] was called the Nara emperor. However, when one looks for the time of Hitomaro’s existence in the Man’yōshū, [his life] was after the reign of Emperor Tenji [r. 668–671]; he was someone of the reign of Emperor Mommu [r. 697–707]. Why is he known as someone of the reign of the Nara emperor? The clause about the Senior Third Rank is questionable.

The author here seems to conclude that Hitomaro was in fact a holder of the Fifth Rank rather than the Third, basing his conclusion in part on the passage in the Kokinshū Mana Preface which reads, “However, there was someone called the Former Teacher Kakinomoto no tayū.”14

Under the ritsuryō system of government, tayū referred to holders of the First to Fifth ranks, and the term came to refer by extension to the holders of the Fifth Rank in particular; in other words, mid-ranking court offi cials. The Mana Preface passage does not necessarily mark a great departure from the Kana Preface, as the term tayū could have referred to a holder of the Third Rank; however, the author of the Sanjūrokunin kasenden questions this on the basis of the Man’yōshū headnote and the lack of a record of Hitomaro’s career in the offi cial sources. An estimate of Hitomaro’s rank as Fifth in the Sanjūrokunin kasenden does not accord with the language used to describe his death in the headnote to Man’yōshū II:223, but both these texts (the Man’yōshū and the Sanjūrokunin kasenden) do at least seem to be at odds with Tsurayuki’s presentation of Hitomaro as a holder of the Senior Third Rank.

Divergence from Tsurayuki’s views on Hitomaro’s rank may even be found within the Kokinshū itself, in the chōka by Mibu no Tadamine (dates unknown; a compiler of the Kokinshū) entitled “A long poem which was presented with some old poems,” which appears as XIX:1003 and includes the following phrases (emphasis added):

13 An alternative title for the Kingyokushū (Collection of Gold and Jewels), a collection of outstanding poems of the early Heian period compiled in the early eleventh century by Fujiwara no Kintō.


46 chapter two

Aware mukashi e How fortunateAriki chō was Hitomaro,Hitomaro koso wa said to liveUreshikere in the days of old;Mi wa shimo nagara though his station was lowly,Koto no ha o he lifted up his wordsAmatsu sora made to the heavens . . .15

Kikoeage

Despite such doubts as to his actual status, the infl uence of the descrip-tion of Hitomaro in the Kokinshū Kana Preface was so pervasive that references to Hitomaro as a holder of the Senior Third Rank occur frequently in post-Kokinshū texts, particularly in accounts of his (leg-endary) life. The fourteenth-century commentary Gyokuden jinpi (Deep Secrets of the Jeweled Transmission), for example, gives a detailed description of his supposed offi cial career:

In the same year [675], on the third day of the Ninth Month, he was appointed Administrator of the Left Capital [Sakyō daibu] of the Third Rank, Lower Grade, and also Governor of Harima. On the fi rst day of the Third Month of the next year, he was appointed Head of the Crown Prince’s household and head of the Bureau of Carpentry, of the Senior Third Rank, Upper Grade. After his death, in the reign of Kōken [749–758], he was appointed to the Senior Second Rank and made Great Minister of the Center.16

This account ultimately takes Hitomaro beyond the Third Rank and attributes to him a posthumous promotion to the Senior Second Rank, effectively the highest rank as the First Rank was seldom awarded. Tsurayuki’s description of Hitomaro as a “sage” of poetry and holder of high rank, close to his sovereign, can be understood as part of his strategy to legitimize Japanese poetry as a publicly acceptable literary form equal in status to poetry in Chinese, rather than merely a means of social interaction; it also depicts an illustrious poetic forebear whose social and political position was superior to that of the waka poets of Tsurayuki’s own day. Thus it is understandable that Tsurayuki would ascribe a high rank to Hitomaro, who for him represented a glorious poetic past. But Tsurayuki does more than just grant Hitomaro high

15 Arai and Kojima, 304.16 Katagiri Yōichi, Chūsei Kokinshū chūshaku sho kaidai 5. Kyoto: Akao shobundō,

1986, 555.


court rank and an enviable position at the emperor’s side; he elevates him to the status of hijiri, translated here as “sage.”

The term hijiri (for which the character sei is often used) is derived from the phrase hi shiri, “one who knows the sun,” in reference to a wise person (in early texts it could also refer to the emperor); thus, although hijiri came to be used to refer to fi gures possessing religious virtue (and was later chosen to translate the Latin sanctus), it also carried overtones of expertise and knowledge, both appropriate in the case of a fi gure such as Hitomaro. Hitomaro is referred to in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as an uta no hijiri (sage of poetry), but in the Mana Preface both he and Akahito are termed waka no hijiri [sen] (sage of Japanese poetry).17 A distinction must be drawn between the term used in the Mana Preface, sen, meaning wizard, hermit or immortal, particularly in a Daoist sense, which is also found in the term kasen, “poetic immortal,” referring to a gifted poet, and the more exclusive term kasei, which is used for Hitomaro and to a lesser extent Akahito, but very rarely in reference to any other poets.

The model for the Kokinshū prefaces’ uta no hijiri and waka no hijiri [sen] is thought to be Bo Juyi’s (772–846) use of the term shisen.18 In addition to the meaning of “a poet who disports himself like an immortal from the world of poetry,” Bo Juyi also uses shisen to mean “a poet who is like an immortal in the distant world of the court.”19 This second meaning is clearly derived from the fi rst, but involves an implicit comparison between the imperial court and the world of the immortals. This meaning also, by extension, invests the terms uta no hijiri (and its Sinifi ed descendant, kasei ) and waka no hijiri [sen] with a distinctly political dimension, refl ected in Tsurayuki’s placement of Hitomaro, his uta no hijiri, in an idealized past where poet and ruler were in perfect accord.20 The concept of literature as a means of mediation between a ruler and his subjects can be traced back to the Great Preface of the Shi jing,21 but the idea of the “poetic sage” as a fi gure at home in both settings, poetic and political, seems to be derived from Bo Juyi’s view of poets and poetic consciousness.22 Tsurayuki’s formulation of the term

17 Arai and Kojima, 342.18 Shinma Kazuyoshi, “Haku Kyoi no shijin ishiki to Kanke bunshū, ‘Kokin jo’: Shima,

shisen, waka no hijiri,” Wakan hikaku bungaku 17 (8/1996): 22.19 Shinma, 25.20 Shinma, 29.21 Owen, 46.22 Shinma, 30.

48 chapter two

uta no hijiri (and Yoshimochi’s waka no hijiri [sen]) can be understood as an example of Bo Juyi’s reception in Heian literature.

After the glowing praise for Hitomaro, another Man’yōshū poet, Yam-abe no Akahito, is mentioned. The pairing of Hitomaro and Akahito here may be echoing Yakamochi’s “gate of the mountain persimmon” passage in Man’yōshū (XVII:3969); in any event, the appearance of the two poets together in Tsurayuki’s Kana Preface had a decisive infl uence on later interpretations of the phrase “gate of the mountain persim-mon” as referring to Hitomaro and Akahito, regardless of Yakamochi’s original intent. The Kana Preface passage further implies that Hitomaro and Akahito were contemporaries when in fact they were a generation apart, Akahito being regarded as one of a group of later (Nara-period) poets who drew on earlier poems—particularly Hitomaro’s—in their own work. (This confl ation of the historical lifetimes of Hitomaro and Akahito is taken one unlikely step further in medieval waka commen-taries such as the Bishamondōbon kokinshūchū (Bishamon Hall Notes on the Kokinshū), in which “Hitomaro” and “Akahito” are described as being different names for the same individual.23)

Although Akahito is described here as Hitomaro’s poetic equal (“It is diffi cult to stand Hitomaro above Akahito, or to stand Akahito below Hitomaro”), he is given far less effusive treatment, and is described as a “person” who composes “extraordinarily skilful” poetry rather than a “sage of poetry,” an important qualitative difference which is refl ected in the exemplary poems given for each poet in the old interpolated notes (kochū) to the Kana Preface.24 In the case of Akahito, the emphasis is on his poetry, and the two poems given for him in the interpolated notes (added to the Kana Preface by an unknown commentator at an early stage of its reception) are poems attributed to him in the Man’yōshū:

23 Katagiri Yōichi, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 215.24 The Kokinshū Mana Preface describes both Hitomaro and Akahito as waka no hijiri

[sen], but historically the Mana Preface has been less highly regarded than the Kana Preface, and it is the latter which has been canonized as the formal or “offi cial” preface to the Kokinshū (Katagiri Yōichi, Kokinwakashū zenhyōshaku, Kōdansha, 1998, I:92). Thus the Mana Preface’s description of both Hitomaro and Akahito as sages of Japanese poetry has been less infl uential in their reception than the description appearing in the Kana Preface, which does draw a qualitative distinction between the two.


Man’yōshū VIII:1424[One of ] Four poems by Yamabe no Sukune Akahito

haru no no ni Having comesumire tsumi ni to to the spring fi eldskoshi ware zo to pluck violets,no o natsukashimi entranced by those fi elds,hitoyo ne ni keru I slept there all night!

Man’yōshū VI:919[An envoy to] a poem by Yamabe no Sukune on the occasion of the imperial excursion to the province of Ki on the fi fth day of the Tenth Month in the winter of Jinki 1 (Elder-brother-of-wood-rat) [724]

waka no ura ni At Waka Bay,shio michikureba when the tide comes inkata o nami and the dry shore vanishes,ashibe o sashite toward the reed-bedstazu nakiwataru the cranes cross crying.

Hitomaro, on the other hand, has moved from being merely a poet (albeit a great one) to being an uta no hijiri, a poetic sage. This is an image of Hitomaro which seems to have arisen almost independently of his poetry: just as Hitomaro’s reception in the Man’yōshū involved poems associated with him but of doubtful attribution, such as the Iwami banka, so in the interpolated notes also the poems put forward as representative of his oeuvre are of uncertain provenance. Rather than Man’yōshū poems of reasonably certain authorship, the exemplary poems given are two of the anonymous poems tentatively linked to Hitomaro in the text of the Kokinshū itself. Indeed, the presence of such attributions in the Kokinshū, however unlikely, for Hitomaro but not Akahito may be taken as a further indication of the greater regard in which Hitomaro was held. The poems given for Hitomaro in the old interpolated notes to the Kana Preface are as follows:

Kokinshū IX:409 (Travel) AnonymousTopic unknown

honobono to Dimly, dimly,akashi no ura no in the morning mistasagiri ni of Akashi Bay,shimagakure yuku I think of a boatfune o shi zo omou going island-hidden.

50 chapter two

Kokinshū VI:334 (Winter) AnonymousTopic unknown

ume no hana The plum blossoms—sore to mo miezu I cannot see which they arehisakata no as the distant skyamagiru yuki no is so misty with snownabete furereba falling everywhere.

This pattern—genuine Man’yōshū poems being given as samples of Aka-hito’s work and poems of doubtful attribution appearing as samples of Hitomaro’s work—is repeated in other collections of exemplary poems, such as Kintō’s Sanjūrokuninsen and the Ogura hyakunin isshu (Ogura Col-lection of One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each) attributed to Fujiwara no Teika. The representative poem for Akahito in the latter collection is a variation on one of his best-known Man’yōshū poems, III:318 (the same variant appears as Shinkokinshū VI:675), while that for Hitomaro is an anonymous Man’yōshū poem (XI:2802) which was one of many such poems to be newly—and improbably—attributed to him in Shūishū (as Shūishū XIII:778). The poems included as representative works for Akahito and Hitomaro in the Ogura hyakunin isshu are:

Shinkokinshū VI:675 (Winter, Topic unknown) Yamabe no Akahito

Tago no ura ni Going out on Tago Bay,uchi idete mireba when I look,shirotae no on Fuji’s high peak,Fuji no takane ni white as hempen sleeves,yuki wa furitsutsu snow is falling.25

Shūishū XIII:778 (Love, Topic unknown) Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

ashihiki no This long long night,yamadori no o no long as the trailing tailshidari o no of the birdnaganagashi yo o of the foot-dragging hills,hitori nemu kamo I sleep alone!26

The attribution to Hitomaro of old anonymous poems, however, does not begin in the Kokinshū; as shown in the previous chapter, it may be seen in the Man’yōshū itself, in the arrangement of poetry from the

25 Komachiya Teruhiko ed., Shūiwakashū, Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei 7, Iwa-nami shoten, 1990, 200.

26 Komachiya, Shūiwakashū, 226.


Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kashū, which, although of uncertain size, authorship and origin, seems to have been regarded by the Man’yōshū’s compilers as Hitomaro’s work. The very existence of Hitomaro’s Kashū and its treatment in the Man’yōshū marked the beginning of a process of association with and attribution of old anonymous poems to Hito-maro which continued throughout the Heian period and beyond. Such accumulation of anonymous poems may also be seen to some extent in the case of other Man’yōshū poets such as Akahito and Yakamochi,27 and also in that of Kokinshū poets such as Ono no Komachi (fl . ninth century). Yet the genuine poems of the other poets never seemed to be overshadowed by those spuriously attributed to them to the extent that Hitomaro’s were; his continued popularity and ability to com-mand respect despite this unsteady textual basis—in terms of actual poetic texts—indicate the extent to which he had attained some kind of autonomous existence as a poetic icon.

Another crucial difference in the treatment of Akahito and Hitomaro in the Kokinshū Kana Preface is that while both are described as having poetic gifts, only Hitomaro is described as being in a politically as well as poetically ideal situation: he is the one to whom high court rank is ascribed, and he is the one who has achieved perfect union with his sovereign (the political implications of the term uta no hijiri are outlined above). No such claims are made in the Kana Preface for Akahito (who, it is implied, was Hitomaro’s contemporary and was thus also living in the reign of the Nara no mikado). This combination of poetic and political standing was the key quality that made Hitomaro, rather than Akahito, the more attractive candidate for worship two hundred years later by the poets of the Rokujō house as they sought a poetic ancestor to venerate in their eigu ceremony,28 a practice through which they hoped to consolidate their own poetic and political position at court.

27 There are, for example, several anonymous Man’yōshū poems (VIII:1426, X:1843, X:1977, X:2014) which appear in more than one of the Hitomaro shū, Akahito shū, and Yakamochi shū in the Sanjūrokuninshū. Man’yōshū X:1812 appears in both the Hitomaro shū and the Akahito shū despite being identifi ed in Man’yōshū as a poem from the Hitomaro kashū.

28 Kitahara Motohide, “Hitomaro eigu to inseiki kadan,” Kodai bunka 51:4 (4/1999): 35.

52 chapter two

Hitomaro Poems in the Kokinshū

Despite the glowing praise given Hitomaro in the Kokinshū prefaces, his poems could not be included in the Kokinshū itself because of an explicit editorial policy against including Man’yōshū poems. In the section of the Kana Preface describing Daigo’s command for the compilation of the Kokinshū, Tsurayuki notes that he and his fellow compilers were instructed to select “old poems not in the Man’yōshū, and their own poems” (Man’yōshū ni iranu furuki uta, mizukara no o mo).29 Nevertheless, there are seven poems in the Kokinshū which, although offi cially anony-mous, are tentatively attributed to Hitomaro in editorial notes following the poems (sachū). The poems are:

Kokinshū III:135 (Summer) AnonymousTopic unknown

waga yado no The wisteria wavesike no fujinami by the pond at my dwellingsakinikeri have bloomed;yamahototogisu when will the mountain cuckooitsuka kinakamu come and sing?

A certain person said that this was a poem by Kakinomoto no Hito-maro.30

Kokinshū IV:211 (Autumn) AnonymousTopic unknown

yo mo samumi The night is cold,koromo karigane and none will lend a robe;nakunae ni as the wild geese call outhagi no shitaba mo the bush clover’s lower leavesutsuroinikeri have started to change color.



ume no hana The plum blossoms—sore to mo miezu I cannot see which they are

29 Arai and Kojima, 16.30 Arai and Kojima, 56.31 Arai and Kojima, 78.


hisakata no as the distant skyamagiru yuki no is so misty with snownabete furereba falling everywhere.





Kokinshū XIII:621 (Love) AnonymousTopic unknown

awanu yo no As nights we cannot meetfuru shirayuki to pile up like driftstsumorinaba of fallen snow,ware sae tomo ni so too shall I vanish,kenubeki mono o just melting away.


Kokinshū XIII:671 (Love) AnonymousTopic unknown

kaze fukeba When the wind blowsnami utsu iwa no the waves beat the crag,matsu nare ya washing bare the roots of the pine;ne ni arawarete so too shall I be exposednakinuberanari crying aloud my love.


32 Arai and Kojima, 110.33 Arai and Kojima, 134.34 Arai and Kojima, 192.35 Arai and Kojima, 205.

54 chapter two

Kokinshū XVII:907 (Miscellaneous) AnonymousTopic unknown

azusayumi Catalpa bow—isobe no komatsu who, and in what time,tare ka yo ni ka thinking of a thousand ages ahead,yorozuyo kanete might have planted the seedtane o makikemu of the small pine on the rocky shore?

A certain person said that this was a poem by Kakinomoto no Hito-maro36

Some textual variants of the Kokinshū also have a Hitomaro-related note for the following poem, to give a total of eight Hitomaro-related poems:37

Kokinshū V:284 (Autumn) AnonymousTopic unknown

Tatsutagawa On the Tatsuta River,momijiba nagaru the autumn leaves fl ow;kamunabi no on Mimuro Mountain,Mimuro no yama ni the abode of the gods,shigure fururashi cold rain must be falling.

Also, “On the Asuka River, the autumn leaves fl ow.” This poem is not noted as Hitomaro’s. Other texts are the same.38

The poem takes a typically intellectual Kokinshū approach to its mate-rial, speculating as to the reason for observed natural phenomena: the leaves must be fl oating down the river because of the runoff from the autumnal rains falling on Mount Mimuro. Nonetheless, of all the Kokinshū poems with any kind of Hitomaro connection, this is the only one with any noticeable similarities to a Man’yōshū poem. Comparisons have been drawn between this poem and the following, the opening lines of which are clearly similar to those suggested in the note to Kokinshū V:284:39

36 Arai and Kojima, 273.37 Yokoyama Satoshi, “Heian ‘Hitomaro’ kō: Kokinshū o chūshin to shite.” Nishō

gakusha daigaku jinbun ronsō 39 (7/1998): 6.38 Arai and Kojima, 96. The second part of the note, “This poem is not noted as

Hitomaro’s. Other texts are the same,” does not appear in the SNKBT, NKBZ, or Shinchō NKSS texts, but does appear in the text used in the Iwanami bunko Kokin-wakashū, ed. Saeki Umetomo (Iwanami, 1981).

39 Yokoyama, “Heian ‘Hitomaro’,” 8.


Man’yōshū X:2210, Anonymous“On autumn leaves”

Asukagawa On the Asuka River,momijiba nagaru the autumn leaves fl ow;Kazuraki no the leaves of the treesyama no ko no ha wa on the Kazuraki mountainsima shi chirurashi must be falling now.

However, despite Kokinshū V:284’s similarity to this poem (and thus its possible plausibility as a Hitomaro poem), its attribution to Hitomaro is probably due rather to the Kana Preface description of the emperor viewing the leaves on the Tatsuta River than to any echoes of the Man’yōshū. The footnote following the poem in Kokinshū, thought to have been written in by Fujiwara no Teika,40 is pointing out the lack of a Hitomaro attribution. The reason why such an attribution would have been expected for this poem by later readers becomes clear when we consider the poem that directly precedes it:

Kokinshū V:283 (Autumn) AnonymousTopic unknown

Tatsutagawa On the Tatsuta River,momijiba midarete the leaves seem to fl ownagarumeri in disarray;wataraba nishiki crossing now would surelynaka ya taenamu tear asunder their brocade.

A certain person said that this was [a poem] by the Nara emperor.41

This poem, which precedes V: 284, is offi cially anonymous but attributed to the Nara emperor in a note very similar to those in which attribution to Hitomaro is made for other Kokinshū poems. Thus the notes suggest an expectation that Hitomaro was with the Nara emperor when the latter perceived the leaves on the Tatsuta River as brocade—as described in the Kokinshū Kana Preface—and recorded his thoughts in the form of poetry. This scenario, tentatively suggested here by the notes, is given more full and defi nite form in a slightly later text, the tenth-century poem-tale (uta monogatari ) Yamato monogatari, the 151st section of which reads as follows:

40 Katagiri, Kokinwakashū zenhyōshaku, I:985.41 Arai and Kojima, 96.

56 chapter two

On the day that the same emperor looked upon the autumn leaves on the Tatsuta River, which were at their most splendid, Hitomaro [composed this poem]:

Tatsutagawa On the Tatsuta River,momijiba nagaru the autumn leaves fl ow;kamunabi no on Mimuro Mountain,Mimuro no yama ni the abode of the gods,shigure fururashi cold rain must be falling.

The Emperor:

Tatsutagawa On the Tatsuta River,momijiba midarete the leaves seem to fl ownagarumeri in disarray;wataraba nishiki crossing now would surelynaka ya taenamu tear asunder their brocade.

Thus they amused themselves.42

Finally, the attribution to Hitomaro is made explicit in an imperially commissioned anthology, the most highly prized genre of waka collec-tion. The third imperial anthology, Shūiwakashū, which was instrumental in cementing the attributions to Hitomaro of a number of poems previously offi cially regarded as anonymous, includes the Tatsuta River poem (Kokinshū V:284) with the following headnote:43

Shūishū VI:219 (Winter) Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

At the time when the Nara emperor made an excursion to see the autumn leaves on the Tatsuta River, this poem was presented together [with His Majesty’s]

One may speculate that it was this defi nite attribution that Teika had in mind when he noted that the Kokinshū made no such statements about the poem’s authorship. As noted earlier, Kokinshū V:284 is the only Hitomaro-related poem in the Kokinshū to bear even a passing resemblance to any Man’yōshū poem. There are a handful of Man’yōshū poems that appear (sometimes in variant form) in the Kokinshū, but the poems attributed by their notes to Hitomaro are not among them.44

42 Katagiri Yōichi et al. ed., Taketori monogatari, Ise monogatari, Yamato monogatari, Heichū monogatari, Nihon koten bungaku zenshū 8 (Shōgakukan, 1972), 399.

43 Komachiya, Shūiwakashū, 63.44 Yokoyama, “Heian ‘Hitomaro’,” 10.


It must be kept in mind here that, just as in the case of the Iwami banka in volume II of the Man’yōshū, the attributions and contexts of the Hitomaro-related poems in the Kokinshū are provided by the edi-torial notes which accompany them, either as headnotes (kotobagaki ), introducing the poem’s topic or the circumstances of its composition, or footnotes, which add further information, including authorship if none has been specifi ed. The notes play a crucial role in determining the way a poem is read, and have greatly infl uenced the interpreta-tion and canonization of Hitomaro-related poems in the Man’yōshū (for instance, Hitomaro’s death poem, II:223, linked to Iwami only through the headnote), the Kokinshū (the tentative attribution of seven poems to Hitomaro, including the Akashi Bay poem), and the Shūishū (the attribution of anonymous Man’yōshū poems to Hitomaro). The power of such editorial notes as an instrument of canonization is amplifi ed in a prestigious text like the Kokinshū, whose treatment or presentation of the poems itself becomes canonical, determining the course of their subsequent reception.

Whether it was the Kokinshū compilers themselves who added the footnotes in which the attributions to Hitomaro are made is unclear, although they are thought to have been added to the text at a fairly early stage, and may be representative of the general view of Hito-maro around the time of the Kokinshū’s compilation.45 Likewise, the old interpolated notes to the Kana Preface are thought to have been inserted into the text of the Kokinshū by the mid-eleventh century; a note in the Kiyosuke-bon Kokinshū records that the Kokinshū text owned by Fujiwara no Michitoshi (1047–1099) included an attribution of the old notes to the Kana Preface to Kintō.46 This attribution is the earli-est extant attempt to determine their authorship (although Kiyosuke himself doubted that Kintō was in fact responsible). The old notes are very similar to Kintō’s notes on the Mana Preface in several places, and modern scholarly opinion is divided as to whether this refl ects Kintō’s authorship or whether his notes served as the textual basis for a later commentator, who adapted them to the Kokinshū Kana Preface, both refl ecting the reverence accorded Kintō by later poets and foreshadow -ing the establishment of the medieval waka houses and their

45 Katagiri, Kokinshū zenhyōshaku, I:216.46 Nishimura Kayoko, “Kokinshū kanajo ‘kochū’ no seiritsu,” in her Heian kōki kagaku

no kenkyū (Izumi shoin, 1997), 18.

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commentarial traditions.47 Regardless of their authorship, the old interpolated notes serve as a very early and very signifi cant stage in Kokinshū reception, the fi rst of the many layers of interpretation and editorial mediation to surround the text over the centuries. Unlike later commentaries, the old notes are written into the Kokinshū and often treated as part of the text itself, and they play an important role in the reception of the Hitomaro-attributed poems in the Kokinshū, as they highlight two of those poems for particular attention by quoting them as exemplary poems for Tsurayuki’s sage of poetry. The most central of these to Hitomaro’s later reception—indeed, one of the most important texts involved in that process—is the anonymous travel poem Kokinshū IX:409.



A certain person said that this was a poem by Kakinomoto no Hito-maro.

This poem (hereafter referred to as “the Akashi Bay poem”) recurs countless times in subsequent Hitomaro-related texts and is subject to a dizzying range of interpretations, being read as everything from an elegy for Prince Takechi48 to a magical incantation for improving one’s poetry.49 Within the context of the Kokinshū, its attribution seems consistent with then-current ideas about Hitomaro’s poetry: the Kana Preface passage identifying Hitomaro as a sage of poetry mentions his poetic confusion of the cherry blossoms of Mount Yoshino with clouds (“the cherry blossoms of Mount Yoshino on a spring morning

47 Sugita Mayuko, “Kintō kagaku to Kokinshū jo chū: kanajo kochū to Kintō jo chū no sengo,” in Suzuki Jun et al. ed., Waka: kaishaku no paradaimu. Kasama shoin, 1998, 117.

48 The seventeenth-century Hitomaro himitsushō (Secret Notes on Hitomaro) identifi es this poem as a banka for Prince Takechi (654–696), the eldest son of Emperor Temmu who was commemorated by Hitomaro in a banka in the Man’yōshū (II:199–201).

49 In, for instance, the Reizei house commentary Kokinshū chū, in which aspiring poets were encouraged to recite the poem three times every morning and make the appropriate offerings to a portrait of Hitomaro (Ōwa Iwao, Hitomaro no jitsuzō [Ōwa shobō, 1990], 238).


were realized as clouds in the heart of Hitomaro”). The technique of visual confusion, or mitate, involved in this description of Hitomaro’s poetry features in both the Akashi Bay poem and the second of the two exemplary poems given for Hitomaro in the old notes to the Kokinshū Kana Preface:


ume no hana The plum blossoms—sore to mo miezu I cannot see which they arehisakata no as the distant skyamagiru yuki no is so misty with snownabete furereba falling everywhere.

A certain person said that this was a poem by Kakinomoto no Hito-maro.

The prominence accorded the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409) in later poetic texts and its canonization as the prime manifestation of Hitomaro’s genius was due not only to its inclusion in the Kokinshū but to the fact that it was singled out as one of Hitomaro’s exemplary poems by the old notes to the Kana Preface. The poem was particularly highly prized by Kintō, who included it in the uppermost level of poetry in his Waka kuhon (Nine Grades of Japanese Poetry, after 1009), a selection of exemplary poems arranged in grades modeled on the nine levels of rebirth in the Pure Land paradise.

The poem was selected for inclusion in a number of other anthologies and critical texts between its emergence in the Kokinshū in 905 and the fi rst eigu ceremony for the worship of Hitomaro in 1118; it is included in Shinsen waka shū (Newly Selected Collection of Poems, c. 934); Kokin waka rokujō (Six Notebooks of Old and New Japanese Poems); Kingyokushū (Collection of Gold and Jewels, 1007); Zenjūgoban utaawase (Former Poetry Contest in Fifteen Rounds, c. 1008); Sanjūninsen (Selection of Thirty People, c. 1009); Sanjūrokuninsen (1009–1012); Shinsōhishō (Inner Chamber Secret Notes, c. 1012); Wakan rōeishū (Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing, c. 1012); Shunrai zuinō (Shunrai’s Poetic Essentials, 1111–1113); and in all three textual lines of the Hitomaro shū (Hitomaro Collection).50 What is most striking about these texts is that seven of them (Kingyokushū to Wakan rōeishū) were compiled by Fujiwara

50 Sasaki Takahiro. “Hitomaro no shinkō to eigu.” Kokubungaku Kenkyū Shiryōkan ed. Man’yōshū no shomondai. Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1997, 136–137.

60 chapter two

no Kintō51 Like Tsurayuki before him, Kintō was making a deliberate attempt to give the waka tradition some authority, to raise its position as a literary art to a similar one to that occupied by Chinese poetry.52 The great esteem in which this particular poem was held by infl uential literary fi gures such as Kintō did much to enhance Hitomaro’s reputa-tion, and may also have been a contributing factor in his selection for the Rokujōs’ eigu ceremony, which can be seen in part as a result of the reception of Kintō’s poetic preferences.53

Man’yōshū Reception

As described above, the Kokinshū includes Man’yōshū poems despite the compilers’ explicit intent to exclude them, and also attributes non-Man’yōshū poems to Hitomaro. The compilers’ apparent inability to determine what is and is not a Man’yōshū poem refl ects the state of Man’yōshū reception in the early Heian period. Reading the Man’yōshū was a daunting prospect for early Heian readers, and the diffi culties involved can be inferred from Sugawara no Michizane’s preface to his Shinsen man’yōshū (Newly Selected Man’yōshū) of 893, in which the eminent scholar complains that the Man’yōshū’s “phrases are in disorder and its characters confused; to enter it is diffi cult and to understand it is hard.”54 The title of Shinsen man’yōshū refl ects an awareness of the Man’yōshū as historical model and ancestral text, as does the twenty-volume struc-ture and the original title of the Kokinshū, Shoku man’yōshū (Continued Man’yōshū), which serves as further evidence of the belief held by the Kokinshū compilers that the Man’yōshū was an anthology compiled by imperial command.55 This belief is also apparent in the Kokinshū Mana Preface’s description of the Heizei emperor ordering the compilation of the Man’yōshū.

51 Sasaki, “Hitomaro no shinkō to eigu,” 137.52 Konishi Jin’ichi. A History of Japanese Literature: Volume Three: The High Middle Ages. Tr.

Aileen Gatten and Mark Harbison. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, 27.53 Sasaki, “Hitomaro no shinkō to eigu,” 137.54 Monku sakuran shi, jitai zatsujū shi, hairu koto kataku satoru koto katashi. Quoted in

Suzuki Hideo, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” in his Kodai waka shi ron. Tōkyō daigaku shup-pan kai, 1990, 359.

55 Yamaguchi Hiroshi, “Kokin senja no Man’yō ishiki,” in Ozawa Masao ed., San-daishū no kenkyū. Meiji shoin, 1981, 153.


Despite Michizane’s comments, however, progress was being made in Man’yōshū study: all of the tanka in the Man’yōshū—about four thousand poems, or ninety percent of the entire text—were supplied with reading marks, the so-called koten or “old marks,” in the early Heian Period.56 The koten were probably added to the Man’yōshū during the 960s by the Nashitsubo no gonin (Five Men of the Pear Chamber), a commit-tee led by Minamoto no Shitagō (911–983) that had also compiled the second imperial anthology, Gosenshū (Collection of Later Selections), in 951. Following the work of the Nashitsubo no gonin, the Man’yōshū was circulated more widely, probably in the form of books of excerpts rather than as twenty-volume texts.57 However, even before the koten were sup-plied to the text, there seem to have been a large number of Man’yōshū poems in circulation that were passed down orally and independently of the collection as a whole. The existence of such poems is suggested by the similarity in tone of old Kokinshū poems to Man’yōshū poems, and also from the inclusion in the Kokinshū of poems that also appear in the Man’yōshū.58 Thus by the eleventh century Man’yōshū poems were being passed down by two routes: in the text of the Man’yōshū, thanks to the koten, and orally. This “text of the Man’yōshū”, however, was not necessarily in twenty-volume form, but could have been a selection of poems, possibly transcribed in hiragana for ease of reading. Concrete infl uence of Man’yōshū poetry on that of the Kokinshū seems particularly pronounced in seasonal and love poetry,59 and may provide clues as to which parts of the Man’yōshū were best known at the time (by either route of transmission).

Rather than the Kokinshū, a more signifi cant textual medium for the dissemination of Man’yōshū poetry and poetics into Heian literature is the Kokin waka rokujō (Six Books of Old and New Japanese Poetry) of the late tenth century. Its compiler unknown, the Kokin rokujō was designed to serve as a poetic reference manual, with 4,370 poems care-fully arranged under 517 poetic topics. The Man’yōshū is represented by approximately 1,260 poems, a signifi cant proportion of the total; poems from the Kokinshū and Gosenshū also feature prominently. A similar

56 Suzuki, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” 359. The text was not completely supplied with reading marks until 1246, when Sengaku (1203–c. 1272) completed a defi nitive edition.

57 Suzuki, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” 359.58 Suzuki, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” 361.59 Suzuki, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” 361.

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pattern to that mentioned earlier is seen in that the Man’yōshū poems show a bias toward anonymous love and seasonal poems.60 Despite the signifi cance of the inclusion of Man’yōshū poems in such an infl uential reference work, where they are invested with some authority by virtue of being held up as legitimate poetic models, their reception in this context is complicated by the fact that they were not all taken directly from the text of the Man’yōshū itself but also seem to include orally-transmitted poems and variants.

The varied means of its transmission at this time makes “the Man’yōshū” a problematic concept, since it is impossible to know pre-cisely what form the text may have taken in a given instance. The one meaningful sense in which the entire Man’yōshū could be spoken of was as an idea, as a symbol of the accumulated poetic greatness of the era preceding that of the Kokinshū. Indeed, the Man’yōshū is canonized in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as just such a symbol, a prestigious anthol-ogy located in a golden poetic past, with no specifi c reference being made to its poems. This is very similar to the treatment given Hitomaro (and Akahito): Hitomaro is lauded as an uta no hijiri and his poetic skills extolled, yet his poems themselves do not appear in the Kana Preface or anywhere else in the Kokinshū. Thus one can argue that in the Heian and medieval periods parallels can be drawn between the canonization processes applied to the Man’yōshū and to Hitomaro. In both cases we see two processes at work: on the one hand, the canonization of an idea, a symbol of the Japanese poetic heritage, rather than a text or person, and on the other, the reception of the actual texts involved. According to this model, Man’yōshū reception can be said to be taking place on two levels: “the Man’yōshū” is canonized in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as an ancestral imperial anthology, while the actual poems of the Man’yōshū make their way into Heian literary discourse via mediat-ing texts such as the Kokin rokujō.

The importance of the Man’yōshū as an ancestral text, specifi cally as an alternative to the Kokinshū, became particularly important in the medieval period as the various poetic schools competed in laying claim to the cultural capital represented by earlier poetic anthologies. The Man’yōshū was taken up, for example, in the critical writing of Kyōgoku Tamekane (1254–1332), compiler of the fourteenth imperial anthology, the Gyokuyōshū (Collection of Jewelled Leaves) of 1312. In

60 Suzuki, “Man’yō ka no denshō,” 362.


his Tamekanekyō wakashō (Lord Tamekane’s Notes on Poetry) of circa 1285–1287 he praises the Man’yōshū style as “elevated, profound and expressive.”61 Subsequent interpretations of Tamekane’s comments have led to perceptions of his Kyōgoku style as “a kind of neo-Man’yō approach,” but examinations of his poetry itself have revealed only a very limited amount of concrete Man’yō infl uence.62 Tamekane’s intent in writing Tamekanekyō wakashō seems to have been largely to defend his style of poetry against criticism from the rival Nijō poetic school,63 and the many references in the text to great poets and works of the past may be seen as an attempt to add some poetic authority to the Kyōgoku style and consolidate its position as a legitimate alternative to the conservative Nijō faction, rather than as an indication of specifi c infl uence of these earlier texts. Tamekane is invoking the idea rather than the substance of the Man’yōshū as an alternative to the Kokinshū; the irony is that that very idea, in terms of its formation, persuasive potency and poetic authority, derives in large part from the Kokinshū itself, from the treatment given the Man’yōshū in Tsurayuki’s Kana Preface.

The twenty-one imperial waka anthologies tend to have derivative titles that stress their place in a series and foreground their status as descendants of valorized texts such as the sandaishū (two of which, Gosenshū and Shūishū, themselves have titles suggesting their positions following the Kokinshū). The fi rst such derivative title was that of the Goshūishū (Later Collection of Gleanings of Japanese Poetry) of 1096, which, although announcing by its title its status as a sequel to the Shūishū of 1007, was actually a pivotal text in the turn towards a medieval poetics in terms of its representation of women poets and preference for landscape poetry. As the competition between the poetic houses intensifi ed in the medieval period, the titles of the Nijō-school anthologies grew increasingly derivative: the only imperial anthologies between the Shinkokinshū (1205) and Shinshokukokinshū (1439) not to have titles beginning shin, “new,” or shoku, “continued,” are those of the Kyōgoku school, Gyokuyōshū (mentioned above) and Fūgashū (Elegant collection, 1346).

Titles alluding to the Man’yōshū show a similar pattern to that evident in the Tamekanekyō wakashō: just as the titles of the Nijō-school anthologies

61 Robert Huey and Susan Matisoff tr. “Lord Tamekane’s Notes on Poetry: Tame-kanekyō Wakashō,” Monumenta Nipponica 40:2 (1985): 138.

62 Huey and Matisoff, 129.63 Huey and Matisoff, 129.

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constantly reaffi rm their descent from the heavily canonized Heian anthologies, so there are anthologies outside the Nijō line of descent which invoke the Man’yōshū in their titles as an alternative source of poetic authority. This is accomplished through the use of the element yō, “leaf ” in the anthology titles. While the word yō, or ha, can refer to “words,” (for instance, in the form koto no ha, “leaves of words,” as seen in the Kokinshū Kana Preface), its use in an anthology title echoes that of the Man’yōshū to an extent unlikely to be missed by anyone suffi ciently well-versed in waka to be compiling or naming a imperial anthology. An obvious example of this is the title of Tamekane’s own anthology, Gyokuyōshū, which seems to be deliberately alluding to that of the Man’yōshū, particularly when considered in conjunction with his remarks in Tamekanekyō wakashō quoted earlier.

Another yō-titled anthology positioned in opposition to the orthodoxy of its day is the Shin’yōwakashū (Collection of New Leaves, 1381), which was commissioned by Emperor Chōkei (r. 1368–1383) and compiled by Prince Munenaga (b. 1311) at the southern court established by Emperor GoDaigo in Yoshino in 1336. As such it was in competi-tion not just with the opposing poetic school (in this case, the Reizei school) but with the opposing court and emperor in the north. The alignment of poetic with political factions at court had become increas-ingly pronounced since the mid-thirteenth century, following the reign of GoSaga (r. 1220–1272), and the succession disputes between those factions came to a head with GoDaigo’s attempt to wrest power from the Hōjō through the Kemmu Restoration of 1333–1336. During the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336–1392), what history has recorded as the offi cial line of succession—the northern court—stayed in Kyoto, producing the Shingoshūishū (New Collection of Later Gleanings), in 1383. The fact that the southern court felt compelled to compile a collection of its own shows the importance of the imperial anthology as an institution through which a regime could claim the high cultural ground; the use of the yō element in the title, invoking the Man’yōshū, can be seen as indicative of the compiler’s need to seek alternative poetic ancestry from that of his rivals to the north.64

64 One can also move backward in time and apply this logic to the title of the fi fth imperial anthology, Kin’yōshū (Collection of Golden Leaves), compiled by Minamoto no Shunrai in 1127. It broke sharply with the titles of its predecessors, and was also innovative in terms of its content, including many contemporary poets and such novel


Thus we can see that Hitomaro’s reception in the early Heian period was largely dependent on his treatment in the prestigious Kokinshū, and furthermore seems to have been mainly based on poems of unknown provenance which came to be associated with him rather than on the poems which bear his name in the Man’yōshū. Like the Man’yōshū itself, Hitomaro comes to be seen as a symbol of the great poetic past, and seems to be picked up as such without any particular consideration of the poems he is actually thought to have composed. In addition to Hitomaro’s newfound identity as a sage of poetry, another element of his legend develops at this time (and is canonized in a imperial anthol-ogy itself ): the story of his supposed visit to China, which is hinted at in two poems in the Shūishū but can be seen as drawing on a number of previous texts, including the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409) and travel poems in the Man’yōshū.

Hitomaro Travels to China

The treatment of Hitomaro in the third imperial anthology, Shūishū, where over a hundred poems are presented as his works, constitutes a signifi cant stage in his reception. In contrast to the cautious editorial policy pursued by the Kokinshū compilers, where the legendary quality and dubious origins of the Hitomaro-related poems are recognized and the association with him is made only in the footnote and not as the formal attribution itself, the Shūishū includes a large number of Hitomaro-related poems of similarly uncertain authenticity which it (for the fi rst time) attributes directly to him. The Shūishū includes 104 poems fi rmly attributed to Hitomaro, more than any other poet except Tsurayuki (who has 107). These Hitomaro poems can be classifi ed according to their origins: among those included in the Man’yōshū, the most numerous are anonymous poems (41/104), followed by poems attributed to the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kashū (27/104) and poems attributed to Hitomaro (13/104); there are also a few poems from the Kokinshū, the Hitomaro shū, and elsewhere.65

poetic forms as tanrenga, “short linked verse.” It was also the fi rst imperial anthology to consist of ten volumes rather than twenty.

65 For a complete listing of types of Hitomaro poem in the Shūishū, see Komachiya Teruhiko, “Shūishū no Hitomaro uta,” in Ōchō waka to shiteki hatten, ed. Higuchi Yoshi-maro (Kasama shoin, 1997), 149–51.

66 chapter two

The suggestion has been made that the reappearance of poems in the Shūishū refl ects the intent of the compilers to correct the “mistakes” of previous imperial anthologies.66 Thus we see cases such as that of Kokinshū V:284, mentioned above, on autumn leaves on the Tatsuta River, which is anonymous in the Kokinshū but formally attributed to Hitomaro in the Shūishū. A similar effect is seen in the many anony-mous Man’yōshū poems that reappear in the Shūishū as Hitomaro poems, and, in extreme cases, in poems that are attributed to other poets in the Kokinshū and Man’yōshū but are nonetheless presented as Hitomaro poems in Shūishū. The attribution to Hitomaro of Man’yōshū poems that were originally anonymous or even by other people which we see in the Shūishū set the tone for his treatment in subsequent Heian texts. Although poetic preferences changed, and Hitomaro poems disappeared from chokusenshū until the neo-classical Shinkokinshū two hundred years later (1205), a similar pattern can be seen there, as 13 of the 23 Hitomaro poems included in the Shinkokinshū fi rst appeared as anonymous poems in the Man’yōshū.67

The “strange and complicated state of Hitomaro poems in the Shūishū”68 produces an image of Hitomaro different from that known from the Man’yōshū69 or the Kokinshū. One of the legends associated with Hitomaro at this time is the one according to which he traveled to China. This legend appears for the fi rst time in the Shūishū and is a prime example of how the reception of the Man’yōshū and of the Kokinshū could combine to contribute to the construction of Hitomaro’s image in the Heian period. The traveling-to-China legend is depicted in the following poems, which appear in the Shūishū attributed to Hitomaro:

Shūishū VI:353 (Parting) Kakinomoto no HitomaroIn China

amatobu ya Taking as my messengerskari no tsukai ni The sky-fl ying geese,itsushika mo soonNara no miyako ni would I send wordkotozute yaramu to the Nara capital70

66 Katagiri Yōichi, Kokinwakashū igo (Kasama shoin, 2000), 413.67 Ōkuma, 171.68 Komachiya, “Shūishū no Hitomaro uta,” 155.69 Katagiri, Kokinshū igo, 422.70 Komachiya, Shūiwakashū, 101.


Shūishū VIII:478 (Miscellaneous) HitomaroComposed when he was sent to China as an envoy

yū sareba As evening comes,koromode samushi my sleeves are cold—wagimoko ga how I longtokiarai koromo to quickly go and wearyukite haya kimu the robes my girl has washed.71

Like so many of the poems attributed to Hitomaro in the Shūishū, these are variant texts of Man’yōshū poems, included in the Shūishū with new authorship and new headnotes, in other words, with a new narrative context. The role here of the Man’yōshū as the original (even if not immediate) source of the poem texts themselves is clear, and there also seems to be clear infl uence from the Travel volume (IX) of the Kokinshū, both in terms of the arrangement of the poems, and inasmuch as that it reinforces the association between Hitomaro and the motif of travel.

The association of Hitomaro and travel which appears here in the Shūishū begins in the Man’yōshū, although it was later made famous by the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409). There are a number of Hitomaro poems involving travel in the Man’yōshū, including the Iwami sōmonka and Iwami banka examined in the previous chapter, and also a group of poems in volume III entitled “Eight travel poems by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro” (Man’yōshū III:249–256), which describe a number of places on the Inland Sea. The group includes the following two poems which specifi cally mention Akashi:


tomoshibi no Entering the straitsAkashi no ooto of lamp-bright Akashiiramu hi ya with the setting sun,kogiwakare namu will we row on and away,ie no atari mizu unable to see our homes?72


amazakaru When we come, longing,hina no nagachi yu up the long roadkoikureba from the distant wilds,

71 Komachiya, Shūiwakashū, 134.72 Nishimiya Kazutami, Man’yōshū zenchū, v. 3, Yūhikaku, 1983, 58–59.

68 chapter two

Akashi no to yori from the straits of AkashiYamato shima miyu we can see the land of Yamato.

In one text, [the last line] says, “we can see our homes.”73

These two poems seem to be composed from the perspectives of a traveler heading west through the straits of Akashi (III:254) and one returning to the capital region (III:255) (the alternative rendering for the last line of the second poem, as presented in the footnote, would make the parallel even more explicit, and this is in fact the version that appears in Man’yōshū volume XV). A little further on in volume III are a pair of poems whose headnote makes the supposed circumstances of their composition quite clear:

Poems composed by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro when at sea on the way down to Tsukushi


naguwashiki Hidden by a thousand layersInami no umi no of the waves of the offi ngokitsunami of the sea of Inami,chie ni kakurinu so splendidly named—Yamato shimane wa the land of Yamato.74


ookimi no When I look upontoo no mikado to the straits where peopleari kayou come and goshimato o mireba to the sovereign’s distant court,kamiyo shi oboyu I think of the age of the gods.75

The Inami no umi referred to here is the area of the Inland Sea directly to the west of the straits of Akashi, known today as the Harima no nada; in other words, it was the fi rst body of water one entered after passing Akashi when heading west, away from the capital. Likewise, the straits (shimato) referred to in the second poem can be understood as those of Akashi, through which boats would pass bound for the distant government outpost of Dazaifu in Tsukushi (modern Fukuoka Prefecture).76

73 Nishimiya, 60.74 Nishimiya, 140.75 Nishimiya, 142.76 Nishimiya, 140–143.


It seems likely that these Akashi-related Man’yōshū travel poems played some role in helping to establish the connection with Akashi that the Kokinshū’s Akashi Bay poem draws on, and, despite the fact that the headnotes draw no explicit connection between the two groups of poems, a connection can still be easily imagined between the fi rst group of travel poems and the poems en route to Tsukushi, due to the similarity of their setting (on the Inland Sea) and their similar references to seeing or losing sight of Yamato, the homeland.77

It should be remembered at this point that Yamato, roughly cor-responding to modern Nara Prefecture, was a land-locked province separated from the sea by the provinces of Settsu, Kōchi and Izumi (modern Osaka Prefecture and part of Hyōgo Prefecture). In under-standing the signifi cance of these poems, the issue of whether the trav-elers could actually make out the mountains of Yamato from aboard ship in the straits of Akashi is less important than that of Akashi’s status as the westernmost boundary of kinai, the home provinces around the capital.78 Kinai, comprised of the provinces of Yamato, Yamashiro, Settsu, Kōchi, and Izumi, was the area under the direct control of the emperor; beyond its borders lay the outer land of kigai, seen as dangerous and uncontrolled.

The boundaries of kinai were more than simply geographical; they symbolized the reach of the political power and spiritual authority of the emperor. For a high-ranking courtier, making an unauthorized crossing of the border into kigai could be seen as a serious transgres-sion, tantamount to treason in its departure from and implicit rejection of the sphere of imperial power; laws prohibiting holders of the Fifth Rank and above from crossing into kigai are mentioned in an entry from the Twelfth Month of 998 in the Gonki, the diary of Fujiwara no Yukinari (972–1027).79 Kigai was the realm of goryō, angry ghosts, and ekijin, deities of pestilence, and lustration ceremonies were held at

77 Nishimiya Kazutami suggests that the group of eight travel poems (III:249–256) and the pair of poems set on the way to Tsukushi (III:303–304) were composed on the same trip. He points out that the poems by Prince Nagata which precede the group of eight poems in the Man’yōshū (III:245–248) bear a headnote indicating that they were composed when he was sent to Tsukushi, and suggests that the Hitomaro poems were also to be understood as having been composed en route to Tsukushi (Nishimiya, 53).

78 Sakurai Mitsuru, “Akashi ōto: Hitomaro no tabi to denshō,” Kokugakuin zasshi 94:1 (1/1993): 84.

79 Hyōdo, 111–112.

70 chapter two

court to banish such spirits from kinai to kigai. Thus Akashi was a place imbued with great signifi cance for travelers, marking their point of fi nal departure from familiar territory into the dangerous wilds beyond, and, were they fortunate enough to survive the trip, marking their arrival home again. Like other liminal points on one’s journey, such as passes through the mountains, the border of kinai and kigai was a potentially dangerous point, where particular care had to be taken to placate angry ghosts and the deities of the road (including the sea-routes).80 It became customary to make offerings at such points, fi rstly of clothing and later of paper strips and poems. These offerings and the poems recited at such points became known as tamuke and tamuke uta, and many travel poems fall into this category.81 The Man’yōshū poems III:254, III:255 and III:303, all quoted earlier, can be regarded as tamuke uta, required at Akashi to ensure the safety of the travellers moving in either direc-tion across the boundary.82

In volume XV of the Man’yōshū we do fi nd a connection, however tenuous, between Hitomaro and diplomatic missions to the continent: a number of Hitomaro’s travel poems are recited by kenshiragishi, envoys sent on a diplomatic mission to Silla ( J. Shiragi, a kingdom on the Korean peninsula), in 736. The Man’yōshū includes 146 poems by the kenshiragishi (XV:3578–3722), among which is a group of ten poems with the heading, “old poems recited at a certain place” (XV:3602–3611). One possible inference from this is that the place in question was one where prayers for safe passage were required, particularly if one accepts the tamuke function of the Hitomaro travel poems. Four of these “old poems” are included in the group of eight travel poems by Hitomaro that appears in volume III of the Man’yōshū.83

Man’yōshū XV:3606 [III:250]

Tamamo karu Passing by the maidensotome o sugite cutting jewel-weed,

80 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 45.81 Sakurai, “Kōroshinin no uta,” 45.82 Yokoyama Satoshi, “Hitomaro no denshōteki sekai to utamakura: ‘Akashi’ to iu

kūkan o chūshin toshite,” in Koten to minzokugaku ronshū: Sakurai Mitsuru sensei tsuitō, ed. Koten to minzokugaku no kai. Ōfū, 1997, 185.

83 Texts of Man’yōshū XV:3606–3609 are from Yoshii Iwao, Man’yōshū zenchū, v. 15, Yūhikaku, 1988, 72–77.


natsukusa no on the cape of NoshimaNoshima ga saki ni of the summer grassesiori su ware wa I build myself a hut.

In the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro poem, it says, “Passing Minume,” and also, “the boat drew nearer.”


shirotae no In Fujie BayFujie no ura ni of the white hempen cloth,izari suru will they see me,ama to ya miramu setting out on my journey,tabiyuku ware o as a fi sherman, fi shing?


amazakaru When we come, longing,hina no nagachi yu up the long roadkoikureba from the distant wilds,Akashi no to yori from the straits of AkashiIe no atari miyu we can see our homes.

In the poem by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, [the last line] says, “We can see the land of Yamato.”


Muko no umi no The sea of Mukoniwa yoku arashi seems a good place:izari suru the fi shing boatsama no tsuribune of the fi sherfolknami no ue yu miyu can be seen above the waves.

In the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro poem, it says, “The sea of Kei,” and also says, “like cut rushes scattered I see them come, the fi shing boats.”

However, most of the poems recorded in this section of volume XV were composed by the kenshiragishi themselves, and among them we fi nd the following anonymous poems:

Man’yōshū XV:3676, Anonymous

amatobu ya Taking as my messengerskari no tsukai ni the sky-fl ying geese,eteshika mo soonNara no miyako ni would I send wordkotozute yaramu to the Nara capital

72 chapter two

Man’yōshū XV:3666, Anonymous

yū sareba As evening comes,koromode samushi my sleeves are cold—wagimoko ga how I longtokiarai koromo to quickly go and wearyukite haya kimu the robes my girl has washed.

These are the original versions of the poems that reappear in the Shūishū as Hitomaro’s China poems. There is very little variation of the waka texts themselves between the Man’yōshū and the Shūishū; the main change made in the course of these poems’ reception in the Shūishū is their new attribution to Hitomaro, a pattern seen in numerous other Hitomaro Shūishū poems. Thus it appears that a triangular relationship—between these poems and travel to the continent, and these poems and Hitomaro, and Hitomaro and travel to the continent—was already established by the time of the Shūishū’s compilation. Although the Hitomaro travel poems appearing in volume XV are identifi ed therein as “old poems,” presumably suggesting that they had been in circulation for some time, and were the work of a poet from a generation preceding that of the kenshiragishi, one can nevertheless imagine a connection being made between the appearance of Hitomaro’s poems in the context of a diplomatic voyage in volume XV and the two sets of travel poems from volume III, particularly those apparently composed on the way to Tsukushi (III:303–4), a place where the envoys stopped en route to Silla. The combined effect of these texts seems to have been infl uential in transforming the legendary Hitomaro from the poet merely quoted by envoys at sea to an envoy himself.

This does not explain, of course, why those two particular poems were chosen for inclusion in the Shūishū as Hitomaro’s works. Follow-ing the suggestion that, in an attempt to correct the mistakes of pre-vious texts, the compilers of the Shūishū included poems from earlier anthologies in new settings, one may at least speculate that the process here is similar to that seen in the case of anonymous Kokinshū poems which reappear in the Shūishū “correctly” attributed to Hitomaro: the “mistaken” anonymous attribution in the Man’yōshū is “corrected” in the Shūishū to refl ect the poems’ “true” authorship.

The association of Hitomaro with envoys to the continent is made again, albeit less directly, in Kokinshū volume IX. Let us examine the Akashi Bay poem, so effectively highlighted in the old interpolated notes to the Kana Preface, in the context of its position in the body of the


Kokinshū. It is placed very early, as the fourth poem, in volume IX, kiryo, “Travel.” The travel volume begins with Kokinshū IX:406.84

Kokinshū IX:406, Abe no NakamaroComposed while looking at the moon in China

ama no hara When I look from afarfurisake mireba at the plain of heaven,kasuga naru there is the moon which rosemikasa no yama no over Mount Mikasaideshi tsuki kamo in Kasuga!

About this poem, it has been passed down that long ago Nakamaro was sent to China to study, but [even] when many years had passed, he was unable to return home, and when another envoy arrived from this country, they left [China] to return together; at that time, on the coast at a place called Mingzhou, the people of that province held a banquet to see them off. When night fell, and [Nakamaro] saw the moon, which had risen and was most moving, he composed this poem.

Kokinshū IX:407, Ono no TakamuraSent to someone in the capital as he was about to board the boat to depart when exiled to the Oki islands.

wata no hara Tell them,yaso shima kakete o fi shing boat,kogiidenu to that I have rowed outhito ni wa tsugeyo on the wide sea plainama no tsuribune set with countless islands.

Kokinshū IX:408, AnonymousTopic unknown

miyako idete Leaving the capital,kyō mika no hara today I saw the Mika Moor.izumikawa As I wondered when I’d reach it,kawakaze samushi the river wind was cold;koromo kaseyama lend me a robe, Lending Mountain.

Kokinshū IX:409, AnonymousTopic unknown

honobono to Dimly, dimlyakashi no ura no in the morning mistasagiri ni of Akashi Bay,

84 Texts of Kokinshū IX:406–10 are from Arai and Kojima, 133–135.

74 chapter two

shimagakure yuku I think of a boatfune o shi zo omou going island-hidden.

Someone said that this was a poem by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

Kokinshū IX:410, Ariwara no Narihira[He] headed east with one or two friends he had invited. When they arrived at a place called Eight Bridges in the province of Mikawa, the irises were blooming splendidly by the river; seeing this, they dismounted in the shade of the trees, and with the words, “I shall compose on the sentiment of travel, setting the fi ve characters of ‘irises’ [kakitsubata] at the beginning of each phrase,” [he] composed this poem.

karakoromo Since I have a wifekitsutsu nareshi ni familiar as my well-worntsuma shi areba Chinese robe,harubaru kinuru how I think of this journeytabi o shi zo omou on which I have come so far.

These fi ve poems, appearing at the head of volume IX, have been characterized by modern scholars as “poems describing the beginning of the journey,”85 and are followed by poems that describe the middle stages of the journey and then the return home. In this the arrange-ment of the travel volume can be seen to follow the same careful rules of sequencing as other Kokinshū volumes such as those on the seasons or love.

For the purposes of comparison with Hitomaro’s China poems in the Shūishū, we must note that Abe no Nakamaro (698–770), author of the fi rst poem in Kokinshū volume IX (IX:406), was a Nara-period scholar who actually went to Tang China. The offi cial account of his trip appears in the Shoku nihongi: Nakamaro was sent to the Tang as a student in 717 at the age of 19 and attempted to return to Japan in 753, but was shipwrecked and barely made it back to the continent. He died in Chang’an at the age of 73, after spending 54 years in China. The authorship of this poem is not entirely clear, but it is thought to have been passed down from around the time of Nakamaro himself.86 It was customary for envoys to the Tang to pray at the Kasuga shrine at the foot of Mount Mikasa before departing; thus the poem can be taken as Nakamaro’s recollection of one of his last evenings in Japan

85 Takeoka, 936.86 Katagiri, Kokinwakashū zenhyōshaku, I:138–139.


(and was presumably alluding to the fact that he expected his evening in Mingzhou to be the last one spent in China).

Continuing the theme of travel to China, Ono no Takamura’s (802–852) poem (IX:407) was composed on the occasion of his ban-ishment for refusing to undertake the journey to the continent despite having been nominated as vice-consul for such a voyage in 834.87 Poem IX:408 is from the oldest stratum of Kokinshū poems, and is similar in tone to many Man’yōshū poems. Anonymous and lacking any topic to give it context, it adds a suitably archaic fl avor to a sequence beginning with Nakamaro’s Nara-period poem in its use of famous place names (utamakura) in Yamato.

Bearing in mind the careful arrangement of the Kokinshū Travel volume, and the fairly close proximity of the Nakamaro poem and the Akashi Bay poem, let us look again at the fi rst of the Hitomaro China poems in the Shūishū, this time with the poem that precedes it in that text:

Shūishū VI:352 (Parting), Kasa no KanaokaThe reply to a long poem composed by his wife when Kasa no Kanaoka crossed over to China

nami no ue ni As the islet glimpsedmieshi kojima no above the wavesshimagakure is hidden behind the island,yuku sora mo nashi I am loath to leavekimi ni wakarete and be apart from you.88

Shūishū VI:353 (Parting), Kakinomoto no HitomaroIn China

amatobu ya Taking as my messengerskari no tsukai ni the sky-fl ying geese,itsushika mo soonNara no miyako ni would I send wordkotozute yaramu to the Nara capital.

There seems to be an clear parallel between the structure of this sequence and that appearing in the ninth volume of the Kokinshū: a poem by a real Nara-period envoy to Tang China is placed (in this case directly) ahead of a poem associated with Hitomaro. There is a link at the level of diction also, as the fi rst poem echoes a phrase from the

87 Katagiri, Kokinwakashū zenhyōshaku, I:141.88 Komachiya, Shūiwakashū, 101.

76 chapter two

Akashi Bay poem, shimagakure, “island-hidden.” In this case Hitomaro is explicitly identifi ed as the author of the latter poem, and the other poet is identifi ed in the Shūishū as one Kasa no Kanaoka. This seems to be a misattribution (or at least an error in the transmission of the poet’s name), as the poem itself originally appears in the Man’yōshū as the envoy poem to a chōka by Kasa no Kanamura (dates unclear; active 724–749), who was sent to the Tang in Tempyō 5 (733) and composed the poem for his wife on his departure.

Man’yōshū VIII:1454, Kasa no Kanamura[Following the chōka with the headnote reading] A poem sent by the envoy to the Tang Kasa no Ason Kanamura in the intercalary Third Month, Spring, Tempyō 5 (younger-brother-of-water-bird)

nami no ue yu As the islet glimpsedmiyuru kojima no from above the waveskumogakuri is hidden in the clouds,ana ikizukashi how I sigh in sorrowai wakarenaba because we are apart.

There are a few differences in the poem’s diction between the Man’yōshū and Shūishū versions: the most signifi cant in terms of its connection to Hitomaro is the changing of the Man’yōshū poem’s kumogakuri, “cloud-hidden,” to the Shūishū’s shimagakure, “island-hidden,” a phrase which famously appears in—and specifi cally evokes—the Akashi Bay poem. The arrangement of the Kanaoka and Hitomaro poems in the Shūishū can be understood as emulating that in the Travel volume of the Kokin -shū, where a travel poem associated with Hitomaro (there in the footnote, here as an explicit attribution) is preceded, closely if not directly, by a poem by or attributed to an historical fi gure who did actually make the journey to Tang China. There is no Travel volume in the Shūishū; Parting—in which the Kasa no Kanaoka poem appears—is the nearest equivalent. The placement of the other Hitomaro China poem (Shūishū VIII:478) as one of a series of Hitomaro poems in a volume of miscel-laneous poems is a little harder to account for, although its headnote does state quite explicitly that Hitomaro was “sent to China.”

The legend of Hitomaro going to China, fi rst seen in the Shūishū, appears in a number of subsequent texts as an element of Hitomaro’s biography. The earliest reference to Hitomaro in China seems to be that in the entry devoted to him in the Kokinwakashū mokuroku (Index to the Kokinshū), attributed to Fujiwara no Nakazane (1057–1118) and thought to have been compiled in 1113.


Did Hitomaro go to China?In Volume Three of the Man’yōshū, it says,Two poems by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro at Awaji, when he was going down to Tsukushi [Man’yōshū III:303–304]

nani takaki How high—tsunai no umi no hidden by a thousand layersokitsunami of the waves of the offi ngchie ni kakurenu of the sea of Tsunai—Yamato shimane wa the land of Yamato.

sumeragi no When I look upontōtsu mikado to the straits where peopleari kayou come and goshimato o mireba to the sovereign’s distant court,kamiyo shi zo omou I think of the age of the gods.

As [it says] in these two poems, [Hitomaro] went down to Tsukushi.In Volume Six of the Shūishū, it says,A poem by Hitomaro [Shūishū VI:353; the Shūishū headnote actually reads, “In Tang China”]

ama tobu ya Taking as my messengerkari no tsukai ni the sky-fl ying geeseitsu shika mo soonNara no miyako ni would I send wordkotozute yaramu to the Nara capital.

This poem follows that by Kasa Kanaoka when he went to Tang China. So perhaps Hitomaro accompanied Kanaoka to China? However, it is said that they were not contemporaries.In Volume Eight of the same collection, it says,A poem by Hitomaro [Shūishū VIII:478; the Shūishū headnote actually reads, “Composed when he was sent to Tang China.”]

Yū sareba As evening comes,Koromode samushi my sleeves are cold—Wagimoko ga how I longToki arai koromo to quickly go and seeYukite haya mimu the robes my girl has washed.

As for this poem, it says that it was [composed] when he was sent to China. [Hitomaro] certainly went to China.89

Here the signifi cance of the arrangement of the poems in the Shūishū is clear, as the Mokuroku author speculates that Hitomaro and Kanaoka

89 Gunsho ruijū v. 285: 137–139.

78 chapter two

were envoys together on the basis of the consecutive placement of the poems (no commentator seems to have made similar claims for Hitomaro and Nakamaro on the basis of the Kokinshū poems, however). Fujiwara no Kiyosuke’s Fukurozōshi introduces the topic of Hitomaro going to China as part of its discussion of when Hitomaro might have lived:

These are also like Hitomaro poems in the Shūishū. The headnote reads, “Composed when he went to China as an envoy.” The above are poems from when they had arrived in Tsukushi. Thinking on this, it is hard to indicate that Hitomaro died before Wadō.90

Later thoughts: in the diary of the envoy to China Ōtomo no Sukune Sademaro,91 it says that [there were] the Japanese envoy and scribe of Yamashiro, Jōdō no Hitomaro and the deputy envoy and deputy gover-nor of Michinoku of the Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade, Tamade no Hitomaro. It also says that the envoys in question departed on the fourth day of the Fourth Month of Tempyō shōhō 1 [749], and arrived back in Ki Province on the twentieth day of the Ninth Month of Tempyō shōhō 2 [750]. Also, there are in the Hitomaro shū poems on the matter of his going to China.92 Perhaps [the poem is by] this Hitomaro? But they have different clan names. Also, in the poems by each of them [in the Sademaro ki] there are no poems by Hitomaro. Perhaps they have the same name as [Kakinomoto no Hitomaro].

Similar confusion over the “four Hitomaros” is seen in other texts, such as Gyokuden jinpi. The main issue here in Kiyosuke’s Fukurozōshi seems to be whether Kakinomoto no Hitomaro went on the mission of 736, the mission described in the Man’yōshū, or the mission of 749, as described in the now-lost Sademaro ki. Kiyosuke seems to accept that Hitomaro was on the mission in 736, and that other individuals named “Hitomaro” went to China in 749.

The following and fi nal example, from an Edo-period poetic compen-dium, neatly shows how later readers inferred a connection between the

90 This conclusion seems to be reached through the confl ation of the mission to Silla of 736 and the mission to the Tang which Hitomaro is described as being on in the headnote to the Shūishū poem. The logic employed here seems to be that just as Hitomaro’s travel poems from volume III of Man’yōshū were included anonymously amongst the poems in volume XV, so the anonymous XV:3666 ( yū sareba) was actually a Hitomaro poem, its true authorship concealed in the Man’yōshū but revealed in the Shūishū. Hence Hitomaro is seen as having actually been present on the mission of 736, and thus could not have died in Wadō [708.1.11–715.9.2] or before.

91 The Sademaro ki (Record of Sademaro), also mentioned in Kenshō’s Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kanmon and the Kokinwakashū mokuroku but no longer extant.

92 Such poems do not appear in the current Hitomaro shū.


travel sections of the Kokinshū and Shūishū, whether the Shūishū section with the fi rst of the China poems (VI:353) was consciously modeled on the Travel section in the Kokinshū (with the Akashi Bay poem), or not. It describes Hitomaro composing the Akashi Bay poem when passing through Akashi on his way to China.

Kasen kingyoku shō (Golden and Jewelled Notes on Poetic Immortals, 1683)

It is also said that when Hitomaro went to Tang China he composed [this poem] on the scenery of the bay when he passed through Akashi in Harima province. It is included in the Travel volume of the Kokinshū, its topic unknown . . . There are also poems from the time when Hitomaro went to Tang China in the Shūishū. 93

The usual visitors dispatched to the continent were priests and scholars of Chinese, who would benefi t the most from Chinese and Buddhist scholarship; these included another Man’yōshū poet, Yamanoue no Okura (660–c. 733), and the founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai (774–835). Although it seems from internal textual evidence in the Man’yōshū that Hitomaro was familiar with works of Chinese poetry such as Wen xuan, this would hardly count as suffi cient expertise in Chinese learning to qualify him for the long and dangerous trip to the continent. In historical terms it seems unlikely that someone known as primarily as a waka poet, indeed, someone regarded (even at that stage) as a representative waka poet, would have gone to China. The legends, of course, did not require an historical basis, but the incongru-ity of the situation may be one reason why a number of the later texts featuring the story of Hitomaro visiting China express doubt that he ever actually went. At fi rst glance, one may wonder whether there was some infl uence on Hitomaro’s story from the so-called “Tenjin visits Tang China” (totō tenjin) legends, which after all involve another poet (albeit one best known for his works in Chinese) who became a deity, Sugawara no Michizane. However, the totō tenjin legends do not begin to appear until the mid-Muromachi period,94 some four hundred years

93 Kyōto daigaku text, typeset in Kyōto daigaku zō daisōbon kisho shūsei, volume 10, ed. Kyōto daigaku bungakubu kokugogaku kokubungaku kenkyūshitsu. Kyōto: Rinsen shoten, 1995: 215–289.

94 Imaizumi Yoshio, “Tenjin shinkō to totō tenjin densetsu no seiritsu,” in Imaizumi Yoshio and Shimao Arata ed., Zen to tenjin, 11. Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2000.

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after the fi rst material describing Hitomaro going to China appears in the Shūishū, ruling out a direct causal relationship.

Closely related to the trope of Hitomaro as envoy to the continent is another travel-related trope, Hitomaro as exile. This is an image of Hitomaro that combines elements of the narrative involving his travel, as depicted in the Akashi-related poems in the Man’yōshū and Kokinshū, and the China-related poems in the Shūishū, with elements of the story of his misery and death in a strange place, as portrayed in the Iwami banka in the Man’yōshū. In that sense the trope of Hitomaro as exile can be seen as a synthesis of these other travel-related Hitomaro narratives, drawing on various elements of his legend but also fi tting within the larger context of the phenomenon of exile. A classical plot archetype relating to exile, as defi ned by Origuchi Shinobu, is that of “the exile of the young noble,” kishu ryūritan, in which a young hero is forced into isolation from society, suffers various trials and ordeals, and either returns triumphant or dies in exile.95 This plotline features in a number of well-known works, the earliest examples of which are found in the Kojiki, in the stories of Ōkuninushi and Yamato Takeru. Heian-period examples include Ise monogatari, in which the protagonist is forced to travel down to the eastern provinces; we may note that the best-known poem from this “Descent to the East” (azuma kudari ) section directly follows the Akashi Bay poem in the Travel volume of the Kokinshū as IX:410. The most prominent Heian example, however, is probably that of Genji, who is exiled to Suma, the westernmost part of kinai, adjacent to the liminal site of Akashi.

The overtones of exile which spread to the Akashi Bay poem from the poems with which it is grouped in Kokinshū IX are made explicit in the following story from the setsuwa (anecdote) collection Konjaku monogatari shū (Collection of Tales of Times Now Past, c. 1120), which combines two of the poems from the initial sequence of Kokinshū travel poems and takes as its protagonist the poet and scholar Ono no Takamura at the time of his banishment to the Oki islands in 838.

95 Akiyama Ken, “Kishu ryūritan,” Nihon koten bungaku daijiten (Iwanami, 1983), II:128.


Konjaku Monogatari shū XXIV:45When Ono no Takamura was Sent to the Province of Oki and Com-posed a PoemOnce upon a time, there was a man called Ono no Takamura. When, as the result of a certain incident, he was sent to the province of Oki; being about to board the boat and depart, he composed this poem and sent it to someone he knew in the capital:

wata no hara Tell them,yaso shima kakete o fi shing boat,kogiidenu to that I have rowed outhito ni wa tsugeyo on the wide sea plainama no tsuribune set with countless islands.

Going to a place called Akashi, he stopped for the night. Since it was about the Ninth Month, at dawn he was unable to sleep, and sat lost in thought, when he saw that a passing boat was hidden by the islands; moved, he composed the following poem, and wept:

honobono to Dimly, dimly,Akashi no ura no in the morning mistasagiri ni of Akashi Bay,shimagakure yuku I think of a boatfune o shi zo omou going island-hidden.

This has been passed down as the tale told by Takamura on his return.96

The principle governing the arrangement of the stories in the Konjaku monogatari shū has been identifi ed as niwa ichirui, “two stories [of ] one type,” and, in a further echo of the poems in the Kokinshū Travel volume, the story which is paired in the Konjaku monogatari with the Takamura story above concerns Abe no Nakamaro, the Nara-period envoy to the Tang whose poem on the moon over Mount Mikasa opens the Travel volume in Kokinshū (IX:406). Nakamaro was of course not offi cially exiled, yet he was, like an exile, unable to return home, and the poem attributed to him in Kokinshū IX involves similar sentiments of nostalgia and longing for an unreachable home.

Thus Hitomaro’s possible status as an exile is hinted at in poems which appear with the Akashi Bay poem in the Kokinshū: Takamura, exiled to Oki; Ariwara no Narihira (825–880), the implied protagonist of Ise monogatari, banished to the eastern provinces; and Nakamaro, forever

96 Komine Kazuaki ed. Konjaku Monogatari shū 4. SNKBT 36. Iwanami Shoten, 1994, 465–6.

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unable to make the journey back to Japan from China. However, the poem itself provides a further link with the trope of exile through its setting. Akashi was an important transit point for traffi c between the capital and the Inland Sea, and is mentioned in the Ōkagami (Great Mirror, late eleventh century) as the point of departure by sea for Tsukushi of the most famous literary exile, Sugawara no Michizane, in 901.97 This is a similar situation to that in the Konjaku monogatari shū story above, where Takamura stays overnight in Akashi en route to his place of exile.

Anecdotes referring to Hitomaro’s exile appear in a number of medieval and later texts. One of the earliest examples is the Iwami no kuni fudoki (Record of the province of Iwami) included in the Man’yōshū commentary Shirin saiyō shō (Notes on Leaves Taken from the Forest of Words, 1366) of Yūa (1291–?), which describes Hitomaro as being exiled or demoted twice:

It is said in the Iwami no kuni fudoki that in the Eighth Month of the third year of Temmu [675] Hitomaro was appointed Governor of Iwami, and that on the third day of the Ninth Month of the same year he was promoted to Administrator of the Left Capital [Sakyō no daibu] of the Senior Fourth Rank, Upper Grade, and that on the ninth day of the Third Month of the following year he was promoted to the Third Rank and made governor of Harima. Etcetera. Subsequently, he may have served seven generations of sovereigns, in the reigns of Jitō [r. 690–97], Mommu [r. 697–707], Gemmei [r. 707–715], Genshō [r. 715–24], Shōmu [r. 724–749], and Kōken [r. 749–58].98 In the reign of Jitō, he was exiled to Shikoku, and in the reign of Mommu, he was demoted to Tōkai no hotori. His son Mitsura was exiled to the Oki islands and died there. Etcetera.99

There is also an account of Hitomaro’s exile in the Bōchō fudo chūshin’an (Report on the Record of the Provinces of Suō and Nagato, n.d.) of the Hachiman Hitomaro shrine in Yuya-chō, Nagato Province (modern Yamaguchi Prefecture), in which Akashi itself is identifi ed as the site of exile:

97 Helen McCullough tr., Ōkagami, The Great Mirror. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, 97.

98 The “seven” referred to are presumably this six plus Temmu [r. 673–86], putting Hitomaro in court service for a minimum total of 74 years (675–749).

99 Akimoto Kichirō ed., Fudoki, Nihon koten bungaku taikei 2 (Iwanami, 1958), 481–482.


This offi cial [tayū, i.e. Hitomaro] was unsurpassed at waka old and new, but he met with defamation and was exiled to Akashi in Harima; then in the fourth year of Keiun [707] a monster came over from a foreign country (it was 8 jō [24m] long and 1 jō 2 shaku [3.6m] wide, with one head and three faces), and, there being an imperial decree for him to defend [ Japan] with the power of waka, Hitomaro was released from his exile, left Akashi and arrived at Tatara (no) miya, and with a single poem he turned his enemy into litter on the sea fl oor. After this, fi nding it hard to forget his old home, he departed from Tatarahama and drifted on the western sea before making landfall at Okuirie in the Ōtsu district in Nagato province, and, loving the scenery, spent the springs and autumns of three years there, gazing on the view morning and evening:

Mukaitsu no In the little wavesoku no irie no of the inner inletsasanami ni of Mukaitsu,nori kaku ama no how soaked the sleevessode wa nuretsutsu of fi sher-girls gathering seaweed.

Then, grown old, he met his end at Takatsuno in the province of Iwami. He is said to have died on the middle eighth day of the Third Month of the fi rst year of Jinki, Elder-brother-of-wood-rat [724], in the reign of Emperor Shōmu.100

The date of this text is uncertain. We may note that Tatarahama, cur-rently a coastal area in the north-eastern part of Fukuoka city, was the site of battles during the Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281. Broadly speaking, the account seems to accept the version of Hitomaro’s death presented in the Iwami banka in the second volume of the Man’yōshū.

The seventeenth-century Hitomaro himitsushō (Secret Notes on Hito-maro) has a fairly detailed account of his exile, including the reason for his banishment and return:

However, [Hitomaro] had an illicit liaison with the daughter of Suguri no Yatsuo, consort of Emperor Mommu, and was banished to Yamabe district, Kazusa Province. The wise sovereign Shōmu had no judges [of poetry] for the Man’yō [shū], and so appointed as editors the Minister of the Right Tachibana no Moroe and the Middle Councillor Ōtomo no Yakamochi. [Moroe] reported [to the emperor], saying, “Lord Hito-maro was the imperial tutor in the reign of a former emperor, and was marvellously gifted and a deity of waka, but he was exiled and is in the Eastern country. You could summon this man and make him a judge [of poetry].” At this point Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Eihei spoke up, saying, “Someone who has been banished to the Eastern Country

100 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 180–181.

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cannot be summoned again to the palace. Why would Hitomaro have been imperial tutor? That cannot be right.” Lord Moroe spoke up, saying, “In Great Tang, Hakurakuten’s real name was Lord Xinyi [ J. Shingi]; because of a liaison with the empress he was banished to a distant state. In that country too exiles are not summoned again to the palace. In spite of this, he was later summoned and became imperial tutor, changing his name to Taiyuan Bo Juyi. That is how things seem to have turned out in his case [and should proceed likewise in the case of Hitomaro].” The lords agreed and summoned [Hitomaro] to return, changing his name [granting him] rank and position such that he was styled Imperial Advisor of the Senior Third Rank Yamabe no Akahito; thus one person had two names.

This passage reiterates the theme of Hitomaro and Akahito being the same person, and also features one of the two possible outcomes of the kishu ryūritan plot: the triumphant return of the hero to society. The other possible outcome, the hero dying in his place of exile (or at least in an isolated place, unable to return to the capital) occurs in the Bōchō fudo chūshin’an, and in the Iwami banka in the Man’yōshū. This explana-tion of the reason for Hitomaro’s exile, the illicit affair with Mommu’s consort, introduces another recurring plot element into Hitomaro’s leg-end, that of the affair with the consort. This is seen in the cases of the protagonists of Ise monogatari and Genji monogatari, and had an historical forerunner in the case of Soga no Himuka, who in 644 abducted the daughter of his elder brother Soga no Ishikawamaro.101 The protagonists in all these cases were exiled: the mukashi no otoko (implicitly, Narihira) of the Ise monogatari to the east, Genji to Suma, Himuka to Tsukushi. The legend of Hitomaro’s exile following a transgressive relationship with a consort also fi ts into this pattern.102

The selection according to topic of poems attributed to Hitomaro in the Shūishū has also been identifi ed as an infl uence on his image in the Heian period: it has been suggested that a very large proportion (75 percent) of the Hitomaro poems in the Shūishū “are love poems, or have strong love overtones,” their selection based on the fact that “great poets were believed to have also been great lovers.”103 The preponderance

101 Nihon shi kōjiten.102 Nakanishi Susumu, “Botsugo no Hitomaro,” 242–243.103 Bentley, John R. “The Creation of Hitomaro, a Poetic Sage.” In The Language of

Life, The Life of Language: Selected Papers from the First College-wide Conference for Students in Lan-guages, Linguistics and Literature, ed. Dina Rudolph Yoshimi and Marilyn K. Plumlee, 154. University of Hawai’i-Manoa: National Foreign Language Resource Center, 1998.


of love poetry amongst the Hitomaro poems in the Shūishū may have been infl uenced by the Man’yōshū’s Iwami sōmonka. It can be interpreted as an attempt to mold Hitomaro into the form of an archetypal Heian courtly hero in general terms; however, it seems possible that the more specifi c model here may have been Ariwara no Narihira, the implicit protagonist of Ise monogatari. As noted earlier, a poem from the ninth section of the Ise monogatari (IX:410) is placed directly after the Akashi Bay poem attributed to Hitomaro (IX:409) in the Travel volume of the Kokinshū, suggesting a parallel between the two authors. The extent to which Hitomaro and Narihira came to be associated in the minds of some later readers is suggested by the connection established between them in medieval poetic commentaries that identifi ed both poets as manifestations of the Sumiyoshi deity.104

Hitomaro in the Sanjūrokuninsen

While the imperial anthologies bore the seal of imperial approval and were the most powerful canonizing medium for poets and poems, Hitomaro’s establishment as a fi gurehead for and embodiment of the court-poetic heritage was also taking place in unoffi cial or privately-compiled waka texts, particularly the compilations of Fujiwara no Kintō. It should be pointed out that the relationship between imperial and non-imperial waka texts is more complex than the terminology may make it seem: imperial anthologies typically draw on the personal collections of their compilers and other poets, and in the case of the Shūishū, the collection as a whole is thought to be based on Kintō’s Shūishō (Notes on Gleanings, pre-1007). In any event, Kintō is a pivotal fi gure in Hitomaro’s Heian-period reception. Hitomaro’s eventual eleva-tion to the position of tutelary deity of the Way of waka owes more to his canonization by Tsurayuki as a sage of Japanese poetry than to any other single factor, but Kintō’s role is also very signifi cant, in terms of both his admiration for the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409) and his attribution to Hitomaro of many poems in the Shūishū (of which he is thought to be a compiler). It was in large part through Kintō that the

104 For instance, “[The term mitari no okina] also means that the [Sumiyoshi] deity, Hitomaro, and Narihira are three people in one body” (Gyokuden jinpi ) (Katagiri, Chūsei Kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 528.)

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body of work associated with Hitomaro in the minds of Heian read-ers was both expanded and given the seal of imperial approval. Kintō admired Tsurayuki and was in turn venerated by later poets: together these two form a kind of chain of infl uence which greatly advanced Hitomaro’s canonization in the Heian period. The next link in the chain, as it were, someone who greatly admired Kintō and through him, Hitomaro, was Fujiwara (Rokujō) no Akisue (1055–1123), host and originator of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, the worship ceremony for Hitomaro held in 1118.

The numerous Kintō-compiled poetry collections that include the Akashi Bay poem were noted earlier. The signifi cance of these collec-tions lies not only in the prominent position of their compiler amongst poets of his time but in the fact that many of them, including Waka kuhon, may be classifi ed as shūkasen, collections of outstanding poems, col-lected and canonized by Kintō specifi cally as supreme examples of the art of Japanese poetry. In terms of Hitomaro’s reception, Kintō’s most important shūkasen is his Sanjūrokuninsen, in which he gathered poems attributed to a group of thirty-six outstanding poets known to posterity as the Sanjūrokkasen (Thirty-six Poetic Immortals). The canonization of a group of poets had already been seen in Tsurayuki’s critiques in the Kana Preface of the Kokinshū of “six well-known poets of recent times,” later known collectively (although not referred to as such in the Kokinshū itself ) as the Rokkasen (Six Poetic Immortals). In addition, there were extant at this time some examples of privately-compiled shūkasen, such as Tsurayuki’s Shinsen waka shū, compiled while he was governor of Tosa from 930–935, and Kintō’s own Kingyokushū, compiled c. 1007. Kintō brings these two ideas together in his Sanjūrokuninsen, but—signifi cantly for the poets included—he places the emphasis squarely on the poets rather than the poems by arranging the poems in Sanjūrokuninsen by author rather than by topic.

This was a radical departure from the format of existing exemplary collections such as Shinsen waka, which were arranged by category (seasons, love, miscellaneous, etc.), resembling those of chokusenshū. The Sanjūrokuninsen, however, was in an innovative new format devised by Kintō, taking the form of a poetry competition, a kasen utaawase, between outstanding poets from the time of the Man’yōshū to the mid-Heian period. Tsurayuki’s Rokkasen are among the thirty-six poets for whom Kintō selected representative poems in his Sanjūrokuninsen, as are Hitomaro, Akahito and Yakamochi (the only Man’yōshū poets included in the thirty-six). Hitomaro is given a prominent position: he is one of


the fi rst four poets listed, for each of whom ten poems are given, while Akahito and Yakamochi each have only three poems included. As noted earlier, however, the Sanjūrokuninsen can be included within the broader trend of texts which spuriously present poems as Hitomaro’s but more fi rmly-attributed poems as those of Akahito. Thus, as one might expect, Hitomaro’s ten poems are largely later attributions, and include only one poem attributed to him in the Man’yōshū, III:264:

Man’yōshū III:264A poem composed by Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro on reaching the banks of the Uji River when coming up from the province of Ōmi.

mononofu no The waves that swirlyaso ujigawa no in the fi shing weirsajiroki ni on the Uji rivertadayou nami no of the eighty clans of warriors,yukue shirazu mo know not where to go.105

The sources for poems given for Hitomaro in the Sanjūrokuninsen can be summarized as follows:

Table 2: Hitomaro poems in the Sanjūrokuninsen, by source text and attribution

Source Author in Source Poem No. in Sanjūrokuninsen and source details

Man’yōshū Hitomaro 10 [Man’yōshū III:264]Man’yōshū Anonymous 5 [Man’yōshū X:2210]Man’yōshū

via ShūishūAkahito (Shūishū); anonymous (Man’yōshū)

1 [Shūishū I:3 (Spring; Yamabe no Akahito); variant of Man’yōshū X:1843 (anonymous)]

Man’yōshū via Shūishū

Anonymous 4 [Shūishū II:125 (Summer; Anonymous); variant of Man’yōshū X:1981 (anonymous)]

8 [Shūishū XIII:778 (Love; Hitomaro); Man’yōshū variant of XI:2802 (anonymous)]

Kokinshū Anonymous 6 [Kokinshū IX:409 (Travel; Anonymous, tentatively attributed to Hitomaro)]

Kokinshū via Shūishū

Anonymous 3 [Kokinshū VI:334 (Winter; Anonymous, tentatively attributed to Hitomaro); Shūishū I:12 (Hitomaro)]

105 Katagiri, Kokinshū zenhyōshaku, 218–219.

88 chapter two

Shūishū Hitomaro 2 [Shūishū I:18]7 [Shūishū XIII:848]9 [Shūishū XX:1289; Yamato monogatari

section 150]106

Five poems are originally from the Man’yōshū, although the Shūishū is the immediate source for three of them. One poem is attributed to Hitomaro in the Man’yōshū; the others are all anonymous in the Man’yōshū. The anonymous Man’yōshū poems which appear in the Shūishū are fi rmly attributed to Hitomaro in the Shūishū (except for one, which is attributed to Akahito but still included as an exemplary poem for Hitomaro here). One poem is straight out of the Kokinshū; one is from the Kokinshū via the Shūishū; and four are from the Shūishū with no other known sources. In other words, the image of Hitomaro and his work presented in the infl uential Sanjūrokuninsen is consistent with other early and mid-Heian treatments of Hitomaro in that relatively little attention is paid to his attributed poems in the Man’yōshū while more weight is given to Heian-period attributions. By comparison (and in a parallel to the poems selected for the interpolated notes to the Kokinshū’s Kana Preface), the Sanjūrokuninsen poems given for Yamabe no Akahito are all attributed to him in the Man’yōshū.106

The authenticity of the poems aside, Kintō’s Sanjūrokuninsen had a considerable impact on the canonization of the thirty-six poets involved in part because of other texts involving those same poets which arose after the compilation of the Sanjūrokuninsen. The most signifi cant is the Sanjūrokuninshū (Collections of the Thirty-Six People), the Nishihonganjibon text of which dates from the early twelfth century. In this text, an unknown later compiler took Kintō’s thirty-six poets and assembled what were presented—and received—as their personal poetry collections. The Sanjūrokuninshū is a valuable indication of the poets and poetry most favored in the mid-Heian period; however, as we might expect from a Heian text, Hitomaro’s collection, the Hitomaro shū, includes a large

106 Shinpen kokka taikan henshū iinkai ed., Shinpen kokka taikan (Kadokawa shoten, 1988), V:911.

Table 2 (cont.)

Source Author in Source Poem No. in Sanjūrokuninsen and source details


number of spurious attributions, including a number of old anonymous poems. This Hitomaro Collection, the largest version of which has 301 poems,107 shares many poems with the Shūishū, and is thought to have been extant in some form at the time of the latter’s compilation.108 The collections of Akahito and Yakamochi in the Sanjūrokuninshū are similarly affl icted with dubious attributions: to take but one example, Man’yōshū X:1812 appears in the Hitomaro shū, the Akahito shū, and the Yakamochi shū.109 Another text to refl ect the infl uence of Kintō’s selection of poets was the Sanjūrokunin kasenden, mentioned earlier. As well as the collections and biographies provided for Kintō’s poetic immortals, this grouping of thirty-six was also represented—from the late twelfth century110—in the genre of portraiture known as kasen-e (pictures of poetic immortals), which enabled the canonization of this group of poetic immortals, including Hitomaro, to take place in a new, visual medium.

From the examples above we can see that several different images of Hitomaro emerged in the early- to mid-Heian period. The fi rst (and most important), marking a signifi cant advance in the process of his canonization, was Hitomaro as a “sage of poetry” (uta no hijiri ) in the Kokinshū Kana Preface. This can be seen as a continuation of Hitomaro’s role as an ancestral poetic fi gure evident in the “Gate of the mountain persimmon” passage in the Man’yōshū, but his ancestral role is invested with new meaning in the context of the promotion of Japanese poetry pursued by Tsurayuki in his compilation of the Kokinshū and his Kana Preface. Hitomaro is also canonized in the context of the Heian cul-tural paradigm of the traveler and exile, a trope strongly suggested by the context—through placement or headnotes—given to poems associated with him in infl uential texts such as the Kokinshū and Shūishū. The more explicit treatment of his exile in later texts seems to indicate the effectiveness of this placement of Hitomaro poems, and the exile trope—inasmuch as it involves separation and longing for home—can also be seen in one sense as a continuation of the Hitomaro’s treatment in the Man’yōshū, namely, the legend of his death in the wilds of Iwami as recounted in the Iwami banka (Man’yōshū II:223–227). At the same

107 Kokka taikan. The smaller version has 64 poems.108 Yamazaki Setsuko, “Hitomaro kashū no seiritsu to Shūishū,” Chūko bungaku 24

(9/1979): 1.109 Hayashiya Tatsusaburō ed. Korai Fūteishō. Kodai chūsei geijutsuron, Nihon shisō taikei

23 (Iwanami Shoten, 1973), 286.110 Maribeth Graybill, “Kasen-e: An Investigation into the Origins of the Tradition

of Poet Pictures in Japan” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1983), 2.

90 chapter two

time, however, the extensive attribution in texts such as the Shūishū or Sanjūrokuninsen to Hitomaro of poems which are of unknown origin or appear anonymously elsewhere served to distance the poet from his works, and contributed to a Heian image of Hitomaro which had at best an uncertain textual basis.

CHAPTER THREE

WORSHIPPING HITOMARO: FROM TEXT TO IMAGE

On the sixteenth day of the Sixth Month of Gen’ei (1118), Fujiwara (Rokujō) no Akisue, Head of the Bureau of Palace Repairs (Shuri no daibu), gathered a small group of men, consisting mainly of family members but also including the prominent poet Minamoto no Shun-rai (Toshiyori) (1055?–1129?), at his mansion in the Sixth Ward. The gathering had been convened for a poetic event unlike any other to date: the presentation of offerings to a portrait of Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, who was to be celebrated as a great poetic sage whose talent for poetry was a gift divinely bestowed. Known as Hitomaro eigu (Hito-maro portrait-offerings), this ceremony was an epochal development in Hitomaro’s reception and a crucial turning point in the process of his deifi cation. Largely based on Chinese models like the Confucian shidian ( Japanese sekiten) ceremony and also infl uenced by the ancestral worship ceremonies of esoteric Buddhism (mikkyō), the Hitomaro eigu implicitly casts Hitomaro in the role of ancestral teacher, his “school” in this case being the Rokujō house, the fi rst of the medieval poetry houses to be established amidst the larger trends toward professionalism and exclusivity which have been termed the “medievalization” of waka.1

Honji-Suijaku Thought and the Waka Mandala

A key element in the development of Japanese Buddhism was its syn-thesis with existing Japanese religious beliefs in what came to be known as honji-suijaku, “original ground-manifest trace” thought, which held that the native deities (kami ) of Japan were “manifest traces” (suijaku) of the “original ground” (honji ), consisting of buddhas and bodhisat-tvas. This assimilation of kami into the Buddhist pantheon began at the highest level, with the identifi cation of Amaterasu, the sun deity (and

1 Robert Huey, “The Medievalization of Poetic Practice,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50:2 (12/1990): 651–668.

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divine ancestress of the imperial line) with the buddha Mahavairocana (Dainichi), the embodiment of the Ultimate Reality (dharmakaya) in esoteric Buddhist thought. Soon other associations between Buddhist fi gures and kami were suggested, and by the early Heian period, honji-suijaku thought had become more systematic and basically hierarchical in nature, with the buddhas and bodhisattvas perceived as superior to the kami.2 However, there continued to be considerable variation among the buddhas or bodhisattvas identifi ed as honji of particular kami.3 The assimilative tendencies of Buddhism seen here were not unique to its development in Japan; a similar process had occurred much earlier in India, where Hindu deities were absorbed into the Buddhist pantheon, mostly in the form of guardian deities.

The Taimitsu priest Sensai (d. 1127) postulated a honji-suijaku relation-ship with profound implications for waka and its practitioners when he identifi ed the Sumiyoshi deity (Sumiyoshi daimyōjin), regarded as a deity of waka, as a manifest trace (suijaku) of Kōkitokuō, a bodhisattva who appears in the Nirvana sutra and who is also a form of Kannon.4 This identifi cation was made in a preface composed by the prominent poet Fujiwara no Mototoshi (d. 1142) and attached to poems which Sensai presented at the Sumiyoshi Shrine during a pilgrimage in the Ninth Month of 1106, in which he sought to expiate the sin engen-dered by his composition of waka and turn it rather into a means for his enlightenment. The preface reads in part:

If one inquires into Sumiyoshi’s origins, one fi nds out that the deity is none other than the Kōkitokuō bodhisattva, who, to identify him, gathered the sutras when the Buddha died in the Sala forest and later explained them. The language of the sutras is simple and easy but it is the highest order of excellence . . . I draw a portrait of the bodhisattva and write a sutra on it and, facing the picture, I expound the meaning of the sutras and pay homage to it in order to repent of my sins. I beg that the sins I committed in life by composing poems will have the contrary effect of bringing me to enlightenment. That is all.5

In its appeal for the reversal of the karmic effects of poetic composi-tion, Sensai’s preface clearly echoes the prayer by Bo Juyi (772–846)

2 Herbert Plutschow, Chaos and Cosmos, Leiden: Brill, 1990, 148–50.3 Alicia Matsunaga, The Buddhist Philosophy of Assimilation: The Historical Development

of the Honji-Suijaku Theory, Tokyo: Sophia University, 1969, 232.4 Yamada Shōzen, “Mikkyō to waka bungaku,” Mikkyōgaku kenkyū 1 (3/1969): 153.5 Translated in Plutschow, 161: the text, entitled “Ungōji shōnin zan kyōgen-kigo

waka jo,” may be found in volume 55 of Honchō bunshū.

worshipping hitomaro: from text to image 93

which accompanied a selection of his poems presented to a monastery in 841 and which subsequently became the basis for many Japanese interpretations of the validity of literature as religious practice. The passage in question—which also appears in the Wakan rōeishū anthology of 1012—reads:

I wish that the karma of my vulgar writings in this life and the errors of my wild words and ornate phrases would be reversed and become a means by which I may praise Buddhist teachings and expound the Law in lives to come.6

This is at once an admission of the transgressive nature of poetic composition and an expression of hope for its potential as a way to salvation. The term here translated as “wild words and ornate phrases,” kyōgen-kigo, was both a pejorative term applied to secular literature—as opposed to sutras and religious commentaries—and also, in the context of the Bo Juyi prayer, a term which indicated the potential for such literature to serve as a means to praise the Buddha and his works. The term appears to have been an original coinage by Bo Juyi, combin-ing kyōgen with kigo, which appears in the Amida sutra in connection with mōgo, “deluded words,” one of the ten major Buddhist sins.7 The scriptural source for this concept of double meaning is a passage in the Nirvana sutra:

The Buddhas always [use] gentle words . . . [but] in order to save the people, they teach [with] crude explanations. Crude words and gentle words are all, fi nally, the source of the ultimate truth.8

The sanctity of secular writings was allowed for by this non-dualistic approach, which denied perceived distinctions such as those between good and evil, or secular and profane;9 this non-dualism was also applied in the process of providing for the sacred nature of waka according to honji-suijaku thought. Sensai’s identifi cation of the Sumiyoshi deity with the Kōkitokuō bodhisattva implied a similar relationship—dif-ferent forms springing from the same root—between waka and sutra texts, all of which could be considered part of the “crude words and

6 Wakan rōeishū 588.7 Misumi Yōichi, “Iwayuru kyōgen-kigo kan ni tsuite,” in Higi toshite no waka: kōi to

ba, ed. Watanabe Yasuaki, Yūseidō, 1995, 201.8 Margaret Childs, “Kyōgen-kigo: Love Stories as Buddhist Sermons.” Japanese Journal

of Religious Studies 12:1 (March 1985): 99.9 Childs, 99–100.

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gentle words” which have equal validity as expressions of the ultimate truth.10

It is also signifi cant that Sensai’s preface was presented in conjunction with a portrait of the Kōkitokuō bodhisattva, a move which foreshad-ows both the use of a portrait in the Hitomaro eigu and also the later use of portraits of the Sumiyoshi deity as the central image in waka initiation (kanjō, Skt. abhiseka) ceremonies, in which he was regarded as the “originating ground” or honji of the line of transmission of secret commentaries on classic texts such as the Ise monogatari.11

As noted in the previous chapter, an earlier phase of Hitomaro’s literary reception was his inclusion in the Sanjūrokuninsen selected by Fuji-wara no Kintō. This poetic canonization was transformed into religious elevation by Sensai, who, on the same pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi during which the confessional preface was presented, also drew up a so-called waka mandala. A description of this mandala (and its subsequent fate), is found in the setsuwa collection Kokon chomonjū (Things Old and New Noted and Heard), compiled by Tachibana Narisue in 1254:

Kokon chomonjū V:164The matter of the completion of the Ungoji by the Priest Sensai, and

also the matter of the waka mandalaHead of the Bureau of Ise Shrine and Head of the Offi ce of Shrines

Chikasada built a hall at a place called Iwade in the province of Ise, and invited Priest Sensai to complete the commemorative service. It was through the donations [Sensai received] that the Ungoji was built. Priest Sensai was fond of poetry, and so was always meeting with the poets of the time at poetry meetings. He drew a mandala of waka, drawing the seven buddhas of the past and then writing in the names of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals. Lord Yoshifusa was good enough to write a clean copy on a screen. This mandala should then have been a valued treasure of this temple [the Ungoji], but for some reason, at the time of the reconstruction of the Ise Shrine by the Deputy Head of the Offi ce of Shrines Chikanaka, [someone] came to sell it to his son the Supernumer-ary Governor of Tosa Chikatsune, who bought it for 20 kan of cash. It was passed on successively and is now with the novice Chikamori.12 In the Ninth Month of the fi rst year of Kenchō [1249], at the time of the

10 Yamada, “Mikkyō to waka bungaku,” 154.11 Susan Blakeley Klein, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval

Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, p. 171.12 Grandson of Chikatsune.


movement of the Outer Shrine, when I visited [Chikamori] I requested this mandala be brought out, and revering it I record this.13

The layout of the waka mandala is not clear from the description above, but the fi rst fi gures to be included in it, presumably either at the centre or the top, were the seven buddhas of the past, consisting of Šākyamuni and the six buddhas who had preceded him into the world. From the original text it is not clear whether the buddhas were represented by portraits or just their names, or by portraits with name captions. The buddhas were surrounded or followed in turn by the names of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals (Sanjūrokkasen), of which Hitomaro was one.14 The waka mandala can be seen as a type of suijaku mandala, a graphically-organized depiction of the honji-suijaku relationship between certain Buddhist and Shintō entities.15 The waka mandala is no longer extant, but we have in the Kokon chomonjū setsuwa what appears to be an eyewitness account, as Narisue records his own viewing of the mandala.

The signifi cance of Sensai’s waka mandala in literary terms is that it indicated by its inclusion of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals that not only Shintō deities but also great poets (“poetic immortals,” kasen) could be “considered avatars of Buddhas or bodhisattvas.”16 In present-ing the seven buddhas of the past as the honji of the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals, the waka mandala implicitly situates the origins of waka in the distant past, pre-dating even Šākyamuni’s appearance on earth. In its longing for the distant past within the context of waka composition, the waka mandala prefi gures the Hitomaro eigu, in which a poet from the past was raised to the status of an icon.

The subsequent development of the waka mandala as a genre is unclear; the dearth of, materials suggests that the practice died out long before that of Hitomaro eigu.17 Nonetheless, in its depiction of poets

13 This text appears in Nagazumi Yasuaki and Shimada Isao, ed., Kokon chomonjū. NKBT 84. Iwanami shoten, 1966, 152–153.

14 Nishiki Hitoshi. “Waka no hatten.” Jūichi, jūni seiki no bungaku. Iwanami kōza Nihon bungakushi 3. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996: 104.

15 Matsunaga, 261.16 Plutschow, 162–3.17 Yamada Shōzen, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai: bukkyō to bungaku to no

sesshoku ni shiten o oite,” Taishō daigaku kenkyū kiyō 51 (1966): 100–101. Yamada does note, however, a reference in the Shokushikashū (Continued Collection of Flowers of Words) of 1165 to Fujiwara no Akisuke (1090–1155), Akisue’s son, drawing a waka mandala in emulation of Sensai (Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 102).

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as divine beings, and as idols revered in graphic form (their presence here symbolized by their names), the waka mandala can be seen to have points in common with the Hitomaro eigu,18 and the fact that is was composed by a poet as actively involved in utaawase as Sensai can only have contributed to its infl uence as an immediate precursor to Hitomaro eigu.

The Hitomaro Eigu of 1118

The proceedings of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, the ceremony in which offerings were made to a portrait of Hitomaro, are recorded in the Kakinomoto eigu ki by Fujiwara no Atsumitsu (1063–1144), a prominent Confucian scholar and head of the University (Daigaku no kami).19 It con-sists of three parts. The fi rst is a diary-like recounting of the ceremony. The second consists of the praise inscription (san) on the upper part of the portrait of Hitomaro.20 As a formal genre, the praise inscription consists of rhymed, parallel units of four characters, with language that is emotive but clear and attractive. A characteristic of the genre is its connection to pictures, and many Japanese Heian-period examples of praise inscriptions also have a connection to Buddhism.21 This last characteristic is signifi cant when considered in light of the infl uence of esoteric Buddhist sect-founder-worshipping ceremonies on the formation of the Hitomaro eigu. The third part of the Eigu ki consists of the waka composed at the poetry meeting which followed the worship ritual; these poems are accompanied by a preface in Chinese, also by Atsumitsu. The initial, diary-like account of the proceedings is as follows:

18 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 101.19 Another account of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, based on the Eigu ki, also appears in

Kokon chomonjū (V:178). The Kakinomoto eigu ki is also known as the Hitomaro eigu ki, the Kakinomoto Hitomaro eigu ki, and the Hitomaro ku. Many handwritten texts of the Eigu ki exist, but there are no signifi cant textual variants, and most of the differences between the texts can be ascribed to copyists’ errors. (Sasaki Takahiro, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” Kokubungaku kenkyū shiryōkan kiyō 21 [1995]: 78.)

20 The san, a passage in praise of a person or thing, is defi ned in the literary treatise Wenxin diaolong, a “systematic treatise on literature” compiled in the early sixth century by Liu Xie (ca. 465–522) (Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 183).

21 Gotō Akio, “Buntai kaisetsu,” in Honchō monzui, ed. Gotō Akio et al., Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei 27 (Iwanami shoten, 1992), 419.


Kakinomoto eigu ki22

On the third day of the Fourth Month, the sixth year of Eikyū was made the fi rst year of Gen’ei [1118]. On the sixteenth day of the Sixth Month, it rained. At the hour of the monkey [1600] I went to the house of the Head of the Offi ce of Palace Maintenance [Akisue], the Rokujō Higashi Tōin [mansion]. Today was the day for offerings to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro.

The portrait of Hitomaro to be used was one that had been newly drawn. It was a scroll about three shaku [c. 91 cm] long, showing [Hito-maro] wearing an eboshi and a robe. In his left hand he held paper, and in his right hand he gripped a brush. He was over sixty years of age. Above this [portrait] a praise inscription was written. I had composed the inscription earlier, and it was written out by Former Assistant Captain of the Middle Palace Guards Akinaka. A desk was placed before [the portrait] and fl owers were stood on it. [On the desk] were placed a bowl of rice, delicacies, and various fi sh and birds. However, they were made of other things, and were not the real thing. The bowls were like Chinese lidded bowls; [they were] vegetable dishes made of water buffalo horn.

Those meeting at that time were the Governor of Iyo Nagazane, the Governor of Ōmi Tsunetada, Former Head of the Bureau of Carpentry Shunrai, the governor of Kaga Akisuke, the former Assistant Captain of the Middle Palace Guards Akinaka, myself, the Minor Councillor Munekane, the former Governor of Izumi Michitsune, the Governor of Aki Tametada, and others.

Next a banquet was set out. Then was the fi rst libation to Kakinomoto. The attendants, holding nautilus-shell winecups and small fl asks, waited on the veranda. The host [Akisue] deliberated, saying, “The fi rst libation should be performed by a master of poetry.” All present said, “It should be done by the Former Head of the Bureau of Carpentry [Shunrai].” The Former Head of the Bureau of Carpentry could not refuse, and, rising from his seat, advanced to in front of the portrait. Kaga [Akisuke], due to his admiration [for Hitomaro], took a nautilus-shell cup and advanced somewhat toward Hitomaro. The Former Governor of Izumi, due to his deep fondness for this Way [of poetry], took a small fl ask, poured wine into a nautilus-shell cup, and placed it on the desk. Each returned to his seat. The ceremony at this time was most awe-inspiring. Next there was a libation by everyone, then juice was set out. Then there was a second libation. Then Junior Assistant Minister of Ceremonial Yukimori came and joined the company. Then there was a third libation, then delicacies were set out, then hot soup. Then Middle Captain of the Right Inner

22 The annotated text followed here is from Suzuki Tokuo and Kitayama Marumasa, “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro eigu chūshaku,” in Sōai joshi tanki daigaku kenkyū ronshū v. 46 (1999/3): 2–37. Section divisions follow this edition. Suzuki and Kitayama take as their base text the Hōsa bunko version of the Hitomaro ku. Another version of the Kakinomoto eigu ki appears in Gunsho ruijū, v. 283 (waka-bu 138:3): 58–60.

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Palace Guards Masasada came and joined the company. Next there was another exchange of cups, and then the meal was cleared away. Next the Captain of the Right Middle Palace Guards [ Fujiwara no Saneyuki] was good enough to visit.

Next the host deliberated, saying, “The praise inscription to Hitomaro should be read aloud.” Those present could not agree as whether this should come before or after the waka. The host said, “Still, the praise inscription should be read fi rst.” [ He] placed a desk before the portrait, and spread out a round mat. The inscription in question was written on two sheets of Chinese paper. Tadatō had written out the clean copy. He had the Junior Assistant Minister of Ceremonial read it out. The Royal Advisor and Captain of the Right Middle Palace Guards opened the inscription and placed it on the stand. [He] removed it after the praise inscription had been read aloud.

Next the poems were read out. Their topic was “the wind over the water at evening [suifū banrai ].” I wrote the preface. The Royal Advisor and Captain of the Right Middle Palace Guards acted as both reader and assistant. [His] splendid words were a treat for the eye and the ear.

When the reading was fi nished, some went and some stayed in their places for a while. Since the nautilus-shell cups were highly prized, people discussed them. I recited poetry, saying, “The color of the wine of Xin-feng.”23 The host recited the same line, and then also recited, “Dimly, dimly, in the morning mist of Akashi Bay.”24 Then I recited, “The nights you’ve promised but do not come grow many.”25 Everyone was entertained by this and stayed a little while longer, then, each promising [to attend] later meetings, went home [and the proceedings were] over.

The Sekiten Ceremony and the Worship of Confucius

The main model for the form of the Hitomaro eigu is the Confucian shidian ( J. sekiten) ceremony, in which offerings were made to Confucius and which is recorded in China at least as far back as the third century

23 From a fu attributed to the Tang poet Gong Sheng Yi, excerpted in Wakan rōeishū (number 479): “The colour of the wine of Xinfeng/clear and cold in the nautilus-shell cups.”

24 Kokinshū IX:409 (Travel).25 Shūishū XIII:848 (Love), where it is attributed to Hitomaro:

tanometsutsu The nights you’ve promisedkonu yo amata ni but do not comenarinureba grow many; and so I thinkmataji to omou zo that not to waitmatsu ni masareru is better than waiting still.


C.E.26 During the Tang dynasty (618–907) the sekiten became a grand state ritual, enjoying “strong imperial interest and support” as a means by which the Tang emperors could “win the support of the Confucian scholarly community in ruling China.”27 The version of the sekiten in China thought to have been most infl uential on its form in Japan is that seen in the ritual compendium Da tang kaiyuan li (Rituals of the Kaiyuan era) of 732.28 The most ornate version of the sekiten described in this text had the crown prince as a participant in making offerings to Confucius and debating the Confucian classics and involved, among other things, a preparatory period of abstinence and blood sacrifi ces. Less complex versions of the sekiten were held at the University twice yearly, and still more simplifi ed versions were held in the provinces. The crown prince’s sekiten, in broad outline, was held at the University and consisted of a religious service involving offerings before spirit thrones for Confucius, his disciple Yan Hui and 71 other fi gures from the tradition, held in the Kongzi miao, the shrine to Confucius. This was followed by reading, exegesis and debate on the Confucian classics in the lecture hall.29

The fi rst reference to the sekiten in a Japanese context appears in the Shoku nihongi, and is dated 701. The sekiten was initially held twice a year (in the Second and Eighth Months) at the University, as man-dated by the relevant section of the Taihō Code. Although imperial interest in the sekiten lapsed in the eighth century, it made a resurgence in the ninth, during a period of great enthusiasm for Chinese culture in general.30 The Japanese sekiten at this time was, as it had been in China (and would be again when revived by the Tokugawa bakufu), a large-scale, formal, offi cial event. However, it subsequently came to be held on a smaller scale in private homes, hosted by individuals rather than the state.31 These private sekiten can be seen as bridging the gap between the sekiten as large public ritual and the private, small-scale Hitomaro eigu. A likely immediate model for Akisue’s Hitomaro eigu,

26 I. J. McMullen, “The Worship of Confucius in Ancient Japan.” In Peter F. Kornicki and Ian James McMullen, eds. Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 50. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 48.

27 McMullen, 42.28 McMullen, 43.29 McMullen, 44–46.30 McMullen, 57.31 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 81.

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in terms of size and setting, was a private sekiten held at the residence of a member of the Ōe clan (a scholarly family) in the Twelfth Month of 1114, only four years earlier.32

The procedures for the sekiten and the eigu were similar, in that both ceremonies involved the display of an image of the object of worship (in the case of the eigu, just Hitomaro; at the sekiten, Confucius and his disciples), and in both cases offerings were set before the image or images. In the sekiten there were poems in Chinese composed on set topics, and in the eigu there were poems in Japanese composed on a set topic.33 However, while the poems composed at the sekiten took lines from the Confucian classics as their topics, those composed for the Hitomaro eigu were not on Hitomaro himself or on subjects particularly associated with him, and no particular attempts were made to use Man’yō (i.e. archaic or pre-Heian) diction in the poems. Although the Hitomaro eigu came to be seen as symbolic of the Rokujō school’s veneration of the Man’yōshū, this fi rst Hitomaro eigu had no direct relationship to the Man’yōshū as a whole in terms of poetic subject or diction, but concen-trated on Hitomaro himself,34 specifi cally the Heian-period image of Hitomaro transmitted through the Kana Preface of the Kokinshū and the writings of Fujiwara no Kintō.

The sekiten, however, was not the only model for the form of the Hitomaro eigu. It has also been suggested that elements of the Hitomaro eigu were infl uenced by esoteric Buddhist ceremonies memorializing sect founders, the Shingon mieku (offerings to portraits) and the Tendai daishiku (offerings to the Great Teacher). Similarities to the Hitomaro eigu are suggested by the similarity of the term mieku. Both the mieku and the daishiku make use of the element ku (offerings), the appearance of which in the name of the Hitomaro eigu serves to formally distinguish the eigu from the sekiten35 as well as to suggest a link (in terms of form) to the esoteric Buddhist ceremonies. The mieku was fi rst held at Tōji in 911 for Kūkai (774–835), on the anniversary of his death, and had as its aim his memorialization (tsuizen); a portrait of Kūkai served as the honzon or primary image during the service.36 In the mieku, offerings were made to the image, the invocation (saimon) was read, the image

32 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 82.33 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 89.34 Sasaki, “Hitomaro no shinkō to eigu,” 142.35 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 83.36 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 83.


was worshipped, and libations were offered.37 The fi rst daishiku was held earlier, in 798, as a memorial service (kuyō) for Tendai daishi,38 and was presided over by Saichō (767–822). The daishiku was also held on the death anniversary of the person to whom it was dedicated, and also involved a portrait of that person, to which offerings were made.39 Unlike the esoteric Buddhist ceremonies (or the sekiten, which was held on specifi c dates in the Second and Eighth Months), the fi rst Hitomaro eigu does not appear to have been linked to any particular day; there is no mention in the Kakinomoto eigu ki of the 16th of the Sixth Month being thought of as Hitomaro’s death anniversary or having any other signifi cance.

Nonetheless, one important parallel between Hitomaro eigu and these esoteric Buddhist ancestor-worship ceremonies is that the portrait used in the daishiku, according to the account in the Sanbōekotoba (Tales of the Three Treasures),40 had a praise inscription, something also found in the case of the Hitomaro portrait used in the eigu, but not mentioned in accounts of the sekiten. It may be surmised that the reading of the praise inscription seen in the Hitomaro eigu was a feature of the cer-emony borrowed from Buddhist memorial services involving ancestor portraits rather than from the sekiten.41 This implicit parallel between Hitomaro and the sect founders ties the development of Hitomaro portraiture to that of esoteric Buddhist sect ancestors, whose portraits were transmitted from master to disciple as proof of transmission of the teachings.42

In addition, Buddhist infl uence may be refl ected in the very presence of the portrait itself at Hitomaro eigu, and possibly the Japanese sekiten. The sekiten account in the Da tang kaiyuan li does not mention images of Confucius and his disciples as the objects of worship;43 rather, the

37 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 83–84.38 The posthumous name of Chi-yi ( J. Chigi, 538–597), third patriarch of the

Tiantai (Tendai) sect, and generally regarded as its founder in China.39 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 83.40 A collection of Buddhist setsuwa compiled by Minamoto no Tamenori in 984.

For an English translation, see Edward Kamens, The Three Jewels, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1988. The account of the daishiku appears on pp. 360–362 of this translation.

41 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 85.42 Katano Tatsurō, “Hitomaro eigu no hensen to sono wakashiteki igi.” Nihon bungei

to kaiga no sōkansei no kenkyū. Kasama sōsho 56. Tokyo: Kasama shoin, 1975: 156.43 Although the shrine to Confucius “seems to have housed images of the Sage

himself and other major fi gures in the tradition” (McMullen, 44).

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offerings are described as being presented to spirit thrones.44 In the case of the Hitomaro eigu, however, even though it is largely based on the sekiten we see great importance attached to the portrait of Hitomaro, as is the case in the mieku and daishiku. This is indicated by the ei element in the word eigu (portrait-offerings), a word that indicates explicitly, like mieku, that this is a ceremony involving a portrait or image to which offerings are made.

Hitomaro’s Portrait

The description in the passage cited earlier from the Kakinomoto eigu ki of the Hitomaro portrait used in the 1118 ceremony—an older man wearing court dress and holding a paper and brush—can be regarded as the mainstream of Hitomaro portraiture. The origins of this arche-type are described in a tale appearing in the Jikkinshō (Notes on Ten Lessons), a setsuwa collection dating from 1252.

Jikkinshō IV:245

There was a man called the Awata Governor of Sanuki Kanefusa. For many years he had been an enthusiast of waka, but being unable to produce good poetry, he prayed constantly in his heart to Hitomaro. In a dream one night, [ he seemed to be] in a place which he thought was Western Sakamoto;46 there were no trees, only plum blossoms falling like snow, which were extremely fragrant. As he was thinking in his heart how wonderful it was, [he noticed] a man of advanced years beside him. He was wearing a robe and pale-colored gathered hakama with crimson hakama underneath, and an unstarched eboshi with a very high tail. He did not look like an ordinary person. In his left hand he held paper, and with his right hand he [held] an ink-dipped brush, and appeared to be deep in thought. As [Kanefusa] was thinking, “How strange. Who is this person?” the man spoke: “You have been good enough to keep Hitomaro in your heart for many years; due to the depth of your wish, I am show-ing myself to you.” Saying only this, he vanished completely.

After waking from his dream, when morning came [Kanefusa] called an artist, described [Hitomaro’s] appearance, and had him draw [a por-trait]. However, [the portrait] did not resemble [Hitomaro], so he had

44 McMullen, 46. “Spirit throne” refers to a lingjiao ( J. reikyō), which provided support for a memorial tablet.

45 Text from: Asami Kazuhiko ed., Jikkinshō, Shinpen nihon koten bungaku zenshū 51 (Shōgakukan, 1997), 150–153; annotations also taken from Kawamura Zenji ed. Jikkinshō zenshaku, Shintensha chūshaku sosho 6 (Shintensha, 1994), 205–8.

46 At the foot of Mount Hiei, near Ichijōji and Shūgakuin in Sakyō-ku, Kyoto.


[the artist] repeatedly redraw it [until] it did resemble [Hitomaro]; mak-ing it his treasure, he always made obeisance to it, and so, possibly due to a miracle, he was able to write better poetry than previously. Many years later, when he seemed about to die, he presented [the portrait] to Retired Emperor Shirakawa, who was greatly delighted and, adding it to his treasures, kept it in his Toba treasury.

The Rokujō Head of the Bureau of Palace Repairs, Lord Akisue, asked repeatedly and was fi nally allowed to borrow [the portrait]. He spoke to Nobushige, who copied [the portrait] for him, [after which Akisue] kept [the copy]. He had Atsumitsu write the praise inscription, had Head of the Department of Shintō Akinaka make a clean copy, made it his main object of veneration, and held the fi rst eigu with it. At the time, [Akisue] had many sons-in-law, but it was Toshiyori, as a person of the Way of poetry, who made the offerings [to the portrait]. [ Hitomaro] eigu were held in this way for many years without fail.

Among [Akisue’s] descendants were Nagazane and Ieyasu; it was his third son, Akisuke, who was skilful in this Way [of Poetry], and so [the portrait of Hitomaro] was passed on to him. When it was passed on to the Retired Emperor [Shirakawa], he was greatly pleased. Nagazane was in attendance on His Majesty; he must have had a jealous heart, for he muttered, “That portrait of Hitomaro is worthless. Even if it were a rare piece of writing, it would be inferior to a single page of poetry.” At this the Retired Emperor’s complexion changed for the worse, and Nagazane rose to leave; the Retired Emperor called him back, saying “Why do you say such a thing in front of me? [The portrait] had its origins in a dream, admittedly an uncertain thing, but Kanefusa was an honorable man, so I hardly think this was an invention on his part. I already count [the portrait] amongst my treasures, and have done so for years. Your father earnestly carried out [Hitomaro eigu] for years. With all this, how can you belittle it? It’s really unreasonable of you!” Thus saying, he was greatly displeased; so [Nagazane] fl ed, and shut himself up in his house for half a year, not making a sound.

This too added to the glory of that portrait.

A number of features in this story hint at its apocryphal nature: the fi rst is the description of the “plum blossoms falling like snow,” a descrip-tion strongly reminiscent of the following Kokinshū poem, which appears along with the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409) as an exemplary poem for Hitomaro in the interpolated notes to the Kokinshū Kana Preface:

Kokinshū VI:334: Winter (anonymous)

ume no hana The plum blossoms—sore to mo miezu I cannot see which they are,hisakata no as the distant skyamagiru yuki no is so misty with snownabete furereba falling everywhere.

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We may also note the narrator’s instinctive recognition of Hitomaro’s special qualities: before any identifi cation is made or any clues given as to his identity, it is remarked that he “did not look like an ordinary person” (tsune no hito ni mo nizarikeri ). This seems to be a precursor to similar foreshadowing in later commentaries that feature remarks on Hitomaro’s divine aura like ge ni mo tadabito ni arazu, “truly he was no ordinary person.”47

Fujiwara no Kanefusa (1001–1069) was the great-grandson of the regent (sesshō) Fujiwara no Kaneie (929–990). Despite being born to such a high social station, his court career consisted mainly of appointments as a provincial governor. While not the prestigious positions someone of his birth might have been expected to hold, his tours of duty in the provinces allowed him to accumulate suffi cient wealth to host his own poetry competitions and meetings.48 Although Kanefusa has a total of 15 poems included in imperial anthologies from Goshūishū to Shinshoku-kokinshū, it is his dream of Hitomaro and subsequent commissioning of the portrait for which he has been best remembered.

The latter part of the story deals with the portrait after the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, when it is said to have passed into the possession of Retired Emperor Shirakawa. The explicit identifi cation of skill in poetry (on the part of Akisuke) as a prerequisite for ownership of the portrait indicates its value as a symbol of poetic authority, its posses-sion the mark of the leading poet of the Rokujō house. The portrait’s importance as a symbol of poetic authority to be passed on can be seen again in another Kokon chomonjū setsuwa which deals with its origins and later transmission.

Kokon chomonjū V:204The matter of the Hitomaro portrait passed down by KiyosukeRegarding the portrait of Hitomaro passed down by Lord Kiyosuke, the

governor of Sanuki, Lord Kanefusa, deeply loved the Way of waka, and was saddened by the fact that he didn’t know what Hitomaro had looked like. Hitomaro came to him in a dream and told [Kanefusa] that since [Kanefusa] was so fond of him, he would show himself. Being unable to draw pictures, Kanefusa summoned an artist the following morning and had him draw as instructed, and as the portrait was identical to what he had seen in the dream, he was overjoyed and revered it. However, Retired

47 See, for instance, Gyokuden jinpi (Katagiri, Chūsei Kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 554–555).

48 Yoshihara Yoshinori, “Kanefusa no uta katsudō to Hitomaro ei ni tsuite,” Sonoda joshidai ronbun shū 13 (10/1978): 20.


Emperor Shirakawa, who was fond of this Way [of waka], requested the portrait and kept it in the treasury at the Toba Palace.

The Head of the Bureau of Palace Maintenance, Lord Akisue, was a close retainer [of Shirakawa] and wished [to borrow the portrait], but was not permitted to; yet he asked persistently and fi nally made a copy of it. Lord Akisue’s eldest son, Middle Councillor Lord Nagazane and his second son, Consultant Lord Ieyasu were not talented at this Way [of waka], and so [he] passed the portrait on to his third son, Administrator of the Left Capital Akisuke. The original portrait which had belonged to Lord Kanefusa was burnt when the Ono Empress49 had asked for it and was viewing it. The Kokinshū in Tsurayuki’s hand was also burnt on the same occasion. This was a most unfortunate matter. Therefore Lord Akisue’s portrait [of Hitomaro] became the original portrait. Even if they were his own children, he should not pass on [the portrait] to those who were not skilled at this Way [of waka], nor should they [be allowed to] copy [the portrait]. It seems that there are pledges [kishōmon] [to this effect]. The portrait in question was passed down to Lord Yasusue, and he gave it to Lord Narizane. [The portrait] is now in the possession of the Retired Emperor, and since the Kenchō era [1249–1256] there have been eigu ceremonies. The offertory vessels were passed on in turn to Lord Iehira,50 but they were then received by Lord Iekiyo,51 and when they were in his son’s possession after his death, they were ordered and kept by the same Retired Emperor. The desk made out of a pillar of the Nagara Bridge was originally passed down by Priest Shun’e52 and during the reign of Emperor GoToba was brought out at such events as imperial poetry meetings. At the imperial poetry meeting of the senior Retired Emperor, poems were read at that desk before that portrait, a most wonderful event.

This repeats the information in the earlier story regarding Akisue’s repeated requests to borrow and copy the portrait, and furthermore invests Akisue’s copy with new authority as the new “original,” the oldest version of the portrait left after the fi re at the Toba treasury. Once again, skill at waka is portrayed as the essential quality required by the various recipients of the Hitomaro portrait, and placed above even blood ties as the crucial determining factor in its inheritance. It is quite possible that Akisue’s Hitomaro portrait was in fact the true original: it has been argued that the Jikkinshō account is a later Rokujō-house fabrication intended to supply a pedigree for the Hitomaro

49 The consort of GoReizei (r. 1045–1068).50 Son of Tsuneie and nephew of Yasusue; great-nephew of Kiyosuke.51 Iehira’s son.52 1113-?. Son of Minamoto Shunrai, priest of the Tōdaiji, poetry teacher of Kamo

no Chōmei, and convener of the monthly poetry meetings of the Karin’en salon.

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portrait used at Akisue’s Hitomaro eigu.53 In any event, the earliest documented Hitomaro portrait is the one belonging to Akisue used in the fi rst Hitomaro eigu in 1118.

One important difference between Kanefusa’s portrait and Akisue’s copy was the addition of the praise inscription, composed by Atsum-itsu and inscribed by Akinaka. The text of the praise inscription—as included in the Eigu ki—consists of a preface and poem in Chinese, as follows:

Praise inscription on picture of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro: one poem with preface

The offi cial, clan name Kakinomoto, given name Hitomaro, was truly a poet of ages past. He served at the holy courts of Jitō and Mommu, and entertained Princes Niita and Takechi. In the spring wind of Mount Yoshino, he followed the imperial palanquin and offered congratulations; in the autumn mist of Akashi Bay, he thought of a small boat and let fl ow his words. Is this not truly the pinnacle of the six styles [rikugi ], and a splendid tale for a myriad generations? Now, due to our respect for his old poems of unfathomable beauty, we would like to pass on a newer-looking picture. Having such feelings, we thus composed this praise inscription. It says:

Sage of Japanese poetry,Receiving your nature from HeavenExcelling in that genius,Your style of poetry is powerful.54

In thirty-one characters,Your fl owers of words are fresh as the dew;For over four hundred years,They have come down to later ages.A teacher of this Way,You were a sage of our land in ancient times.Although [touched by] the black earth, [your poems] are undefi led;55

If one [tries to] cut them, they grow ever harder.56

53 Kitahara Motohide, “ ‘Ume no hana no Hitomaro ei’ ni tsuite”, in Bunkashigaku no chōsen, ed. Kasai Masaaki (Kyoto: Shibunkaku shuppan, 2005), 201.

54 Sono hokosaki shinzen tari, “the point of the spear [of your poetry] is sharp.” This seems to have been a set phrase, and occurs in other texts.

55 This line also appears in the Wen xuan, and is thought to come originally from the Analects (Suzuki and Kitayama, 220).

56 Kore o kireba, iyoiyo katashi. A phrase describing the excellence of Hitomaro’s poetry. The passage in question from the Analects reads, “Yan Yuan, heaving a sigh, said, ‘The more I look up at it the higher it appears. The more I bore into it the harder it becomes’ ” (Suzuki and Kitayama, 220; D. C. Lau tr., The Analects, London: Penguin, 1979, 97).


Splendid as phoenix feathers, their like are few,Rare as the kirin’s horn, none may follow them.Your peerless excellence is already stated;Who could stand as your equal?

Gen’ei 1, Sixth Month, [ ] dayBy Head of the University Tō no Atsumitsu

The praise inscription refl ects a number of infl uences in its treatment of Hitomaro. The opening line of the poem, here translated as “Sage of Japanese poetry,” reads yamato uta no hijiri in the original, clearly echoing the Kokinshū Kana Preface’s reference to Hitomaro as an uta no hijiri, “sage of Japanese poetry” and the Mana Preface’s waka no hijiri,57 “sage of Japanese poetry” (particularly in its use of the character sen). The important thing to note here, when considering the Hitomaro eigu in the context of Hitomaro’s deifi cation, is that, although a num-ber of scholars regard the eigu as the defi ning moment of Hitomaro’s apotheosis,58 he is here still termed an uta no hijiri, “sage of Japanese poetry,” rather than a deity of Japanese poetry (waka no kami). Although Hitomaro is here made the object of not merely admiration (as in the Kokinshū) but actual worship, he is not yet the full-fl edged divinity he would become in later texts. This brings the Hitomaro eigu into line with its models, the sekiten and the mieku or daishiku, which were services to the memory of great but still mortal fi gures.

Further infl uence from the Kokinshū can be seen in the reference to the six styles of poetry (rikugi ), which derive originally from the Great Preface to the Shijing and are applied to Japanese poetry in both Kokinshū prefaces, and also in the reference to the Akashi Bay poem, which had come to be regarded as Hitomaro’s representative poem due to its asso-ciation with Hitomaro in the Kokinshū. However, although Hitomaro’s Heian and medieval reception was heavily dependent on his treatment in the prestigious Kokinshū and owed rather less to his actual poems col-lected in the Man’yōshū, the Man’yōshū is also referred to in the praise inscription and some of Hitomaro’s works therein acknowledged. Thus it can be seen that despite the overwhelming role of the Kokinshū in Hitomaro’s Heian-period canonization, the Man’yōshū could continue to have some infl uence.

57 Arai and Kojima, 342.58 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 84.

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At the most basic formal level the praise inscription refl ects the infl uence of Chinese literature. The formal defi nition of the praise inscription—originally a Chinese genre—was given earlier, and there is also some Chinese infl uence in terms of content: various phrases have precedents in Chinese texts, including the following two lines, both of which are based on lines from the Analects (Lun yu, J. Rongo), the fi rst coming by way of a praise inscription preserved in the Wen xuan.

Although [touched by] the black earth, [your poems] are undefi led;If one [tries to] cut them, they grow ever harder.

Although the echo of the Analects here may suggest a link back to the Confucian sekiten, the immediate effect of these and similar lines is to elevate the tone of the praise inscription by invoking prestigious Chinese-language texts.

The iconography of the Hitomaro portrait used in the ceremony is a further aspect of the Hitomaro eigu for which a Chinese precedent can be identifi ed. The origins of the fi rst Hitomaro portrait recounted in the Jikkinshō setsuwa notwithstanding, modern scholarship has identi-fi ed an earlier model for the archetypal Hitomaro portrait in which he is posed with brush in one hand and paper in another. In this form, Hitomaro appears to have been modeled on a portrait of an old man on one panel of a six-fold landscape screen (sansui byōbu) held by the Kyoto National Museum. The identity of the old man on the screen is not clear, but he has been tentatively identifi ed as the Tang poet Bo Juyi, based in part on the fact that Bo Juyi was featured on screens (known as Hakurakuten shōshikai byōbu) in the Heian period and that his veneration by poets composing in Chinese was at a peak in the mid-Heian period, when the archetypal Hitomaro portrait fi rst took form. Also, although there is nothing in the Man’yōshū to suggest that Hitomaro lived to a particularly old age, the portrait depicts him as an older man, aged about sixty. Portraits of Bo Juyi regularly depicted him as an old man (he lived to be 74) and may thus be likely models for the archetypal Hitomaro portrait.59

Later Hitomaro portraiture split into two lines, the Nobuzane type and the Iwaya type, the former being named for the Kamakura-period

59 Information in this paragraph is from Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 91–92; he is referring to the work of Ōgushi Sumio (see his “Hitomaro zō no seiritsu to Tōji sansui byōbu.” Bijutsu kenkyū 164 (1952): 1–26). A discussion of this topic in English appears in Graybill, “Kasen-e,” 41–52.


poet and artist Fujiwara no Nobuzane (1176–1265) and the latter for the rock cave (iwaya) in which the Tendai priest and poet Gyōson (1057–1135), who is said to have had a dream involving Hitomaro, carried out ascetic practices. The Nobuzane-type portraits depict Hitomaro as he is described in the Jikkinshō account of Kanefusa’s dream, while the Iwaya-type portraits show Hitomaro in a Chinese style60 (a particularly noteworthy development when one considers the early Heian traditions according to which Hitomaro was dispatched to China as an envoy). It is also thought that the Muromachi-period portraits of Tenjin going to Tang China (totō tenjin zu) may have had some infl uence on the develop-ment of the Chinese-style Hitomaro portraits.61

It should be noted that not all Hitomaro portraits bear the praise inscription recorded in the Kakinomoto eigu ki. Some bear the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409) in the upper part, while others have Kokinshū VI:334, on plum blossoms and snow (the second exemplary poem given for Hitomaro in the interpolated notes to the Kokinshū Kana Preface). Attention has also been drawn to a Muromachi-period Hitomaro portrait which has an illustration of white plum blossoms in its upper part in lieu of any inscription.62 It has been suggested that the production of Hitomaro portraits with plum blossoms rather than praise inscriptions can be related to the changing circumstances of the eigu. The fi rst Hitomaro eigu, closely modelled on Chinese precedents, can be interpreted as a show of power by Akisue and his poetry circle. Akisue’s descendants, however, lacking his standing at court, did not hold Hitomaro eigu again until 1177 (under Akisue’s grandson, Kiyosuke), and when they did so, opted for a more aestheticised, de-politicized version of the portrait, bearing plum blossoms (reminiscent of Kokinshū VI:334) rather than the Chinese praise inscription.63

These portraits of Hitomaro, while descended themselves—at least initially—from Chinese precedents, can be seen as ancestors of the genre of kasen-e, which were often executed in sets of thirty-six corresponding to Kintō’s Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals (from his Sanjūrokuninsen), of which Hitomaro was one. Indeed, the oldest extant Hitomaro portrait is that included in the thirteenth-century Satakebon sanjūrokkasen (Satake Text of Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals), a scroll with

60 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 92.61 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 92.62 Kitahara, “ ‘Ume no hana no Hitomaro ei’ ”, 199.63 Kitahara, “ ‘Ume no hana no Hitomaro ei’ ”, 207–208.

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portraits, poems, and information on the so-called Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals arranged—like the Sanjūrokuninsen—in the form of a poetry contest.64 The Satakebon Hitomaro is clad in similar garb to that described in the Jikkinshō account, and holds a brush and paper; this may be the closest extant portrait to that used in the fi rst Hitomaro eigu in 1118.65

Chinese Models of Poetic Practice

As is clear from the preceding sections, a number of elements of the worship of Hitomaro, from the form of the eigu ceremony to the iconography of his portraits, are based on or adapted from Chinese precedents. The ceremony by which Hitomaro was worshipped was based largely on a Chinese model, the sekiten/shidian, and the literary form through which his praises were extolled at the eigu was also Chinese in origin and language. At fi rst glance, the use of Chinese ritualistic and literary apparatus to celebrate Hitomaro as Japanese poetry’s greatest exponent may seem counterintuitive; however, it is an entirely logical development when one considers that the practice of Japanese poetry as a genre suitable for composition or recitation in a formal or offi cial context was patterned to a large extent on Chinese models in an attempt to accrue some of the prestige given writings in Chinese (kanshibun).66 Waka-related phenomena that came about in emulation of Chinese-language equivalents include anthologies compiled by imperial command, and kakai, Japanese poetry meetings.

Poems in Chinese were an element of the ceremonies established under the ritsuryō system, and as such their composition was part of a public offi cial’s duty.67 The mastery of both political and literary skills was the mark of the ideal government offi cial. Although overshadowed by poems in Chinese in the early Heian Period, waka made their way back into the public sphere during the reign of Emperor Murakami (946–967) as a secondary form of poetry (behind kanshi) at formal banquets. Subsequently it was only natural that waka meetings should

64 Graybill, 34.65 Kitahara, “ ‘Ume no hana no Hitomaro ei’ ”, 209.66 Takigawa Kōji, “Gishiki to waka: kōen shikai to no kakawari ni oite,” Chūko

bungaku 59 (5/1997): 1.67 Takigawa, 1.


incorporate elements of kanshi meetings to legitimize Japanese poetry as a genre equally worthy of attention. This incorporation of kanshi-meeting features is evident in the earliest extant record of a court poetry meeting, that of the Tōka no en kakai (Wisteria-blossom poetry meeting) of 949.68 As Japanese poetry grew in prestige the adherence of kakai protocol to that of kanshi meetings grew somewhat less rigorous, but the concept and basic outline of the kakai was still indebted to its kanshi predecessor. Thus it can be seen that the poetry meeting which was held as part of the Hitomaro eigu, while not dealing directly with Hitomaro or his poems, was still part of this larger pattern of Japanese adaptations for waka of prestigious Chinese literary precedents and in that respect quite in accord with other elements of the day’s proceedings.

Insei-period Poetry Circles and the Establishment of the Rokujō House

Hitomaro eigu represented a signifi cant milestone in the process of Hitomaro’s deifi cation in that it identifi ed him not merely as a semi-divine fi gure but as one fulfi lling an important ancestral role. The Confucian and Buddhist rituals on which the Hitomaro eigu was based were concerned specifi cally with the ancestral fi gure of a school or discipline, and in honoring Hitomaro with the eigu ceremony Akisue seems to have been seeking to establish him as the ancestral deity of the Rokujō school.69 It seems likely that in establishing some measure of poetic authority, the Rokujō house hoped to improve their standing at court in political terms also. The late eleventh century was a period of considerable political upheaval, refl ected in the establishment of the insei ( government by Retired Emperors) system in 1086 as the power of the Fujiwara regency faded. It was also the time when competing poetic houses began to emerge.

The poetry circles (kadan) of the insei period occupy a pivotal posi-tion at the turning point between archaic (kodai ) and medieval (chūsei) poetry, as Japanese poetry moved from being a form of entertainment

68 The record of the Tōka no en wakakai procedure appears in the Seikyūki of Minamoto no Takaakira (914–982) (Takigawa, 2).

69 Susan Blakeley Klein, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan, 86.

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to a more seriously contested literary form.70 While waka in the ear-lier part of the Heian period had largely been relegated to the role of elegant entertainment for imperial consorts, the poetry circles of the insei period were formed by young, capable, politically mobile courtiers.71 From the early twelfth century onward, poetic production at court revolved around two main poetry circles, each affi liated with one of the major political power blocs: the circle centred on Fujiwara no Tadamichi, who served as both regent (sesshō kanpaku) and prime minister (daijō daijin), and the one surrounding Fujiwara (Rokujō) Akisue, who was one of Shirakawa’s closest retainers and a great source of economic support for the Retired Emperor. He was also the son of Shirakawa’s wet nurse.72 The medieval nature of these poetry circles can be seen in their relative exclusivity, there being little interchange of members between the two apart from recognized poets like Shunrai and Mototoshi. Both the exclusivity of these poetry circles and the respect accorded the poetic talents of Shunrai and Mototoshi that allowed them to transcend the division between the two circles are indicative of the fundamental changes taking place in the conception of court poetry at that time.73

These epochal changes in the nature of waka praxis are refl ected in the imperial anthologies compiled around this time: the Goshūishū of 1096, while showing to some extent a break from the three preced-ing imperial anthologies (the sandaishū) in poetic terms, is politically signifi cant as the fi rst imperial anthology of the insei period, and can be read as a celebration and affi rmation of the recovery of sovereignty by the imperial line, in the person of Retired Emperor Shirakawa.74 The next imperially commissioned anthology was Shunrai’s Kin’yōshū (Collection of Golden Leaves) of 1127, and it is in the compilation processes for these two collections that we see the beginning of the imperial anthology’s role as contested ground between rival poetic

70 Hashimoto Fumio, “Inseiki no kadan,” in his Ōchō waka: shiryō to ronkō, Kasama sōsho 253, Kasama shoin, 1992, 245.

71 Hashimoto, “Inseiki no kadan,” 249.72 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 96.73 Huey defi nes the two salient features of the medievalization of poetic practice

as 1) the movement of waka to an art form, in which context creative differences may be debated, and 2) the move toward exclusivity, in the form of waka schools, and the growing strength of waka-school-based bonds compared to those from other social settings (Huey, “The Medievalization of Poetic Practice,” 651–652).

74 Nishiki, p. 94.


factions. The Goshūishū was commissioned by Shirakawa (who was still emperor at the time) in 1075, and the poet to whom the signal honor of compilation was given was Fujiwara no Michitoshi (1047–1099). The senior poet in court circles at the time was Minamoto no Tsunenobu (1016–1097, Shunrai’s father), who was close to the rival regency fac-tion rather than to Shirakawa.75 Tsunenobu’s compilation of a pointed critique of the Goshūishū, the Nan Goshūishū of 1086, is evidence of both the bitterness of the poetic and political rivalry between the two factions and the emergence of Japanese poetry as a literary arena in which such critical debate could take place.

As noted earlier, the rise of Japanese poetry as a professional literary form involved the emulation in a waka context of kanshi events such as poetry meetings. However, as Japanese poetry moved into the territory previously occupied exclusively by poetry in Chinese, it took over more than the outward trappings of formal poetic praxis; it came to be seen as taking on some of the qualities of kanshi. One such quality, which was uppermost in the minds of Shirakawa and his circle, was the potential usefulness of poetry as a political tool or aid to government. This Confu-cian idea of politicized poetry was not new to waka discourse, appearing in the Kokinshū Mana Preface,76 but was able to be explored in practice only when the prestige of waka had risen suffi ciently for it to be used in offi cial contexts previously the preserve of kanshi. It has been argued that Shirakawa’s enthusiasm for waka, as evident in his commissioning of the Goshūishū, refl ects a belief that waka was emblematic of ideal government.77 Likewise, it can be suggested that the combination of skill in kanshi and in political affairs, another Confucian ideal, was being supplanted by that of skill in waka and political affairs. This too was visible back in the Kokinshū, in Tsurayuki’s comments on Hitomaro as being “in perfect union” with his sovereign, (and, as noted earlier, the combination of poetic and political talents ascribed to Hitomaro was instrumental in determining his selection by the Rokujō poets for their eigu).78 Thus one could argue that this emergence of Japanese poetry into the public arena was a necessary precondition for Hitomaro eigu, that it was only once the political potential of waka was starting to be realized that a poetic and political ceremony for a Japanese poet (who composed

75 Huey, 653.76 Kitahara, “Hitomaro eigu to inseiki kadan,” 31.77 Hashimoto, “Inseiki no kadan,” 225.78 Kitahara, “Hitomaro eigu to inseiki kadan”, 35.

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in Japanese) could be held. However, as host of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, Akisue was doing more than just holding up Hitomaro as an example of this ideal combination; he was presenting himself in a similar light, as one skilled in poetry and close to his lord (Shirakawa). This is sug-gested by the preface to the poetry meeting at the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, also included in the Eigu ki, which consists of a headnote and poem in Chinese largely devoted to praising the host, Akisue:

On a summer’s day at the waterside tower of the Third-ranked Head of the Bureau of Palace Repairs, composed together on the topic of “the wind over the water at evening,” one poem with preface.[By] Head of the University Atsumitsu

Waka is the main custom79 of our land.Arising in feelings, it takes form in words;It is written on each thing, and recited on each thing,And is truly the origin of allegory;80

Long may it depict the beautiful relationship of lord and ministers.

Thus, whenever the Head of the Bureau of Palace Repairs Has time to spare from his imperial duties,He settles the dew of his words on the six styles [of waka].What matches his perceptive mindIs the splendid interest of the fl owers and birds and grasses and insects;Those who responded to his invitationAre fi ne men with perfumed robes and good horses.Today’s meeting [is a result of ] the convergence of these circumstances.81

At present,The garden stream is cold, although it is summer;The cool breeze comes with the evening.How cool it seems as the reed leaves sway;The shoreline haze gradually darkens.The cedar twigs rustle as they move;The moonlight on the sand begins to brighten.Our feelings greatly inspired, we compose a few poems.Those words are:[Head of the University Atsumitsu]

79 Fūzoku, a common description for waka in poetic works of the time.80 Fūyū, allegory, referring in a poetic context particularly to the Chinese use of shi

for remonstrating with one’s lord through an allegorical or metaphorical poem.81 The “circumstances” are the combination of Akisue’s poetic interests/accom-

plishments and the attendance of his splendid guests.


References to waka as “the origin of allegory” and as a medium for depicting “the beautiful relationship of lord and ministers” make it clear that the Hitomaro eigu was held with both political and poetic goals in mind, in an environment where the two could be combined in connection with Japanese rather than Chinese poetry. It may be noted that the Tang sekiten, on which Hitomaro eigu was largely mod-eled, was, in its large, public form, more than just the celebration of a philosophical school: it was a ritual integration of the two main ele-ments of the state, namely the imperial household and the academy. In its inclusion of the crown prince and various academic offi cials, the sekiten can be “interpreted to symbolize the normative structure of the Chinese imperial bureaucratic state and the partnership between the Confucian tradition and imperial power.”82 The Hitomaro eigu was on a much smaller scale, but it retained a political dimension as a means to promote the political aspirations of members of the Rokujō house.

However, Akisue’s main purpose in appropriating Hitomaro for his ceremony of worship is generally thought to be the establishment of the Rokujō house as a poetic school—the fi rst such poetic house to be incorporated—with Akisue as its head and Hitomaro as its poetic ancestor. Under these conditions the portrait of Hitomaro took on great signifi cance as a symbol of the Way of waka, and its transmission from generation to generation became a defi ning feature of the Rokujō house.83 The signifi cance of the portrait and the symbolic value of its ownership is evident from the attention paid to the process of its trans-mission in the Kokon chomonjū setsuwa quoted earlier. Akisue’s portrait of Hitomaro gets retroactively endowed with even more authority in Kokon chomonjū V:204 when its predecessor, the portrait commissioned by Kanefusa himself, is destroyed by fi re, making Akisue’s copy the oldest extant Hitomaro portrait and thus the new “original.”

Doubts have been raised, however, as to whether the interpretation of the Hitomaro eigu as the founding event of the Rokujō house is accurate. Sasaki Takahiro has pointed out that although many of the attendees at the fi rst Hitomaro eigu were Rokujō family members, they often tended to participate in poetry meetings together and their atten-dance as a group was therefore nothing unusual. Likewise, Shunrai was

82 McMullen, 48.83 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 94.

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a regular participant at Akisue’s poetry meetings, so his presence too was unexceptional.84 Possibly the most telling aspect of the argument against the Hitomaro eigu as an exercise in school-founding, however, is the fact that there is no record that Akisue ever held Hitomaro eigu again,85 which seems a strange omission if it truly was the event through which his house was defi ned as a discrete artistic entity. This is of course not to say that the Rokujō house did not exist as such an entity, or that later members did not take an interest in its incorporation (or in the Hitomaro eigu). Rather, it may be the case that the signifi cance of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu was only recognized after the fact and prestige added to it retroactively.86 The fact that it did come to be highly regarded is evident from the Jikkinshō setsuwa (IV:2), in which Hitomaro eigu is said to have been “held in this way for many years without fail,” and the “glory” of the Hitomaro portrait is enhanced through its defense by Shirakawa.

In fact, it seems possible that a lack of recognition of the value for posterity of the Hitomaro eigu at the time of its fi rst enactment may have contributed to its rapid dissemination to other poetic groups at court. While there is no record of Akisue ever holding a repeat performance of Hitomaro eigu, other instances of Hitomaro eigu at court in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries are well documented. If Hitomaro eigu had been recognized at the time as a defi nitive founding event for the Rokujō house, it seems quite likely that it would have been kept secret to enhance its value as specialized, in-house knowledge. This was the approach taken by later poets to the proprietary waka commentar-ies of the kokin denju, which feature numerous injunctions to the reader not to disclose what they have learned therein. The cultural capital represented by a medieval poetic house’s stock of poetic tradition and lore derived much of its value from the very fact of its exclusivity, and its secrets were jealously guarded. The practice of Hitomaro eigu, by contrast, seems to have spread with surprising speed to poetic bodies other than the Rokujō house.

Another possible contributing factor to the spread of the Hitomaro eigu is the loss of strength of the Rokujō house. Although it was the fi rst poetic house to be founded, the Rokujō house ultimately lost out to the

84 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 95.85 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 96.86 Sasaki, “Rokujō Akisue tei shodo Hitomaro eigu kakai kō,” 96.


Mikohidari house of Fujiwara Shunzei and Teika in the quest for poetic and political superiority. The waning of Rokujō power and infl uence is evident in the subsequent evolution of the Hitomaro eigu, which came to celebrate Hitomaro as an ancestral fi gure of the Way of Japanese poetry as a whole rather than as an ancestor of one house exclusively. Although members of the Rokujō house continued to hold Hitomaro eigu sporadically (for instance, Kiyosuke in 1177, as noted earlier) and held, for a time, a important asset in the form of the Hitomaro portrait used in the original eigu, they were unable to retain exclusive possession and control of their most signifi cant innovation, namely the concept and performance of the Hitomaro eigu ritual itself.

As we speculate as to the reasons why the Rokujō house did not maintain control over the Hitomaro eigu, we must also examine this issue from the other side. Specifi cally, the question arises as to why such a ritual would have appealed to other poets. Clues to this lie in the fact that Japanese poetry itself was evolving as a discipline and coming to be conceptualized as a Way of practice (michi). This new view of waka necessitated the retroactive construction of a past—in the form of his-tory, traditions and ancestors—to which current practitioners could look for some kind of legitimizing authority. The seminal text for all waka poets (and their emerging schools) was the Kokinshū, the Kana Preface of which outlined the history of waka from its divine origins onward, and identifi ed representative poets from that history, most prominently Hitomaro. The Kana Preface took on new signifi cance for poets in the late Heian period as the culture of waka was transformed into a Way and a literary fi eld started to emerge. In this increasingly competitive literary environment, poetic production soared, and “[p]oets themselves came to speak of ‘the way of poetry’ (uta no michi) as the steering course of their artistic lives.”87

In other words, the same broad developments that prompted Akisue to promote Hitomaro as an ancestor of his own school proved equally compelling to other, non-Rokujō, poets seeking an ancestral fi gure to legitimize their own poetic activities. Within the changing tone of poetic discourse in the twelfth century, worship of a poetic ancestor was a concept that proved itself applicable to a wider range of contexts than

87 See Ivo Smits, “Places of Meditation: Poets and Salons in Medieval Japan.” In Reading East Asian Writing: The Limits of Literary Theory, ed. Michel Hockx and Ivo Smits (London: Routledge, 2003), 209.

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simply that of a particular poetic house. This was true whether the ancestral fi gure in question was Hitomaro (whose appearance in the seminal Kokinshū made him a suitable ancestor for all poets, not only the Rokujōs) or another fi gure more specifi c to a particular family or school (such as the Reizei house’s later kōmon eigu, venerating Teika). The Hitomaro eigu was, in short, an idea whose time had come.

The main form in which elements of the Hitomaro eigu spread beyond the Rokujō school to other poetic groups was that of the eigu utaawase (poetry contest with portrait-offerings), in which the Hitomaro eigu ceremony (in its original or a truncated form) was performed as a prelude to a poetry contest. The term eigu utaawase is one that suggests a greater emphasis on the practice and composition of the poems themselves than the worship of Hitomaro, and in its inclusion of these two elements—competitive poetic composition and a supernatural poetic ancestor—it encapsulates at once both the practical and writerly nature of poetic praxis at the time and the increasing religiosity of poetry as a discipline. The eigu utaawase fl ourished between 1199 and 1203, when it was held seventeen times.88 Minamoto no Michichika (1149–1202), a powerful political backer of the Rokujō house, took up the practice of eigu utaawase and by 1200 was holding them monthly at his mansion, where they were attended by prominent non-Rokujō poets such as Teika.89 The account in Teika’s diary Meigetsuki (Record of the Bright Moon) of the eigu utaawase held on the 26th day of the Twelfth Month of Shōji 2 (1200) indicates that it was a monthly event with regular attendees, including the now-elderly Shunzei and Retired Emperor GoToba. A Hitomaro portrait was hung amid blinds (sudare), libations were offered to it, and the utaawase was held. The ritual pro-ceedings were somewhat abbreviated compared to Akisue’s Hitomaro eigu90 In 1201 these eigu utaawase began to be held under the patronage of GoToba rather than Michichika, and soon became a regular event at the recently-revived Wakadokoro, the offi ce responsible for the com-pilation of imperially commissioned waka anthologies. The reasons for GoToba’s interest in eigu utaawase become clear when we consider that

88 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 105. For a listing of Kamakura-period Hitomaro eigu, see Sasaki Takahiro, “Hitomaro eigu nenpu kō: Kamakura jidai hen,” Mita bungaku 12 (12/1989): 15–24.

89 Robert N. Huey, The Making of Shinkokinshū. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002: 83.

90 Yamada, “Hitomaro eigu no seiritsu to tenkai,” 106.


the commission for compilation of the Shinkokinshū was issued later in 1201; poetry contests such as eigu utaawase played an extremely impor-tant role as productive sites for the outstanding poetry GoToba sought for inclusion in his imperial anthology. In the wake of these public, high-profi le eigu utaawase Hitomaro’s status as a poetic ancestor was signifi cantly raised, and the hanging of his portrait became a defi ning feature of medieval and early modern utaawase.91

Some later variations of the Hitomaro eigu involved more overtly Buddhist elements, in keeping with the pervasive infl uence of Buddhist philosophy on so many aspects of medieval thought.92 This trend is refl ected in the fact that the Hitomaro eigu held at the monthly meet-ings of the Karin’en, the poetic salon hosted by Shunrai’s son Shun’e (b.1113), was noticeably more Buddhist in tone than the original. This was a development that foreshadowed the increasing interaction between Buddhism and the Hitomaro eigu in the medieval period, an interaction that would produce texts such as the late-twelfth-century Kakinomoto kōshiki (Praise service for Kakinomoto).

The Hitomaro eigu at the Karin’en in 1166 is the next recorded instance of Hitomaro worship following the fi rst Hitomaro eigu in 1118. As the son of Shunrai, guest of honor at the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, one could suppose that Shun’e may have had some sort of familial interest in continuing Hitomaro eigu. The conditions at the Karin’en and the form of the ceremony, however, were signifi cantly different from those at Akisue’s Hitomaro eigu. The Karin’en was a salon of lower-ranked aristocracy, whose prominent members included Fujiwara Norinaga and Minamoto no Toshimasa. Its monthly meetings (with Hitomaro eigu) provided a forum in which poets from a variety of backgrounds and affi liations could interact.93 The Karin’en appears to have had its own Hitomaro portrait and to have been quite independent in holding its Hitomaro eigu. Just how different the tone of the Hitomaro worship here was from the original Hitomaro eigu can be seen in the Wakaman-dokoro ipponkyō kuyō hyōbyaku (Offi ce of Poetic Affairs Offering with Sutra Chapters Invocation) of 1166, one of the few texts giving details of the Karin’en Hitomaro eigu. This text is from an Offering with Sutra Chapters (ipponkyō kuyō) service held before a portrait of Hitomaro in the

91 Sasaki Takahiro, “Kakai ni Hitomaro ei o kakeru koto”, Bungaku 6:4 (7–8/2005): 158.

92 Katano, 177.93 Sasaki Takahiro, “Karin’en no Hitomaro eigu (1),” Ginnan chōka 3 (12/1989): 4.

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Seventh Month of 1166 with over thirty poets in attendance. Excerpts are translated below:94

Now, what reason can there be for this meeting of this group of so many excellent fellows? They are not brothers, joined like branches or like fl esh and bone, and they are not fellow practitioners of austerities in the mountains and forests. It is through poetry that this has come to pass, as in the forest of words they meet, making their wills as one.

This ceremony is largely devoted to making the offi cial Kakinomoto the supremely revered fi gure of this Way. Thus we draw a true portrait of him, and every month worship him with offerings. Sometimes we gather in this place, and each speaks of our intent. Men and women let fl y their poetic compositions, priestly and profane alike murmuring [poems] to themselves. This we call the Offi ce of Poetic Affairs, and with good reason.

[. . .]Here, one of those gathered debated, saying, “We are all equal in [our

devotion to] this Way. Is this just the banquet we see before our eyes? Regarding the distant past, we should pray for the release from suffer-ing and attainment of enlightenment of our ancestors; as for ourselves, we should await good karma in a future existence. The human world is not eternal; the world to come is fearsome indeed. Why would we vainly expend our feelings on the Way of Akahito and Hitomaro, and completely estrange our aspirations from the abandonment of illusion and attainment of enlightenment?

[. . .]What we wish is that: fi rstly Kakinomoto no Hitomaro and Yamabe

no Akahito be allowed to pluck the fl owers of the Buddha tree and be allowed to scale the peak of the mountain of awakening; next, that Soto-orihime95 and Ono no Komachi be able to step on the dust of the wife of pure virtue96 and be able to inherit the correct enlightenment of the Nāga King’s daughter;97 next, that the Kazan Archbishop98 and Kisen of

94 The text of the Wakamandokoro ipponkyō hyōbyaku appears in Chōken sakumonshū in Akiyama Ken ed., Chūsei bungaku no kenkyū (Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1972).

95 Sotoorihime’s name refers to a beauty so great that it shone out through her clothing. Mentioned in the Nihon shoki as the younger sister of the consort of Ingyō (traditionally thought to have reigned 412–453), she is famously compared to the ninth-century poet Ono no Komachi in Tsurayuki’s Kokinshū Kana Preface and counted as one of the three deities of waka.

96 The wife of the king Fine Adornment (Subhavyūha), who guides her husband into the Way of the Buddha in volume eight of the Lotus sutra (Leon Hurvitz tr., Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma, New York: Columbia University Press, 1976, 325).

97 J. Ryūnyo, the daughter of the Nāga King Sāgara (Shakara-ryūō), whose attainment of enlightenment at the age of eight is described in volume fi ve of the Lotus sutra.

98 Sōjō [Archbishop] Henjō (816–890), like Komachi one of Tsurayuki’s Six Poetic Immortals, as is Kisen.


the Uji mountains be allowed to stand on equal terms with the virtue of Sāriputra the wise and Maudgalyayana the supernaturally-endowed.99

The Karin’en Hitomaro eigu represents an early and important stage in the spread of both Hitomaro eigu and Hitomaro portraiture. It marks the independence of the ritual from the Rokujō house and can be seen as a forerunner both of eigu utaawase and the increasing interaction of Buddhism and Hitomaro eigu in the medieval period.100 Its text (as excerpted above) also includes explicit acknowledgement of the human-ity of Hitomaro the poetic sage in its prayers for his enlightenment: while clearly superior to other poets in both poetic and political terms, he is still human and not yet a poetic deity as such. Similar sentiments can be found in the Kakinomoto kōshiki.101

The development of the Kakinomoto kōshiki can be seen as another instance of the larger trend of the appropriation by waka of Buddhist paradigms. This was combined with the precedent for Hitomaro worship set by the Hitomaro eigu, although the kōshiki was not an epochal event in the course of Hitomaro’s deifi cation in the way that the eigu had been. Originally instructions for the procedure of a sermon expounding a sutra, kōshiki developed into services devoted to the praise of a particu-lar deity (a buddha, bodhisattva, deva, or kami ) or ancestral fi gure. In particular, kōshiki “seek to generate a karmic link (kechien) between the ritual participants and the object of devotion.”102 An object of worship (honzon), often a portrait of the fi gure to whom the kōshiki was devoted, would be set up, and the kōshiki text recited aloud to it. Kōshiki consist of prose passages in kanbun—often three or fi ve sections—praising the object of worship, interspersed with gāthā ( ge), Buddhist hymns. The earliest example is Genshin’s (942–1017) Nijūgo zanmai shiki (Reading on the Twenty-fi ve Samādhi) of 986, but most extant examples date from the late Heian and early Kamakura periods.103

The assimilation of Buddhist elements into waka praxis provided an environment for poetry-related kōshiki to develop: there are two waka kōshiki, the earlier one, in one section, dating from 1287 and the later

99 Sāriputra ( J. Sharihotsu) and Maudgalyayana ( J. Mokuren) were two of the Buddha’s ten great disciples.

100 Sasaki Takahiro, “Karin’en no Hitomaro eigu (3),” Ginnan chōka 5 (12/1990): 5.101 Sasaki Takahiro, “Kakai ni Hitomaro ei o kakeru koto”, 149–150.102 James L. Ford, “Competing With Amida: A Study and Translation of Jōkei’s

Miroku kōshiki,” Monumenta Nipponica 60:1 (Spring 2005): 43.103 Ford, 44.

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one, in fi ve sections, from 1305.104 A precedent for Hitomaro’s worship had already been set with the Hitomaro eigu, so the composition of the Kakinomoto kōshiki can be seen as a natural development, a product of the confl uence of the existing tradition of Hitomaro worship and the adaptation of the kōshiki form to waka discourse. There are several texts of the Kakinomoto kōshiki, including one appearing in Gunsho ruijū and one (traditionally attributed to Shun’e) in the Gesshōji jiden (Origins of Gesshōji temple).105 The Gesshōji text starts with three poems associated with Hitomaro and then consists of three main sections: a section in praise of waka, one in praise of Hitomaro, and one describing original thoughts. Each section is followed by three waka and a prayer for the rebirth of all poetic ancestors in the Pure Land paradise.

Acknowledgement of Hitomaro’s humanity (also apparent in the memorial-like nature of the Hitomaro eigu) forms a continuing strand of his canonization as a divine poetic fi gure. Hitomaro is still widely referred to as a poetic sage (kasei ) even after some texts start describing him as a deity (kami ) of waka (and even after shrines dedicated to him are established).106 Thus the boundary between the essentially human kasei and the explicitly divine kami remains indistinct. This blurring of categories is facilitated by a philosophy such as honji-suijaku, in which a single entity may simultaneously exist in multiple forms (for instance, as both a kami and a bodhisattva).

Eigu for Other Poets

As we have seen, the veneration of Hitomaro as a poetic ancestor spread beyond the Rokujō house to other poetic groups, and took on slightly different forms. A particularly signifi cant development in this process was the adaptation of the Hitomaro eigu ceremony itself as a means for the veneration of other poetic fi gures. The evolution of eigu ceremonies for other poets is still another facet of the reception of Hitomaro (or, more precisely, the reception of Hitomaro eigu). The

104 Yamada Shōzen, “ ‘Waka kōshiki’ nidai,” Taishō daigaku kenkyū kiyō 55 (3/1970): 2, 8.

105 “Kakinomoto kōshiki (den Shun’e hōshi saku),” in Mase Sekizen ed., Gesshōji jiden, Akashi: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro hōsankai, 1972, 89–127 (text 89–101; notes 102–127).

106 See, for instance, Ueda Akinari’s Kaseiden (Biography of the poetic sage, 1785).


earliest known such example is that of Shunrai, for whom GoToba held eigu ceremonies while in exile in the Oki islands; the earliest example of this Shunrai eigu seems to be from 1236.107 The latter half of the thirteenth century saw the development of eigu ceremonies for GoToba himself, held mostly annually during the Bun’ei era (1264–1275) and generally on GoToba’s death anniversary, and attended by members of his family. These eigu seem to have involved portraits of GoToba with what was regarded as his representative waka inscribed at the top. The religious topics on which some of the poems were composed hint at the function of the event as a memorial service (tsuizen) for the recently dead. But infl uence could fl ow in the other direction also: as noted earlier, Hitomaro eigu was not originally held on Hitomaro’s death anniversary, but in the Edo period it came to be sometimes held on his supposed death-day (the eighteenth day of the Third Month), partly as a result of the infl uence of the GoToba eigu.108

Another instance of eigu for a poet other than Hitomaro seems to be a poetry-inspired one (i.e., involving no familial relationships such as those seen in the GoToba eigu above) held by Retired Emperor Juntoku for Teika in 1242, the year after Teika’s death.109 Family-based worship of Teika would subsequently be developed into the kōmon eigu ceremony by his descendants.110 The ceremony is so named on the basis of Teika’s court post of chūnagon, Middle Councillor, the Chinese name for which is kōmon. Eigu for poets other than Hitomaro was also held by Fujiwara no Akisue’s descendants: Fujiwara no Arifusa (1251–1319), an eighth-generation descendant of Akisue, held eigu for his grand-father, Koga no Michiteru (1187–1248) in 1305.111 Arifusa’s cousin Lady Nijō (the author of Towazugatari) held Hitomaro eigu the same

107 Sasaki Takahiro, “GoToba-in Ietaka ‘Shunrai eigu’ shōkō (1),” Ginnan chōka 9 (12/1992): 5–6.

108 Sasaki Takahiro, “Tsuizen kakai toshite no eigu: GoToba-in eigu ni tsuite no ikkōsatsu,” Nihon bungaku 43:7 (7/94): 27.

109 Katano, 178.110 See Reizei Fumiko, “Uta no ie ni umarete ‘kōmon eigu,’ ” Taiyō 35:12 (1997):

121–125. For a photograph of arrangements for a contemporary kōmon eigu in the Reizei house, see Reizeike shigure-tei bunko and NHK ed. Kyō no miyabi, waka no kokoro: Reizeike no shihōten (NHK Promotion, 1997), 156.

111 Sasaki Takahiro, “Towazugatari no Hitomaro eigu”, Kokugo to kokubungaku 70:7 (1993/7): 21.

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year, an act which may be taken as an illustration of her awareness of her personal poetic heritage.112

It seems likely that the original Hitomaro eigu, based quite closely on the sekiten and held in the context of a Rokujō family gathering, was intended to defi ne Hitomaro as a poetic ancestor of the Rokujō school, but this would have been a subtly different objective from those of later Hitomaro eigu (such as the Karin’en Hitomaro eigu) or eigu utaa-wase, in which the concern seems to have been less with Hitomaro as the ancestor of a particular school of waka and more with Hitomaro as an ancestral fi gure for the Way of Japanese poetry in general. The original signifi cance of the Hitomaro eigu as a ritual specifi cally for the founder of a school was thus reduced, and became diluted even further with the advent of eigu for other, more recent poets. The role of eigu in those cases seemed to be more to honor great earlier poets, without there necessarily being issues of ancestry involved. The eigu to Shunrai and GoToba (and possibly Teika) are also striking because they took as their subject poets who had been active extremely recently (particu-larly in comparison to Hitomaro), and about whom much was known. Hitomaro eigu, on the other hand, co-opted a fi gure largely hidden by the mists of time, who hailed from the distant past even as far as the Kokinshū compilers were concerned and presumably even more so by the time of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu in the early twelfth century.

Through the performance of Hitomaro eigu in sites such as the Karin’en and the holding of eigu utaawase, Hitomaro had been re-positioned as the ancestral fi gure of the Way of Japanese poetry as a whole rather than of the Rokujō school exclusively. There seem to have been parallel developments in other literary and artistic Ways (michi). A postscript to the Kokon chomonjū describes the banquet held in the Tenth Month of 1254 to celebrate that text’s completion, at which portraits of Bo Juyi, Hitomaro and Lian Cheng Wu ( J. Renshōbu) were hung, as representative fi gures of the three Ways of Chinese poetry, Japanese poetry, and music.113 That this postdates the fi rst Hitomaro eigu from 1118 may suggest that the transfer of ritual elements from a philosophical or religious context into a literary one took place fi rst with Hitomaro, and then spread from waka to other literary or artistic

112 Sasaki, “Towazugatari no Hitomaro eigu”, 19; see Karen Brazell tr., The Confessions of Lady Nijō (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), 251–252.

113 Katano, 158–9.


Ways in Japan. In other words, inasmuch as waka in particular came to be viewed as a not merely literary but also a religious vocation, it was waka that provided the point of entry for non-literary rites into a literary environment; once assimilated into that environment, these extratextual elements of waka praxis could be more easily appropriated by practitioners in other artistic or literary genres.

The Hitomaro eigu was an event of pivotal importance in the process of Hitomaro’s canonization. Its signifi cance in setting a precedent for making Hitomaro an object of worship is clearly apparent in both its appropriation for the worship of other literary fi gures and its elevation of Hitomaro to the status of poetic ancestor of the Way of Japanese poetry. This elevation of Hitomaro was a critical precursor to the rev-elations of his divine nature which would take place in poetic discourse in the medieval period.

CHAPTER FOUR

MEDIEVAL RECEPTION: POETIC DEITIES IN THE SECRET COMMENTARIES

The most signifi cant development in Hitomaro’s reception during the medieval period was his canonization as a deity of Japanese poetry, a waka no kami. Although the eigu ceremony cemented Hitomaro’s posi-tion as a poetic fi gurehead, a symbol of the glorious past of Japanese poetry, he was worshipped in the eigu as a kasei, a poetic sage, possessing a heaven-sent gift, perhaps, but still mortal. In a number of medieval texts, however, Hitomaro is presented as a supernatural being, no longer a mere mortal but a divinity in his own right. This chapter will examine Hitomaro’s canonization as a deity of Japanese poetry, particularly as it occurred in medieval commentaries on the Kokinshū.

Broadly speaking, Hitomaro’s deifi cation in the commentaries (like his worship in the eigu ceremony) is situated at the intersection of two large socio-historical trends. The fi rst is the rise in prestige of waka as a genre and the changes this brought to its practice. As noted in the previous chapter, the development of waka as a professional literary exercise and the formation of competing poetic houses are characteristic of waka praxis in the medieval period, and these are the driving forces behind the establishment of the Hitomaro eigu and the kokin denju, the practice of the transmission of secret teachings on the Kokinshū. The second broad trend is that waka discourse in the medieval period took on an increasingly religious tone, as elements of Buddhist thought and practice were absorbed by waka. This appropriation by waka of paradigms of Buddhist discourse, the dominant and authoritative discourse of the age, can be seen as part of waka’s quest for legitimacy: just as Heian-period waka consolidated its position by assimilating elements of the practice of poetry in Chinese (including poetry meetings and imperially com-missioned poetry anthologies), so medieval waka turned to Buddhism to increase its prestige. Within these sweeping trends, developments such as the twelfth-century recanonization of the Kokinshū, the spread of the doctrine of honji-suijaku, and the development of waka-dhāranī theory, according to which Japanese poems were equated with Buddhist invocations, also played decisive roles in Hitomaro’s canonization.

128 chapter four

Hitomaro’s Grave

Visits by later poets to Hitomaro’s grave form a recurrent motif in Hitomaro-related narratives, and one through which his canonization as a deity can be traced. In fact, a grave visit fi gures in the earliest text in which Hitomaro is identifi ed as a deity, the headnote to the follow-ing poem by the poet-priest Jakuren.1 Jakuren was Shunzei’s nephew and was selected as a compiler of the Shinkokinshū, but died in 1202, before the compilation was completed. This grave visit is thought to have taken place in the period 1173–1180.2

On visiting Hitomaro’s grave and paying homage to the Kakinomoto no myōjin

furuki ato o Had I not soughtkoke no shita made the ancient tracestazunezu wa even beneath the moss,nokoreru kaki no would I have seen the remainingmoto o mimashiya base of the persimmon tree?3

A slightly different text of this poem appears in the imperial anthol-ogy Gyokuyōshū (Collection of Jeweled Leaves) of 1312, but the poem is also included in the smaller of the two extant versions of Jakuren’s personal poetry collection. Hitomaro is referred to in the headnote as the Kakinomoto no myōjin, the Bright Deity Kakinomoto. The term myōjin, although of Chinese origin, is used in Japan as a respect term for kami, deity. The fact that Hitomaro is thus identifi ed less than a century after he was worshipped in the fi rst Hitomaro eigu (1118) underscores the pivotal role of the eigu ceremony as a catalyst for the process of his deifi cation.

We may also note that the poem was composed on the occasion of a visit to Hitomaro’s grave. There are a number of references to Hito-maro’s grave as a site sought out and visited by poets from the twelfth century onward; indeed, the Jakuren poem quoted above appears in the Gyokuyōshū directly after a poem by Fujiwara no Kiyosuke composed on his own visit to Hitomaro’s grave. Kiyosuke was the grandson of

1 Aso Mizue. “Hitomaro shinkō: sono keisei to tenkai,” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 182 (9/1973): 23.

2 Sasaki Takahiro, “Hitomaro tenbo no dentō: Hitomaro shinkō no ittenkai,” Kokubungaku kenkyū shiryōkan kiyō 18 (3/1992): 6.

3 Number 77, “Jakuren I,” in Wakashi kenkyūkai ed., Shikashū taisei: chūsei I, Meiji shoin, 1974, 184.

medieval reception 129

Akisue, holder of the fi rst Hitomaro eigu, and the most detailed account of his visit to Hitomaro’s grave appears in the Kakinomoto no Ason Hito-maro kanmon (Investigative Report on Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, 1184) of Kenshō (c. 1130–c. 1210), Kiyosuke’s adopted brother and one of the most prolifi c of the Rokujō scholars.

Kiyosuke said, “When I went down to the province of Yamato, an old man of that province said, ‘There is a forest beside Isonokami Temple in Sōnokami district. It is called the Harumichi forest. In the middle of that forest there is a temple, called the Shihonji,4 and it is a temple [dedicated] to Hitomaro. In front of the temple there is a small mound in the fi elds. It is said to be Hitomaro’s grave, and is a holy place which always resounds.’ Hearing this, I went with worshipful intent to that place; in the Harumichi forest is a torii, and of the Shihonji only the founda-tion stones remain. Hitomaro’s grave was a small mound of about four shaku [c. 1.2m]. There were no trees, and pampas grass was growing. I then and there erected a stupa for the sake of later generations, and as the inscription wrote, ‘Grave of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro.’ On the reverse I wrote the name of a buddha and an important passage from a sutra. I also wrote my full name, and below that inscribed the poem:

yo o hete mo Though ages pass,aubekarikeru the promise madechigiri koso that we should meetkoke no shita ni mo has not decayedkuchisezarikere even beneath the moss.

After I returned home to the capital, all the people of that village had a dream in which three men in proper court dress came and worshipped this stupa and left. This dream was heard of faintly in the southern capital, and it [ became] known that this place was determined to be Hitomaro’s grave,” [he said].5

Kiyosuke does not refer to Hitomaro as a deity, but rather inscribes his full (human) name on the stupa. Nonetheless, Hitomaro’s supernatu-ral powers are evident in the fact that the gravemound “resounded,” and his divine authority is suggested by the visitors to his grave in the dream subsequently seen by the local population. There is something very conventional and setsuwa-like about the dream appearance itself, and about the way in which Kiyosuke recounts this development as

4 Also pronounced Kakinomotodera. The temple is no longer extant.5 Nihon kagaku taikei, supplementary volume 4 (Kazama shobō, 1958), 93.

130 chapter four

if from an omniscient perspective, as something that happened to the villagers at a time when he was no longer present.

A quite different account of visiting Hitomaro’s grave appears in a slightly later text, the Mumyōshō (Nameless Notes) of Kamo no Chōmei (c. 1155–1216):

Hitomaro’s grave is in the province of Yamato, on the road leading to Hatsuse. When I asked about Hitomaro’s grave, there was no-one who knew. They said that there was a poem-mound at that place.6

Here Hitomaro’s grave is unknown to the locals; those who revere him and seek out his fi nal resting place are the poets in the capital.7 In fact, Hitomaro’s assimilation into local belief structures for an assortment of non-poetic purposes is a feature of his later deifi cation, but at this stage he seems to be of interest only to the poets, and only as a poetic deity. Both these accounts were produced by members of poetic institutions noted for their admiration for Hitomaro: Kiyosuke and Kenshō of the Rokujō house, and Chōmei, a member of the Karin’en, at whose monthly meetings Hitomaro eigu came to be held regularly. Hitomaro grave visits were quite popular among Karin’en attendees, although they declined somewhat after the end of the Karin’en.8 Knowledge of Hitomaro’s gravesite in Yamato, however, was still being passed down even as the number of pilgrimages there by poets decreased, as seen in the diary Towazugatari, which records the visit of its author Nijō to Hitomaro’s grave in the autumn of 1304.9

A slightly later narrative involving Hitomaro’s grave, by which stage the process of his deifi cation and canonization as a symbol of the court-poetic tradition was more advanced, is that appearing in the fi fteenth-century setsuwa collection Sangoku denki (Biographies of Three Countries). This tale describes the poet-priest Saigyō (1118–1190) traveling in Harima Province (modern Hyōgo Prefecture) en route to Akashi. Saigyō spends the night in the hut of an old man, with whom he discusses poetry; in the morning the old man and the hut are gone, and all that remains at the site is Hitomaro’s gravemound. What sets this Hitomaro grave-visit account apart from those which preceded

6 Hisamatsu Sen’ichi and Nishio Minoru eds., Karonshū, nōgakuronshū, Nihon koten bungaku taikei 65 (Iwanami shoten, 1961), 53.

7 Aso, “Hitomaro shinkō,” 22.8 Sasaki Takahiro. “Towazugatari no Hitomaro eigu”, 15.9 Sasaki, “Towazugatari no Hitomaro eigu”, 15; see Brazell, 252.


it is the signifi cance attached by Saigyō and the narrator of the tale to Hitomaro’s appearance at the gravesite. While bound for Akashi, Saigyō declares that he seeks a meeting with Hitomaro to prove that the Way of Poetry, to which he had dedicated himself, was a Way by which salvation could be attained. After Hitomaro’s disappearance, the story concludes with an account of Saigyō’s death and achievement of rebirth in the Pure Land, by way of proof that, as Saigyō had declared, salvation was indeed possible through the Way of Poetry.10 Parts of the story dealing with Saigyō’s travels appear in Saigyō monogatari (The Tale of Saigyō, late Kamakura period), but not the section in which he encounters Hitomaro’s ghost.11 The Sangoku denki story formed the basis of two Edo-period nō plays about Hitomaro, which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. In the context of the present discussion, we may note that this gravemound is in a different place (Harima) from that visited by Kiyosuke (Yamato). As Hitomaro came to be increasingly revered as a poetic deity, more gravesites came to be associated with him, often through poems by or attributed to him. These include sites in Akashi, through the Akashi Bay poem from the Kokinshū and travel poems mentioning Akashi in the Man’yōshū, sites in Yamato, from poems in the Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro shū in the Man’yōshū which are set in the southern part of Yamato, and sites in Iwami, based on Hitomaro’s putative death poem in the Man’yōshū. The number and location of these sites varies from text to text. As with many of the other items of proprietary knowledge passed down in the esoteric commentaries of the kokin denju, the authors of the commentaries tend to be concerned with evaluating the various possibilities in order to identify the most truthful, in other words, to identify the secret that would make this piece of knowledge a valuable piece of poetic property. Thus we fi nd the following discussion of Hitomaro’s grave in the fourteenth-century Tamesuke Kokinshū chū:

As for Hitomaro’s grave, there are numerous theories. One is said to be in the province of Iwami. One is said to be in Sumiyoshi Bay in the province of Settsu. One is said to be in the province of Awa. One is said to be in the forest of Harumichi in Isonokami in the province of Yamato. One is at Takatsu Pine Plain in the province of Ōmi. Takatsu Pine Plain is said

10 Sasaki Takahiro, “Hitomaro tenbo no dentō,” 20. For the text of the setsuwa itself, see Ikegami Jun’ichi ed., Sangoku denki (Miyai shoten, 1976–1982): 338–340.

11 Kinoshita Motoichi, “Sangoki setsuwa no ikkōsatsu: Hitomaro Saigyō setsuwa o megutte,” Toyama daigaku kyōiku gakubu kiyō A (Bunkakei) 30 (3/1982): 185–186.

132 chapter four

to be in the province of Iwami. Also, it is said that there is a Hitomaro grave in Inazu village in the province of Nagato. In this school, we say that it is at Takatsu Pine Plain in the province of Iwami.12

This account gives seven legendary grave sites, including not only sites associated with Hitomaro through poetry, but also the traditional grounds of the Wani/Kakinomoto clan in Yamato, and Sumiyoshi in Settsu (modern-day Osaka), where the Sumiyoshi daimyōjin—regarded as a deity of poetry and associated with Hitomaro in some commentar-ies—is enshrined. The text also instructs its readers as to which gravesite should be regarded as the correct one. However, the fourteenth-century Gyokuden jinpi effectively trumps all such arguments over the true loca-tion of Hitomaro’s grave with the revelation that none of Hitomaro’s several gravesites actually contain his body, as he ascended to heaven without leaving any earthly remains behind:

The three sites of Hitomaro mounds: 1) in the forest of Harumichi in Soe district, Yamato Province; 2) in the village of Murashima in the province of Nagato; 3) in the village of Ōyama in the province of Iwami. However, his bones are not in any of these places. He is said to have ascended to heaven.13

As well as including the earliest references to Hitomaro as a deity, these texts related to his grave also encapsulate the evolution of his image and status, from a revered poetic ancestor (Kiyosuke) to a poetic deity ( Jakuren) and a symbol of poetic skill and Buddhist enlightenment (Sangoku denki ). To understand how and why this transformation took place, we need to look at the changes taking place in court-poetic circles in the early medieval period, and particularly the establishment and propagation of the kokin denju in the wake of the recanonization of the Kokinshū.

The Recanonization of the Kokinshū and Establishment of the Kokin Denju

Although the Kokinshū had been canonized as a poetic standard since its compilation by virtue of its imperial sponsorship, its position as the prime exemplar of normative court-poetic values was confi rmed

12 Sasaki, “Hitomaro tenbo no dentō,” 17–18.13 Katagiri, Chūsei Kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 540. Quoted in Sasaki, “Hitomaro

tenbo no dentō,” 17.


once and for all by its treatment in the infl uential treatises of Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204) and his son Teika (11162–1241), founders of the Mikohidari house of poetry. The Kokinshū’s recanonization was accom-plished in large part through statements such as the following, from Shunzei’s monumental poetic treatise Korai fūteishō (Notes on Poetic Styles from Ancient to Modern Times: 1197, revised 1201):14

Since the time of [Kokinshū], the good and bad points of waka have been selected and fi xed, so for the proper forms of poetry one should respect and believe Kokinshū alone.15

In other words, the good and bad points of waka are defi ned through their inclusion in or exclusion from the Kokinshū; thus it is to that anthology that one should look for the correct or ideal poetic style. This recanonization of the Kokinshū as the sole repository of desirable poetic forms has been described as “the single most decisive factor” in the formation of the kokin denju, “the curriculum of the Way of Poetry”,16 among the competing poetic houses in the medieval period.

The fi rst generation of these poetic houses or schools consisted of the Rokujō house and the Mikohidari house. The Rokujō house was the fi rst to be established and the fi rst to die out, ceasing to be a major force after the death of Kenshō in about 1210 and disappearing altogether in the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336–1392). The Mikohidari house fl ourished under Shunzei, Teika, and Teika’s son Tameie (1198–1275), and its members were responsible for fi ve of the twenty-one imperial waka anthologies: Senzaishū (Collection for a Thousand Years, 1187), Shinkokinshū, Shinchokusenshū (New Imperially-Commissioned Collection, 1235), Shokugosenshū (New Later Collection, 1251), and Shokukokinshū (Continued Collection of Old and New Japa-nese Poetry, 1265). Two of these fi ve titles, Shinkokinshū and Shokukokinshū, are suggestive of the compilers’ desire to insert themselves into the lineage of poetic descent from Kokinshū, and some formal features of the Shinkokinshū in particular, such as its panel of fi ve compilers and its two prefaces, one in Chinese and one in Japanese, refl ect a deliberate attempt to emulate the Kokinshū as closely as possible.

14 Lewis Cook, “The Discipline of Poetry: Authority and Invention in the Kokindenju” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 2000), 18.

15 Ariyoshi Tamotsu ed., “Korai fūteishō,” in Ariyoshi et al. ed., Karonshū, Shinpen nihon koten bungaku zenshū 87 (Shōgakukan, 2002), 264–265.

16 Cook, 18.

134 chapter four

After Tameie’s death in 1275, however, a dispute between his children resulted in the splintering of the Mikohidari house into three lines, the Nijō, headed by his eldest son Tameuji (1222–1286); the Kyōgoku, under Tamenori (1227–1279); and the Reizei, under Tamesuke (1263–1328). The Nijō house became the mainstream of waka, and their dominance of court-poetic circles is apparent in their near-monopoly on the com-pilation of imperial anthologies; all but two of the imperial anthologies from the Shokushūishū of 1278 onwards were compiled by poets from the Nijō school.17

Each of these houses sought to establish itself as the true inheritor of the teachings of Shunzei and Teika, particularly those concerning the Kokinshū, the interpretation of which was the primary concern of poetic commentators from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.18 The poetic houses sought to consolidate their positions by each laying claim to exclusive knowledge of the Kokinshū, knowledge contained in the particular interpretation recorded in house commentaries. These proprietary teachings, which are liberally sprinkled with injunctions not to reveal their content to outsiders, were passed on from generation to generation (and later, from master to disciple) in a strictly controlled line of transmission. The fi erceness of the competition between the poetic houses in the early medieval period may be inferred from the number of commentaries they produced: it has been estimated that about forty-four commentaries on the Kokinshū were produced between 1200 and 1400.19 The beginnings of the practice of the transmission of these commentaries and other teachings on the Kokinshū can be traced to the early thirteenth century, and the kokin denju system of transmis-sion was fi rmly in place by the end of that century.20

17 The two exceptions were the Gyokuyōshū (Collection of Jewelled Leaves, 1312), compiled by Kyōgoku Tamekane, and the Fūgashū (Elegant Collection, 1346) compiled by Retired Emperor Kōgon.

18 Cook, 21.19 Yokoi Akio and Arai Eizō, eds., Kokinshū no sekai: denju to kyōju, Sekai shisōsha,

1986, 197–200. Lewis Cook notes that about 200 commentaries were produced on the Kokinshū from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries, compared with only four or fi ve on the Gosenshū and Shūishū, less than a dozen on the Shinkokinshū, and approximately 30 on the Hyakunin isshu (Cook, 21).

20 Cook, 19–21. Cook identifi es the “symbolic origin” of the kokin denju as Fujiwara no Mototoshi’s (d. 1142) admonition in Kenshō and Teika’s Kenchū mikkan (Kenshō’s Notes on Secret Interpretations, 1221) to the effect that the canon (i.e., the Kokinshū) cannot simply be read but “must be received.”


The content of the commentaries can take various forms, including interpretations of problematic poems and anecdotes on the supernatural or divine nature of poetry and poets. The commentaries can be struc-tured in various ways; they may take the form of entries for the poems in the order in which they appear in Kokinshū or they may be in the form of passages about a Kokinshū-related topic. These different formats do not necessarily imply great differences in content; similar anecdotes may appear in a topic-related section in one text or inserted into the note on a poem in another. The commentaries frequently stress the exclusivity of the teachings they expound, teachings which are described as belonging to “our school” (tōryū). Recipients of the kokin denju were keenly concerned with their place within the genealogy of transmis-sion, the model for which was “an impeccable if fi ctional lineage or genealogy placing the recipient in a potentially endless line of succession leading back to the origin and forward indefi nitely”;21 establishing the authenticity of the teachings was thus a crucial concern of the kokin denju as an institution. A number of commentaries or poetic treatises are spuriously attributed to giants of the court-poetic tradition, such as Teika (for instance, Sangoki, Thirty-fi ve Records, ca. 1312–1317) or Mototoshi (Waka mutei shō, Notes on the Infi nite Profundity of Japanese Poetry). Others turn to a still higher source of poetic authority: the Gyokuden jinpi includes a note to the effect that it was composed by the Sumiyoshi deity and transmitted to Ariwara no Narihira on the twenty-eighth day of the First Month of 857,22 while the opening of the Sanryūshō (Notes on Three Streams)23 describes the receipt of the teachings contained therein by Minamoto no Tsunenobu from the Sumiyoshi deity.24 This concern with the antiquity and authority of waka and its texts is evident as far back as the Kokinshū Kana Preface, where Hitomaro was appropriated as a symbol of the long and proud heritage of Japanese poetry in an attempt to add to the genre’s authority by both situating its origins in the distant past and by emphasizing the enthusiasm of earlier sovereigns for its composition. The development of waka as a literary fi eld, contested by increasingly professional poetic schools, made the need for symbols of the poetic tradition, like Hitomaro, ever more pressing. Poetic lore,

21 Cook, 52.22 Miwa Masatane, Kagaku hiden no kenkyū, Kazama shobō, 1994, 100.23 Also known as the Kokinwakashūjo kikigaki (Kamakura-Muromachi period).24 Katagiri Yōichi, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, Kyoto: Akao shōbundō, 1973,

223.

136 chapter four

tradition, and authority, embodied in texts, commentaries, and portraits of poetic deities, were the most valuable assets a school could have in the charismatic economy of early-medieval waka praxis.

The formation of poetic houses and the professionalization of waka can be understood in the context of the establishment of waka as a Way (michi ) of artistic discipline and endeavor. The Way of Poetry (kadō or uta no michi ) came to be formulated as a profession analogous to others through which the bureaucracy of the imperial court func-tioned, and the rewards for successful practitioners of this Way included appointments as judges at poetry contests or imperial commissions for the compilation of poetry anthologies.25 The opportunity to provide service to the court and to one’s sovereign was the prize at stake for the members of the competing houses. The “symbolic precedent” for the poet’s (idealized) position in close service to his lord can be found in the Kana Preface to the Kokinshū, specifi cally in the reference to Hitomaro being “in perfect union” with his sovereign.26 Thus, in the context of the Way of Poetry, Hitomaro could serve as a model for all poets, regardless of affi liation (an idea borne out by the rapid spread of Hitomaro eigu into the poetic community at large).

The term michi had another sense, however, in which it was employed in Buddhist contexts: that of a regime of ascetic practice, a spiritual exercise rather than merely a profession as defi ned by the ritsuryō state. The medieval period in Japan has been described as “that epoch dur-ing which the basic intellectual problems, the most authoritative texts and resources, and the central symbols were all Buddhist.”27 As waka appropriated elements of the dominant Buddhist discourse to enhance its own position, so too the Way of Poetry took on aspects of michi in the Buddhist sense, initially combining with and ultimately replacing the earlier meaning of michi as a profession.28 The infl uence of the Buddhist paradigm of michi can be seen not only in the content of poetic commentaries and treatises (as will be discussed below), but in the practice of transmission itself, which could incorporate elements of

25 Cook, 63.26 Cook, 16.27 William LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan,

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984, 9.28 Cook, 63.


esoteric Buddhism such as baptism (kanjō, Skt. abhiseka),29 and licenses of transmission.

Incorporation of Buddhist infl uence was not necessarily uniform throughout the commentaries produced for the kokin denju. Several of the texts drawn on most extensively here for their presentation of Hitomaro as a poetic deity are from the commentarial line descended from Fujiwara Tameaki (c. 1230s–c. 1290s), a son of Tameie who was outside the three main poetic houses. Tameaki seems to have been largely responsible for the introduction of the esoteric Buddhist baptismal initiation rite (kanjō) as a model for poetic transmission ritu-als, a practice which subsequently spread to other poetic schools. The Hitomaro eigu ceremony was an important precursor of Tameaki’s waka initiation ritual, and Hitomaro seems to appear quite prominently in commentaries associated with Tameaki. Living in eastern Japan, away from the capital where the main poetic houses were based, Tameaki was an ordained Shingon priest whose commentaries on the Kokinshū and Ise monogatari—and those descended from them—show particularly marked esoteric Buddhist infl uence. Content from the Tameaki-line commentar-ies made its way into the writings of other poetic houses and beyond, into medieval prose literature and nō plays.30 Although Tameaki may have been a marginal fi gure not affi liated with the main poetic houses, his commentaries and those associated with him, such as the Gyokuden jinpi, exerted considerable infl uence on the kokin denju in general and the deifi cation of Hitomaro in particular. Tameaki’s waka praxis and theory play a crucial role in transforming Hitomaro into a poetic deity and shaping the image of Hitomaro which would be popularized in the later medieval and early modern periods, and in this regard they are of central importance to the process of his canonization.

Hitomaro’s Origins, in the Commentaries

One element of Hitomaro’s legend where his reception in the medieval period clearly differed from his reception in earlier times is his supposed connection with the western province of Iwami. As seen earlier, the

29 Cook, 64.30 Susan Blakeley Klein, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval

Japan, 1–3.

138 chapter four

arrangement of Hitomaro’s poems on parting from his wife in Iwami and his purported death poem on Kamoyama in the second volume of the Man’yōshū gave rise to later legends concerning his life and (par-ticularly) his death in Iwami. In the medieval Kokinshū commentaries, however, the Iwami-related narrative has evolved to include accounts of another pivotal or liminal moment in Hitomaro’s life, his birth, or, more accurately, his fi rst miraculous manifestation as a divinity in the human realm. While the earlier Iwami-related legend, concerned largely with Hitomaro’s death, made his mortality all too clear, these accounts stress Hitomaro’s mysterious origins and preternatural poetic gifts. A typical example of such an account is found in the Gyokuden jinpi:

Origins of Hitomaro

On the third day of the Eighth Month of the third year of the reign of Emperor Temmu [675], [ Hitomaro] appeared at the base of a large persimmon tree at the house of someone called Katari-no-ie-no-mikoto in a place called Mountain Village in Toda District, Iwami Province. He was aged about twenty and of splendid appearance in both face and body. When the owner of the house was suspicious and questioned him, saying “Who are you? I think you are not an ordinary person,” he replied, saying, “There is nowhere I have come from and nowhere I should go. Giving voice to the morning and the evening, the moon and the wind, all I do is recite poetry.” Thinking this very strange, the owner of the house spoke of it to his master, an offi cial of the province of Tango, who sent a message to the capital. When the emperor heard of this, he thought it very strange and dispatched a messenger to summon [ Hitomaro]. Truly he was no ordinary person. When he was commanded to compose poetry, his skill was such that the words fl owed like water. Since it was the land of his birth, he was appointed governor of Iwami Province. Since he had appeared at the foot of a large persimmon tree, he was granted the clan name Kakinomoto. As for his real name, since he had appeared from the heavens, he was called Ama-kudaru-onoko, “a man descended from heaven.”31

A perfect physical and poetic specimen, Hitomaro’s supernatural qualities are recognized by those around him and confi rmed by the narrator: “truly he was no ordinary person” ( ge ni mo tadabito ni arazu). Most importantly, they are recognized by the emperor, who summons Hitomaro to court and favors him with a bureaucratic appointment, the governorship of Iwami. The last sentence of the excerpt reiterates Hitomaro’s divine origins, revealing his real name to be Ama-kudaru-

31 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 554–555.


onoko, “A man descended from heaven.” This occurs at the foot of a persimmon tree, allowing the text to incorporate a folk etymology for his clan name, Kakinomoto (“at the foot of the persimmon [tree]”). As noted in Chapter Two, the Gyokuden jinpi then goes on to describe Hitomaro’s court career:

He was a teacher of waka, and a selector of waka. He was an important person in the world. In the same year, on the third day of the Ninth Month, he was appointed Administrator of the Left Capital [Sakyō daibu] of the Third Rank, Lower Grade, and also Governor of Harima. On the fi rst day of the Third Month of the next year, he was appointed Head of the Crown Prince’s household and head of the Bureau of Carpentry, of the Senior Third Rank, Upper Grade. After his death, in the reign of Kōken [749–758], he was appointed to the Senior Second Rank and made Great Minister of the Center. According to one theory, in [the reign of ] Heizei tennō, on the eleventh day of the Eight Month in the second year of Daidō [807], he was appointed to a posthumous bureaucratic position.32

Here we fi nd further details of Hitomaro’s court appointments, as his exalted status is defi ned and legitimized through the court bureaucracy. He receives the governorship of Harima, likely attributed to him because of his poems dealing with Akashi ( just as he was credited with the governorship of Iwami through his poems set there). Hitomaro’s putative appointment to the Senior Third Rank is also included here, refl ecting the infl uence of the Kokinshū Kana Preface, where he is described as holding such a rank. While placing Hitomaro’s earthly existence more or less in the right century (the seventh), this account also includes a posthumous connection between Hitomaro and Emperor Heizei (r. 806–809); possibly this was a way to reconcile Heian-period theories linking the two men which were derived from the Kokinshū Mana Preface.

The earliest version of this account—which is very similar to if slightly less detailed than the Gyokuden jinpi version—appears in the Sanryūshō of 1286,33 and similar accounts appear in a number of other texts.34 Other versions of the narrative, however, differ in substance from

32 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 555.33 Itō Masayoshi, “Kakō no denki: chūsei no Hitomaro,” Kansai daigaku kokubungaku

48 (7/1973): 4.34 These include the Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden (Oral Transmission on the Kokinshū

Initiation, mid-Kamakura period-early Muromachi period), Waka mutei shō (c. early Muromachi period), and Hitomaro himitsushō (Notes on Hitomaro’s Secrets, 1670) (which

140 chapter four

the Gyokuden jinpi account in one particular aspect, namely, Hitomaro’s age at the time of his appearance beneath the persimmon tree. In the Kokinwakashū Ton’a jo chū (Ton’a’s Prefatory Notes on the Kokinshū, mid-Kamakura period-early Muromachi period), for instance, he appears as a youth of fourteen or fi fteen,35 and in shrine-related texts such as the Kakinomoto jū sanmi Hitomaro ki (Record of Hitomaro of the Junior Third Rank) held by the Ayabe family in Toda, he is described as a boy of seven or eight years of age.36 The Akashi ryaku engi (Abbreviated Account of the Origins at Akashi, n.d.) held by the Gesshōji in Akashi describes Hitomaro as a “small boy” (shōdō) who appears in the garden of a childless man.37 Broadly speaking, Hitomaro appears to be older at the time of his appearance in earlier texts and younger in later texts. His appearance as a boy or youth beneath a tree fi ts his origin story into a wider narrative archetype of divine beings appearing as children or old men. The very young and the very old were peripheral fi gures in medieval society, in a liminal space between the divine and the secular by virtue of their positions at the beginning and end of mortal life; in other words, they were seen as closer to the divine than individuals in the prime of life.38 In the context of his origin story, it may be that Hitomaro’s decreasing age in texts which are later and are more closely linked to his canonization through shrine worship serves to emphasize his divinity. In any event, a miraculous appearance as a boy or youth is by no means peculiar to Hitomaro, and may be compared to the treatment given other divinized fi gures. For instance, the traditional hagiography of Sugawara no Michizane, deifi ed in the tenth century as Tenman Tenjin, includes a strikingly similar scene: stressing Michizane’s supernatural origins, the narrative describes him appearing as a small boy in the garden of Sugawara Koreyoshi.39

The following is taken from the Gyokuden jinpi, and comes directly after the account of Hitomaro’s origins and bureaucratic career.

draws much of its material from Gyokuden jinpi ) (Kikuchi Hitoshi, “Genja toshite no kajintachi: ‘ryūri’ to ‘dōgyō’ to,” Nihon bungaku 38:5 [5/1989]: 68).

35 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, 332.36 Kikuchi Yoshio, Hitomaro gensō, Shintensha, 1995, 152.37 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 154.38 Kuroda Hideo, “ ‘Dō’ to ‘okina’,” in his Kyōkai no chūsei, shōchō no chūsei (Tokyo

daigaku shuppankai, 1986), quoted in Ōwa Iwao, Hitomaro densetsu (Hakusuisha, 1993), 80.

39 Kikuchi, “Genja,” 69. Michizane’s appearance as a divine child can be found in the twelfth-century Kitano tenjin engi (Account of the Origins of Tenjin at Kitano); it also features in the fourteenth-century Taiheiki (Record of the Great Peace).


Origins of Akahito

There is a place in the province of Yamato called Jijō no take. At the foot of this mountain is a mountain village called Yamabe. At the time of the Shuchō-in,40 a divine being in human form appeared. He was neither layman nor priest, but was just a large child. His face and body were reddish in color. He looked to be over thirty years of age. He was sitting on a fl at rock by a small river in that village. The people of the village were suspicious and approached [him]. “Who are you? What do you do?” they asked, and questioned him repeatedly, but he did not say a thing. “Is this a goblin, or an ogre, or a demon?” they wondered, and trembled with fear. As many days passed in this manner, the people thought that in his present state he need not be feared, and approached him, and gave him food which he ate joyfully. Since his entire body was red, they called him Akahito. The village headman said, “Matters should not be left as they are; this must be reported to the emperor.” When this was reported to Emperor Temmu, he thought this very strange and summoned him.41

After a dispute with the imperial messenger, Akahito goes on to be presented to Temmu, who, as with Hitomaro, grants him offi cial appoint-ments, including the governorship of the province of his “birth,” and eventually promotes him to the Third Rank (thus fulfi lling the dictum in the Kokinshū Kana Preface that out of Hitomaro and Akahito, one cannot be placed above the other). As in the case of “Kakinomoto,” the narrative includes an etymology for the poet’s name: his clan name comes from the village in which the tale is set, and his given name, Akahito—“red man”—is derived from his strange appearance. Although over thirty years of age, Akahito is described as a “large child” (daidō) who is “neither layman nor priest,” in other words, not an adult member of society. Despite his apparent age, Akahito is thus fi rmly relegated to the periphery of society, the twilight zone between this world and the world of the divine.

In a similar vein, the Sanryūshō includes the following account of an appearance by the Sumiyoshi deity as a child.

On the twenty-eighth day of the First Month of Ten’an 1 [857], Emperor Montoku made an excursion to Sumiyoshi. Narihira accompanied him. When they knelt upon the jewelled dais and offered greetings to the shrine,

40 The Shuchō era was 686.7.20–686.9.?, the fi nal period of Temmu’s reign. Temmu is also described as a retired emperor in the “Hitomaro kanmon” in Fukurozōshi, but in fact he died while in power, so was never thus styled.


142 chapter four

their prayers reached to heaven and a blessed wind cooled their hearts. At that time [ Narihira] composed a poem and presented it to the deity.

ware mite mo Since fi rst I saw them,hisashiku narinu how long it has been—Sumiyoshi no how many ages have they passed,kishi no himematsu the princess pinesikuyo henuran on Sumiyoshi’s shore?

At the time, Narihira was twenty-fi ve years old. At this point, the deity pushed open the jewelled doors, appeared in the form of a child in a red robe, and composed a poem in response:

mutsumashi to Do you not knowkimi wa shiranami of the bond between us?mizugaki no Since ages past,hisashiki yo yori long as the jewelled fence,iwai someteki have I watched over you.42

This is a more detailed rendering of a poetic exchange which appears as the 117th section of Ise monogatari. The Ise monogatari version identi-fi es the human participant only as “an emperor” (mikado), and does not specify the form in which the Sumiyoshi deity manifested himself.43 There is also no mention made of the Ise’s protagonist, widely taken to be Ariwara no Narihira, in the Ise account of this exchange, yet he is not only present in the Sanryūshō version but seems to be the author of the poem to which the deity responds. Thus the “bond” spoken of by the Sumiyoshi deity is not with the emperor, as in the Ise monogatari version, but between the deity and Narihira. A similar account to that in the Sanryūshō appears in the Gyokudenshū waka saichō (Supreme Jewelled Transmission on Japanese Poetry, Kamakura-Muromachi period), where the Sumiyoshi deity’s poem is followed by his presentation of scrolls, including the Gyokuden jinpi, to Narihira.

The deity said, “I will leave my traces for a long time, to protect this Way, but I have not yet disclosed my true intent to people. You are a teacher of my Way, and a manifestation of myself. I should give to you what is in my heart,” with which he brought out three scrolls. These were the Gyokuden [ Jeweled Transmission], Kushō [ Nine Chapters] and Akone no ura

42 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, 229.43 The version of this episode appearing in the Ise monogatari zuinō mentions the

“manifestation” of the Sumiyoshi deity, but then describes his poem as having been “transmitted as an oracle through a head shrine offi cial named Tsumori” (Susan Blakeley Klein, “Ise monogatari zuinō: An Annotated Translation,” Monumenta Nipponica 53:1 (1998): 33–34.


no kuden [Oral Transmission of Akone Bay]. These were written in the deity’s own hand, and are the essence of waka.44

Children were not the only liminal age group: as mentioned above, the elderly were also regarded as being in an intermediate area between this world and the next. In this connection we may note that in Hitomaro’s dream appearance to Kanefusa, as canonized through what became the conventional iconography of his portrait, he appears as an old man of at least sixty years of age. In the Sangoku denki story mentioned earlier he appears to Saigyō as an old man, and is also represented as such in the nō plays which deal with him. Similarly, and despite his appearance in the form of a child in the Sanryūshō excerpt above, the Sumiyoshi deity is frequently represented as an old man, in both written and visual form.45 The story of Hitomaro’s appearance in the garden of the house at Toda is thus consistent with accounts of the origins of other poetic deities as divine boys, as seen in the case of Akahito and Michizane. More broadly speaking, Hitomaro’s appearance as both a boy and an old man may be understood in terms of the special signifi cance of very young or very old individuals as intermediaries between the mortal and divine realms. In this sense—and within the broader context of poets as divinities—the origin story can be seen as having specifi cally medieval characteristics. The crucial difference between the treatment of Hitomaro in the medieval commentaries and his treatment in ear-lier texts is perfectly demonstrated in his origin tale: he is revealed to be not just a great mortal poet, not just a sage of poetry, even, but a superhuman fi gure of divine origin, whose great poetic gifts are due to his otherworldly nature.

44 Katagiri Yōichi, “Waka kami toshite no Sumiyoshi no kami: sono naritachi to tenkai,” in his Kokinwakashū igo, 691–692.

45 See, for instance, the Ōgishō (Notes on Inner Meanings) of Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1107–1177), featuring an encounter between Narihira and the Sumiyoshi deity (Kata-giri, “Waka kami toshite no Sumiyoshi no kami,” 686–687); the Shasekishū (Collection of Sand and Pebbles, c. 1283), in which the Sumiyoshi deity appears in a dream to the eleventh-century poet Akazome Emon; and the Sanryūshō account of the Sumiyoshi deity’s transmission of poetic teachings to Minamoto no Tsunenobu (Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, 223).

144 chapter four

Hitomaro, Sumiyoshi, and Honji-suijaku

In addition to the parallels drawn between Hitomaro and the other deifi ed poets mentioned above, there are numerous references in the Gyokuden jinpi and elsewhere to the relationship between Hitomaro, Narihira, and the Sumiyoshi deity. Various connections between the three are described, mostly claiming that Hitomaro and Narihira are incarnations of the Sumiyoshi deity (whose identifi cation of Narihira as a manifestation of himself appears in the Gyokudenshū waka saichō extract given earlier).

In the Nara and early Heian periods the Sumiyoshi deity was regarded as a deity of marine safety, overseeing sea traffi c on the Inland Sea. During the Heian period, however, the Sumiyoshi deity came to be increasingly associated with Japanese poetry and regarded as one of the major gods of waka. The identifi cation of Hitomaro with the Sumiyoshi deity is clearly demonstrated in the following passage from the Gyokuden jinpi.

At the time of Emperor Temmu’s excursion to Sumiyoshi, the deity appeared in the form of an old man, and said, “For the purposes of spreading waka through this world, I have manifested myself as Hito-maro. Thus Your Majesty should further the spread of this Way.” When the emperor went to reply, [the old man] vanished into thin air. At this time it was clear that Hitomaro was a manifestation [of the Sumiyoshi deity].46

This passage serves as another example of the Sumiyoshi deity appear-ing in the form of an old man, as well as stressing Hitomaro’s divine nature. However, the signifi cant feature here in terms of the process of Hitomaro’s canonization is the concept of one deity being a manifes-tation of another. This can be seen as a development stemming from honji-suijaku thought. As discussed in the previous chapter, the basic form of the honji-suijaku paradigm posits a Buddhist deity, a buddha or bodhisattva, as the honji, or “original ground,” of a Japanese kami, who is the suijaku, or “manifest trace,” of that buddha or bodhisattva. The fourteenth-century Reizei-house commentary Kokinshū chū (Notes on the Kokinshū) gives the following instructions to aspiring poets, and a clear illustration of honji-suijaku thought applied to Hitomaro.

46 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 555.


According to the oral tradition, Hitomaro is an incarnation of the bodhi-sattva Fine Sound. [. . .] If you wish to grasp the Way of Poetry, hang his portrait beside your pillow, and every day at the hour of the Rabbit [5–7 am], scoop water in the direction of the Rabbit [east], make offerings, recite the Akashi Bay poem three times and “Praise to the bodhisattva Fine Sound” one hundred times; then, in anywhere from three months to three years at the most, you will see proof [of your success].47

The bodhisattva Fine Sound (Myōon bosatsu, Sanskrit Gadgadasvara), who is a form of Kannon, appears in the Lotus Sutra and seems, by virtue of his name, a logical choice as the original form of a poetic deity like Hitomaro. This identifi cation of Hitomaro as an incarnation of Myōon bosatsu also appears in, for instance, the Sangoki.48 It should be pointed out here that within the broader concept of honji-suijaku there seem to have been various types of avatars or embodiments of divine beings. Hitomaro is here described as the keshin, or physical incarnation, of Myōon bosatsu, while the suijaku, or manifest trace, of the same bodhisattva is identifi ed elsewhere as the female deity Benzaiten, a Buddhist form of the Vedic water deity Sarasvatī, who is worshipped for music, speech, and learning.49 Her alternative name Myōonten (Deity of fi ne sound) echoes that of Myōon bosatsu.

The basic honji-suijaku paradigm was further developed in the poetic commentaries, where the principles of original ground and manifest trace, of one deity being a manifestation or incarnation of another, were applied to the relationships between various Japanese deities. The mutability of individual identity involved in honji-suijaku relationships, through which one individual is revealed to be in fact another (or indeed, several others), is also applied in the commentaries to relationships between poets. The application of honji-suijaku in this context “creates a three-tiered hierarchy: buddhas and bodhisattvas as honji for kami; both kami and Buddhist deities as honji for human beings.”50 The situation could be still more complicated: Hitomaro, although often represented as a poetic divinity on a par with the Sumiyoshi deity, could nonetheless be revealed to be an aspect of the Sumiyoshi deity himself, as seen in the passage above from Gyokuden jinpi.

47 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 237.48 Sangoki, 352.49 Matsunaga, 256.50 Susan Blakeley Klein, “Allegories of Desire: Poetry and Eroticism in Ise monogatari

zuinō,” Monumenta Nipponica 52:4 (1997): 455.

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Narihira, canonized as a poetic immortal in the Kokinshū Kana Preface, was generally assumed to be the protagonist of Ise monogatari, although never named as such. Narihira’s perceived connection to Hito-maro may be traceable back to the Kokinshū, where both are mentioned in the Kana Preface. It should also be noted that the poem most widely canonized as Hitomaro’s work, the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409), is directly followed in the Kokinshū by a poem by Narihira (Kokinshū IX:410). As discussed in Chapter Two, it seems at least possible that the juxtaposition of the Akashi Bay poem—attributed in a footnote to Hitomaro—and Narihira’s poem could have led to some sort of link between the two poets in the minds of later readers, a link developed further in commentaries such as the Gyokuden jinpi.

Narihira’s role as the implicit protagonist of Ise monogatari forms the basis for his inclusion in the Sanryūshō entry based on the exchange of poems with the Sumiyoshi deity recorded in Section 117 of the Ise. As noted earlier, this exchange also appears in the Gyokuden jinpi, in which text the second poem (mutsumashi to…) is followed by commentary which makes clear Narihira’s divine nature.

You are me. Why have you forgotten your originating ground [honji ]? I have spent many years manifesting myself [suijaku] in the shade of these princess pines. In that time, how much benefi t have I given sentient beings? To benefi t sentient beings, have I not for a short time made use of an ordinary human body? This is the content of the deity’s poem.51

The “ordinary human body” (bonshin) referred to here is Narihira’s. The passage explicitly identifi es him as an incarnation of the Sumiyo-shi deity, but also illustrates the “three-tiered” honji-suijaku paradigm in action: the Sumiyoshi deity, in the middle tier, is at once Narihira’s honji, or original form, and also a suijaku, or manifest trace, of his own honji (identifi ed elsewhere in Gyokuden jinpi as the buddha Yakushi).

Hitomaro, meanwhile, was not only identifi ed as the Sumiyoshi deity, but also, in the Kokinshū kanjō (Kokinshū initiation), as an incarnation (keshin) of the Kamo deity.52 Via the Sumiyoshi deity, both Hitomaro and Narihira are thus ultimately presented as incarnations of the medicine buddha, Yakushi. As seen in the Reizei-house Kokinshū chū, Hitomaro has also been identifi ed as an incarnation of the bodhisattva Myōon, who is in turn a form of Kannon. Also, the Kamakura-period

51 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 546.52 Mitani Eiichi, Koten bungaku to minzoku, Iwasaki bijutsusha, 1969, 233.


Teikin no shō (Exemplary Notes) describes Hitomaro as an incarnation of Thousand-Armed Kannon, and Narihira as an incarnation of the buddha Dainichi; since Thousand-Armed Kannon is also an incarna-tion of Dainichi, both Hitomaro and Narihira are effectively identifi ed as incarnations of Dainichi.53 The multiplicity of honji ascribed to Hitomaro and Narihira is entirely in keeping with much of honji-suijaku discourse: there were some pairings of major deities which remained consistent, like that of the Great Sun Deity Amaterasu with the Great Sun Buddha Dainichi, but for lesser divinities there was a considerable amount of fl exibility and variation in the associations attributed to them.54 Hitomaro and Narihira are thus not atypical in having several identifi ed honji, or “original ground” deities.

This fl exibility of the relationships between various poetic fi gures is well demonstrated in the passages concerned with the matter of the “Three Old Men” (mitari no okina) which appear in several texts. This version is from the Gyokuden jinpi.

omoiwabi When, with troubled mind,waka no uraji o I pay a visit bytazunureba the road to Poetry Bay,mitari no okina no I come to the houseie ni ki ni keri of the three old men.

This is a poem by Emperor Montoku from his Sumiyoshi excursion on the eighteenth day of the First Month of the fi rst year of Ten’an [857]. The “three old men” are said to be Moroe, Yakamochi, and Yukihira. In saying “old man,” one reads this as “having a powerful presence.” This is questionable. Regarding this deity, it means “having a powerful presence.” It also means that the deity, Hitomaro, and Narihira are three people in one body.55

This passage clearly identifi es both Hitomaro and Narihira as incarna-tions of the Sumiyoshi deity, but also mentions an alternative theory according to which the “three old men” were in fact Tachibana no Moroe, Ōtomo no Yakamochi (both associated with the Man’yōshū), and Ariwara no Yukihira (Narihira’s elder brother, 818–893). There is

53 Ōtani Setsuko, “Gasshin suru Hitomaro: waka hisetsu to ōken,” Imatani Akira ed., Ōken to jingi, Shibunkaku shuppan, 2002, 265.

54 “From these earliest lists [of honji and their suijaku] we can already note that both buddhas and bodhisattvas appear as honji and there appears to be little consistency in their application . . . It is apparent that the identifi cations can change in accordance with the increase or decrease in popularity of the various cults” (Matsunaga, 232–233).

55 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 528.

148 chapter four

a play on words here between mitari, “three people,” and mitari, mean-ing to have suffi cient or powerful presence. The later Hitomaro himitsushō adds another set of three poets as possible candidates for “the three old men,” but reveals that the true referents—a matter of the greatest secrecy—are the Sumiyoshi deity and his two incarnations, Hitomaro and Narihira.

This is the reason why this fact is concealed. This matter of the three old men is the most secret thing in the Kokinshū. It should be in the oral transmission. (Quite secret) My late father’s own brush says that the fi rst poem is by Kuronushi, the second is by Kotonao56 and the third is by Yoshifusa. (Most secret) The mitari okina is in fact the Sumiyoshi deity. The reason for this is that in order to spread this Way of Poetry, he manifested himself as Hitomaro and as Narihira; thus, being three people in one body he was also called the Three-person-old-man. He is also called “old man of powerful presence” because of the power of the Way of Poetry. In order to conceal this truth, they have also been identifi ed as poems by Yakamochi, Yukihira, and Moroe.57

The three poems referred to appear in the seventeenth volume (Miscel-laneous) of the Kokinshū (XVII: 893–895), are all anonymous, and are followed by the note “These three poems were composed by three men who lived long ago.”58 Little notice seems to be taken of the content of the poems, which are all similar in tone, bemoaning the speaker’s old age; rather, commentarial attention is focused on the editorial note following them. The commentaries’ pun on mitari refl ects the malle-ability of individual identity possible under the infl uence of honji-suijaku, allowing the “three old men” to become one.

Narihira is the poet with whom Hitomaro has the most in common in terms of his medieval canonization as a poetic deity, but there are signifi cant differences between them. Despite the fact that both Hito-maro and Narihira are presented as incarnations of the Sumiyoshi deity, Hitomaro was ultimately canonized as a poetic divinity, but Narihira was not. The difference in status between them is highlighted in pas-sages such as that where Hitomaro is described as a incarnation (keshin) of the Sumiyoshi deity, who was subsequently reborn as Narihira and

56 Possibly Fujiwara no Kotonao (fl .ca. 900), who has one poem included in the Kokinshū (I:10).

57 Kanbun 10 (1670) woodblock edition of Hitomaro himitsushō; reproduced in Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 1129–1130.



then as Tsurayuki,59 or Narihira is described as “an incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity, and Hitomaro reborn.”60 The implication here is at the very least that the Sumiyoshi deity’s earlier incarnation as Hito-maro was the model for Narihira to follow; it also seems to suggest that Hitomaro has suffi cient standing as a deity that he is not only a manifestation of greater gods, but can also function as the “original ground” for an avatar of his own. This interpretation is reinforced by passages like the following from the Edo-period Kingyoku sōgi (Dual Meanings of Gold and Jewels):

The Meaning of the Two Characters

Now, Narihira is an incarnation [keshin] of Hitomaro. Thus Ise monogatari is something composed by Hitomaro when born as Narihira.

[translation] 1 3

hito masa ni

4 2

mumarete maro

5

tsutome ari

Thus when “Ise” is written, it is read “Hitomaro was without a doubt born and has a task” [Hitomaro masa ni mumarete tsutome ari ]. The “task” referred to is to spread the current Way of Poetry. Various things are said about these two characters, but their real meaning is that Hitomaro was born as Narihira and spreads the Way of Poetry, guiding living things as to the deep meaning of yin and yang.61

Here Narihira is explicitly described as an incarnation of Hitomaro. The characters used to write “Ise” are broken down into their con-stituent parts to spell out the hidden truth that Hitomaro was born as Narihira and that Hitomaro/Narihira was born into this world to spread the Way of poetry. This method of analysis, which Susan Klein

59 Ishigami Hideaki, “Kunaichō shoryōbu zō Kingyoku sōgi honkoku awasete kaidai,” Mita kokubun 15 (12/1991): 47.

60 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 529.61 Ishigami, 49. A similar dissection of the characters “I-Se” appears in the Gyokuden

jinpi (Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 542).

ヒトマサニ

ムマレテマロ

ツトメアリ

150 chapter four

has termed “etymological allegoresis,”62 has been identifi ed as a key strategy pursued by Fujiwara Tameaki in his commentaries, by means of which he “retroactively transformed Heian classical texts such as the Kokinwakashū and Ise monogatari into complex esoteric Buddhist allegories by searching for hidden meanings within phrases, proper names, and titles.”63 A similar technique was used by later worshippers of Hitomaro who parsed his name in ways which yielded clues as to his divine pow-ers: for instance, his name in its common rendering of Hitomaru could be parsed as hi-tomaru, “fi re-stop,” providing a rationale for Hitomaro’s popular worship for fi re prevention.

Although it is Narihira who is described as an incarnation of Hito-maro in the passage above, a similar indication of Hitomaro’s status as a honji found in the Yōmei bunko text Tōryū kirigami (Memoranda of Our School) describes Tsurayuki as an incarnation of Hitomaro.64 The fake Teika text Guhishō (Notes on Foolish Secrets, Kamakura period) also includes a reference to the medieval poet Saigyō in similar terms to Narihira above, as “Hitomaro reborn” (Kakinomoto saitan).65

Hitomaro and Akahito

The infl uence of honji-suijaku philosophy is felt in the commentarial accounts in which Hitomaro and Yamabe no Akahito, the other poetic sage from the Kokinshū Kana Preface, are revealed to be the same per-son. However, while these stories involve the same kind of one-poet-as-another pattern as seen in the Hitomaro-Narihira relationship, they mostly lack divine or supernatural overtones; the confl ation of Hitomaro and Akahito generally seems to occur at a mortal level.66 This version

62 Susan Blakeley Klein, “Allegories of Desire: Poetry and Eroticism in Ise monogatari zuinō,” 445. She mentions the reduction of characters to their constituent parts as an analytical strategy on pp. 446–7.

63 Klein, “Allegories of Desire,” 446.64 Ōtani, 245.65 Sasaki Nobutsuna ed., Nihon kagaku taikei 4 (Kazama shobō, 1956), 297.66 Note that there is also an account of Hitomaro and Akahito as former brothers

and great ministers in Tang China, now reborn in Japan, in the Gyokuden jinpi (Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 557), and elsewhere in Gyokuden jinpi they are described as manifestations ( gonge) of the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi respectively (Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 558). However, the story quoted here about Hitomaro changing his name to become Akahito seems to be much more widespread.


of the story appears in the Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden as the third of the “Three Types of Oral Teachings about Authors.”

Hitomaro and Akahito are the same person. The reason for this is that in the reign of Emperor Mommu [r. 697–707], Hitomaro had an illicit affair with the imperial consort, who was the daughter of the Minister of the Left. For this he was released from his bureaucratic post and banished to Yamabe district in Kazusa Province, where he spent months and years. Then, in the reign of Emperor Shōmu [r. 724–749], when the Minister of the Left Moroe and the Middle Councillor Yakamochi were selecting poems for the Man’yōshū, they asked that Hitomaro be summoned back to the capital to serve as a poetry judge. [. . .] [The emperor] recalled Hitomaro, changing his clan name to Yamabe and calling him Akahito. For this reason, although Hitomaro and Akahito are poetic sages indistin-guishable in talent, Hitomaro’s poems appear in the Kokinshū while there is not one by Akahito. This is because they are one person.67

This account involves the confl ation of the lifetimes of several poets: Hitomaro, thought to have died in the early eighth century, Akahito, whose latest poem is dated 736, Tachibana no Moroe (684–757) and Ōtomo no Yakamochi (c. 717–785). As seen in the fi nal sentence, it also answers a question commonly posed in Kokinshū commentaries: if Hitomaro and Akahito are presented in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as poetic sages of equal ability, why are there no poems by Akahito in the Kokinshū? The standard answer is that they are actually one and the same person, whose poems in the Kokinshū all appear as Hitomaro’s works. As discussed in Chapter Two, the poems in question actually appear as anonymous in the Kokinshū, with tentative attributions to Hito-maro made in the notes following them. Nonetheless, by the medieval period, these poems seem to have been fi rmly canonized as his actual compositions. The answer to the question posed here makes use of the narrative archetype of transgression, exile, and redemption.

Foundations for Hitomaro’s identifi cation as one with someone else can be seen retrospectively in the Kokinshū itself, where in the Kana Preface he is described as being “in perfect alignment” with his sov-ereign. The actual phrase used to describe this state of being is mi o awasetari, literally, “they combined their bodies,” in other words, they were as one (in their poetic sensibilities). In the honji-suijaku-infl uenced environment of the medieval commentaries, this notion of the com-bination of bodies was reinterpreted to allow for the identifi cation of


152 chapter four

Hitomaro and his lord as fellow incarnations of a divinity, much as Hitomaro was identifi ed with other poets or poetic deities. This passage is from the Gyokuden jinpi.

Question: Who is the “lord”?Answer: It is Emperor Shōmu.Question: Who is the “subject”?Answer: Emperor Shōmu was a manifestation of the Sumiyoshi deity. The tone of government was bad, so in order to rule, the deity was born into the imperial house. He was called Shōmu and also Hitomaro. Thus the deity became incarnate and spread the Way of Poetry. Poetry is the Law [nori ] of our land. Prince Shōtoku was also an incarnation of the Sumiyoshi [deity]. Thus [the combined body] is three people in one body. It is said that the originating buddha is Yakushi. It is also seen to be Kannon. . . . Yakushi and Kannon are one body. Why do they have two names? When we speak of Hitomaro and the sovereign as combined in body, it is because they have a single original ground. Keep this secret. Keep this secret.68

This passage also seems to be indirectly addressing the matter of the mitari no okina, the three beings in one body, by identifying Prince Shōtoku as being yet another incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity. The implied conclusion, not explicitly reached in the passage, is that if Shōmu (701–756, r. 724–749) and Hitomaro are one on the basis of their shared honji, then Hitomaro and Shōmu must each also be one with Prince Shōtoku. Prince Shōtoku and Emperor Shōmu both played critical roles in the propagation of Buddhism within Japan, and a mental association between them on the part of later readers seems understandable. As seen in Chapter One, both Hitomaro and Prince Shōtoku composed poems on dead people by the roadside, and these poems are included in the third volume of the Man’yōshū. Though no connection, implicit or explicit, is made in the Man’yōshū between the two poems, it seems at least possible that, like the Narihira poem in Kokinshū volume IX, the proximity of Prince Shōtoku’s poem to Hitomaro’s may have been a factor in their later association by way of the same honji.

There were other ways in which connections between various poets and poetic deities could be established, however, such as the canoniza-tion of (numbered) groups or sets of poets or gods. Prominent examples of such groups (as discussed in Chapter Two) are the Rokkasen, or Six



Poetic Immortals, praised by Tsurayuki in the Kokinshū Kana Preface, or the Sanjūrokkasen, or Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals, selected by Kintō in his Sanjūrokuninsen and subsequently canonized as a group through poetry collections and portraiture. In addition, the Kokinshū commen-taries mention the Nisei, or Two Sages (Hitomaro and Akahito),69 also from the Kana Preface, and the Waka no gosen, or Five Immortals of Poetry. Although there is some variation in the composition of the Five Immortals, the Waka kuden shō (Oral Transmissions on Japanese Poetry), a forged commentary spuriously attributed to Fujiwara no Ietaka (1158–1237), identifi es them as Hitomaro, Akahito, Narihira, Komachi, and Sarumaru dayū and states that they “are known as the “Five Immortals” because they are all avatars ( gonge, earthly manifesta-tions of divinities).70 The signifi cance of the Five Immortals is that while kasen, “poetic immortal,” in earlier contexts referred to an outstanding poet, the term is used here in a slightly different way, to refer to poets who are divinities, their status as such made clear by their description as avatars.

In terms of the process of Hitomaro’s deifi cation, however, it is his membership in one canonized set of individuals in particular which is signifi cant, namely, the Waka sanshin, the Three Deities of Waka. The three deities so designated varied somewhat from school to school, although the most common combination seems to have been Hitomaro, the Sumiyoshi deity, and the Tamatsushima deity. This is the combination presented in a later text, the Nan chōhōki (Treasured Notes for Men), a Genroku-era handbook of essential knowledge for young men.71 Other possible combinations include Hitomaro, Akahito, and Sotoorihime; Sumiyoshi, Tamatsushima, and Tenman Tenjin; and Amaterasu, Hitomaro, Ki no Tsurayuki.72

Hitomaro appears in all but one of these possible sets of three dei-ties, and Narihira, despite his standing as a fellow incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity, does not appear in any. The entities included in these groupings fall into two broad categories: deities who were once mortal

69 Sanryūshō: Nisei, rokkasen to iu toki wa, nisei wa Hitomaro, Akahito nari “When one speaks of the Two Sages and the Six Poetic Immortals, the Two Sages are Hitomaro and Akahito” (Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, 274).

70 Kikuchi, “Genja,” 62.71 Nagatomo Chiyoji ed., Onna chōhōki, Nan chōhōki: genroku wakamono kokoroe shū, Gendai

kyōyō bunko 1507, Shakai shisōsha, 1993, 251.72 Arai Eizō, “Waka sanshin,” Nihon koten bungaku daijiten (Iwanami shoten, 1983),

VI: 331–332.

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poets, and deities who were not. The Sumiyoshi deity and his relation to Hitomaro and Narihira has already been discussed. The Tamatsushima deity is enshrined at Waka no ura (Poetry Bay) in Wakayama Prefecture (Kii Province). The shrine is mentioned in the Shoku nihongi (797), and was visited by Emperor Shōmu in 724. By the medieval period, how-ever, the Tamatsushima deity had come to be regarded as a divinized form of Sotoorihime, who is presented as a poetic forebear of Ono no Komachi in the Kokinshū Kana Preface.73 The Waka iroha (Colored Leaves of Poetry, 1198) recounts that Sotoorihime once visited Waka no ura in life, and liked the place enough to leave her traces there as a deity.74 Other accounts describe the Tamatsushima deity as originating in Sumiyoshi but later worshipped at Waka no ura.75 In any event, the shrine seems to have been established fi rst, and then, probably due in part to the name of its location (Poetry Bay), it came to be associated with a poetic fi gure (Sotoorihime) and its deity worshipped as a poetic god. The identifi cation of Amaterasu, the Great Sun Deity, as a poetic divinity is based on the Akone no ura kuden,76 while Susano-o, although credited in the Kokinshū Kana Preface with inventing the thirty-one-syllable poetic form, does not seem to appear as one of the Three Deities of Waka.

As described earlier, Tenman Tenjin is the deifi ed form of Sugawara no Michizane. Although Michizane was in life a poet (composing in both Chinese and Japanese, though more famous for the former), he was deifi ed initially as a thunder god rather than a poetic deity. A victim of the political machinations of his enemies at court, Michizane died in exile in northern Kyushu. When various ominous events transpired in the capital in the years following Michizane’s demise, including the premature death of his chief political rival in 909 and lightning striking the palace in 930, they were ascribed to Michizane’s vengeful spirit ( goryō) and he was enshrined at Kitano in 947 in an attempt at pacifi cation. By this time his identity had become apparent through a series of oracular revelations, and he was also canonized as a literary

73 “Ono no Komachi is of the same line as Sotoorihime of old. [Her poetry] is moving but is not strong. It resembles a beautiful woman affl icted by illness. Its lack of strength is probably due to its being the poetry of a woman.” (Arai and Kojima, 14).

74 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 112–113.75 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 114.76 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 530.


deity.77 Although Michizane is probably the best-known of the poetic deities, the original motivation for his deifi cation was based on popular beliefs regarding angry ghosts rather than growing out of a specifi cally literary context. Despite the basic similarities in their status as literary deities (and in their origin narratives, as noted earlier), the process of Michizane’s deifi cation is signifi cantly different from that of Hitomaro, whose apotheosis took place initially in a literary environment and whose worship then assimilated popular or non-literary elements.

Looking at the poets included among the Three Deities of Waka, we may note that although some of Sotoorihime’s poems appear in the Nihon shoki while Hitomaro’s and Akahito’s are found in the Man’yōshū, the poets themselves have one common characteristic: they are all three mentioned in the Kokinshū Kana Preface by Tsurayuki, who is himself sometimes included as a poetic deity. With the excep-tion of Tsurayuki, the poets mentioned here—Hitomaro, Akahito, and Sotoorihime—were not contemporary poets at the time of Kokinshū’s compilation, but rather were fi gures from the distant (and poetically glorious) past. Even so, it seems that it was not enough for a poet to be merely pre-Kokinshū in order to ascend to the status of poetic divinity; they actually had to be mentioned in the Kokinshū, as is evident from the fact that no Man’yōshū poets other than those mentioned in the Kana Preface, Hitomaro and Akahito, seem to have ended up among either the Five Immortals of Poetry or the Three Deities of Waka. In this sense the selection of Tsurayuki seems unusual, in that he is from a more recent period. It seems natural for Tsurayuki to be canonized for his role as the editor-in-chief of the Kokinshū and author of the Kana Preface, yet the poets whose teachings on the Kokinshū the kokin denju was most concerned with transmitting, Shunzei and Teika, do not seem to appear as poetic deities.

The complex nature of Hitomaro’s divinity becomes apparent through these texts: he is not only a deifi ed poet, but one who is an avatar of other deities, notably the Sumiyoshi deity. Although the recep-tion of Ariwara no Narihira as an incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity is similar in many ways to that of Hitomaro, what sets Hitomaro apart is that he was widely canonized as not just a divinized kasen, or poetic immortal, but as a poetic deity, one of the Three Deities of Waka. This

77 Robert Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994 [1986]), 308–309.

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gave him a similar standing to that of the Sumiyoshi deity, and like the Sumiyoshi deity (but unlike Narihira or the other kasen) Hitomaro was able to function as an “original ground” deity (honji ), with incarnations (keshin) of his own. This ability to act as a original ground constitutes a signifi cant difference between Hitomaro and other deifi ed poets, and, together with his canonization as a poetic deity, confi rms Hitomaro’s position as the foremost example of poetic apotheosis.

Hitomaro’s Function as a Poetic God

From the nature and constitution of Hitomaro’s divinity, we now turn to the question of his function as a poetic deity, and the uses to which he was put as a great poetic ancestor and tutelary deity of the Way of Poetry. Arising in the wake of the recanonization of the Kokinshū in the twelfth century, the kokin denju “as institution, eventually assumed the task of maintaining and enhancing the canonical status of Kokinshū as the fi rst imperial anthology of Japanese poetry.”78 Lionized as a poetic sage in the Kokinshū Kana Preface, Hitomaro was canonized by the kokin denju as a great poet of the greatest poetic text, one representative of a golden age of poetry (the reign of the “Nara no mikado”). The worship of Hitomaro through the eigu ceremony from 1118 onward cemented his position as the embodiment of the court-poetic tradition, an iconic poetic ancestor (fi guratively and literally, through the use of his portrait at Hitomaro eigu, eigu utaawase, and waka kōshiki ). Hitomaro joined the pantheon of poetic deities going back to the mythical Susano-o, who was credited in the Kokinshū Kana Preface with the creation of the thirty-one syllable poetic form. In this sense, Hitomaro can be seen, like the institution of the kokin denju itself, as both a product of the Kokinshū’s canonization and as part of its canonizing apparatus by virtue of his status as a tutelary deity of the Way of Poetry. The presence of poetic deities in the Kokinshū and its commentaries served to enhance the aura of authority of those texts, a function clearly demonstrated in the account given above of the receipt of commentaries such as the Gyokuden jinpi from the Sumiyoshi deity. Intimations of Hitomaro’s role as a guardian of the Way of Poetry can be seen in the following passage from the Shōtetsu monogatari (Tales of Shōtetsu, 1450):

78 Cook, 104.


They say that if Japanese poetry is in danger of dying out, [Hitomaro] will without fail come back to the world of men and pass on the art as before. He has also manifested himself numerous times as a god.79

The Kokinshū Kana Preface includes the line, “Hitomaro has passed away, but poetry remains!” (Hitomaro, nakunari ni taredo, uta no koto, todo-mareru kana).80 While this line suggests that Hitomaro has died, leaving behind the poetic sensibility shown by the Nara no mikado,81 by the fi f-teenth century, when Shōtetsu is writing, Hitomaro is prepared to return to the mortal realm to reprise his earlier ancestral role (as presented in the Kana Preface) of establishing the court-poetic tradition. This passage depends on Hitomaro’s canonized status as the great ancestor of Japanese poetry, and also allows for him to assume if necessary a similar role to the Sumiyoshi deity in bringing poetic teachings from the divine to the human world. The Kingyoku sōgi passage quoted earlier also gave a clear statement of Hitomaro’s earthly mission: “to spread the Way of Poetry” (waka no michi o hiromuru).82

Poets could also request personal guidance from Hitomaro for the improvement of their art. An early example—and one not appearing in a poetic commentary as such, but in a setsuwa collection—seems to be the story included in the Jikkinshō of 1252 (IV:2) in which the origins of Hitomaro’s archetypal iconography as an old man holding brush and paper are described. As discussed in Chapter Two, the story describes the poet Fujiwara no Kanefusa’s encounter with Hitomaro in a dream; Kanefusa subsequently had a portrait of Hitomaro made, revered it, and found that his poetry had improved. Kanefusa is in effect rewarded twice for his devotion to Hitomaro; fi rstly with the dream encounter, and then with the improvement in his poetry. This latter development only takes place once Kanefusa does more than just pray inwardly to Hitomaro, but rather makes obeisance to his portrait.

Following the Hitomaro eigu, the worship of Hitomaro’s portrait continued to play an important role in ceremonies involving him. The late-Kamakura-period Tameaki-line text Chikuenshō, (Notes from the Bamboo Garden), for instance, stipulates the display of portraits of Hitomaro and the Sumiyoshi deity (to be hung on the right and left

79 Robert Brower and Steven D. Carter, Conversations with Shōtetsu (Shōtetsu monogatari), Ann Arbor: Centre for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1992, 66.

80 Arai and Kojima, 17.81 Arai and Kojima, 18.82 Ishigami, 49.

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respectively) and the placement of offerings before the portraits as part of the procedure for poetry readings (wakakō ).83 This passage from the Reizei house commentary Kokinshū chū was quoted earlier as an example of honji-suijaku thought applied to Hitomaro, but also concerns practical matters such as how to worship him and what to pray for:


This passage clearly illustrates Hitomaro’s function as a poetic divinity; not only did his godly status imbue the art of Japanese poetry with a measure of divine authority, and legitimacy as a literary form, but he was also available to assist his supplicants in their quest for poetic skill. Private prayers to Hitomaro’s portrait for poetic success can be seen as descendants of the Hitomaro eigu, and include elements from the eigu like the use of Hitomaro’s portrait. Similar instructions for the correct form of Hitomaro worship appear in a number of poetic texts, including the following:

Hitomaro’s vow is this: “Scoop water in the tiger-rabbit direction [east-north-east] and make offerings to my portrait, arranging the utensils, and if [you recite] the Akashi Bay poem for seven days or thirty-seven days, my virtue will transfer onto you.” This is said to be Hitomaro’s vow.(Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden [Oral Transmission on the Kokinshū Initiation])

Accordingly, people who wish to keep poetry in their hearts recite Hitomaro’s Akashi Bay poem three times every day, and hold memorial services for the Five Buddhas of the Five Directions. Not only will they receive the heart of poetry in this world, but they will achieve enlighten-ment. One can have no doubt about this.(Waka kanjō shidai himitsu shō [Secret Notes on Procedures of the Waka Initiation])85

A desire to improve their own poetic technique has been identifi ed as the most signifi cant motivation for poets to display portraits of Hito-

83 Sasaki Nobutsuna ed., Nihon kagaku taikei 3, 424–425.84 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 237.85 Quoted in Hanabe Hideo, Juka to setsuwa: uta, majinai, tsukimono no sekai, Miyai

shoten, 1998, 104–105.


maro at poetry meetings and similar events, where he could serve as an object of worship and of prayers for poetic improvement. It has also been suggested that Hitomaro’s presence at such events in the form of a portrait served as a substitute for his actual presence (following the example of the Sumiyoshi deity, once said to have appeared at a poetry meeting in the form of an old man).86

In addition to offering assistance in the composition of poetry, Hitomaro could be depicted within the context of the kokin denju as concerned with more worldly affairs, such as the importance of trans-mitting the secret teachings to a worthy recipient, one who showed the requisite commitment to the Way of Waka. Hitomaro is invoked, and his wrath threatened, in a kishōmon, or pledge, which is included in Waka mutei shō.

Next, one should protect one’s house, honour the words, revere the bud-dha Sudatta, who bore a thousand pieces of gold,87 and transmit [the teachings] only to one who is like the Young Ascetic in the Himalayas, who was prepared to cast away his body in search of half a verse.88 If anyone passes this on to someone other [than a person like the Young Ascetic], may they suffer the wrath of Sumiyoshi, Tamatsushima, Hito-maro, Akahito, Shitateru-hime,89 and Susano-o; may they in this life be lost as they search endlessly for the Six Principles; and may they in future existences fall without fail into the three hateful realms.90

The fate threatened here for anyone unwise enough to pass on the poetic teachings to a less-than-deserving recipient is the wrath of an assortment of poetic deities, including Hitomaro. Just as Hitomaro can grant poetic skill, so he can deny it, condemning the object of his displeasure to “search endlessly for the Six Principles,” the rikugi or six principles of poetry enumerated by Ki no Tsurayuki in the Kokinshū Kana Preface. By extension, the term rikugi could refer to waka itself; the implication seems to be that the transgressor punished by Hitomaro would never be able attain an understanding of waka (despite having received the teachings themselves). On top of their poetic misfortune,

86 Sasaki Takahiro, “Kakai ni Hitomaro ei o kakeru koto”, 151–153.87 Sudatta ( J. Shudatsu) was a wealthy disciple of the Buddha.88 Sessen-dōji, the historical Buddha in a former existence, who offered his own body

to a demon as food in order to be taught the second half of a verse (the Sessen ge [Verse on the Himalayas], also known as the Shogyō mujō ge [Verse on the Impermanence of All Things]).

89 Daughter of Ōkuninushi no mikoto.90 Sasaki ed., Nihon kagaku taikei 4, 251–252.

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they would be condemned to an eternity in the lower three of the Six Realms of transmigration: hell, the realm of beasts, and the realm of hungry ghosts. Although the implication from this text is that Hitomaro (and the other poetic deities) were capable of offering punishment as well as reward, there seem to be many more examples of Hitomaro presented as a benevolent deity than otherwise.

The Akashi Bay Poem and Waka-Dhāranī Theory

The Hitomaro eigu ceremony of 1118 was a crucial turning point in the process of Hitomaro’s deifi cation, and set the precedent for the ritual uses to which his portrait was subsequently put, such as its display and function as an object of reverence at poetry meetings, kōshiki, and the initiation ceremonies employed in the transmission of the kokin denju. The need for ritual praise of Hitomaro becomes clear when his role as protector and propagator of the Way of Poetry is considered: his blessing was necessary for the Way as a whole to fl ourish, and could also be personally requested through prayer to improve one’s poetry on an individual basis. Hitomaro’s own poetic talents were displayed to greatest effect—in the eyes of his believers—in the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409), the text of which could itself be hung as an object of worship in place of portraits of poetic deities.91 The reception of this poem, considered Hitomaro’s representative work, was closely entwined with that of Hitomaro himself, and, like Hitomaro’s reception, took on specifi cally medieval characteristics in the course of its transmission through the kokin denju.

Anonymous, Topic unknown



91 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 111.92 Arai and Kojima, 134.


This poem and its placement in the Travel volume of the Kokinshū were discussed in detail in Chapter Two; it is one of seven in the Kokinshū which, although offi cially anonymous, are tentatively attributed to Hitomaro in the notes which follow them. The prominence of this poem in Hitomaro’s reception, however, is dependent upon not only its inclusion in the body of the Kokinshū, but in its insertion as one of the exemplary poems for Hitomaro given in the old interpolated notes to the Kana Preface. Presented as the supreme poetic achievement of Tsurayuki’s “sage of poetry,” it was subsequently seized upon by Kintō, who included it in several exemplary collections. (Later commentar-ies stress the poem’s complexity and depth through notes describing how Kintō, the foremost poetic critic of his age, took three years to understand it.93) The role of the poem in stories of Hitomaro’s exile was discussed earlier; here its origins and interpretations, as presented in the commentaries of the kokin denju, will be examined.

There are a number of accounts of the poem’s origins in the com-mentaries. That in the Sangoki describes how, during the reign of Emperor Heizei, a boat came ashore on the coast of Akashi. The fi sherfolk there saw that a single Chinese man was riding in the boat. Finding this strange, they reported it to Heizei, who summoned the man to the court, and asked him about his homeland, but no-one could understand his words; only the emperor and Hitomaro understood their meaning. The emperor favored the Chinese man, who was wise in the ways of government and knowledgeable about Chinese poetry, but before three years had passed, the man was longing for his home and expressed his distress to the emperor. Taking pity on him, Heizei had a swift boat prepared for him and, accompanied by Hitomaro, proceeded in secret to Akashi and saw the boat off from afar. Missing the Chinese man, the emperor shed tears, and Hitomaro, also grieving, composed a poem. This was the Akashi poem.94

According to this account, the poem depicts a straightforward scene of Akashi Bay, with a boat disappearing into the distance. The asso-ciation of Hitomaro and Emperor Heizei is probably based on the interpretations of the Kokinshū prefaces which identifi ed Heizei as the “Nara no mikado” in whose reign Hitomaro composed poetry and with

93 Kunaichō Kokinshū shō (Imperial Household Agency Notes on the Kokinshū), Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 368.

94 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 108.

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whom he was “in perfect alignment,” and the otherwise inexplicable presence of the “Chinese man” may be in some way related to the legends describing Hitomaro as an envoy to China.95 The story is free of supernatural elements, and no assertions are made as to the divine origins or nature of the poem. This was not always the case, however. Just as the Sumiyoshi deity had been presented as the original author of some teachings of the kokin denju in the Gyokudenshū waka saijō passage quoted earlier (in which he bestows three scrolls upon Narihira), so he is also presented as the originator of the Akashi Bay poem in a section of the Sangoki where Fujiwara Shunzei, troubled by thoughts that the Way of Poetry might be nothing but wild words and ornate phrases (kyōgen-kigo), and trivial compared with matters of life and death, goes to pray at the Sumiyoshi shrine. In a dream Shunzei sees an old man of at least ninety-nine years of age, who is wearing a red brocade hat and carrying a white horsehair whisk. When Shunzei asks him about waka, the old man assures him joyfully that there is no need to learn about anything but waka, and that by learning waka he (Shunzei) would be able to attain rebirth in paradise. He then passes on to Shunzei the Akashi Bay poem.96

In this version of events, the poem has divine origins, passed on to Shunzei by the Sumiyoshi deity. Since Hitomaro was, as seen above, regarded as an incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity, there was nothing contradictory about the Sumiyoshi deity being the originator of the poem; the incongruity lies in the date for this episode, since Shunzei lived more than two hundred years after the compilation of the Kokinshū, in which the Akashi Bay poem appeared. In another account, from the Gyokuden jinpi, Hitomaro himself makes an appearance in divine form to pass on the poem.

The Matter of Hitomaro Worship in the Bamboo Chamber of the Palace

After Hitomaro’s death, in the reign of Emperor Heizei, according to a dream oracle, on the thirteenth day of the Seventh Month of the second year of Daidō [807], Hitomaro’s spirit was worshipped at Chikubushima in Ōmi Province. Afterwards, during the reign of Shirakawa-in, when the Nakayama Middle Councillor Lord Mototoshi visited Chikubushima and

95 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 109, 122.96 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, 106–107; Sangoki appears in Nihon kagaku taikei 4,

341–342.


recited the Buddha’s name before the shrine, he saw that the door was slightly open, and saw the body of the deity, in the form of Hitomaro. At once there was an oracle: “Your knowledge of the Way of Poetry is extraordinary. This poem [encapsulates] the essential meaning of poetry,” with which he transmitted the Akashi Bay poem to Mototoshi. Since then, it is said that this poem has been ever more used in the world. After that, during the reign of the Engi emperor, His Majesty had a dream and, accordingly, on the thirteenth day of the Seventh Month of the third year of Engi [903], Hitomaro’s likeness was copied and he was worshipped in the Bamboo Chamber of the Palace. This is the shrine to his portrait.97

The Hōgonji at Chikubushima, an island in the northern part of Lake Biwa, is known for its shrine to Benzaiten. In light of Hitomaro’s iden-tifi cation as the incarnation (keshin) of Myōon bosatsu and Benzaiten’s identifi cation as Myōon’s manifest trace (suijaku), the setting of this story at Chikubushima becomes signifi cant, possibly suggesting some confl a-tion of Hitomaro and Benzaiten. This is a phenomenon seen elsewhere: the Miyako meisho zue (Pictures of Famous Places in the Capital, 1780) describes a “Hitomaro Benten” enshrined at the Kisshōin Tenmangū in Karahashi, Kyoto.98 Although the shrine to which Mototoshi prays in the account above is not specifi ed, it seems likely that it was the shrine to Benzaiten. There are chronological inconsistencies here: although this oracular transmission of the Akashi Bay poem is recorded as having taken place in 903, Fujiwara no Mototoshi (d. 1142) lived considerably later. The choice of Mototoshi here is signifi cant: he was the poetry teacher of Shunzei, founder of the Mikohidari house, so this account of Hitomaro bestowing the Akashi Bay poem upon Mototoshi in particular serves to legitimize the Mikohidari house’s claims to poetic expertise. Involving direct contact with Hitomaro, it can be seen as a response to the Hitomaro eigu of the Rokujō house, primary poetic rivals of the Mikohidari.99 Hitomaro’s role here in divulging the Akashi Bay poem is comparable to that of the Sumiyoshi deity when he is depicted presenting scrolls of poetic teachings to Narihira. The story also has a similar motivation to that in which Shunzei receives the Akashi Bay

97 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 561.98 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 238.99 Hanabe, 103.

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poem from the Sumiyoshi deity, serving to legitimize the Mikohidari house by showing its members receiving the favor of poetic deities. Thus these stories of the divine revelation of the Akashi Bay poem serve to emphasize the prestige of both the poem and its recipient. It may also be noted that in the Chikubushima story, Hitomaro himself goes on to receive imperial favor when he is enshrined within the palace.

In addition to accounts of the poem’s origins, the commentaries include a number of interpretations of its content, varying widely in tone. The poem is classifi ed as a travel poem in the Kokinshū, but in the commentaries it was often given a metaphorical interpretation as a lament. For instance, the Bishamondōbon Kokinshū chū notes that although the poem is fi rst and foremost a travel poem, “Someone said that long ago, Prince Takechi, eldest son of Emperor Temmu, died at the age of nineteen. This is a poem about that.”100 A similar interpretation appears in the Sanryūshō,101 and the Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden includes the following passage.

This poem is said to commemorate the death of Emperor Mommu, or that of Prince Takechi. Either way, it is a lament. “Dimly, dimly” means a clear, bright heart. “Morning mist” means mist which separates things. “Akashi Bay” is that which allows a boat to be composed on. Where it says, “hidden by islands,” these are not ordinary islands. Of the sufferings of mankind, the four sufferings of birth, old age, illness and death are called the four devils. Since one dies after undergoing these four sufferings, they are called the four devils. Where it says, “I think of a boat,” this is no ordinary boat. This is the sovereign. It is usual for the sovereign to be compared to a boat. Therefore, “I think of a boat” refers to the death of the sovereign after suffering these four devils. The Six Principles are the six hearts of poetry, so one does not expect to fi nd them all in one poem. However, it is passed down that this poem contains six principles. The reason for this is that although the surface of the poem deals with a scene of Akashi Bay, the underlying meaning follows thoughts of lament; this is the heart of airs [ feng]. Even the sovereign cannot escape the effects of the ephemerality of the world, and compositions on how much more we cannot escape them, exhausting all reason, show the heart of exposition [ fu]. Next, “morning mist” does mean the mist of morning, but also is a reference to the sovereign as “morning”; this is a comparison [bi ] poem. Comparing the sovereign to a boat is an affective image [xing] poem. Actually composing on Emperor Mommu suffering

100 Hanabe, 90–91.101 Hanabe, 91–92; Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 3, 272–273.


the four devils and passing away is an ode [ ya]. Composing to tell of the sovereign’s passing away, despite his imperial virtue, to the spirits of the heavens and the earth, is a hymn [song], a heart that fi lls the ear to overfl owing. This being the case, one should learn that there is no poem other than this one which includes the Six Principles.102

Here we see Emperor Mommu as another possible candidate for the subject of the Akashi Bay poem as a lament (banka); the Sangoki similarly identifi es the sovereign on whose death it was composed as Mommu.103 While Mommu is mentioned here because Hitomaro was believed to have been in his service, the interpretations of the poem as a banka for Prince Takechi (654–696), the eldest son of Emperor Temmu, are based on the fact that Hitomaro really did compose a lament for him, Man’yōshū II:199–201, the longest poem in the Man’yōshū. Thus the Akashi Bay poem could be interpreted as a variation on a theme on which Hitomaro had already composed one work, the death of Takechi. The religious meanings read into the poem give it a cautionary moral to the effect that even the emperor cannot escape the ephemerality of the world, and this—it is implied—applies even more to his subjects. The human condition is revealed through a play on the word shima, “island,” which is here parsed as shima, “four devils,” defi ned here specifi -cally as the four sufferings of birth, old age, illness, and death. This use of wordplay to bring out hidden depths of meaning in the poem can be seen as a logical extension of the classical poetic technique of the kakekotoba or “pivot-word,” which was similarly dependent on a play on words.104 A more detailed comparison of the parts of the Akashi Bay poem to the “four devils” is found in the Muromachi-period Kokinshū kanjō (Kokinshū initiation).105

102 Hanabe, 92–93; Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 510–511. Translations of the rikugi are from Owen, Readings in Chinese Literary Thought, 45.

103 Sangoki, 352.104 Klein, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan, 16.105 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 1990, 246; see also Miwa, 471.

166 chapter four

Translation (read columns from right to left):

I think of a boat

WHEN BIRTH AND DEATH ARE DONE

WITH

Sickness Dimly, dimly

ALL THINGS ARE

IMPERMANENT

Birth

Today I will cross the tall mountains

Of this mortal world

Colours are brilliant,

But they are sure to fade

going island-hidden

THE BLISS OF NIRVANA IS REALIZED

Death in the morning

mistof Akashi

Bay

THIS IS THE LAW OF BIRTH

AND DEATH

Old age

To see no more shallow dreams,

No more distractions

So who in our world

Will last forever?


Here the Akashi Bay poem is broken up into four units, the fi rst phrase (ku), the second and third phrase, the fourth phrase, and the fi fth phrase, which are each associated with: one line from the Sessen ge, the gāthā from the Nirvana sutra mentioned earlier;106 one of the “four devils”; and two phrases from the Iroha uta,107 the Heian-period poem which uses each kana syllable once and which expresses (in Japanese) similar sentiments to those in the Sessen ge. The allegorical implication of this rendering of the Akashi Bay poem is that it encapsulates the essential truth of the impermanence of worldly phenomena through its inclusion of the “four devils,” in the same way that this truth is encapsulated in the Sessen ge and the Iroha uta.

The Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden then analyzes the poem in terms of the rikugi, the six poetic principles derived from the Shijing and enumerated in the Kokinshū Kana Preface. It is thus presented as containing not only the essentials of Buddhist teachings, but the essentials of poetic composition as well, as it includes all six styles of poetry within its fi ve phrases. Despite the assertion in the last line of the Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden passage that “there is no poem other than this one which includes the Six Principles,” similar claims are made in the Gyokuden jinpi for the following poem, attributed to Akahito:

Waka no ura ya The Bay of Waka!shio no michihi the rising and ebbing of the tidemi o tsukushi exhausts one’s body;fukasa asasa wa the depths and shallowskimi ya shiranami are unknown to my lord.108

The discovery of the rikugi in this poem is taken as supporting evidence for the assertion made in the Kokinshū Kana Preface that Hitomaro and Akahito were equally matched.

To take a slightly later example, the seventeenth-century Hitomaro himitsushō, a compendium of Hitomaro-related lore from the kokin denju, includes a number of interpretations of the Akashi Bay poem, including the following, which is similar to that quoted above from the

106 “All things are impermanent/This is the law of birth and death./When birth and death are done with/The bliss of nirvana is realized.”

107 “Colors are brilliant,/But they are sure to fade/So who in our world/Will last forever?/Today I shall cross the tall mountains/Of this mortal world/To see no more shallow dreams,/No more distractions.”

108 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 557. Possibly a variant of Akahito’s Man’yōshū VI:919.

168 chapter four

Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden in its attempts to discover in the poem principles related to matters other than poetry.

“Dimly, dimly” means “the beginning of things.” The beginning is spring. “Akashi Bay” means “this world is bright.” This means “to praise this world.” That which praises is a ritual poem. Ritual is summer. “Morn-ing mist” is that which separates life and death. In the Wen xuan109 too, it says, “mountain mist widely separates the many countries.” Therefore the heart that divides life and death is called “morning mist.” This means the division of death [from life]. Therefore its nature is metal. This is righteousness and autumn. “A boat going hid by islands” [refers to] the prince leaving this world. “This world” indicates earth. This is the center. The main point of this poem is this prince leaving this world. Therefore this line [of the poem] gives the main point. Therefore, “going hid by islands” means “fl ames.” “I think of a boat” [is because] a boat is some-thing that fl oats on water. Water indicates “fl ow.” This, with “boat,” refers to the prince’s being crown prince. Therefore “boat” is “water body.” This is winter. Therefore in this poem the virtues of the four seasons are assembled, and it includes benevolence, righteousness, rites, wisdom and belief, and the corporeal Six Principles. Therefore this poem takes as its basis the assembly of the corporeal and spiritual Six Principles. The matter of the spiritual Six Principles is on a separate piece of paper, and should be consulted. Therefore, this poem is Hitomaro’s dhāranī, and is supreme among poems.110

Here we see the Akashi Bay poem in the context of various sets of principles, including the rikugi. The other principles or sets of concepts mentioned here are the Five Elements ( gogyō), the Five Confucian Virtues ( gojō), and the four seasons. These sets of concepts—and a number of others, including the Five Planets, the Five Viscera, the Five Directions, the Five Tastes, and so on—had been incorporated into a system of conventionalized correspondences in China during the Warring States period (403 B.C.E.–221 C.E.). The correspondences involved in the exegesis of the Akashi Bay poem above may be sum-marized as follows:111

109 The line quoted here does not appear to be included in the Wen xuan; like spurious quotations elsewhere in the Himitsushō, it seems to be an invocation of an authoritative Chinese source to add an atmosphere of legitimacy.

110 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 1127–1128.111 Adapted from Morohashi, “Gogyō setsu,” I:465.


Table 3: Correspondences in the Akashi Bay Poem

Phrase of poem Elements Confucian Virtues Seasons

Honobono to [ Wood] [ Benevolence] SpringAkashi no ura no [ Fire] Ritual SummerAsagiri ni Metal Righteousness AutumnShimagakure yuku Earth [fl ames also

mentioned][Belief ] [doyō, days falling

between the seasons]

Fune o shi zo omou Water [Wisdom] Winter

A precedent for the use of the Five Elements in poetic analysis can be found in the earlier Gyokuden jinpi, in the section entitled “Secret Transmission of the Nine Chapters” (Kushō mitsuden), which begins with a listing of the nine chapters, the fi rst fi ve of which involve the Five Elements. Then comes the following passage:

The wood chapter mentioned above shows fi rstly the heart of spring and can be supplied with the words of the fi re chapter. Wood is the beginning of all things. Fire is the words of the heart which praises things. Therefore this chapter cannot be composed as an earth chapter. It is inauspicious for wood to prevail over earth. The earth chapter phrase (ku) should be composed with divinities and words of celebration at its center. A water chapter phrase should not be composed in these two phrases. The water chapter phrase is the teachings of the Buddha. Here a metal chapter or wood chapter is suitable. A metal chapter is the heart that destroys things. It is a poem of impermanence. This phrase cannot be composed as a wood chapter or fi re chapter. It should ideally be a water chapter or an earth chapter.112

Interpretations such as these depend on a view of language as being non-arbitrary and an “assumption that words have ‘magical’ force. Analogical and/or metonymic correspondences between language and reality are not accidents but ‘signatures’ left intentionally by a transcendent creator. They are marks indicating where interpretation should take place.”113 In this sense, the allegorical interpretations of the Akashi Bay poem parallel those given to the dissected characters of the title of Ise monogatari.

Ideas about the magical power of words are also evident in the perceived function of the Akashi Bay poem, and the uses to which

112 Katagiri, Chūsei kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 567.113 Klein, Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries of Medieval Japan, 17.

170 chapter four

it was put. Belief in the poem’s affective power is clearly illustrated in the passage mentioned earlier from the Reizei house commentary Kokinshū chū:


This passage has already been quoted twice to illustrate Hitomaro’s canonization within the context of honji-suijaku and the fact that his believers could pray to him for personal poetic success. This time, how-ever, the focus of attention is the role of the Akashi Bay poem in the act of worship. The poem here is treated like an invocation, repeatedly recited in addition to a more standard Buddhist prayer, “Praise to the bodhisattva Fine Sound” (Namu Myōon bosatsu).115 From the context here it is evident that the poem was thought to possess some incantatory power, some kind of magical effi cacy, and this attribution is made explicit through statements such as that with which the Hitomaro himitsushō pas-sage above concludes: “Therefore, this poem is Hitomaro’s dhāranī, and is supreme among poems.” Similarly, the Edo-period Chōdai gokuhi Hitomaro den (Super Great Extreme Secret Hitomaro Biography) includes the following in reference to the Akashi Bay poem:

There are many strange things about this poem; they are incalculable. Since these are known to people, they are not noted here. One should recite it three times every morning. Somehow it surpasses a divine dhāranī, and becomes a prayer.116

The poem is compared to a dhāranī; indeed, it is said to be superior to one in terms of its effects as an incantation. Dhāranī are Sanskrit incantations originally intended to aid Buddhist practitioners in main-taining their concentration but which came to be increasingly regarded as possessing an inherent affective power. The correlation of kami with buddhas and bodhisattvas under the infl uence of honji-suijaku thought

114 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 237.115 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 237.116 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 234; see also Nagata Shin’ya, “Date-shi kyōiku iinkai

zō Chōdai gokuhi Hitomaro den,” Denshō bungaku 46 (1/1997): 314.


allowed for a parallel correspondence to be drawn between waka and Buddhist teachings, a development which allowed for the reversal of the sin of kyōgen-kigo and the meritorious practice of waka, as discussed earlier. In the early medieval period, however, this concept was expanded further to include the notion of waka as being equivalent to dhāranī. The logic followed was that since dhāranī, seen as summaries of the teachings of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, were in the language used in India, the land where the buddhas and bodhisattvas came from, they were equivalent to waka, which were fi rst composed in Japanese by kami in Japan. This equivalence or correspondence between dhāranī and waka is made clear in the following passage from the Shasekishū (Collection of sand and pebbles, 1283) of Mujū Ichien:

When thinking of the Way of Japanese poetry, there is virtue in stop-ping one’s feelings of disorder and unruliness, and adopting solitude and quiet. Also, make one’s words few, while deepening one’s feelings. This is the meaning of “all-inclusive” [sōji ]. “All-inclusive” refers to dhāranī. The deities of Japan are traces of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and are the most excellent manifestation forms [ōjin]. Susano-o began to compose in the thirty-one-syllable form, with the poem on the eight-fold fence of Izumo. This is no different from the words of the Buddha. The dhāranī of India are simply the words of the people of that country. The Buddha used those words to expound dhāranī.117

Similar ideas regarding the correspondence between waka and mantras (shingon) or dhāranī are also evident in texts such as the thirteenth-cen-tury waka commentary Nomori no kagami (Field Watchman’s Mirror) and Shinkei’s Sasamegoto (Murmurings, 1463).118 The following is from Nomori no kagami:

Mantras choose the words which are the essence of the teachings of the various buddhas, and since they take to the limit the truth of the speed of the salvation of sentient beings, although their phrases are few, they have great effect. Although the words of poetry are many, they are selected, and [ poems] are just like mantras summed up in thirty-one characters. For showing the sincerity of this intent, there is nothing which surpasses Japanese poetry.119

Like other aspects of the synthesis of waka and religion, ideas about the equivalence of waka and dhāranī made their way from classical

117 Watanabe Tsunaya ed., Shasekishū, NKBT 85, Iwanami shoten, 1966, 222–223.118 Kikuchi, p. 221.119 Yamada, “Mikkyō to waka bungaku,” 157.

172 chapter four

to popular genres, from poetic discourse to otogizōshi (medieval prose narratives), as seen, for instance, in this passage from the Muromachi-period otogizōshi Kamiyo Komachi (Komachi in the Age of the Gods):

Japanese poems are the dhāranī of the Buddha, and composing them can be said to correspond to the enlightenment of the bodhisattvas and to be a link to attaining enlightenment and release from suffering.120

The concept of waka-dhāranī equivalence, however, was predicated on more than just the repositioning of waka within honji-suijaku discourse; it also involved the adaptation of existing ideas on the nature of Japa-nese poetry to a new philosophical environment. Belief in the power of words is apparent in the earliest Japanese texts, and the notion of waka-as-dhāranī can be seen as a combination of both honji-suijaku thought and earlier concepts such as that of kotodama, “word-soul.”121 The term kotodama, which makes its fi rst appearance in the Man’yōshū, refers to the “magico-religious effi cacy of certain words,” which could be invoked or activated by the use of the appropriate ritual language. It is intimately connected to the oral and performative aspects of Japanese poetry,122 at that time being combined with and transformed by the infl ux of Chinese literary culture; its application may be seen, for instance, in ritual poems such as kunimi, “land-viewing” poems, in which the sovereign would survey the land and harness its spiritual power through kotodama by reciting a poem of praise.123 This view of poetry as affective and spiritually powerful by nature persisted dur-ing the Heian and medieval periods; as mentioned earlier, it was an aspect of waka recognized by Tsurayuki in the Kokinshū Kana Preface, where in the opening paragraph he describes waka as being able to “effortlessly move heaven and earth, calm the invisible spirits, soften relations between men and women, and console the hearts of fi erce warriors.”124 It is not hard to draw a parallel between this view of poetic language and the concept of waka as dhāranī, as both rely on the perceived incantatory power of words recited aloud in the form of an appropriately structured utterance such as a poem. It has also been

120 Kikuchi Hitoshi, “Waka darani kō,” in Watanabe Yasuaki ed. Higi toshite no waka: kōi to ba, Nihon bungaku o yomikaeru 4. Yūseidō, 1995: 217.

121 Yamada, “Mikkyō to waka bungaku,” 160.122 Ebersole, 19–22.123 Ebersole, 39.124 Arai and Kojima, 4.


argued that the connection to dhāranī was partly made on the basis of aural characteristics of waka such as their sound and rhythm, the importance of which is stressed in various commentaries.125

Hitomaro’s treatment in medieval texts can be situated within this broader trend towards the sacralization of poetic language itself. As the producers of admired poems, great poets could take on divine characteristics, and the important development in Hitomaro’s medieval canonization is his transformation into a deity rather than merely a mortal sage of poetry. Hitomaro’s valorization as a poetic divinity in court-poetic discourse, while cementing his position as a canonical sym-bol of poetic authority, also laid the foundation for his wider reception in the early modern period in both elite and popular genres.

125 Kikuchi, 217

CHAPTER FIVE

HITOMARO IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD: POETIC ICON AND POPULAR DEITY

Following Hitomaro’s elevation to the status of poetic deity in the medieval commentaries on the Kokinshū, his reception and canonization in the early modern period (Edo period, 1603–1868) can be examined in terms of three main spheres of discourse. The fi rst is the continuing transmission of Hitomaro as a deity of poetry (as depicted in the texts of the kokin denju), including the reception in popular genres of Hitomaro as a poetic divinity. The second is the re-emergence of Hitomaro as a Man’yōshū poet in the context of the reception and study of the Man’yōshū by scholars of the National Learning (kokugaku) movement. The third is the growth of shrines dedicated to Hitomaro, where he came to be worshipped for distinctly non-literary purposes. These areas were by no means mutually exclusive: rather, there was, broadly speaking, a strong tendency for the image of Hitomaro presented in court-poetic discourse to infl uence other areas of his reception. It was through a combina-tion of factors, but primarily the integration of the kokin denju into the body of rituals associated with the imperial house, that the process of Hitomaro’s deifi cation reached a major milestone with his receipt of a divine title and court rank by imperial permit in 1723.

Early Modern Kokin Denju Reception

By the Edo period, the transmission of poetic teachings on the Kokinshū was largely in the hands of parties other than the blood descendants of the medieval poetic houses. The system of transmission was reformu-lated as a paying institution in the fi fteenth century by the waka poet Tō no Tsuneyori (1401–1484) and the linked verse (renga) master Sōgi (1421–1502),1 an event that makes clear the extent to which control of the secret teachings had moved beyond the reach of the poetic houses.

1 Cook, 22.

176 chapter five

One line of transmission of the kokin denju passed from Sōgi to the Sanjōnishi house and thence to the warrior and waka poet Hosokawa Yūsai (1534–1610), who transmitted it in turn to the popular linked verse (haikai) poet Matsunaga Teitoku (1571–1653). The involvement in the transmission of the kokin denju of warriors like Yūsai or poets composing in non-waka forms like Sōgi and Teitoku is indicative of the changed circumstances of waka in the late medieval period, as the high court canon was appropriated and adapted in other social spheres. However, the Kokinshū and its commentaries still retained a place at the heart of aristocratic culture through the newly reformulated kokin denju, as Yūsai also originated the so-called “palace transmission” ( gosho denju), the line of transmission from Yūsai himself to Prince Toshihito (1579–1629) and Emperor GoMizunoo (1596–1680; r. 1611–1629). The advent of the “palace transmission” was an extremely signifi cant development in the context of Hitomaro’s reception, as GoMizunoo was the father of Reigen (1654–1732, r. 1663–1687), whose infl uence as Retired Emperor was to prove decisive in Hitomaro’s offi cial deifi cation in 1723.

As a product of the power struggle between the medieval poetic houses rather than a natural outgrowth of poetic study,2 the teachings contained in the kokin denju were prized as much—or even more—for their symbolic value as emblems of poetic authority and expertise as they were for their actual content. By the early seventeenth century the kokin denju as reinvented by Tsuneyori and Sōgi had been transformed into a syncretic religious ceremony—involving the use of Hitomaro portraits as objects of veneration—which placed emphasis on the mystical and secret nature of the teachings.3 The effects of this perception of the teachings on the Kokinshū are evident in the Edo-period development of the so-called “box transmission” (hako denju), in which the box contain-ing the scrolls of the kokin denju materials would be passed on to the recipient without any accompanying lectures or instruction in the Way of Poetry. It was this extremely conventionalized and commercialized form of the kokin denju that was the object of particular criticism by the scholars of the National Learning movement,4 notably Motoori

2 Aso Mizue, “Hitomaro shinkō: sono keisei to tenkai,” 24.3 Janet Ikeda-Yuba, “Triumphant survivor on Japan’s cultural battlefi eld of the

sixteenth century. Hosokawa Yūsai, 1534–1610: Warrior, Nijō poet and guardian of the kokin denju” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1993), 137–8. A description of Yūsai’s receipt of the kokin denju in 1574 appears in Ikeda-Yuba, 150–152.

4 Ikeda-Yuba, 139.

hitomaro in the early modern period 177

Norinaga (1730–1801), who described the kokin denju as “a disaster and a scandal” in his poetic treatise Ashiwake obune (A Small Boat Parting the Reeds, 1757).5

Hitomaro in Popular Genres

Even as the transmission of the kokin denju itself was becoming increas-ingly formulaic, with less attention being paid to the content of its com-mentaries, that content, including information pertaining to Hitomaro, was making its way into other vehicles for wider dissemination. The content of the secret commentaries had been seeping out of court-poetic discourse and into popular genres such as otogizōshi (prose narratives) in the medieval period—as seen in the previous chapter in the case of Kamiyo Komachi—and this phenomenon continued into the early modern period. The truly epochal development in the spread of the image of Hitomaro as a poetic deity, however, was the publication in 1670 of the Hitomaro himitsushō. This was a printed compendium of the teachings central to Hitomaro’s treatment in the kokin denju, and a considerable part of its content was taken, in some cases almost verbatim, from the fourteenth-century Tameaki-line commentary Gyokuden jinpi.6

The popularity of the Hitomaro himitsushō, which is the second-old-est independent work on Hitomaro after Kenshō’s Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kanmon of 1184, may be gauged from the fact that it went on to be reprinted twice, in 1675 and 1692.7 This reprinting is situated within what has been characterized as the fi rst “Hitomaro boom”; the second such boom came almost a century later, in the form of popular texts with Hitomaro-related storylines based on the content of the secret commentaries which had been revealed in the Himitsushō.8 These popular treatments of Hitomaro are found in a variety of genres, including the kusazōshi ( grass booklet) Kakinomoto Hitomaro akashi no suzuri (Kakinomoto no Hitomaro: an Inkstone at Akashi) of 1760, the plot of which is heavily dependent on the Himitsushō, the kanazōshi (vernacular prose booklet) Kakinomoto no Hitomaro tanjōki (Record of Kakinomoto

5 Cook, 110.6 See Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 1121–1169.7 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 955.8 Kaisetsu to Kakinomoto Hitomaro akashi no suzuri, in Koike Masatane sō no kai ed.,

Edo no ehon: shoki kusazōshi shusei I, Kokusho kankō kai, 1987, 83–84.

178 chapter five

no Hitomaro’s birth, 1762), and the jōruri and kabuki play Hitomaro banzai dai (1761).9

Another popular work involving Hitomaro—along with a few other fi gures from the poetic tradition—is the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi, the title of which may be translated as The Power of Poetry: A Dimly-Dawn-ing Tale of Akashi Harbour.10 It is an illustrated tale probably published soon after 1762, and, like the Kakinomoto Hitomaro akashi no suzuri men-tioned above, belongs to the genre of popular prose narrative known as kusazōshi. The narrative of the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi begins in Akashi, where a fi sher-girl called Kosan comes ashore for a rest from diving and dreams of a romantic encounter with the emperor (identifi ed in the text as the nineteenth sovereign, Hanjō, traditionally supposed to have reigned from 406 to 410). Following this dream encounter, Kosan shows signs of pregnancy, but will not tell her parents who the father of her child is. The birth of her child follows in due course:

That year was one in which the persimmon tree bore an unusually large number of fruit. When Kosan went to break off a branch laden with fruit, strangely, her side suddenly began to hurt, and, breaking open the side of her body, a jewel-like boy was born.

[. . .]Kosan’s mother wept. Her father, seeing the birth of his grandson,

thought it most strange. The baby took seventeen steps to the left and fourteen to the right, making thirty-one in all; with his left and right hands he pointed to heaven and earth, and announced in a loud voice that throughout the universe Japanese poetry should be revered above all else. It was most strange.

At that time the holy man Shōkū [c. 917–1007] from Shoshazan11 in Harima Province was passing by, spreading the teachings of the Buddha. In the Lumbini Garden it had been beneath a fl owering tree, but since

9 Kaisetsu to Akashigata honobono zōshi, Edo no ehon, 54. Just as Hitomaro had not been the only literary fi gure implicated in honji-suijaku relationships in the medieval commentaries, so he was not the only such fi gure to be thus represented in popular Edo-Period texts. One slightly earlier example than those listed above is the kusazōshi Shinpan Murasaki Shikibu (Murasaki Shikibu newly published) of circa 1747, which recounts—among other things—Murasaki Shikibu’s composition of the Genji mono-gatari and her eventual revelation as a manifestation of Kannon (Keller Kimbrough, “Murasaki Shikibu for Children: The Illustrated Shinpan Murasaki Shikibu of ca. 1747,” Japanese Language and Literature 40:1 (2006): 1–37).

10 Katoku akashigata honobono zōshi appears in Koike Masatane sō no kai ed., Edo no ehon: shoki kusazōshi shusei I, Kokusho kankō kai, 1987, 35–54. All translations from the text appearing here are of this edition of the text.

11 Now in Himeji City. Site of Enkyōji, a Tendai temple founded by Shōkū in the mid-Heian period.


this was at the foot of a persimmon tree, [Shōkū] at once named [the child] Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, and, wrapping him in the sleeve of his robe, promised that when [ Hitomaro] was an adult [Shōkū] would summon him as an acolyte.12

Then comes an abrupt change of scene to the seashore near Mount Fuji, where we are told that in 725 red clouds covered the sun for several days before being dispersed by the recitation of a poem. The poem which exhibited such impressive power is the Shinkokinshū variant (VI:675, Winter) of Man’yōshū III:318:

Tago no ura ni Going out on Tago Bay,uchiidete mireba when I lookshirotae no on Fuji’s high peak,Fuji no takane ni white as hempen sleeves,yuki wa furitsutsu snow is falling.13

The fi sherman who recites the poem is subsequently identifi ed as the Man’yōshū poet Yamabe no Akahito. Meanwhile, the devious Tachibana no Hayanari (a stereotypical villain with the requisite bushy eyebrows and sideburns) plots to overthrow the emperor; he also wishes to become better acquainted with the beautiful (fi fth-century) poet Princess Soto-ori. Hayanari is infuriated when he overhears Princess Sotoori being presented to the Crown Prince as an unoffi cial concubine by the (elev-enth-century) poet Izumi Shikibu. Hayanari retaliates by imprisoning the Princess’ father, but Kanefusa, Deputy Governor of Sanuki, rescues him during a drinking party, beheading the guard in the process.

Meanwhile, Hitomaro—now an acolyte at Shōkū’s temple, but already depicted as an old man, as is typical in his portraits—dons a court hat and robe and recites the Akashi Bay poem while gazing out to sea. Soon thereafter Hayanari launches an armed assault on the imperial palace, and the crown prince and his entourage fl ee the capital for Akashi Bay. Reaching the coast, they encounter Hitomaro, at which point the Crown Prince bestows the Senior Third Rank upon Hitomaro and declares that Hitomaro, Akahito, and Princess Sotoori shall henceforth be known as the “three gods of Japanese poetry.” After Hitomaro presents him with the Akashi Bay poem, the Crown Prince’s party departs for the port of Naniwa by sea. Then comes the dramatic climax of the story, and a memorable demonstration of the awesome

12 Katoku akashigata honobono zōshi, 39–40.13 Katoku akashigata honobono zōshi, 41.

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power of poetry, as Hayanari’s boats close in and the Crown Prince recites the verse presented to him by Hitomaro:

“Dimly, dimly”How strange! As the poem was recited, dimly, the gods appeared. “In the morning mist”They destroyed all the attacking military boats. “Of Akashi Bay,”The boats were all wrecked, and the soldiers one and all became seaweed on the sea fl oor. “I think of a boat”Hayanari’s army had pursued them to Akashi Bay; “Going island-hidden.”The Prince had already seen that they were in danger, but when he recited Hitomaro’s poem, he was safe, and the boat arrived at Naniwa Harbor.14

Hayanari subsequently causes a drought by sealing up a dragon deity in a large jar, but the (eleventh-century) poet-priest Nōin recites a poem praying for rain, releasing the dragon deity and relieving the drought. The story ends with Kanefusa being commissioned by the Crown Prince to draw portraits of the three deities of Japanese poetry.

The Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi depicts an imagined poetic past, some of whose prominent fi gures—from the Heian period and ear-lier—are inserted into an exciting narrative framework with a fl amboy-ant villain, murder, dramatic divine manifestations, and a spectacular climactic scene of marine pursuit and mass drowning. A number of fi gures in the illustrated text—including the chief villain, Hayanari—are depicted in contemporary eighteenth-century style rather than with Heian or pre-Heian hairstyles or clothing. The story thus constructed is an entertaining pastiche of classical poems, classical and contem-porary plot elements, and religious and poetic lore, all rendered in an accessible graphic format.

Within this popular illustrated text, however, we can clearly discern elements derived from the esoteric commentaries of the kokin denju. Information that had been preserved in secret for centuries had escaped the bounds of kokin denju transmission to make its way into wider dis-course, available to any interested reader. For instance, as seen earlier, medieval accounts of Hitomaro’s divine origins frequently describe him as miraculously appearing beneath a persimmon tree. A similar scene

14 Katoku akashigata honobono zōshi, 49.


features in the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi; the difference here—serv-ing to further emphasize Hitomaro’s divinity—is that Hitomaro’s birth scene in this text is modeled on accounts of the birth of the Buddha, who emerged from his mother’s right side beneath a fl owering tree in the Lumbini Garden. The Buddha is then described as taking seven steps in each of the four directions; by contrast, Hitomaro’s thirty-one steps equate to the thirty-one syllables of a waka. The infant Hitomaro’s announcement that “throughout the universe Japanese poetry should be revered above all else” (tenjō tenge waka dokuson) is a clear parody of the newborn Buddha’s “throughout the universe I should be revered above all else” (tenjō tenge yuiga dokuson). In both cases similar hand movements are described, with one hand pointing up at the heavens and the other down at the earth. In a further parallel, like the Buddha’s mother, Hitomaro’s mother in this narrative dies soon after the miraculous birth.

Another element of the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi which is found in earlier texts is the concept of the miraculous powers of poetry (katoku). As was noted in the previous chapter, a number of poetic commentaries attribute magical effi cacy to the Akashi Bay poem as a means of improving one’s compositions, and the concept of poetry as magical utterance, formulated in medieval writings on waka-dhāranī theory, goes back to the Kokinshū Kana Preface and beyond, to the earlier concept of kotodama (word-soul). The miraculous power ascribed to poetry according to waka-dhāranī theory could be recorded in the form of short narratives known as katoku setsuwa, “tales of the wondrous benefi ts of poetry,”15 which started to appear in the late Heian period.16 In the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi, a descendant of these earlier katoku setsuwa, Hitomaro is the character depicted as having both the most miraculous origins and the most magically powerful poetry. His statement that “Japanese poetry should be revered above all else” is reinforced by subsequent events in which the recitation of poetry leads to a demonstration of its awesome power. The most spectacular instance of poetic magic in the text is the use of the Akashi Bay poem

15 Keller Kimbrough, “Reading the Miraculous Powers of Japanese Poetry: Spells, Truth Acts, and a Medieval Poetics of the Supernatural,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32:1 (2005): 2.

16 Kimbrough, “Reading the Miraculous Powers of Japanese Poetry,” 2. He cites Fukurozōshi (1157–1158) and Shasekishū (1280) as texts with notable sections of katoku setsuwa.

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that results in the aforementioned destruction of Hayanari’s fl eet. The particular method by which the poem serves this purpose is by sum-moning various deities, including the Sumiyoshi deity, associated with both poetry and water, who then play a role—unclear from either the text or the image—in the sinking of the fl eet. In addition, the use of poems to bring rainfall features in a number of katoku setsuwa,17 and one of the best-known such stories, appearing in a number of Heian and medieval texts, involves Nōin breaking a drought with a poem.18 It is this episode, including the poem, which is reproduced in the lat-ter part of the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi, providing an explicit intertextual link to the lineage of earlier texts concerned with poetry’s magical potency. Thus the Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi can be seen as a direct descendant of earlier texts dealing with the power of poetry, but can also be understood as very much a product of its time and place, when classical texts were fi nding a wider audience through the juxtaposition and interaction of elite and popular cultures.

Similar adaptations of medieval source material into Edo-period Hitomaro-related texts can be seen in some of the nō plays which take him as their subject. These include works such as the seventeenth-century Hitomaro,19 Hitomaro Saigyō (Hitomaro and Saigyō),20 thought to date from before the mid-Edo period, and the later (nineteenth-century) Kakinomoto.21 Hitomaro Saigyō takes as its source material the Sangoku denki setsuwa, mentioned in the previous chapter, describing an encounter between the poet-priest Saigyō and Hitomaro’s ghost at Akashi. There are, however, some signifi cant differences between the two texts. Where the Sangoku denki story stresses the religious benefi ts of poetry, explicitly identifying fervent adherence to poetry as a path to Buddhist salvation, the nō play employs Hitomaro’s ghost as a mouthpiece for imparting poetic knowledge (echoing in places the Kana Preface to the Kokinshū). Hitomaro informs Saigyō that the latter’s reward for his years of single-minded devotion to the Way of Poetry is Hitomaro’s appearance to

17 See Kimbrough, “Reading the Miraculous Powers of Japanese Poetry,” 11–18.18 Kimbrough, “Reading the Miraculous Powers of Japanese Poetry,” p. 17.19 Ca. 1687. In Mikan yōkokushū 6, ed. Tanaka Makoto, Koten bunko 227 (Koten

bunko, 1965), 193–201.20 Kubota Jun ed., Saigyō zenshū (Nihon koten bungaku kai, 1982), 1120. The text

of the play appears in the same text, 1104–1108.21 In Mikan yōkokushū zoku 2, ed. Tanaka Makoto, 283–291. Koten bunko 498. Koten

bunko, 1988.


him22 (rather than rebirth in the Pure Land, as in the setsuwa). This is reminiscent of Hitomaro’s comments to Kanefusa in Jikkinshō IV:2: “You have been good enough to keep Hitomaro in your heart for many years; due to the depth of your wish, I am showing myself to you.”23

The nō Hitomaro has a similar plot: a traveling poet-priest makes a pilgrimage to a shrine in Akashi, where he encounters an elderly local man. The old man reveals himself to be Hitomaro, recites the Akashi Bay poem, and describes himself as follows:

I have been the guardian deity of poetry since many kalpas in the past. In order to save the masses, I have temporarily assumed human form, comforting my lord and promoting poetry. For generations I was in service [at court], but now I have left my traces here at Akashi. I revere my lord and protect the Way [of Poetry]. The “Bright Deity of Akashi” refers to me.24

In the case of this play, while the deity is once again Hitomaro, the traveler is the twelfth-century poet-priest Tōren, a member of Shun’e’s Karin’en salon immortalized in the fourteenth-century Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness; section 188) as a passionate enthusiast of poetry. Near the end of the play, Hitomaro makes a declaration to Tōren regarding his appearance which echoes that in Hitomaro Saigyō:

It is only because you have applied yourself to the Way of Shikishima [i.e. poetry] and have such a deep relationship with poetry that I have appeared to you.25

Like Saigyō, Tōren had a reputation for utter devotion to the Way of Poetry, a devotion that was a precondition for Hitomaro’s appear-ance.26 In other words, only a truly dedicated poet could hope for an actual encounter with Hitomaro at his gravesite or shrine. Hav-ing appeared to Tōren, Hitomaro then proceeds to transmit to him the “Innermost Truth” (ōgi ) of poetry (again, largely drawn from the Kokinshū Kana Preface). Hitomaro also recounts to Tōren the tale of his miraculous appearance beneath a persimmon tree in Iwami. As seen earlier, this anecdote can be found in a number of medieval kokin denju

22 Kubota, 1106–7.23 Asami, 150.24 Hitomaro, in Mikan yōkokushū 6, 198.25 Hitomaro, 199.26 Sasaki, “Hitomaro tenbo no dentō,” 21–22.

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commentaries, and its inclusion in this nō play allows the text to be situated within the larger phenomenon of the emergence of the secrets of the kokin denju commentaries into wider discourse.

The same is true for the later nō Kakinomoto (c. 1863), which takes place at Toda in Iwami. Still the site of a shrine to Hitomaro, Toda is identifi ed in texts such as the Gyokuden jinpi as the specifi c site of Hitomaro’s appearance beneath a persimmon tree, and Kakinomoto includes a retelling of the story in which Hitomaro is discovered as an awesome divine child by an elderly couple beneath a persimmon tree in Toda. Although the waki in Kakinomoto is not identifi ed by name, his connection to poetry is made clear by the fact that he is a priest from Sumiyoshi, who has already visited Tamatsushima and is now en route to the Toda shrine dedicated to the third of the three deities of waka, Hitomaro.27

Hitomaro and National Learning

One factor underlying the enthusiasm for Hitomaro refl ected in popular texts like those quoted above was the renewed interest in and research on the Man’yōshū being undertaken by National Learning scholars.28 For instance, Keichū’s Man’yōshū daishōki (Record of the Man’yōshū in Lieu of my Teacher) was presented to Mito Mitsukuni in 1690, two years before the third printing of the Hitomaro himitsushō, and Kamo no Mabuchi’s monumental Man’yō kō (Thoughts on the Man’yōshū) (volumes 3, 4, 5, 6 and appendix [bekki ]) was published in 1768, soon after the two Hitomaro-related kusazōshi mentioned earlier. In other words, the revival of interest in Hitomaro in the context of the Man’yōshū spurred interest in Hitomaro as depicted in the kokin denju, despite the fact that the work of the National Learning scholars was in part a reaction against the kokin denju and the type of knowledge and transmission thereof that it involved.

The forerunner of the early modern Man’yōshū commentaries was the Man’yōshū chūshaku (Commentary on Man’yōshū, 1269) of Sengaku (1203–1272), which was the first commentary to cover the entire

27 Tanaka Makoto ed., Mikan yōkokushū zoku 2, 283–291.28 Edo no ehon, 84.


anthology. The fi rst major Man’yōshū commentary of the Edo period is the Man’yōshū daishōki, which began as a commentary commissioned by Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1700), Ieyasu’s grandson and lord of the Mito domain, from Shimokōbe Chōryū (1624–1686). Stricken by illness, Chōryū in 1682 asked that the work be completed by his friend Keichū (1640–1701). Keichū’s Man’yōshū daishōki, the fi nal version of which was presented to Mitsukuni in 1690, is notable for the quality of its philological analyses of the text and heralded the beginning of a new era in Man’yōshū studies.29

Along with this increased interest in the Man’yōshū came new studies of Hitomaro, and yet despite the advances in Man’yōshū scholarship, the effects of Hitomaro’s image from the kokin denju, or at least from his post-Man’yōshū reception, persisted. Chōryū wrote the following on Hitomaro in his Kasen shō (Notes on Poetic Immortals):

A person of Tsuno village, Iwami Province. Served sovereigns at the Fujiwara palace, then returned to his home province and died there. His rank and that of his ancestors are nowhere to be seen.30

While incorporating the Man’yōshū-based tradition of Hitomaro dying in Iwami, based on his putative death poem in volume II of the Man’yōshū, this entry also draws on the story of Hitomaro’s origins in Iwami fi rst seen in the Sanryūshō of 1286. Kasen shō also includes comments on the Akashi Bay poem (Kokinshū IX:409): Chōryū interprets it as a straightforward scene of Akashi Bay, composed at the time Hitomaro was going to China, and goes on to say:

Although the story of Hitomaro going to China is not seen elsewhere, it appears in the Shūishū and so should not be doubted. On top of that, a number of poems composed by Hitomaro at Akashi can be seen in the Man’yōshū.31

Chōryū then criticizes the allegorical interpretations given the poem in the kokin denju, noting that “this poem has been compared to vari-ous things, and false reasons noted. All of these are useless.”32 Despite Chōryū’s criticism of the kokin denju and his familiarity with Hitomaro’s poems in the Man’yōshū, his comments on Hitomaro and the Akashi Bay

29 Information in this paragraph is from Peter Nosco, “Man’yōshū Studies in Tokugawa Japan,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Fourth series, 1, 1986, 111–117.

30 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 979.31 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 979–980.32 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 980.

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poem in the Kasen shō clearly show the infl uence of Hitomaro’s Heian and medieval reception. The very inclusion of the Akashi Bay poem in his discussion of Hitomaro and his acceptance of the Hitomaro-visiting-China narrative suggest Chōryū’s regard for the Kokinshū and Shūishū and the image of Hitomaro presented therein. His approach to Hitomaro seems similar to that of the mid-Heian period prior to the advent of the kokin denju,33 as he largely refutes the medieval treatment of Hitomaro (apart from describing Iwami as Hitomaro’s birthplace) but does not exclude the two early imperial anthologies—Kokinshū and Shūishū—from consideration.

The Man’yōshū daishōki includes a similar biography of Hitomaro to that in Chōryū’s Kasen shō in its “Hitomaro no koto” (“The Matter of Hitomaro”) section, based mainly on the Man’yōshū but with Iwami identified as Hitomaro’s birthplace.34 Doubts over this version of Hitomaro’s life were expressed by Kada no Azumamaro (1669–1736) in his Man’yōshū dōmōshō (Child’s Notes on the Man’yōshū):

It is very diffi cult to know in which province Hitomaro was born. In later ages, Iwami has come to be passed down as the province of his birth. Prior to this collection [Man’yōshū] there was the poem from the time when he parted from his wife to come up to the capital, and here too is the poem from the time of his death. Perhaps this is why [ Iwami ] came to be seen as his home province. However, there is no clear record of the province of his birth in any of the national historical records and so forth, and so it is diffi cult to decide where it is; but perhaps it should be understood as Iwami, following the headings in this collection [Man’yōshū] to the poem on coming to the capital and to his fi nal poem.35

However, a major advance in Man’yōshū-based discussion of Hitomaro’s life was made by Azumamaro’s student Kamo no Mabuchi, who consid-ers Hitomaro’s biography in the appendix to his six-volume commentary Man’yō kō. As mentioned in Chapter One, Mabuchi’s reconstruction of Hitomaro’s biography was very infl uential, becoming the basis of the standard theory regarding Hitomaro’s life36 among later scholars. Mabuchi suggested that Hitomaro served Princes Hinamishi and Takechi as a low-ranking offi cial (toneri ), and was posted to Iwami late

33 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 980.34 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 982.35 Aso, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ronkō, 190–191.36 Inaoka Kōji, “Denshō,” 107.


in life. He was summoned to the capital for a meeting of offi cials,37 and died unexpectedly on the road in Iwami on either this journey or a later one. Regarded as one of “Japan’s premiere eighteenth-century nativists,”38 Mabuchi is particularly noted for his work on the Man’yōshū, and his proposed biography of Hitomaro was soundly based on poems (and their headnotes) appearing in the Man’yōshū. Yet even Mabuchi’s writings could not entirely escape the effects of Hitomaro’s canonization in the Kokinshū. In his Niimanabi (New Learning, 1765), Mabuchi praises the Man’yōshū for its masculine style (masuraoburi ) and deplores the feminine style (taoyameburi) of the poetry of the Kokinshū. He praises Hitomaro’s poetry as representative of the more masculine style, yet quotes as Hitomaro’s work not a Man’yōshū poem, but one of the anonymous poems tentatively attributed to him in the Kokinshū, VI:334 (Winter):

ume no hana The plum blossoms—sore to mo miezu I cannot see which they are,hisakata no as the distant skyamagiru yuki no is so misty with snownabete furereba falling everywhere.

. . . This is a poem of someone of the Nara period, and is one with the sentiment and metre of Hitomaro’s poetry. Without speaking even slightly of trivial things, the height and breadth of the sentiments of the noble masculinity of the meter appear. In the same collection [i.e. Kokinshū], there are many amusing-sounding poems on plum blossoms, but one realizes that they are composed concealing narrow sentiments; think [ instead] on the noble sentiments of people of the Nara period. Look toward the poems of the Kamakura Great Minister of the Right.39 Hitomaro’s poem has vigor, like a dragon ascending to the sky, and the words are like the movements of the tides of the sea. The meter is like the sound of Sotsuhiko of Katsuragi plucking a great bow. The words of the poems of Akahito are as clear as the waters of Yoshino River, and the sentiments as unapproachably noble as Fuji’s lofty peak. Hitomaro is as different [from Akahito] as the heavens from the earth, but they both made excellent poems of old.40

37 As a chōshūshi, a messenger sent to present the annual report on the provincial government to the central administration.

38 Nosco, 109.39 Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192–1219), the third Kamakura shōgun, noted for his

poetry in the Man’yō style.40 Taira Shigemichi and Abe Akio ed., Kinsei shintō ron: zenki kokugaku, Nihon shisō

taikei 39, Iwanami shoten, 1972, 364.

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As well as its appearance in the body of the Kokinshū, the plum blos-som poem (VI:334) is quoted—along with the Akashi Bay poem—in the old interpolated notes to the Kana Preface as one of Hitomaro’s exemplary poems. Despite the similarity of this poem to some Man’yōshū poems,41 its appearance here seems to indicate Mabuchi’s acceptance of the attribution to Hitomaro made in the Kokinshū footnote, and can be taken as an illustration of the diffi culties faced by those trying to free the study of Hitomaro from the sphere of court-poetic discourse.

The most detailed biographical treatment of Hitomaro in the early modern period was Ueda Akinari’s (1734–1809) Kaseiden (Biography of the Poetic Sage, 1785), in which Akinari sets out to rectify inaccura-cies in existing accounts of Hitomaro’s life. He makes use of a wide range of sources, including the Man’yōshū, the Kokinshū, the Kakinomoto eigu ki, shrine records and monumental inscriptions, Shōtetsu monogatari, Kenshō’s Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kanmon, Kiyosuke’s Fukurozōshi, Mabuchi’s Man’yō kō, and the Hitomaro himitsushō. Akinari critically evalu-ates medieval traditions surrounding Hitomaro, dismissing, for instance, an apocryphal death poem attributed to Hitomaro in Shōtetsu monogatari as “useless, by someone unfamiliar with old poems.”42

The early modern period saw what has been described as “the lib-eration of the classical Japanese literary tradition”43 from the restricted and exclusive lines of transmission of the kokin denju. The classical texts were freed from the exclusive purview of the court poets and made accessible through publications and lectures, provoking interest among the reading public and introducing Hitomaro to a broader readership not composed exclusively of practicing poets (poetic producers being the recipients of the teachings of the kokin denju). It was against this background that popular interest in Hitomaro grew, and the publication of the Hitomaro himitsushō in 1670 refl ected both the increased interest in Hitomaro and the loss of the kokin denju’s monopoly on information about him. Elements of Hitomaro’s medieval canonization infl uenced every aspect of his reception in the early modern period, affecting not only the popular works drawing on the Himitsushō, and Hitomaro’s

41 E.g. Man’yōshū VIII:1426: waga seko ni/misemu to omoishi/ume no hana/sore to mo miezu/yuki no furureba (The plum blossoms/I thought to show/to you, my love/cannot be told apart/from the falling snow) (Katagiri, Kokinwakashū zenhyōshaku, I:1077).

42 Koka shiranu hito no itazuragoto nari (Nakamura Yukihiko ed., Kaseiden, Ueda Akinari zenshū 4, Chūōkōronsha, 1993, 26).

43 Nosco, 114.


imperially sponsored deifi cation, but even extending to the work of the National Learning scholars despite their avowed opposition to the form and content of the kokin denju and its teachings.

Hitomaro Enshrined

The major Edo-period development in the process of Hitomaro’s canonization was his extra-literary canonization as an enshrined deity. Shrines to Hitomaro had existed in the medieval period, but they fl our-ished in terms of both status and number in the Edo period. Although the impetus for Hitomaro’s deifi cation was rooted in his reception in court-poetic discourse, his apotheosis in the early modern period was taking place on two levels. At a local level, he was being assimilated into local systems of folk belief (minkan shinkō) and frequently worshipped for reasons that had nothing to do with poetry.44 On a national level, however, his status as a great poetic deity was enhanced through the proliferation of the kokin denju and was formally recognized through his imperially-sponsored deifi cation as the Kakinomoto daimyōjin (Great Bright Deity Kakinomoto) in 1723, believed to be the one-thousandth anniversary of his death.

Today there are numerous shrines dedicated to Hitomaro throughout Japan:45 the two largest and best-documented are at Takatsu, in what was formerly Iwami Province (modern Masuda city, Shimane Prefec-ture) and Akashi. There are additional important shrines to Hitomaro in Shimane, notably at Toda (near Masuda) and in Yamato (modern Nara Prefecture), site of the Fujiwara palace where he is thought to have served at court. Until it was abandoned in the nineteenth century there was also a temple, the Shihonji or Kakinomotodera, near the Wanishita shrine in Tenri City, in the ancestral territory of the Wani clan from which the Kakinomoto clan was descended.46

The earliest reference to a shrine to Hitomaro is found in the Shōtetsu monogatari of 1450. The relevant passage is as follows:

44 Edo no ehon, 83.45 Sakurai Mitsuru includes a list of over two hundred shrines to Hitomaro in his

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 227–259.46 The fi rst record of the Kakinomoto temple, apparently the clan temple of the

Kakinomoto clan, appears the Tōdaiji yōroku, a late-Heian compilation of records of Tōdaiji, where it is said to be “in the province of Yamato, Sōnokami district” (Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 31–32).

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Wooden images of the poet Hitomaro can be found in the provinces of Iwami and Yamato. The one in Iwami is located in Takatsu. There is an inlet from the sea on the western side of this place, and to the rear it is encircled by the Takatsu mountains. The image was enshrined in a square-shaped chapel out in the fi elds. It held in one hand a brush and in the other a piece of paper. It was made of wood.

One year, when there were heavy rains, the area was fl ooded along with the rest of the countryside; the tide came in and the sea covered it up; and the chapel was swept away by the tide or waves and disappeared, no one knew where. Then after the waters had subsided, a peasant was digging with shovel and hoe in order to make an arable fi eld, when it sounded as if his hoe had hit something. He dug it up, and there it was, the image of Hitomaro. It had been buried under the seaweed and still had the writing brush safely in its hand. Believing this to be no ordinary occurrence, the people quickly repainted the image, rebuilt the chapel as it had originally been, and enshrined it there. The story spread abroad and people from two or three provinces around all fl ocked to see it. I heard this story from someone who gave me a full account of the incident.47

It is diffi cult to date the beginnings of the local worship of Hitomaro, since shrine and temple histories tend to backdate the establishment of the institution in order to enhance its reputation. The traditional history of the shrine at Takatsu, for instance, places its construction in the Jinki era, 724–729, during the reign of Shōmu,48 while the Gesshōji jiden (Account of Gesshōji Temple), the traditional history of the superintending temple of the Kakinomoto shrine at Akashi, places the initial installation of Hitomaro at Akashi in Ninna 3 (887). In that year (according to the temple history), the priest Gakushō of the Konanzan Yōryūji was visited by Hitomaro’s spirit in a dream; he then requested an eleven-headed Kannon, depicted aboard ship, from the Kakinomoto temple in Yamato and enshrined Hitomaro as the tutelary deity of the temple, the name of which was changed to Gesshōji.49 Regardless of the questionable foundation dates found in the traditional shrine/temple origin accounts, however, from the Shōtetsu monogatari entry above, it seems that the shrine at Takatsu, in some form, dates back to at least the fi fteenth century, while local historical

47 Brower and Carter, Conversations with Shōtetsu, 65.48 Yatomi Kumaichirō, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro to Kamoyama, Masuda: Masuda kyōdo

shi yatomikai, 1964, 283.49 Mase Sekizen ed., Gesshōji jiden, 1.


records indicate that the Kakinomoto shrine at Akashi was moved to its current location in 1618.50

While Hitomaro was worshipped as a poetic deity at his shrines, he was also co-opted into local belief structures, his role and perceived powers varying from place to place according to the spiritual needs of the local population. In Iwami Hitomaro is regarded not only as a poetic deity but as one of agricultural production and disease prevention.51 Legend also credits him with introducing the craft of paper-making to Iwami, and during the celebrations of the 1225th anniversary of his death at Takatsu in 1958 he was celebrated as the ancestral deity of the Japanese paper-manufacturing industry (Seishigyō no soshin).52 In Akashi Hitomaro is worshipped for poetry and for marine safety. As mentioned in Chapter Two, Akashi was the westernmost boundary of the home provinces around the capital (kinai ).53 The straits of Akashi overlooked by the Kakinomoto shrine were of geographical and spiritual signifi cance to travelers as a crossing point into unknown territory, and, as noted earlier, Hitomaro’s travel poems in the Man’yōshū include some which appear to have been composed at Akashi as tamuke, offerings to ensure the safety of the travelers.54 The following passage from the Kakinomoto daimyōjin engi (Origins of the Great Bright Deity Kakinomoto, n.d.) of the Kakinomoto shrine at Akashi, explicitly describes the effi cacy of praying to Hitomaro in case of travel diffi culties:

There are many places where [ Hitomaro] left his traces, but the most famous of all is Akashi. In fact, this is why there is nothing in the world like the Akashi Bay poem. Now, waka began in the age of the heavenly gods, and has been a custom of our land up to the present age. [Out of all poems] the Akashi Bay poem is revered by all, from the highest ministers to the common people; and, revering Hitomaro as the fi rst teacher, there are no scholars of poetry who do not visit this shrine. Now, the straits of Akashi are the most diffi cult point in the western seas, and the boats that come and go meet the dangers of the wind and waves. Long ago, when at this diffi cult [point] the wind was bad, and the ship

50 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 35.51 Sakurai, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro ron, 152.52 Yatomi, 291.53 Sakurai Mitsuru, “Akashi ōto,” 84.54 Man’yōshū III:254, III:255, III:303. As noted in Chapter Two, the recitation “at

a certain place” of some Hitomaro travel poems by envoys to Silla, recorded in the fi fteenth volume of the Man’yōshū (XV:3602–3611), seems to hint at the ritual signifi cance and power of Hitomaro’s travel poems as tamuke poems.

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was already turning back, they prayed to the kami, sincerely reciting, ‘O kami, said to guard the Way of Poetry and the Way of ships, who have left your traces in Akashi [uta no michi/fune no michi o/mamoru tote/akashi no ura ni/ato tareshi kami ],’ and escaped that danger.55

It is perhaps natural that through his association with Akashi Hitomaro should come to be regarded as a deity of sea travel, but it may also be noted that two other poetic gods with which Hitomaro is often grouped, the Sumiyoshi deity and the Tamatsushima deity, are also enshrined on the coast, and the Sumiyoshi deity was originally a sea deity.56 Also, Benzaiten, related to Hitomaro through a common honji or “original ground” in the form of the bodhisattva Myōon, was originally (as the Vedic Sarasvatī) a “river personifi ed into the form of a goddess.”57 A possible metaphorical link between water and poetry is hinted at in the Gyokuden jinpi account of Hitomaro’s appearance in Iwami, where it is said that “When he was commanded to compose poetry, his skill was such that the words fl owed like water.”58

Hitomaro is worshipped at both his major shrines as a god of fi re prevention and safety in childbirth. These beliefs, while not connected to his poetic role in terms of content, do—as noted in the previous chapter—share a common methodology of allegorical interpretation with some commentaries on the Kokinshū and Ise monogatari. In the Heian, medieval, and early modern periods Hitomaro’s name was often rendered Hitomaru, and, as mentioned earlier, this could be parsed as hi-tomaru, “fi re-stop”; it could also be parsed (with a little twisting) as hito-umaru, “to be born.” Similarly, Hitomaro is in Akashi credited with the ability to cure eye diseases and blindness through interpretation of the place name Akashi as the continuative form of the verb akasu, “to make bright.” Various anecdotes record Hitomaro’s manifestation of these divine powers:

There are many people in various provinces who were having diffi cul-ties in childbirth, but had an easy birth when they grasped an amulet in their right hand and recited aloud the Akashi Bay poem. [ The poem’s]

55 Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 238.56 Katagiri, “Waka kami toshite no Sumiyoshi no kami,” 684.57 Matsunaga, 256. Matsunaga notes that “The transformation from a river goddess

to deity of music and learning is not so unusual, since it is most likely that Vedic lore and learning developed along the banks of this river” (256).

58 Katagiri, Chūsei Kokinshū chūshakusho kaidai 5, 554.


other merits are too numerous to record. One character of this Akashi Bay poem encapsulates a thousand leagues and is the same as a Shingon dhāranī. According to past [precedent], if one recites the poem in one’s heart three times, seven times, or even a hundred times every morning, one will without a doubt escape evil and disaster and will attain fulfi ll-ment of one’s many wishes.59

It is said that a house that believes in Hitomaro will escape fi res. One can think of the reading [of Hitomaro’s name] as “fi re-stop” [hi-tomaru]. It is said that when a house near the shrine of the Hitomaro deity in Akashi, Harima, caught fi re, an old man came out of nowhere and instantly quelled the fl ames.60

A blind man came from Tsukushi to visit the shrine, and recited, ‘Dimly, dimly, /if you truly are a god/of making bright/show to even me/Hitomaro’s grave [honobono to/makoto akashi no/kami naraba/ware ni mo mise yo/Hitomaro no tsuka]’ at which both his eyes suddenly opened, and when he stood the staff of cherry wood he had come with near the garden and went home, it grew branches and fl owers.61

In addition to Hitomaro’s worship for non-poetic purposes at a folk level, interest was growing in him as a poetic deity, both through the transmission of the kokin denju and the wider dissemination of its con-tents through popular texts. The “palace transmission” of the secret teachings on the Kokinshū played a critical role in inspiring interest in Hitomaro in the early Edo period, being regarded as the central ele-ment of the line of transmission descending from Sōgi and Tsuneyori’s reformulated kokin denju. The focus of the “palace transmission” was the emperor himself,62 and by the eighteenth century, the receipt of the teachings of the kokin denju had been formally adopted as a ritual in which all emperors were expected to participate.63

This was particularly signifi cant for Hitomaro, who was not only canonized as an ancestor of the Way of Poetry within the kokin denju, but had from his earliest appearance in the Man’yōshū been associated with the imperial house. In the case of the Man’yōshū, this relationship

59 From the Kakinomoto daimyōjin ryaku engi (Abbreviated Origins of the Great Bright Deity Kakinomoto, n.d.) of the Gesshōji at Akashi, quoted in Hanabe, 108.

60 Nagata, 314.61 Kakinomoto daimyōjin engi, quoted in Ōwa, Hitomaro no jitsuzō, 255. A “blind-man’s-

staff-cherry tree” still stands before the Kakinomoto shrine in Akashi.62 Arai Eizō, “Kokin denju no rekishi,” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 50:1 (1/1985):

123.63 Cook, 29n. A chart showing the line of the “palace transmission” from GoMizunoo

to Ninkō (1800–1846, r. 1817–1846) appears in Arai, “Kokin denju no rekishi,” 123.

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involved Hitomaro’s composition of banka for deceased members of the imperial family, but in the Kana Preface of the Kokinshū he is presented as having been in very close proximity to his sovereign, so close, in fact that he and the Nara no mikado are described in that text as being “in perfect union.” The symbolic importance of this relationship becomes particularly clear in the context of the “palace transmission,” which reunited the sovereign with Hitomaro as a poetic guide.64 As described earlier, it was Hitomaro’s combination of poetic and political stand-ing—as depicted in the Kana Preface—that made him an appropriate fi gure for courtiers like the members of the Rokujō house to venerate through eigu and hope to emulate themselves. The driving force behind Hitomaro’s imperially-sponsored apotheosis in 1723, however, was an actual member of the imperial line, Retired Emperor Reigen, who through his receipt of the teachings of the kokin denju was symbolically bound to Hitomaro, canonized as the ancestral poetry teacher of the imperial house.

Reigen was a devoted adherent of the Way of Poetry who presented poems to a portrait of Hitomaro every New Year’s Day for forty years.65 It is hardly surprising, then, that when Reigen applied to the bakufu in the winter of 1722 regarding a possible promotion for Hitomaro, he was overjoyed when permission was ultimately granted by Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune.66 In ceremonies at his major shrines in Takatsu and Akashi in 1723—believed to be the one-thousandth anniversary of his death—Hitomaro received the divine title (shingō) of Kakinomoto daimyōjin and was also promoted to the Senior First Rank (shōichii ) by imperial decree. This momentous event, through which Hitomaro was transformed into a revered deity of the highest rank, took place some 605 years after his initial worship as a quasi-divine ancestor in the fi rst Hitomaro eigu of 1118. The text of the edict (senmyō) presented on the occasion is as follows:

The sovereign,67 according to his imperial will, deigning to speak before Kakinomoto, said, a thousand years have passed [since the time of Hitomaro], yet the Way [of poetry] continues; I worship it in public and private. Its virtue grows ever higher, yet the deity’s rank is low; I have considered this in particular and reverently present the headdress of the

64 Cook, 16.65 Yatomi, 297.66 Yatomi, 306.67 Nakamikado (r. 1709–1735).


Senior First Rank. Accordingly I have dispatched Chamberlain Urabe no Ason Kaneo of the Junior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade, and have had him as my representative present a written record of [the award of ] this rank. I ask that, hearing this, you make the world peaceful and serene, make the forest of words fl ourish ever more, and protect and aid us forever.68

One result of Hitomaro’s offi cial recognition as a deity seems to have been new restrictions on his worship. His formal apotheosis apparently spurred greater interest in Hitomaro eigu, so much so, in fact, that in an effort to combat what he saw as the excessive use of Hitomaro’s portrait at poetry gatherings, Reigen banned the practice, arguing that more deference should be shown to the divine authority of the newly promoted deity. Poets were advised to use portraits of Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241) in place of those of Hitomaro. Hitomaro eigu ceremonies could still take place, but anyone wishing to hold one now had to obtain imperial permission to do so.69

Teika was in some ways a logical substitute for Hitomaro in the con-text of poetic worship. As a founding fi gure of the Mikohidari school, and ancestor of the Nijō, Reizei and Kyōgoku lines, Teika’s writings were revered by court poets, and each of the competing poetic houses laid claim to their correct interpretation and transmission through the kokin denju. The Shōtetsu monogatari of the Reizei-trained poet Shōtetsu opens with the declaration that “In this art of poetry, those who speak ill of Teika should be denied the protection of the gods and Buddhas and condemned to the punishments of hell.” Shōtetsu goes on to rec-ommend that an aspiring poet ignore the poetic schools and “cherish the style and spirit of Teika and strive to emulate him even though he may never succeed.”70

In addition, Teika’s reception illustrates the systematic application of the eigu ritual as a canonizing paradigm to another poet besides Hitomaro. As seen in Chapter Three, the use of Teika’s portrait as a poetic icon may have begun with Retired Emperor Juntoku in 1241 or 1242, and the worship of Teika by his descendants in the Reizei house continues today through the kōmon eigu ceremony. Thus Teika occupies a crucial position as an ancestral fi gure (in very concrete terms, having

68 Yatomi, 308–309. The text (Ason zōi senmyō) also appears in Masui Tadayuki, Zō shō ichi-i Kakinomoto no ason Hitomaro kiji, Masuda-chō, Mino-gun, Iwami no kuni: Shin’eki kappanjo, 1910, 57.

69 Yatomi, 304–305.70 Brower and Carter, 61–62.

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produced both critical writings and offspring) of the court-poetic tradi-tion as it existed in the medieval and early modern periods.

Yet, as a more recent fi gure, and one whose existence was well docu-mented, Teika seems to be fundamentally different from Hitomaro as a poetic icon despite the fact that both were the subjects of eigu cer-emonies. Unlike Hitomaro or Narihira, Teika does not seem to have been deifi ed in the commentaries,71 and he was not appropriated as a divine protective fi gure of the Way of Poetry as a whole in the way that Hitomaro was. In spite of this, however, Teika’s and Hitomaro’s modes of reception seem to have converged, by imperial decree, with Reigen’s instructions to eighteenth-century poets to substitute Teika’s portrait for Hitomaro’s.

Although Reigen’s interest in and devotion to Hitomaro seems to have been unusually strong, his prohibition of the use of Hitomaro’s portrait raises questions as to the proprietary interest of the imperial household in Hitomaro. That such a decree could have been made can be seen as part of the continuing association of Hitomaro with the imperial household described earlier. This association was the motiva-tion for Reigen’s efforts to secure a promotion for Hitomaro, and for his support of Hitomaro’s two major shrines, at Akashi and Takatsu (Iwami), to which he donated poems (hōraku waka, poems presented at a shrine) on numerous occasions, starting on the 18th day of the Third Month in 1723.72 However, it also seems to have been something that he felt entitled him to a degree of control over the use of Hitomaro as a poetic divinity. It can be argued that the adoption of the kokin denju as an imperial ritual through the “palace transmission” made Hitomaro (in his capacity as a poetic deity) part of the support apparatus of the imperial house. Evidence for this view of the kokin denju in general can be found in the works of Motoori Norinaga, who recognized that the imperial connection meant that a certain amount of discretion had to be employed when offering criticism of the kokin denju.73 In the case of Hitomaro, his position within the kokin denju in general and the “palace

71 As noted in the previous chapter, in general no poet from a text later than Kokinshū seems to be described as a kasen or waka no kami in the kokin denju commentaries.

72 Yagi Ichio, “Kinsei dōjō Kakinomoto yashiro hōraku waka,” Shintō shi kenkyū 44:2 (4/96): 27–31. The eighteenth day of the Third Month had been accepted as Hitomaro’s death anniversary since its description as such in Shōtetsu monogatari: “The anniversary of Hitomaro’s death is kept secret, so that few people anywhere know the date. It is the eighteenth day of the third month.” (Brower and Carter, 136.)

73 Cook, 29n.


transmission” in particular may have led ultimately to a dramatic eleva-tion of his divine status, but it also brought him—as a poetic deity, at least—under the control of the imperial house.

Hitomaro and Tenjin

In contrast to the interest taken in Hitomaro as a poetic deity by social elites, folk worship of Hitomaro in general is decentralized and seems to be concerned primarily with this-worldly benefi ts rather than with poetry.74 A useful comparison can be made with the worship of another well-known deifi ed poet, Sugawara no Michizane, deifi ed as Tenman Tenjin in the tenth century and still a popular object of worship today. The worship of Tenjin has been described as follows:

[ N ]either an accepted core of doctrine nor an extensive organizational structure ever developed. Instead, the cult consisted simply of reverence for a deifi ed ancient hero who was worshipped throughout Japan at independent shrines, great and small. In these respects, Tenjin worship resembles other aspects of Japan’s native religious heritage. Lacking both unifi ed theology and institutional hierarchy, it is best described in terms of its historical development.75

Parallels can be drawn between the shrines to Tenjin, which are numer-ous but include two large representative shrines at Kitano and Dazaifu, and shrines to Hitomaro, which include many small shrines and two large ones, Takatsu and Akashi. In another parallel with Tenjin, Hito-maro has come to be regarded as a deity of learning and exam success. Although, as described in the previous chapter, the initial processes of Michizane’s and Hitomaro’s deifi cation were quite different—Michizane being originally feared as an angry ghost and worshipped as a thunder deity—there seems to have been a gradual convergence of their paths. This is evident not only at the level of folk worship, but also in their roles as literary deities, as seen in the biography of Hitomaro presented to the shrine at Takatsu in the Third Month of 1652 by Kamei Kore-masa (1617–1680), the head of the Tsuwano domain in Iwami, within whose territory the shrine lay:

74 Kikuchi, Hitomaro gensō, Shintensha, 1995, 201.75 Borgen, 307.

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Since Great Minister Kan76 was accomplished in the Way of Chinese poetry, being the great ancestor of the Way of Letters, and a master of poetic composition, he performs miracles as Tenman Tenjin. Hitomaro is the immortal of the Way of Japanese poetry, and being the teacher of the Bay of Waka, is without doubt the incarnation of a deity.77

In medieval texts such as the Kokon chomonjū the ancestor of Chinese poetry held up in parallel to Hitomaro, the ancestor of Japanese poetry, is the Tang poet Bo Juyi (Kokon chomonjū XX:721). However, Tenjin had been regarded as a literary fi gure, at whose shrines poetry could be presented, since at least 986,78 and the mid-seventeenth-century account of Hitomaro’s life quoted above presents Michizane as the representa-tive practitioner and divine ancestral fi gure of the Way of Letters, in other words, composition in Chinese. Tenjin came to be regarded as a deity of scholarship in addition to literature in the Edo period,79 and it seems likely that Hitomaro took on similar qualities under the infl uence of this transformation of Tenjin.

Conclusion: Canonizing Hitomaro

Hitomaro’s canonization as a fi gurehead of the Japanese court-poetic tradition begins at almost the earliest stage of his reception, with his valorization by Ōtomo no Yakamochi as the sanshi no mon, “gate of the mountain persimmon,” in the eighth-century Man’yōshū. The process of his canonization, as covered in this study, spans a thousand years and transforms Hitomaro from a man to a god. His reception stems from and is inextricably entwined with that of two texts, the Man’yōshū and the Kokinshū, the former being the repository of his poems and the latter the source of his authority and prestige as an uta no hijiri or “sage of poetry.”

Hitomaro’s canonization as a poetic deity has notable parallels with the literary canonization of the Kokinshū and Man’yōshū, a fact that illustrates the symbolic power these texts—like Hitomaro—came to possess in court-poetic discourse. The Kokinshū’s compilation in the early

76 Kan shōjō, i.e. Michizane, who was appointed Minister of the Right in 899.77 “Kakinomoto no Hitomaro denki,” 502.78 Borgen, 324.79 Borgen, 328.


tenth century was an attempt to raise the prestige of Japanese poetry as a genre in the face of the dominance of poetry in Chinese at court. Ki no Tsurayuki’s Kana Preface to the Kokinshū presents a history of Japanese poetry and ancestral fi gures for the genre, the foremost such poetic ancestor being Hitomaro. Japanese poetry’s canonical elevation to a status equivalent to that of poetry in Chinese was accomplished through the appropriation of elements of the practice of poetry in Chinese such as poetry meetings and the form of the imperial anthol-ogy itself. The epochal development in Hitomaro’s canonization as a tutelary poetic deity, his role as an object of worship in the Hitomaro eigu of 1118, can be understood within this broader trend, as the eigu ceremony itself was based largely on a Chinese model, the sekiten ritual through which Confucius was worshipped. Situating Hitomaro’s can-onization within the larger context of the canonization of Japanese poetry as a genre and the Kokinshū as the supreme text of that genre also elucidates factors in Hitomaro’s deifi cation in medieval poetic commentaries. Just as Japanese poetry had appropriated elements of the dominant Chinese-based discourse of the Heian period, so it did likewise with the dominant Buddhist discourse of the medieval period. Mahāyāna non-dualist thought allowed for the fusion of the Way of Japanese poetry and Buddhism, and under the infl uence of honji-suijaku thought (similarly non-dualist in nature) poets could become avatars of deities and thus divine beings themselves. As a result, we see Hito-maro canonized in medieval poetic discourse as a tutelary deity of the Way of Japanese poetry, at once a symbol of its glorious past and a guardian to ensure its future fl ourishing. This was a role in which he came—at least initially—to be enshrined and worshipped from the late medieval period onward, and for which purpose he was offi cially deifi ed in 1723.

Although the Man’yōshū is the text in which Hitomaro’s poems appear, it was not as highly regarded as the Kokinshū, which was canonized as the supreme achievement—and defi nitive text—of Japanese court poetry until the modern period. This lack of recognition of the Man’yōshū meant that it could not serve as the primary vehicle for Hitomaro’s canonization; rather, it was the canonization of the Kokinshū as the pin-nacle of Japanese poetic achievement that enabled the canonization and eventual apotheosis of Hitomaro, based on his appearance therein. Yet there is a certain symbiotic nature to the relationship between Hitomaro and the Kokinshū. Hitomaro is invoked in the Kokinshū Kana Preface as the greatest poet of a past golden poetic age, presented as

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a symbol of the antiquity, and thus authority, of Japanese poetry as a genre. Hitomaro’s poetry is not critiqued in the Kana Preface; what is stressed is his proximity to his sovereign. Hitomaro’s presence legiti-mized the compilation of the Kokinshū, and the canonization of the Kokinshū cemented Hitomaro’s position as a fi gurehead of the Way of Japanese poetry. Similarly, when the recanonization of the Kokinshū in the twelfth century gave rise to the system of secret teachings known as the kokin denju, Hitomaro’s evolution into a full-fl edged deity of poetry in medieval commentaries added to the prestige of Japanese poetry and its most admired text, the Kokinshū.

In concrete terms, the less-valorized Man’yōshū provided elements of Hitomaro’s legend based on poems by or associated with him, such as his connection to Iwami and his ties to the imperial household as an attendant and poet. However, the actual poems with whose reception much of Hitomaro’s later canonization was concerned do not appear in the Man’yōshū but are rather tentatively attributed to him in the Kokinshū. The Man’yōshū could serve as evidence of Japanese poetry’s antiquity (and thus authority) even though it was not regarded as a source of normative poetic values like the Kokinshū and even though it was not widely read in its entirety. In this sense parallels can be drawn between the reception of Hitomaro and that of the Man’yōshū: rather than great attention being paid to their substance, both were canonized largely as ideas, as potent symbols of the long and venerable history of Japanese poetry as a genre. Their canonization in this way took place within the Kokinshū-dominated discourse of Japanese court poetry in the Heian and medieval periods. The Man’yōshū’s rediscovery and recanonization in the early modern period involved rigorous philological and literary analysis of the Man’yōshū as a text, within which Hitomaro was ultimately recan-onized as a mortal poet rather than a poetic divinity. It was precisely this recanonization as the foremost poet of the Man’yōshū that allowed Hitomaro to survive, canonically speaking, the sudden decanonization of the Kokinshū at the end of the nineteenth century.

Hitomaro’s canonization through his presentation in poetic texts such as anthologies and commentaries, however, is only part of the larger process of his deifi cation. His canonization as a deity of Japa-nese poetry also depended on extratextual modes of canonization, like the Hitomaro eigu and the medieval ceremonies for which it set a precedent, the Kakinomoto kōshiki and waka kanjō (initiation) rituals. Hitomaro was also canonized visually, in terms of his iconography, through portraiture. This particular development can be tied to the


need for portraits for use in Hitomaro worship rituals such as the eigu, literally, “portrait-offerings,” and to the development of kasen-e, “poet portraits,” through which groups of poets, Hitomaro included, came to be canonized. The culmination of Hitomaro’s extratextual canonization came in the form of his imperially sponsored deifi cation in 1723, when he was granted the title of Kakinomoto daimyōjin and posthumously promoted to the highest possible court rank, the Senior First, thus having his status confi rmed in both divine and mortal—i.e. courtly—terms.

Within the larger picture of the process of Hitomaro’s canonization, in both textual and ritual contexts, the specifi c phases of his recep-tion—in other words, the state of his reception at any given time—can often be related to a specifi c cultural pattern or trope visible elsewhere in literary or religious discourse at that time. The apocryphal nature of Hitomaro’s purported death poem in the Man’yōshū, for instance, is suggested by its similarities to poems of the kōroshinin no uta (“poems on fi nding dead people by the wayside”) sub-genre, some of which Hitomaro did compose. The legends of his exile, based on poems attrib-uted to him in the Kokinshū and Shūishū, can be fi tted into a genealogy of exile narratives reaching back to the Kojiki. The eigu ritual devised for his worship as a poetic ancestor by the Rokujō house was based largely on existing worship ceremonies for Confucius, and also incor-porated elements of esoteric Buddhist sect-founder services. Tales of his miraculous origins as a poetic deity in medieval commentaries cast him as a divine youth who appears beneath a tree (a persimmon tree, naturally), a narrative archetype which may be understood broadly in terms of medieval ideas of the potentially divine nature of the oldest and youngest members of society and more narrowly as part of a group of similar narratives on the appearance of great poets as supernatural children, including stories involving Yamabe no Akahito and Sugawara no Michizane.

Thus Hitomaro’s treatment, when looked at episodically, is in some ways unexceptional, employing existing tropes or archetypes. Yet the prestige and canonizing power of the Kokinshū gave Hitomaro’s canon-ization process unequaled momentum, propelling him through all of these different stages, the cumulative effects of which, combined with the points where he was singled out for special treatment, elevated him to a singular status as a once-mortal deity of the Way of Japanese poetry. In this sense the critical turning point in Hitomaro’s canonization is his worship in the eigu ceremony in 1118. Although the eigu drew on existing

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rituals for its form, its application to Hitomaro, based ultimately on his treatment in the Kokinshū, was a watershed not only for his canonization but for the treatment of poets and poetry in broader terms. The eigu represented the introduction of an ancestral worship ceremony from a purely philosophical or religious context into a poetic environment, and, as described earlier, set a precedent for the development and use of worship rituals as part of waka praxis. Most signifi cantly for Hitomaro’s canonization, it was also subsequently applied to other poets, and can thus be understood as a point at which Hitomaro’s canonization became itself a trope or pattern—the worshipped poet—on which the treatment of other poets could be modeled. This becomes particularly apparent in the eighteenth-century case of poets being instructed by the Retired Emperor to substitute portraits of Teika for Hitomaro at eigu and similar ceremonies. The Retired Emperor’s involvement in this process also hints at the extent to which Hitomaro’s early modern canonization through the kokin denju involved issues of imperial power and control.

The most important developments in Hitomaro’s canonization occurred at the heart of the high classical canon, within the realm of court-poetic discourse. However, like other elements of classical literary culture (including other fi gures from the Heian literary canon), the can-onized image of Hitomaro and the poems associated with him spread from the high canon to non-canonical genres such as popular fi ction (medieval otogizōshi, early modern kusazōshi ) and theatre (kabuki). His canonization was thus occurring in both central and peripheral genres, although the process seems to have been mostly one-way, based on the seepage of Hitomaro-related lore from canonical texts and their criti-cal apparatus, such as commentaries, to other, less prestigious, genres. A parallel of sorts can be drawn with the worship of Hitomaro at his shrines: although he was originally deifi ed and enshrined as a poetic deity, his actual worship involves a number of folk elements unrelated to poetry and predicated rather on allegorical renderings of his name or the spiritual needs of the local populace. These other worship practices did not obliterate the poetic worship of Hitomaro; rather, worship of him can be said to have continued at two levels, poetic and popular.

Hitomaro’s prominence in the literary canon and his close ties to the Kokinshū serve to situate the process of his canonization at the centre of court-poetic discourse. In this sense a study of his canoniza-tion can become a window onto the complex processes at work in the development and transmission of Japanese court poetry as a genre. An


analysis of Hitomaro’s deifi cation illuminates sweeping changes such as the medieval infl ux of Buddhist thought into poetic theory and praxis, and also lesser cultural phenomena such as the tropes or archetypes frequently employed in the canonization of historical or literary fi gures. An examination of Hitomaro worship also highlights the complex interaction of textual and extratextual modes of canonization that combined to lead to his apotheosis as a poetic god.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(The place of publication for Japanese materials is Tokyo unless otherwise indicated)

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(1). Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei 12. Iwanami shoten, 1989.Aoki Takako, Ide Itaru, Itō Haku, Shimizu Katsuhiko and Hashimoto Shirō eds.

Man’yōshū (1–5). Shinchō nihon koten shūsei. Shinchōsha, 1976.Arai Eizō and Kojima Noriyuki eds. Kokinwakashū. Shin nihon koten bungaku taikei

5. Iwanami shoten, 1989.Asami Kazuhiko ed. Jikkinshō. Shinpen nihon koten bungaku zenshū 51. Shōgakukan,

1997.Chikuenshō. In Nihon kagaku taikei 3, ed. Sasaki Nobutsuna, 410–428. Kazama shobō,

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INDEX

Abe no Nakamaro (698–770), 73–75, 78, 81academic success, Hitomaro as deity

of, 1Akashi (Harima), 67, 68–70,

79–83, 106, 130, 131, 139, 140, 161, 168, 177, 178–180, 182, 183, 185; as site of Hitomaro shrine, 189–194, 196, 197. See also Kokinwakashū IX:409

Akashi Bay poem. See Kokinwakashū IX:409

Akashi ryaku engi(Abbreviated Account of the Origins at Akashi, n.d.), 140

Akone no ura kuden(Akone Bay Oral Transmission, n.d.), 142, 154

Amaterasu ōmikami , 91, 147, 153, 154

Amida sutra , 93Ariwara no Narihira

(825–880), 74, 81, 84, 85, 152; as incarnation of Hitomaro, 149, 150; as incarnation of the Sumiyoshi deity, 144, 146, 147, 148, 154–156; in commentaries, 135, 141, 142, 146, 147, 153, 162, 163, 196

Ariwara no Yukihira (818–893), 147, 148

Ashiwake obune (A Small Boat Parting the Reeds, 1757), 177

Asuka-no-Kiyomihara palace (672–694), 11

banka (elegies), 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 30, 33, 165, 194; as adaptation of Pan Yue poems, 26; as means of spirit pacifi cation, 32. See also Iwami banka

Benzaiten , 145, 163, 192Bidatsu, Emperor (538–585,

r. 572–585), 5birth: of the Buddha, 178, 181. See also

IwamiBishamondōbon kokinshūchū

(Bishamon Hall Notes on the Kokinshū), 48, 164

Bo Juyi (772–846), 47, 48, 84, 92, 93; and Hitomaro portrait, 108; as ancestral fi gure of Chinese poetry, 124, 198

Bōchō fudo chūshin’an(Report on the Record of the

Provinces of Suō and Nagato, n.d.), 20, 82, 84

Chikubushima , 162–164Chikuenshō (Notes from the

Bamboo Garden, late Kamakura period), 157

China, 73–76, 82, 98, 99, 168; Hitomaro’s supposed journey to, 65–67, 72, 74–80, 109, 162, 185, 186. See also totō tenjin

chinkon (spirit pacifi cation), 32, 33, 70

Chōdai gokuhi Hitomaro den(Super Great Extreme Secret

Hitomaro Biography, Edo period), 170chōka (long poems), 10, 12, 17, 23,

26, 27, 33, 36, 45, 76Chōkei, Emperor (1343–1394,

r. 1368–1383), 64chokusenshū (imperially

commissioned anthology), 39, 66, 86. See also individual chokusenshū by title

Confucius (c. 551–479 BCE), 98–101, 199, 201; shrine to (Kongzi miao ), 99. See also sekiten

Da tang kaiyuan li(Rituals of the Kaiyuan Era, 732), 99, 101

Daid era (806–810), 42, 43, 45, 139, 162

Daigo, Emperor (885–930, r. 897–930), 42, 52

daishiku (offerings to the Great Teacher), 100–102, 107

death, 31–33, 100, 101, 105, 154, 162, 168; of Hitomaro, 9, 12, 18–20, 27, 29, 33, 40, 44, 46, 57, 90, 83, 89, 123, 131, 138, 139, 162, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 194, 201; of

214 index

Hitomaro’s wife, 11, 17, 21; of Prince Arima, 28; of Retired Emperor GoToba, 123; of Kenshō, 133; of Emperor Mommu, 164, 165; of Prince Takechi, 165; of Saigyō, 131; of Tameie, 134; of Teika, 123; of Yamato Takeru, 28; terminology for, 44, 45

death anniversary: of Kūkai, 100; of Hitomaro, 101; of GoToba, 123

dhāranī. See waka-dhāranī theorydivine titles of Hitomaro: Kakinomoto

daimyōjin (great bright deity Kakinomoto), 1, 189, 191, 194, 201; Kakinomoto no myōjin

(bright deity Kakinomoto), 128dream, 109, 129, 162, 163, 166, 178,

190; of Hitomaro, by Kanefusa, 102–104, 109, 143, 157

Ebersole, Gary, 27eigu utaawase (poetry contest

with portrait-offerings), 118, 119, 121, 124, 156

eigu (portrait-offering ceremony): for Hitomaro (Hitomaro eigu

), 38, 39, 51, 59, 60, 86, 91, 94–111, 113–119, 121–125, 127–130, 136, 137, 156–158, 160, 163, 194–196, 199–202; for Retired Emperor GoToba, 123, 124; for Koga no Michimitsu, 123; for Minamoto no Shunrai, 123, 124; for Teika (kōmon eigu ), 118, 123, 124, 195. See also Kakinomoto eigu ki

ekijin (deities of pestilence), 69Etchū , 36exile, 40, 73, 80, 81, 89, 161, 201; of

Hitomaro in Bōchō fudo chūshin’an, 83; in Hitomaro himitsushō, 83–84; in Iwami no kuni fudoki, 82; in Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden, 151; of GoToba, 123; of Michizane, 154; kishu ryūritan

(archetypal narrative of “the exiled noble”), 40, 80, 84

four Hitomaros, 78Fūgashū (or Fūgawakashū

, Elegant Collection of Japanese Poetry, 1346), 63

Fujiwara capital (694–710), 11Fujiwara (Rokujō) no Akisue (

) (1055–1123), 86, 91, 97, 99, 103, 105, 106, 109, 111, 112, 114–119, 123, 129

Fujiwara no Arifusa (1251–1319), 123

Fujiwara no Atsumitsu (1063–1144), 96, 103, 106, 107, 114

Fujiwara no Ietaka (1158–1237), 153

Fujiwara no Kanefusa (1001–1069), 102–106, 109, 115, 143, 157, 179, 180, 183

Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041), 57, 85, 86, 100, 161; and Akashi Bay poem, 59, 60; and Sanjūrokuninsen, 40, 44, 50, 86, 88, 89, 94, 109, 153; and Shūishū, 85

Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1104–1177), 57, 104, 109, 117, 128–132, 188; and Fukurozōshi, 42, 43, 78; visits Hitomaro’s grave, 129

Fujiwara no Michitoshi (1047–1099), 57, 113

Fujiwara no Morifusa (d. 1094?), 44

Fujiwara no Mototoshi (d. 1142), 92, 112, 135, 162, 163

Fujiwara no Nakazane (1057–1118), 76

Fujiwara no Shunzei(1114–1204), 2, 39, 117, 118, 128, 133, 134, 155, 163; encounters Sumiyoshi deity, 162

Fujiwara no Tadamichi (1097–1164), 112

Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275), 133, 134, 137

Fujiwara no Tamenori (1227–1279), 134

Fujiwara no Tamesuke (1263–1328), 134

Fujiwara no Tameuji (1222–1286), 134

Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), 2, 50, 55, 56, 117, 133–135, 155; and eigu, 118, 123, 124, 195, 196; and recanonization of Kokinshū, 133; spurious attributions to, 135, 150. See also portraiture

Fujiwara no Yukinari (972–1027), 69

Fujiwara Tameaki (c. 1230s–c. 1290s), 137, 150, 157, 177

Fukurozōshi (Bag Manuscript, 1157), 42, 78, 188

index 215

Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji, eleventh century), 40, 80, 84

Genshin (942–1017), 121Gesshōji , 122, 140; Hitomaro as

tutelary deity of, 190GoDaigo, Emperor

(1288–1339, r. 1318–1339), 64gogyō (Five Elements), 168gojō (Five Confucian Virtues), 168GoMizunoo, Emperor

(1596–1680, r. 1611–1629), 176Gonki (Supernumerary Record, 1026), 69goryō (angry ghost), 69, 154GoSaga, Emperor (1220–1272,

r. 1242–1246), 64Gosenshū (or Gosenwakashū

, Collection of Later Selections of Japanese Poetry, 951),

61, 63gosho denju. See kokin denjuGoshūishū (or Goshūiwakashū

, Later Collection of Gleanings of Japanese Poetry, 1096),

63, 104, 112, 113GoToba, Emperor (1180–1239,

r. 1183–1198), 105, 118, 119, 123. See also eigu

grave, Hitomaro’s, 128–132, 183, 193groups of poets. See Nisei, Rokkasen,

Sanjūrokkasen, Waka no gosen, Waka sanshin

Guhishō (Notes on Foolish Secrets, Kamakura period), 150

Gyokuden jinpi (Deep Secrets of the Jewelled Transmission, fourteenth century), 46, 78, 132, 135, 137–140, 142, 144–147, 152, 156, 162, 167, 169, 177, 184, 192

Gyokudenshū waka saichō(Supreme Jewelled Transmission

on Japanese Poetry, Kamakura-Muromachi period), 142, 144, 162

Gyokuyōshū (or Gyokuyōwakashū, Collection of

Jewelled Leaves of Japanese Poetry, 1312), 62–64, 128

hanka (envoy poem), 12, 23, 26Hashimoto Tatsuo , 24, 26Heijō capital (710–784), 42Heizei, Emperor (774–824,

r. 806–809), 42, 60, 139, 161, 162

Hitomaro (Hitomaro, 1687), 182, 183

Hitomaro banzai dai(c. 1761), 178

Hitomaro Benten , 163Hitomaro eigu. See eiguHitomaro himitsushō

(Secret Notes on Hitomaro, 1670), 83, 148, 167, 170, 177, 184, 188

Hitomaro kanmon (Report on Hitomaro, 1153), 42, 43

Hitomaro Saigyō (Hitomaro and Saigyō, mid-Edo period), 182, 183

Hitomaro shū (Hitomaro Collection, mid-Heian period), 59, 65, 78, 88, 89

Hitomaro’s wife, 11, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 138, 186; Yosami no otome, 12, 16–19, 21, 22, 33

honji suijaku (original ground-manifest trace), 122, 127, 151, 158, 170, 172, 199; in relation to Hitomaro and Akahito, 150; in relation to Hitomaro, Narihira and the Sumiyoshi deity, 144–148; and waka mandala, 91–95

hōraku waka (poems presented at a shrine), 196

Hosokawa Yūsai (1534–1610), 176

Inaoka Kōji , 22, 44Iroha uta (mid-Heian

period), 167Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise,

c. 947), 40, 80, 81, 84, 85, 94, 137, 142, 146, 150, 192; analysis of title, 149, 169

Itō Haku , 23, 24, 28Iwami , 9, 12, 14, 16–22, 27,

29, 44, 57, 82, 83, 89, 137, 139, 187, 197, 200; as site of Hitomaro’s appearance or birth, 20, 138, 183–186, 192; as site of Hitomaro’s grave, 131, 132; as site of shrine to Hitomaro, 189, 190, 191, 196

Iwami banka (Iwami elegies), 9, 17, 19, 21–23, 27, 28, 31–33, 40, 49, 57, 67, 80, 83, 84, 89. See also listings by poem number under Man’yōshū

Iwami no kuni fudoki(Record of the Province of Iwami), 19, 82

216 index

Iwami sōmonka (Iwami love poems), 9, 10, 12, 17, 19, 21–29, 33, 40, 67, 85. See also listings by poem number under Man’yōshū

Izumi Shikibu (eleventh century), 179

Jakuren (d. 1202), 128, 132Jikkinshō (Notes on Ten

Lessons, 1252), 105, 108, 109, 110, 116, 157, 183; IV:2, on Kanefusa’s dream of Hitomaro, 102

jinnin (representatives of the deities), 6

Jitō, Empress (645–702, r. 690–697), 11, 24, 28, 34, 82, 106

Juntoku, Emperor (1197–1242, r. 1210–1221), 123, 195

Kada no Azumamaro(1669–1736), 186

kadan (poetry circles), 111kadō (Way of Japanese poetry),

2, 117, 124, 125, 136, 171, 198–201

kakai ( Japanese poetry meetings), 110, 111

kakekotoba (pivot-word), 165Kakinomoto (Kakinomoto,

c. 1863), 182Kakinomoto clan, 4, 5, 132, 189Kakinomoto daimyōjin. See divine titles

of HitomaroKakinomoto eigu ki

(Record of Kakinomoto Portrait-Offering, twelfth century), 96, 101, 102, 109, 188; translation of, 97, 106, 114

Kakinomoto jū sanmi Hitomaro ki(Record of

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro of the Junior Third Rank, n.d.), 140

Kakinomoto kōshiki (Kōshiki for Kakinomoto, twelfth century), 119, 121. See also kōshiki

Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro kanmon(Investigative

Report on Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, 1184), 129, 177, 188

Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro no kashū(Poetry Collection

of Kakinomoto no Ason Hitomaro, in Man’yōshū), 10, 11, 51; distribution of poems in, 34, 35; and Hitomaro’s supposed journey to China, 65

Kakinomoto no Ason Saru ( ), 5, 6

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro akashi no suzuri(Kakinomoto no

Hitomaro: an inkstone at Akashi, 1760), 177, 178

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro tanjōki(Record of Kakinomoto no

Hitomaro’s birth, 1762), 177Kakinomoto temple (Shihonji or

Kakinomotodera), 129, 189Kamei Koremasa , 20, 197Kamiyo Komachi (Komachi

in the Age of the Gods, Muromachi period), 172, 177

Kamo no Chōmei (c. 1155–1216), 130Kamo no Mabuchi

(1697–1769), 6, 20, 23, 24, 27, 186–188

kanjō (initiation), 94, 137, 146, 168, 200

Kannon (bodhisattva), 92, 145–147, 152, 190Kanshi. See poetry in ChineseKarin’en , 119, 121, 124, 130,

183Kasa no Kanamura (fl . 724–749), 76Kasa no Kanaoka , 75–77Kasa no Kanamura shū (Kasa

no Kanamura Collection, eighth century), 35

Kaseiden (Biography of the Poetic Sage, 1785), 188

kasen (poetic immortal), 47, 95, 153, 155, 156. See also Rokkasen, sage of poetry, Sanjūrokkasen, shisen, Waka no gosen, Waka sanshin

kasen-e (pictures of poetic immortals), 89, 109, 201

Kasen shō (Notes on Poetic Immortals, seventeenth century), 185, 186

kasen utaawase (poetry contest between poetic immortals), 86

katoku (miraculous powers of poetry), 181; katoku setsuwa

(tales of miraculous powers of poetry), 181, 182

Katoku Akashigata honobono zōshi(The Power

of Poetry: A Dimly-Dawning Tale of Akashi Harbour, c. 1762), 178, 180–182

index 217

Keichū (1640–1701), 184, 185kenshiragishi (envoys to Silla),

70, 71, 72Kenshō (c. 1130–c. 1210), 129,

130, 133, 177, 188Ki no Tsurayuki (c. 868–c. 945), 37, 38, 41, 43–48, 52, 58, 63, 65, 85,

86, 89, 105, 113, 149, 150, 153, 155, 159, 161, 172, 199; admiration of by Kintō, 60, 86; as incarnation of Hitomaro, 149, 150, as poetic deity, 153, 155

Ki no Yoshimochi (d. 919), 42, 48

kigai (outer provinces), 69, 70kinai (home provinces), 69, 70,

80, 191Kingyokushū (Collection of

Gold and Jewels, 1007), 45, 59, 86Kingyoku sōgi (Dual

Meanings of Gold and Jewels, Edo period), 149, 157

Kin’yōshū (or Kin’yōwakashū, Collection of

Golden Leaves of Japanese Poetry, 1127), 112

kishōmon (pledge), 105, 159kishu ryūritan. See exileKitamura Kigin (1624–1705), 37Koga no Michiteru

(1187–1248), 123Kojiki (Record of Ancient

Matters, 712), 4, 5, 28, 80, 201koka shū (collections of old

poems), 35kokin denju (transmissions on

the Kokinshū), 116, 127, 131–135, 137, 155, 156, 159, 161, 162, 167, 175; criticism of, 177; in early modern period, 175, 176, 183–186, 188, 189, 193–196, 200, 202; gosho denju

(palace transmission), 176, 193, 194, 196; hako denju (box transmission), 176; initiation ceremonies for, 160

Kokinshū kanjō (Kokinshū Initiation, Muromachi-period), 66, 165Kokin waka rokujō (Six

Notebooks of Old and New Japanese Poems, tenth century), 59, 61

Kokinshū (or Kokinwakashū, Collection of Old and

New Japanese Poetry, c. 905):

III:135, 52; IV:211, 52; V:283, 55; V:284, 54–56, 66; VI:334, 50, 52, 59, 87, 103, 109, 187, 188; IX:406, 73, 74, 81; IX:407, 73, 75; IX:408, 73, 75; IX:409 (see separate entry); IX:410, 74, 80, 85; XIII:621, 53; XIII:671, 53; XVII: 893–895, 148; XVII:907, 54; XIX:1003, 45. See also Kokinwakashū IX:409, Kokinwakashū Kana preface, Kokinwakashū Mana preface

Kokinwakashū IX:409 (Akashi Bay poem), 49, 53, 57, 65, 67, 69, 76, 107, 131, 179, 183; divine origins of, 162–164; and notes to Kokinshū preface, 58, 59, 103; and Hitomaro portraits, 109, 160; as incantation or dhāranī, 145, 158, 160, 169, 170, 180, 181, 191–193; as part of travel sequence in Kokinshū, 72, 73, 75, 79–81, 85, 146; inclusion in exemplary collections, 59, 85–87; later interpretations of, 165, 167–169, 185, 186, 188

Kokinwakashū Kana Preface (Kanajo ): divine origins of poetry in, 41,

154, 156, 181; infl uences on, 38, 41, 159, 167; Man’yōshū canonized in, 62, 63; old interpolated notes to, 48, 49, 57, 58, 72, 88, 103, 109, 161, 188

Kokinwakashū kanjō kuden(Oral Transmission on the

Kokinshū Initiation, mid-Kamakura period-early Muromachi period), 151, 158, 164, 167, 168

Kokinwakashū Mana Preface (Manajo ), 42, 45, 47, 57, 60, 107, 113,

139Kokinwakashū mokuroku

(Index to the Kokinshū, c. 1113), 76, 77,

Kokinwakashū Ton’a jo chū(Ton’a’s Prefatory Notes on

the Kokinshū, mid-Kamakura period-early Muromachi period), 140

Kōkitokuō (bodhisattva), 92–94

Kokon chomonjū (Things Old and New Noted and Heard, 1254), 95, 115, 124, 198; V:164, on waka mandala, 94; V:204, on Hitomaro portrait, 104

kokugaku (National Learning), 175, 176; treatment of Hitomaro, 184–189

kōmon eigu. See eigu

218 index

Konjaku monogatari shū(Collection of Tales of Times Now Past, c. 1120), 80–82; XXIV:45, on Ono no Takamura’s exile, 81

Korai fūteishō (Notes on Poetic Styles from Ancient to Modern Times, 1197), 133

kōroshinin no uta (poems about dead travellers), 9, 31–33, 201

kōshiki (praise service), 121, 122, 156, 160. See also Kakinomoto kōshiki

Kōshō, Emperor (475–393 B.C.E.), 4

kotodama (word-soul), 172, 181Kuhon waka. See Waka kuhonKūkai (774–835), 79, 100kusazōshi (popular illustrated

prose narratives), 177, 178, 184, 202

kyōgen-kigo (wild words and ornate phrases), 93, 162, 171

Kyōgoku house , 63, 134, 195Kyōgoku Tamekane

(1254–1332), 62, 64

Lu Ji (261–303), 25, 26, 37

Man’yō kō (Thoughts on the Man’yōshū, 1768), 6, 20, 27, 184, 186, 188

Man’yō shūsuishō (Notes on Gathered Grain of the Man’yōshū, 1682–1690), 37

Man’yōshū chūshaku(Commentary on Man’yōshū, 1269), 184

Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, c. 759): II:131–134,

12–14, 16, 17, 22–26, 28; II:135–137, 12, 14, 15, 17, 22–26; II:138–139, 12, 15, 16, 22–24, 28; II:140, 12, 16, 22–24; II:141–142, 28; II:167–9, 10; II:196–8, 10; II:199–201, 165; II:207–209, 11, 17, 26, 27; II:210–212, 11; II:220–222, 29–30, 32, 33; II:223, 17, 19, 27, 33, 44, 45, 57, 89; II:224, 18, 22, 27, 32, 33, 89; II:225, 18, 22, 27, 32, 33, 89; II:226, 18, 27, 33, 89;II:227, 18, 19, 27, 89; III:249–256, 67; III:254, 67, 68, 70; III:255, 67, 68; III:264, 87; III:303, 68, 70, 72, 77; III:304, 68, 70, 72, 77; III:318, 50, 179; III:415, 31,

32; III:426, 31, 32, 33; VI:919, 49; VII:1068, 34; VII:1087–1089, 34; VII:1092–1098, 34; VIII:1424, 49; VIII:1454, 76; X:1812, 89; X:1843, 87; X:1981, 87; X:2033, 11; X:2210, 55, 87; XI:2802, 50, 87; XV:3578–3722, 70; XV:3606, 70; XV:3607, 71; XV:3608, 71; XV:3609, 71; XV:3676, 71; XV:3666, 72; XVII:3969, 9, 36, 48; XVII:3973, 36, 37

Man’yōshū daishōki(Record of the Man'yōshū in Lieu of My Teacher, 1690), 184, 185, 186

Man’yōshū dōmōshō(Child’s Notes on the Man’yōshū, after 1725), 186

masuraoburi (masculine style), 187Matsunaga Teitoku

(1571–1653), 176Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), 1Meigetsuki (Record of the

Bright Moon, thirteenth century), 118Mibu no Tadamine (fl . tenth

century), 45mieku (offerings to portraits), 100,

102, 107. See also eiguMikohidari house , 117, 133,

134, 163, 164, 195Minamoto Michichika

(1149–1202), 118Minamoto no Shitagō (911–983),

61Minamoto no Shunrai (Toshiyori)

, (c. 1055–c. 1129), 91, 97, 112, 113, 119. See also eigu.

Minamoto no Tsunenobu (1016–1097), 113, 135

minkan shinkō (folk belief ), 189; involving blindness, 192, 193; involving fi re prevention, 192, 193; involving safety in childbirth, 1, 192

Miyako meisho zue(Pictures of Famous Places in the Capital, 1780), 163

Mommu, Emperor (683–707, r. 697–707), 11, 42, 45, 82, 83, 84, 106, 151, 164, 165

Motoori Norinaga(1730–1801), 177, 196

Mujū Ichien (1226–1312), 171

Mumyōshō (Nameless Notes, 1211–1216), 130

index 219

Munenaga, Prince (b. 1311), 64

Myōon (bodhisattva), 145, 146, 163, 170, 192

Nan chōhōki (Treasured Notes for Men, seventeenth century), 153

Nan Goshūishū(Diffi culties with Goshūishū, 1086), 113

Nara no mikado (Nara emperor), 42, 51, 156, 157, 161, 194

Nashitsubo no gonin (Five Men of the Pear Chamber), 61

Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan, 720), 4–6, 155

Niimanabi (New Learning, 1765), 187

Nijō house , 63, 64, 134, 195Nijūgo sanmai shiki

(Reading on the Twenty-fi ve Samādhi, 986), 121

Nirvana sutra , 92, 93, 167Nisei (Two Sages), 153Nomori no kagami (Field

Watchman’s Mirror, thirteenth century), 171

Ogura hyakunin isshu(Ogura Collection of One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, thirteenth century), 50

Ōkagami (Great Mirror, late eleventh century), 82

Ōmi court (667–672), 11Ono no Komachi (fl . ninth

century), 51, 120, 153, 154Ono no Takamura (802–852),

73, 75, 80–82Ōtomo no Ikenushi (fl . eighth

century), 9, 36, 37Ōtomo no Yakamochi

(717?–785), 40, 51, 83, 86, 87, 89; as Man’yōshū compiler, 10, 38; and sanshi no mon, 9, 36, 37, 39, 48, 198; in commentaries, 147, 148, 151

Pan Yue (247–300), 26, 37paper-making, 191persimmon tree (kaki ), 5, 128; as site

of Hitomaro’s appearance, 5, 20, 138–140, 178–180, 183, 184, 201

poetic deity, 2, 121, 130–132, 136, 137, 143, 145, 148, 152, 154–156, 159,

160, 164, 175, 177, 189, 191, 193, 196–199, 201, 202. See also kasen, Nisei, Rokkasen, sage of poetry, Sanjūrokkasen, Waka no gosen, Waka sanshin

poetic immortal. See kasenpictures of poetic immortals. See kasen-epoetry in Chinese (kanshi ), 39, 110,

111, 113portraiture, 94, 95, 100, 121, 136, 153,

158, 160, 180; of Bo Juyi, 108, 124; of GoToba, 123; of Hitomaro, 3, 91, 94, 96–98, 101–110, 115–121, 145, 156–160, 163, 170, 176, 179, 194, 195, 200, 201; iconography of Hitomaro portrait, 102, 108, 109, 143, 157; of Lian Cheng Wu, 124; Nobuzane and Iwaya types of Hitomaro portrait, 109; origins of Hitomaro portrait, 102; of the Sumiyoshi deity, 94, 157; of Teika, 195, 196, 202; transmission of Hitomaro portrait, 103–105, 115. See also totō Tenjin, kasen-e

public/private (hare /kei ) distinction, 11, 23, 25, 26, 27, 39, 46; in relation to sekiten, 99

Reigen, Emperor (1654–1732, r. 1663–1687), 176, 194–196

reijin (shrine entertainers), 6Reizei house , 64, 134, 195; and

kōmon eigu, 118; commentaries of, 144, 146, 158, 170

rikugi (six styles or principles of poetry), 41, 106, 107, 159, 167, 168

ritsuryō system, 5, 45, 110, 136Rokkasen (Six Poetic

Immortals), 38, 86, 152. See also kasen, Sanjūrokkasen, Waka no gosen

Rokujō house , 104, 105, 115, 117, 118, 121, 122, 129, 130; as hosts of fi rst Hitomaro eigu, 51, 60, 91, 100, 111, 113, 115, 116, 201; competition with Mikohidari house, 133, 163; Hitomaro as divine ancestor of, 111, 124, 194, 201

Ruijū karin (Forest of Classifi ed Poems, seventh to eighth century), 35

sacrifi ces, 99sage of poetry, 2, 7, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46,

58, 65, 85, 91, 106, 121, 143, 150,

220 index

151, 153, 156, 161, 173; uta no hijiri (sage of poetry), 39, 47–49,

51, 62, 89, 107, 198; kasei (sage of poetry), 47, 122, 127; waka no hijiri

(sage of Japanese poetry), 47, 48, 107. See also kasen, Nisei, shisen, Waka sanshin

Saigyō (1118–1190), 1; as Hitomaro reborn, 150; meeting Hitomaro’s ghost, 130, 131, 143, 182, 183

Saigyō monogatari (Tale of Saigyō, late Kamakura period), 131

Saitō Mokichi (1883–1953), 6, 21

san (praise inscription), 96–98, 101, 103, 106, 107–109

Sanbōekotoba (Tales of the Three Treasures, 984), 101

Sandaishū (Collections of Three Generations), 63, 112

Sangoki (Thirty-fi ve Records, c. 1312–1317), 135, 145, 161, 162, 165

Sangoku denki (Biographies of Three Countries, fi fteenth century), 130–132, 143, 182

Sanjōnishi house, 176Sanjūninsen (Selection of

Thirty People, c. 1009), 59Sanjūrokkasen (Thirty-Six

Poetic Immortals), 40, 86, 95, 109, 153. See also kasen, Rokkasen, Waka no gosen

Sanjūrokunin kasenden(Biographies of the Thirty-Six

Poetic Immortals, c. 1094), 20, 44, 45, 89

Sanjūrokuninsen (Selection of Thirty-Six People, 1009–1012), 40, 44, 59, 153; and kasen-e, 109, 110; Hitomaro’s canonization in, 85–88, 94; spurious Hitomaro poems in, 50, 87, 88, 90

Sanryūshō (Notes on Three Streams, 1286), 135, 139, 141–143, 146, 164, 185

sanshi no mon (gate of the mountain persimmon), 36, 37, 39, 40, 48, 89, 198

Sasaki Takahiro , 115Sasamegoto (Murmurings,

1463), 171

Satakebon sanjūrokkasen(Satake Text of Thirty-Six Poetic

Immortals, thirteenth century), 109, 110

sekiten (Ch. shidian, worship ritual for Confucius), 91, 98–102, 107, 108, 110, 115, 124, 199

Sengaku (1203–1272), 184Sensai (d.1127), 92–96Senzaishū (or Senzaiwakashū

, Collection of Japanese Poetry for a Thousand Years, 1187),

133Sessen ge (Verse on the

Himalayas), 167Shasekishū (Collection of

Sand and Pebbles, 1283), 171Shidian. See sekitenShihonji. See Kakinomoto templeShijing (Classic of Poetry,

c. 600 B.C.E.), 41, 107, 167shima (four devils), 165Shimokōbe Chōryū

(1624–1686), 185, 186Shin’yōshū (or Shin’yōwakashū

, Collection of New Leaves of Japanese Poetry, 1381),

64Shinchokusenshū (or

Shinchokusenwakashū, New Imperially Commissioned

Collection of Japanese Poetry, 1235), 133

Shingoshūishū (or Shingoshūiwakashū , New Collection of Later Gleanings of Japanese Poetry, 1383), 64

Shinkei (1406–1475), 171Shinkokinshū (or

Shinkokinwakashū , New Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry, 1205), 3, 50, 63, 128, 133, 179; Hitomaro poems in, 66; role of eigu utaawase in compilation of, 119; VI:675, 50, 179

Shinsen man’yōshū (Newly Selected Man’yōshū, 893), 60

Shinsen seishiroku (Newly Selected Record of Names, 815), 5

Shinsen waka shū (Newly Selected Collection of Poems, c. 934), 59, 86

index 221

Shinshokukokinshū (or Shinshokukokinwakashū

, New Continued Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry, 1439), 3, 63, 104

Shinsōhishō (Inner Chamber Secret Notes, c. 1012), 59

Shipin (Classifi cation of Poetry, sixth century), 37, 38

Shirakawa, Emperor (1053–1129, r. 1072–1086), 103, 104, 112–114, 116, 162; and Fujiwara no Akisue, 105, 112; and Hitomaro portrait, 104, 105, 116

Shirin saiyō shō (Notes on Leaves Taken from the Forest of Words, 1366), 19, 82

shisen (immortal of Chinese poetry), 47Shoku nihongi (Continued

Chronicles of Japan, 797) 5, 74, 99, 154

Shokugosenshū (or Shokugosenwakashū , New Later Collection of Japanese Poetry, 1251), 133

Shokukokinshū (or Shokukokinwakashū , Continued Collection of Old and New Japanese Poetry, 1265), 133

Shōmu, Emperor (701–756, r. 724–749), 42, 43, 82, 83, 151, 152, 154, 190

Shōtetsu monogatari (Tales of Shōtetsu, 1450), 156, 157, 188, 189, 190, 195

Shōtoku, Prince (574–622), 31, 32, 152

shrines, 6, 74; to Hitomaro, 1, 3, 20, 82, 122, 140, 164, 175, 183, 184, 188–194, 196, 197, 199, 202; to Benzaiten, 163; to Confucius, 99; at Ise, 94, 95; to the Sumiyoshi deity, 92, 132, 141, 162, 163; to the Tamatsushima deity, 154; to Tenjin, 154, 197, 198; Wanishita shrine, 189

Shūishō (Notes on Gleanings, pre-1007), 85

Shūishū (or Shūiwakashū, Collection of Gleanings

of Japanese Poetry, 1007), 40, 50, 63, 186, 201; and Sanjūrokuninsen, 85, 87, 88–90; attribution to Hitomaro of formerly anonymous poems in,

56, 57; Hitomaro’s journey to China described in, 65–67, 72, 74–80, 84, 85, 185; I:3, 87; I:12, 87; I:18, 88; II:125, 87; VI:219, 56; VI:352, 75; VI:353, 66, 75, 77, 79; VIII:478, 67, 76, 77; XIII:778, 50, 87; XIII:848, 88; XX:1289, 88

Shun’e (b.1113), 105, 119, 122, 183

Shunrai zuinō (Shunrai’s Poetic Essentials, 1111–1113), 59

Silla , 70, 72six styles or principles of poetry.

See rikugiSōgi (1421–1502), 175, 176, 193sōmonka (love poems), 11, 12, 17.

See also Iwami sōmonkaSōnokami district, 4, 129Sotoorihime (fi fth century), 120;

as a deity of waka, 153–155spirit pacifi cation. See chinkonSugawara no Michizane

(845–903), 4, 60, 61, 79, 82, 154, 155, 197, 198, 201; hagiography of, 140, 143. See also Tenman Tenjin

Sumiyoshi daimyōjin (Sumiyoshi deity), 85, 94, 132, 141, 142–144, 146, 149, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159, 163, 182; and Akashi Bay poem, 162, 164; and Gyokuden jinpi, 135, 142, 156; and Kōkitokuō bodhisattva, 92, 93; as sea deity, 192; Hitomaro as manifestation of, 144, 145–148, 152, 153, 155; Narihira as manifestation of, 146–148, 153, 155; Emperor Shōmu as manifestation of, 152; Prince Shōtoku as manifestation of, 152. See also portraiture, shrines, Waka sanshin

Susano-o-no-mikoto , 41, 154, 156, 159, 171

Tachibana no Moroe (684–757), 83, 84, 147, 148, 151Taihō Code , 99Tajihi no Mahito , 18, 19, 21,

27, 28, 33Takahashi no Mushimaro shū

(Takahashi no Mushimaro Collection, eighth century), 35

Takatsu (Iwami), 13, 14, 83, 131, 132; as site of Hitomaro shrine, 20, 189–191, 194, 196, 197

222 index

Takechi, Prince (654–696), 6, 58, 106, 164, 165, 186

Tamatsushima myōjin (Tamatsushima deity), 153, 154, 159, 192

Tamekanekyō wakashō(Lord Tamekane’s Notes on Poetry, c. 1285–1287), 63, 64

Tamesuke Kokinshū chū(Tamesuke’s Notes on the Kokinshū, fourteenth century), 131

tamuke, (travel offerings), 32, 33, 70, 191; tamuke uta (travel-offering poetry), 70, 191

Tanabe no Sakimaro shū(Tanabe no Sakimaro Collection,

eighth century), 35tanka (short poem), 10, 12, 15, 17,

24, 33, 36, 61taoyameburi (feminine style),

187tayū (holders of the First to Fifth

ranks), 44, 45, 83Teikin no shō (Exemplary

Notes, Kamakura period), 147Temmu, Emperor (d.686,

r. 673–686), 5, 11, 34, 82, 138, 141, 144, 164, 165

temples. See Gesshōji, Kakinomoto temple

Tenman Tenjin , 4, 153, 154; comparison with Hitomaro worship, 197, 198; hagiography, 140; visits China, 79, 109. See also Sugawara no Michizane

Tō no Tsuneyori (1401–1484), 175, 176, 193

Toda (Iwami), 138, 140, 143, 184, 189

Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1700), 184, 185

Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684–1751), 194

toneri (offi cial), 6, 7, 186Tōren (twelfth century), 183Tōryū kirigami (Memoranda

of Our School, n.d.), 150Toshihito, Prince

(1579–1629), 176totō Tenjin (Tenjin visiting

Tang China), 79; portraits of, 109Towazugatari

(Unrequested Tale, c. 1306), 123, 130

Tsuwano domain, 197Two poems Composed on the Road to the

Capital (Lu Ji), 25

Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), 188

uta haiyū (poet-performer), 23, 24, 28

uta monogatari (poetic narrative), 29, 55

utamakura (famous place names), 75

Waka iroha (Coloured Leaves of Poetry, 1198), 154

Waka kanjō shidai himitsu shō(Secret Notes on

Procedures of the Waka Initiation, Kamakura period), 158

Waka kuden shō (Oral Transmissions on Japanese Poetry, Kamakura period), 153

Waka kuhon (Nine Grades of Japanese Poetry, c. 1009), 59, 86

waka mandala , 91, 94–96Waka mutei shō, (Notes

on the Infi nite Profundity of Japanese Poetry, Kamakura period), 135, 159

Waka no gosen (Five Immortals of Japanese Poetry), 153

Waka sanshin (three deities of Japanese poetry), 153–155, 158, 179, 180, 184. See also kasen, Nisei, poetic deity, Rokkasen, sage of poetry, Sanjūrokkasen, Waka no gosen

waka-dhāranī theory (the equivalence of Japanese poetry and Buddhist incantations), 2, 127, 160, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 181, 193

Wakadokoro (Offi ce of Poetry), 118

wakakō (poetry readings), 158Wakamandokoro ipponkyō kuyō hyōbyaku (Offi ce

of Poetic Affairs Offering with Sutra Chapters Invocation, 1166), 119

Wakan rōeishū (Collection of Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing, c. 1012), 59, 93

Wani clan, 4, 132, 189Way of Japanese poetry. See kadōWen xuan (Writings Selected,

sixth century), 11, 25, 26, 37, 43, 79, 108, 168

index 223

Yakushi (buddha), 146, 152Yamabe no Akahito

(fl . c. 724–736), 6, 37, 38, 86–89, 120, 155, 167, 179, 187; as sage of poetry, 47, 153; as same person as Hitomaro, 48, 84, 150, 151; in Kokinshū prefaces, 41, 42, 47–51, 62, 14 1, 151; origins of, 141, 143, 201. See also Waka sanshin

Yamanoue no Okura (660–733), 35, 79

Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato, 951), 43, 55, 88

Yamato Takeru , 28, 80Yosami no otome . See

Hitomaro’s wifeYoshino (Yamato), 10, 41, 58, 64,

106, 187Yūa (1291–?), 19, 82

Zenjūgoban utaawase(Former Poetry Contest in Fifteen Rounds, c. 1008), 59

zōka (miscellaneous poems), 11, 34

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