Reading the New Ballads:
Late Heian kanshi poets and Bo Juyi1
IVO SMITS (Leiden)
In the year Ten’ei 2 (1111) in what was then the capital of Japan, Fujiwara no
Tadamichi turned fifteen and in Confucius’ words it was time “to put his mind
to study.” Scholarship meant not only the study but also the active practice ofliterature and the young man was to search for examples to emulate. As
Tadamichi was the eldest son of the then Regent, the Retired Emperor Shirakawa (1053-1129) did not let this moment pass unnoticed and sent him a copyof the collected works of the Chinese poet Bo (also Bai) Juyi (772-846).2 It was
not really surprising that the retired sovereign should choose this poet for his
courtesy gift. At the time, as well as in present-day Japan, Bo simply was themost famous poet from China. The practice of literature among the male members of the highest nobility of Heian Japan (794-1185) focused very much on
the composition of texts in Chinese (kanbun), with special attention to poetry(kanshi), so that China’s best-known poet seemed an obvious choice. In thisparticular case, however, Shirakawa’s present led to an important step in broadening the range of early medieval Japanese literary subject matter. Throughout
Tadamichi’s career as a kanshi poet, Bo was to prove an exceptionally influential source of inspiration and it was Bo’s poetry that tempted Tadamichi tocompose some radically new poems himself.
When Shirakawa sent his present to the young Tadamichi, Bo Juyi’s poetry
had been known in Japan for some three centuries. Japan’s infatuation with the
Chinese poet owes much to its thorough customs examination. In Shôwa 5(838), Fujiwara no Takemori (808-851) was Assistant Governor of Dazaifu, thegovernment headquarters in Kyushu and main port for the trade contacts with
the Asian continent. That year he discovered in a shipment from China, thenruled by the Tang dynasty (618-907), a book bearing the title Poetry and prose
by Yuan [Zhen] and Bo [Juyi]. Sensing that he was on to something good,
1

2First published in Wasser-Spuren: Festschrift für Wolfram Naumann zum 65. Geburtstag,ed. Stanca Scholz-Cionca, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1997 (pp. 169-184). Page numbering follows the original publication. The author wishes to thank the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research (NWO; Nissan Fellowship) for making research for this article possible.
Hosshô-ji kanpaku gyoshû, Tadamichi’s note to poem 63. Gunsho ruijû 9, 251. The termshigaku for “fifteen years old”, which Tadamichi uses himself, derives from the Analects(Lunyu) 2: 4: “At fifteen I set my heart to learning.”

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Takemori sent the book on to the emperor. He was duly rewarded for this showof literary connoisseurship with a promotion in rank.3 Bo Juyi had arrived inJapan and he was there to stay.
Takemori’s inspection of the Chinese ship resulted in a poetic frenzy among
the Japanese literati. The demand for a complete set of Bo Juyi’s works grew
rapidly. The monk Egaku (dates unknown, active 835-864), who maintained avirtual one-man shuttle service with four visits to the Asian continent, played
an important role as supplier. When he went to China for the second time, hespent the fourth and fifth months of Huichang 4 (844) copying Bo’s collected
works at the Nanchan Temple in Suzhou. Some five years before, in the second
month of Kaicheng 4 (839), Bo himself had deposited this version of his works
in the sutra storage of the Thousand Buddhas Hall (qianfo tang) of that same
Nanchan-yuan.4 At the time this was one of only three copies of Bo’s complete
works available in China. It was this authorized version that Egaku copied andbrought back to Japan, where it is now known as the Kanazawa bunko-bon Hakushi monjû.5 At the very same time, another Japanese monk, Ennin (794-864),
then residing in the Tang capital Chang’an, also purchased a “Collection ofBo’s poetry, six books.”6 The activities of monks like Egaku and Ennin madeBo himself aware of his success abroad; he mentioned that copies of his collected works were available in Korea and Japan.7 After the formal decision ofJapanese, in 894, to abandon their official embassies to China, the Chinese
court made it a habit to question Japanese monks travelling through their empire, in order to keep up with the latest events in Japan. When these monks got
an audience with the Chinese emperor, a standard point of protocol was thequestion which Chinese books were known in Japan. The monks never failed tomention Bo Juyi.
The first copies of Bo Juyi’s poetry to reach Japan were Tang manuscripts.
However, as Chinese text editions of the Boshi wenji grew more sophisticated,
this edited and annotated Bo Juyi also made the crossing to Japan.8 The statesman Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027), for instance, was an avid book collector with an impressive library; on a rainy day in 1010, he rearranged his

3
4
5
6
7.
8

Montoku jitsuroku 3, Ninju 1 (851)/IX/[kinoto-hitsuji]. Kokushi taikei 3, 478.
Suzhou Nanchan-yuan Boshi wenji ji. Bo Juyi ji 70, 1487-1489.
KANEKO 1948: 103-112; KOMATSU 1965, 295-302. Incidentally, recent theories hold thatthe Heian and Kamakura reading of the characters for “collected works” was “bunshû” or“bunsu” rather than “monjû.” ÔTA/KOBAYASHI 1982, 129.
Nittô shinkyû seikyô mokuroku. Dai Nihon bukkyô zensho 2, 71.
Boshi Changqingji houxu, Huichang 5 (845)/V/1. Bo Juyi ji waiji 2, 1553. See also
WALEY 1949, 212-213.
See KOMATSU 1965, 334-338; and SATÔ 1996, 231.

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books and counted over two thousand volumes.9 Michinaga was keen to collectprinted editions (surihon) of Bo Juyi’s poetry, which he obtained either through
Chinese merchants or through Japanese monks abroad.10 These were annotated
Song editions (960-1279), which differed from Tang manuscript copies at several points. It remains doubtful, however, whether these new editions reallycontributed in any major way to Late Heian studies of Chinese poetry. For one
thing, Michinaga may have owned a Song edition, but that does not necessarily
imply that Chinese scholars also did. Occasionally, Fujiwara scholars from the
Umakai Branch of the Ceremonial House and the Hino Branch of the NorthernHouse were given Chinese books by Michinaga. These books found their way
to the Kangaku-in, the private academy of the Fujiwara and rival institution of
the court university. The older clans of Chinese scholars like the Sugawara andthe Ôe, however, virtually had no access to these new editions. Moreover, theSugawara and Ôe based their authority in the field of Chinese literature on old
Tang text variants that had been passed on within the clans. The idea of having
to credit text editions that deviated from their classroom material probably did
not appeal to them very much. Nevertheless, their conservative attitude does
not mean that they were completely unfamiliar with this “new” Bo Juyi. The
scholar Ôe no Masafusa (1041-1111), for instance, pointed out more reliablevariants in Song editions of Bo’s popular lines.11
In short, members of the Heian nobility went to great lengths to get hold ofcopies of Bo Juyi’s poetry and were eager to lay hands on the new Chinese versions. Several arguments are put forward as to why it was Bo who became so
popular in Japan rather than any other Tang poet. The most likely reason forthis Japanese success was his huge popularity in China.12 Japanese travellingthrough China could not fail to see that all of China was reading Bo Juyi. The
simplicity of Bo’s language and the ease with which his poems could be readundoubtedly accounted for this phenomenal success as well. The Buddhist toneof his poetry (OKADA), the notion that Tang society as it featured in Bo’s poetry was similar to Heian society (KANEKO), and the fact that Bo’s themes andstyle offered Japanese poetry a new treatment and new topics (BROWER/M INER), are other arguments to explain Bo’s fame in Japan.13 Kanda Hideo
9
10

11
12
13

Midô kanpaku ki Kankô 7 (1010)/VIII/29. Dai Nihon kokiroku Midô kanpaku ki 2, 74.
E.g. Midô kanpaku ki Kankô 3 (1006)/X/20; Kankô 7 (1010)/XI/28; Chôwa 2 (1013)/IX/
14; and Chôwa 4 (1015)/VII/15. Dai Nihon kokiroku Midô kanpaku ki 1, 196; 2, 82, 243,
3, 20. Most often, Michinaga received these books together with similar editions of the
Wenxuan.
Gôdanshô 6, 420. Gôdan shôchû, pp. 1297-1300. Masafusa comments on a faulty phrasingin Wakan rôeishû 780, a quotation from the Changhen ke (“Song of everlasting sorrow”).
See KONISHI 1986: 150-155.
OKADA 1954, 283-286; KANEKO 1943, 97; and BROWER/MINER 1961, 156.

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suggests a few additional reasons: both the fact that Bo died a natural death andthat he reached a high court position at the end of his life, in other words that
Bo did not die a violent death and had social success, also appealed to the Japanese.14
Even so, Bo’s poetry is not very homogeneous, not only because of the large
number of poems he composed, but also because he tried his hand at a variety
of styles and topics. Obviously Bo Juyi could be used as inspiration for almost
any kind of poetry––and that is what happened. His poetry must always be explicitly defined when it is described as a source of inspiration.
The first anthology of Bo Juyi’s poetry to arrive in Japan also contained poems by Yuan Zhen (779-831). That these two poets should be seen together on
their first trip to the east is only fitting. They were long time friends and political allies. Joint collections of Yuan’s and Bo’s poetry were made, one of which
was discovered by Takemori. Yuan Zhen and Bo Juyi agreed in matters both
poetic and political. The expression “the Yuan and Bo Style” (Yuan Bo ti), referring to their innovating poetry, bears testimony to that. Yuan was a poet extremely concerned with social and political issues. His main literary aim waspolitical. Like Bo, he deliberately developed a linguistic simplicity and clarityof meaning, which rendered his poetry so popular in China.15
Yuan Zhen and Bo Juyi promoted the “new ballads” (xinyuefu), a genre thatwas initiated by Yuan. The new ballads, rather long poems in a relatively freeform, criticized in a simple tone social and political wrongs or described other
deplorable situations in society. Bo therefore classed the new ballads with his“poems of admonition and instruction” (fengyushi, J. fûyushi). Each new ballad
was usually given a motto, making the poet’s theme explicit to the reader. Bo
himself considered the xinyuefu to be one of his most important contributions topoetry.
The name of the genre took its cue from a much older one known as yuefu,
or “ballads.” Founded around 150 BC, the Music Bureau (yuefu) was an important Han imperial institution responsible for the collection, composition, andperformance of music to be used at court rituals. Since music mostly meantsong, the Music Bureau collected lyrics for ritual, dance and other songs. Theseballads were regarded as folk music and literati hastened to compose other ballads, borrowing title and tune from the originals.16 Bo’s and Yuan’s ballads
were “new” in the sense that the poets chose their own themes, rather thanemulate existing ones as the literati had been used to do.
14
15
16

As in KOMATSU 1965, 327-334.
PALANDRI 1977, 57.
ALLEN 1992, 37-68.

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Bo and Yuan’s new ballads differed from the older yuefu in yet another way:
they were part of a political program. Generally, Heian kanshi do not reveal any
awareness of the political implications of the majority of Chinese poetry. In the
Chinese literary tradition the poet was first of all a civil servant. Poetry was aguide in governing the state and functioned as a mirror. If the government was
at fault and the people suffered, the poet was to point this out in his poetry sothat the emperor would notice and set right the social wrongs. Through his poetry the poet helped to keep society in social and political balance.17 Bo Juyi
and Yuan Zhen specifically meant the new ballads to be an instrument to pointout the misery of different groups in society and to call for the administration tochange its policies accordingly. Bo himself makes this very clear in the preface
to the new ballads, where he states that the new ballads are not concerned withliterature but with society and that their aim is to admonish.18
The political nature of the xinyuefu was not completely unknown to the literati of eleventh and twelfth century Japan. The scholar, poet, and raconteur Ôe
no Masafusa, for instance, lectures very clearly that “the two books of Juyi’s
new ballads are composed as admonition and instruction for government policies.”19 Incidental examples do exist of Early Heian kanshi that lament the fateof Japan’s poor and these may well have taken their inspiration from Chinese
poetry.20
This Heian fondness of the xinyuefu is an oddity not very often touched
upon. Why a people that liked most of Chinese culture except its politics should
become enamoured of a genre that was invented for political purposes, is a bit
puzzling.
However, the fact remains that the new ballads were a great hit with the
Heian nobles. Together with verses from the “Song of everlasting sorrow,”
their lines were singled out for recitation. Women, too, enjoyed reading andreciting Bo’s poetry, as Sei Shônagon indicates.21 Even though the practice andstudy of Chinese literature was considered a male prerogative, Murasaki Shi-

17
18
19
20

21

IDEMA/HAFT 1985, 58-82.
Bo Juyi ji 3, 52. For a translation, see ALLEN 1992, 231.
Gôdanshô 5, 309. Gôdan shôchû, pp. 954-957.
I am thinking specifically of the ten poem sequence Sugawara no Michizane (845-903)
composed about the poor in winter, when he was Governor of Sanuki in northern Shikoku.
Kanke bunsô 200-209. NKBT 72, 259-265. For a translation of this sequence, see BURTON
W ATSON, Japanese Literature in Chinese 1, New York, 1975, pp. 93-94; and ROBERTBORGEN, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court, Cambridge (Mass.), 1986,
pp. 187-188. Another example is Ki no Haseo’s (845-912) Hinjo no hin (“The song of thepoor woman”). Honchô monzui. NKBT 69, 344-346.
Makura no sôshi 211. NKBT 19, 249.

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kibu “secretly” taught Empress Akiko to read Bo’s new ballads.22 Again andagain, when excerpts of Bo Juyi’s poetry were singled out for copying, as apresent for instance, it was practically always the new ballads that were chosen.23 The Japanese even organized study sessions to discuss the xinyuefu.24 In
fact, when Heian nobles mentioned “ballads” they invariably meant Bo Juyi’s
new ballads.
An interesting example of the xinyuefu’s popularity is the Kandabon Hakushi monjû.25 This is a Heian manuscript copy of books three and four of Bo’s
collected poetry, in other words, a Heian copy of Bo’s new ballads. The manuscript has reading marks (kunten) by Fujiwara no Shigeaki (or Mochiakira;dates unknown, active early twelfth century), added on two separate occasions,in 1113 and 1140. Born into the Ceremonial House of the Fujiwara as the
grandson of the famous Akihira (?989-1066), Shigeaki was himself active as akanshi poet, but he probably was not the copyist. The Kanda manuscript, theoldest extant Japanese version of Bo’s xinyuefu, raises the question to what extent the new ballads circulated as an independent book. A comparison with
Dunhuang manuscripts of the new ballads strongly suggests the possibility thatthe new ballads already circulated separately in China, and that the Kanda
manuscript is a copy of such a book containing only the new ballads.26 A Heian
preference for the new ballads, then, may well have followed a Chinese habit ofseparating the new ballads from the rest of Bo’s oeuvre.
As noted above, Japanese readers of Chinese poetry preferred easy texts.
The simple language of the new ballads will therefore have had a lot to do with
their popularity in Heian Japan. Bo himself emphasizes in the preface to thenew ballads that the clarity of their meaning is far more important than theirliterary style. It is also clear that the Japanese did not care much for the political
implications of the Chinese examples, but used the descriptive passages andimitated those in their own poems. The Japanese kanshi differ from the poems
from China in their lack of moral implication. In other words, the Japanese had
to work hard to depoliticize the contents of the new ballads in order to be able

22
23

24
25
26

Murasaki Shikibu nikki. NKBT 19, 500-501.
E.g. Midô kanpaku ki Kenkô 1 (1004)/IX/7. The famous calligrapher Fujiwara no Yukinari brings Michinaga “the first book of the yuefu” he has copied out. Eight days later hebrings Michinaga the second, so that now Michinaga has the complete set of Bo’s new
ballads.
Kenkô mentions one of these in Tsurezuregusa 226. NKBT 30, 271-272. Tadamichi’semulations of the Maitan wen are also the result of study sessions; see below.
A facsimile edition, with transcription and extensive accompanying essays is ÔTA/KOBAYASHI 1982.
For an extensive treatment of this question, see ÔTA/KOBAYASHI 1982, 148-174.

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to appreciate them. Japanese imitations of Bo’s xinyuefu offer an insightful example of what it was in the Chinese original that appealed to Heian nobility.
Fifty of Bo Juyi’s new ballads have been preserved. One that is still includedin every major Japanese anthology of Chinese poetry is “The old charcoal
seller” (Maitan weng). The poem’s motto is “Suffering palace marketing” (kugongshi ye) and is inspired by the fact that in 797 a palace eunuch was appointed Commissioner for Palace Marketing whose sole commission was toorganize requisitioning raids. People were unable to oppose these officiallysanctioned robberies.27 Bo’s poem tells us of the hardships of those tradesmen
who are forced to sell their wares to the palace for far too low a price and describes the hardships of one particular old charcoal seller. The poem is descriptive, but ends with a sarcastic observation of the ease with which the government, and in particular the eunuchs, abuses its power.
The old charcoal seller(Suffering palace marketing)
The old charcoal seller
Cuts firewood, burns charcoal by the southern mountain.
His face, all covered, with dust and ash, the colour of smoke,
The hair at his temples is grey, his ten fingers black.
The money he makes selling coal, what is it for?
To put clothes on his back and food in his mouth.
The rags on his poor body are thin and threadbare;
Distressed at the low price of coal, he hopes for colder weather.
Night comes, an inch of snow has fallen on the city,
In the morning he rides his cart along the icy ruts,
His ox weary, he hungry, and the sun already high.
In the mud by the south gate, outside the market, he stops to rest.
All of a sudden, two dashing riders appear:
An imperial envoy, garbed in yellow (his attendant in white),
Holding an official dispatch, he reads a proclamation.
Then turns the cart around, curses the ox, and leads it north.
One cartload of coal—a thousand or more catties!
No use appealing to the official spiriting the cart away:
Half a length of red lace, a slip of damask
Dropped on the ox—is payment in full!28

Slightly bizarre as it may seem at first, this poem was avidly read by Heiankanshi poets not as a political poem but as a text offering exotically new subject
27
28

WALEY 1949, 58-59.
Bo Juyi ji 4, 79-80; Quan Tang shi 427, 4704. Translation, with minor changes, EUGENEE OYANG in WU - CHI L IU and IRVING Y UCHENG L O (eds.), Sunflower Splendor: ThreeThousand Years of Chinese Poetry, Bloomington, 1975, pp. 206-207.

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matter. The first transformation of “The old charcoal seller” was the work of agroup of poets centring around Fujiwara no Tadamichi (1097-1164), a man
destined to be Chancellor and Regent for an uninterrupted thirty-seven years.
In his fifteenth year, Tadamichi received a copy of Bo Juyi’s collected
works from the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Included in this gift were ofcourse the new ballads, which were to lead to some fascinating poetic exercises
by Tadamichi. At fifteen, Tadamichi already started attending gatherings ofkanshi poets and later on he became the main organizer of such gatherings
during the mid-twelfth century. One of the activities of Heian kanshi salons
were the “reading groups” (dokusho). These were informal study groups, gatherings of scholars and poets who read Chinese texts and usually composed poems about whatever they had just read.
One of Tadamichi’s study groups at one point tackled Bo Juyi’s new ballads,
thanks to which we are left with a series of five poems by Tadamichi which he
aptly named “Reading the new ballads.”29 These poems are all paraphrases ofBo’s xinyuefu in the form of lüshi, or regulated poetry in eight lines withmostly parallel couplets. To paraphrase xinyuefu in shi format was a peculiarityof the Japanese, who seem to have been uncomfortable with Chinese poetic
genres other than the shi. The very act of using the title of the older yuefu poem
is a practise that stems directly from the genre conventions of yuefu poetry; bynaming the older title, the shi emulations connect themselves firmly to theirmodels, even if the poetic format is wholly different. Earlier Japanese paraphrases in shi format of older Chinese yuefu poetry do exist in the Bunkashûreishû of 818.30 Among the new ballads chosen by Tadamichi for this exercise is “The old charcoal seller.”“The old charcoal seller”
Let us ask what the old man intends to do with
Chopping wood and burning it to charcoal, how he spends the last years of his life.
Dust covers his face in the wind from the peak at dawn;
The fire blocks his view of the moon above the mountains.
The price is low: crying he returns over frozen roads;
His clothes are unlined: he cannot endure this snow-cold feeling.
Messengers from the palace in their white liveries haul his chart away:
One roll of red silk, one should not belittle that.31

29
30
31

Hosshô-ji dono gyoshû 85-89. Gunsho ruijû 9, 254-255.
Bunka shûreishû 2: 62-70. NKBT 69, 251-257.
Hosshô-ji dono gyoshû 88. Gunsho ruijû 9, 255. The second character of the last line (੝)
must be a misprint for 疋.

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The pointe of Tadamichi’s paraphrase is a rare touch of irony in Heian kanshi,
obviously inspired by Bo’s original. Tadamichi has given a fairly faithful rendering of Bo’s poem, although the reader has to be familiar with the the new
ballad to be able to understand this condensed version without difficulties.
Tadamichi’s regulated poem depends heavily on borrowed phrases and words
take from Bo’s new ballad, in order to create an atmosphere full of “Bo-ness.”
Tadamachi sent his poem to Fujiwara no Atsumitsu (1063-1144), then Master at the Ministery of Ceremonies. The younger son of Akihira, Atsumitsu carried the torch of the Ceremonial House and became himself an Erudite of Literature (monjô hakase) and president of the court university (daigaku no kami).
The elder of Tadamichi by more than thirty years, his ties with the younger
Chancellor were close. He not only acted as advisor and assisted in drafting
Tadamichi’s petitions, but Atsumitsu also functioned as Tadamichi’s teacher
and partner in poetic matters. At Tadamichi’s request, for instance, he compiled
a now lost sequel to his father’s kanshi selection, the Zoku honchô shûku (“Superior Couplets of Our Court, Continued”) in three books, which was presented
to the Retired Emperor Shirakawa.
In keeping with the ever extending cycle of poetic emulation and intertextualreference that dominates so much of the East Asian poetic tradition, Atsumitsu
composed a poem of his own in reply. Undoubtedly, this poem, too, was paraphrase of “The old charcoal seller.” In return, Tadamichi sent Atsumitsu a second poem, again a paraphrase of Bo’s new ballad.
Harmonizing with the excellent poem sent to me by the Master at the Ministry of
Ceremonies when he saw my clumsy piece of poetry “The old charcoal seller”
The heavy rains find the old man from the mountains in his thatched hut.
He knows his livelihood and heart’s desires, whether awake or asleep.
For his trade, of what use is a scorching sun?
For his family, he hopes for shadow-cold winds.
He is ashamed of his white hair, the result of hard work;
He is afraid of the white liveries, which come galloping south of the city.
The charcoal is more than a thousand catties, the silk but ten foot long.
The clerk speaks the imperial order—who is the greedy one?32

The social fringe seems to have appealed to Tadamachi for its considerable
potential as poetic subject matter. He persuaded members of his salon to compose a series of poems on the subject of kugutsu, for instance, an itinerantgroup of indeterminate origin.33 Once again, he used Bo’s “The old charcoal
32
33

Hosshô-ji dono gyoshû 89. Gunsho ruijû 9, 255.
Honchô mudaishi 2, 77-82. Gunsho ruijû 9, 15-16.

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seller” as a starting point for a Chinese poem, this time on the subject of a peddler woman. The last couplet makes explicit what attracted Tadamichi to his
new found topic
On seeing a peddler woman
A sorry sight, this downcast woman in her shabby clothes
Who goes about peddling until the sun has set:
Raising the price for undue profit, she stands before a door,
Or cries her name outside the gate, lingering there awhile.
A poor household offers custom, but she pays no heed,
Forcing herself unbidden onto one of greater wealth.
“The autumn moon” and “spring blossoms” struck me as passé,
But this topic came to me very naturally.34

In composing his poems Tadamichi as strongly stimulated by Atsumitsu. In his
younger days, before joining Tadamichi’s literary circles, Atsumitsu had been amember of the salon of Prince Sukehito (1073-1119). Sukehito had spent muchof his life waiting to become emperor. He was the second son of Go-Sanjô andMinamoto no Motoko, and therefore a half-brother of Shirakawa. Shirakawa,
who himself had a Fujiwara mother, had promised Go-Sanjô that Motoko’ssons Sanehito (1071-1085) and Sukehito would be next in line to the throne.
When his elder brother died at the age of fourteen, Sukehito became Shirakawa’s supposed successor, in accordance with Go-Sanjô’s wish to secure thethrone for princes who had no ties with the Fujiwara Regent House. Shirakawa,
however, was anxious to transfer the succession to his own son, the later Horikawa (1079-1107).
Sukehito was never officially appointed crown prince, and in Kanji 1 (1087)
he finally moved to the Hanazono Palace at the Ninna-ji, where he became
known as San no miya, “the Third Prince” and where he devoted most of histime to literature. Affecting the air of the literatus who has renounced hisworldly occupations in favour of the pursuit of the arts and the contemplationof life’s impermanence, Sukehito gathered around him a large group of kanshi
poets who met regularly at the Ninna-ji. This group, most of which members
held a middle court rank, became so well known that contemporaries started tocall them “the hundred Masters of the Third Prince.”35 Atsumitsu was one ofthis group.
Sukehito himself was not averse to experiments with new themes in Chinese
poetry and composed emulations of Bo Juyi’s new ballads. When Sukehito’s
34
35

Honchô mudaishi 2, 87. Gunsho ruijû 9, 17. Translation AILEEN GATTEN in KONISHI 1991, 5.
Genpei jôsui ki 16, 1. Nihon bungaku taikei 15, 546-547.

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salon was disbanded with the latter’s death in 1119, Atsumitsu quite probablytransferred this literary taste to his new salon centred around Tadamichi. One of
Sukehito’s few kanshi still available to us is a reworking of Bo’s “The oldcharcoal seller.” Sukehito’s first line is an attempt to reproduce a typical featureof the xinyuefu, which always start with mentioning the topic or title of thepoem.
On seeing an old charcoal woman“The old charcoal woman”—now, listen very carefully!
Her village lies far off, in the Ôhara mountains.
Her clothes unlined, her journey dangerous, she sets out with the wind;
The sun set, the sky cold, she returns, seen home by the moon.
Her voice soars to the clouds and fills the streets;
The autumn wind drives up the price in the ravaged village.
The earth’s products should be brought forth by able-bodied men,
So I am moved to pity now seeing her white hairs.36

We see here, then, a high-ranking aristocrat politician and an imperial prince
emulating a poem that criticizes the arbitrary nature of imperial taxes. The
question presents itself why Tadamichi and Sukehito were so intrigued by thissubject matter. We know from history that neither ever attempted to change
government policies concerning taxation, nor did they embark on a politicalprogram of social reform. In other words, both were probably interested morein the Chineseness of their topics than in changing government policies. The
politically conscious, Confucianist stance of the Chinese poets had little appeal
to the Japanese nobility. Heian upper class society was not very much in favourof social mobility for the poor.
The answer to the question must lie in the attraction of the social fringe as
exotic subject matter. Both Tadamichi and Sukehito were poets intent on
broadening the field of possible topics for poetry. “‘The autumn moon’ and‘spring blossoms’ struck me as passé,” Tadamichi had written and charcoal
sellers, peddler women, kugutsu and others were welcome company at thewriting table. This need for new, more exotic topics is seen in poetry in Japa36

Honchô mudaishi 2, 88. Gunsho ruijû 9, 17. The character combination 聞取 , in the firstline, may at first seem slightly odd or even Japanized Chinese (kikitoru, “to listen intently”), but actually is colloquial Tang Chinese. The auxiliary verb qu 取 indicates anintensification of the verb it accompanies. Examples can be found in the poetry of Li Bo
and Bo Juyi. ZHANG XIANG (ed.), Shiciqu yuci huishi, Peking, 1954, pp. 300-301. Sukehito must have been familiar with another poem by Bo Juyi as well, “As a stand-in for awoman selling firewood, send to every courtesan” (Dai maixin nü zeng zhuji. Bo Juyi ji
20, 447). This short poem opens with the lines “Hair unkempt like tangled mugwort, rags
for clothing,/ At dawn I walk the cold mountains with firewood on my back.”

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180

nese (waka) of the period as well. Eventually, Late Heian Japan saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, that of the social fringe.37
In Edo Japan (1600-1868), the Late Heian Maitan wen emulations attracted
the approving attention of neo-Confucian scholars. In 1771, for example, theKyoto scholar and kanshi poet Emura Hokkai (1713-1788) published his Nihon
shishi (“History of Chinese Poetry in Japan”) and singled out Sukehito’s poemon the old charcoal woman as exceptionally noteworthy.38 Of course, neoConfucian scholars had their own reasons for preferring Heian kanshi about themarginal in society. The question why Heian nobles should want to compose
such poetry was asked already in 1660, when the neo-Confucian scholar Hayashi Gahô (1618-1680) and his son Baidô (1643-1666) compiled the anthology
Honchô ichinin isshu (“One poem each by poets from our court”). Gahô selected kanshi of all periods and gave short commentaries to each poem, which
Baidô faithfully recorded.
Sukehito’s poem was chosen to open Book Six of the anthology.39 The intellectual training of Gahô, son of the famous neo-Confucian philosopher Hayashi Razan (1583-1657), naturally colours his commentary. From Bo’s political intentions through Sukehito’s and Tadamichi’s exotism, Gahô makes thecircle round by giving Sukehito’s poem a political interpretation. According toGahô, Sukehito decided to do away with literary ornamentation, the “jugglingof flowers and birds,” as well as with shallow topics, the “singing girls wearing
scarlet skirts.” Instead, he deliberately chose the theme of a country so abusedby its government that even old women have to go out and make a living andintended the poem as a complaint against the state. Presumably, all the men of
the woman’s “ravaged village” have been called away to fulfil their corvee labour duties. Gahô expounds the political theme by linking the old woman withunsung talents. A topos in Chinese poetry, court ladies pining away in the emperor’s harem or elder courtesans fading away in the back streets of the capitalare a disguise for the talented bureaucrat whose abilities are not recognized andwho is not given the chance to shine as an administrator. Gahô recalls how
Sukehito was deprived of his rightful claim to the throne and contrasts his politically correct attitude, along Confucian lines, with his half-brother’s usurpation of the throne and abuse of state funds. Needless to say, Gahô’s view of
37
38
39

I have touched upon this development in SMITS 1994. In the future I hope to publish an
article dealing more extensively with the emergence the social fringe as a poetic genre, bywhich I mean poetic texts dealing with the social groups mentioned above.
Nihon shishi 1. ShinNKBT 65, 48, 747.
Honchô ichinin isshu 6, 261. SNKBT 63, 180-181, 393.

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history is a fine piece of misrepresentation in order to underline his own political views.
The Master said: “The poet imitated Bo Juyi and composed ‘The old charcoal
seller.’40 It is safe to say that the essence of the two verses is alike. As for women
selling charcoal, everybody saw them, but until then no one had heard of people
composing poems about them.
Sukehito, who had the high rank of Imperial Prince, did not compose on
singing girls wearing scarlet skirts, but put his heart to ‘ravaged villages’ andgave it a refined elegance. He was not simply juggling flowers and birds, but hepitied the charcoal seller’s white hairs. One must say that his talent and knowledge were great. If one enters this much into someone else’s feelings, then isthere not a political message?
Sukehito was the third son of Emperor Go-Sanjô, which is why he was called‘the Third Prince’. As Go-Sanjô was a wise ruler, he understood that the prince
had talent, but since a distinction was made between legitimate [Shirakawa] andillegitimate sons [Sukehito], Emperor Shirakawa was to succeed to the throne.
If I compare this one poem with the way Shirakawa squandered the national
budget without a thought at the Tokujôju-in,41 really, then it is not just thatheaven and earth are separate from one another [i.e. Sukehito’s and Shirakawa’s
talents are far apart], but one may say that Sukehito’s other compositions, even if
they do not equal those by Kaneakira, can compete with those by Tomohira.”42

Classical East Asian poetics have early on operated along imitative principles.
Generic genre codes and the pervasive literariness of the acts of reading andwriting forced every literary effort to be a continuous reference to past and future texts. The reference to yet unwritten texts consists in the fact that every
poem added itself automatically to the existing body of the genre and in thatway became a point of reference for poems to come. This self-reference within

40
41

42

Either Gahô gets the title wrong here or he literally means that Sukehito recomposes
Bo Juyi’s poem. Bo’s poem is indeed “The old charcoal seller,” but Sukehito’s poem
is about an old woman.
The Tokujôju-in was a temple next to the Shirakawa Southern Villa (nanden) and the
Hosshô-ji, at Nijô on the east side of Kamo River. Shirakawa established the first in
no chô, or Retired Emperor’s Bureau, at Hosshô-ji, built in 1077, from which he effectively controlled court politics. Gahô obviously mentions the Tokujôju-in in reference to Shirakawa, as it stood at the centre of the Shirakawa area from which the Retired Emperor ruled and therefore can be read as a metaphor for Shirakawa.
Prince Kaneakira (914-987), also known as Saki no Chûshoô (“the Former Prince in
the Central Ministry”) was a famous kanshi poet and is credited with the compilationof the Kokin rokujô (“Six quires of ancient and modern poetry,” 987). Prince Tomohira (964-1009), another kanshi poet, was known as Nochi no Chûshoô (“the Later
Prince in the Central Ministry”). Both the fact that all three were imperial princes andthe existing link between Kaneakira and Tomoakira will have called this comparison
to Gahô’s mind.

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182

a genre, or intratextuality if you like,43 obviously dominates the small corpus of
Late Heian Maitan wen emulations. Tadamichi is not only in dialogue with Bo
Juyi when he composes his “On seeing a peddler woman” or “The old charcoal
seller,” but echoes poems like Sukehito’s as well.
The functional conventions of the new ballad genre, however, were used by
the Late Heian kanshi poets to create a new genre in Japanese literature: thepoetry of the social fringe. Calls for social reform in the Chinese model weretransformed into observations of exotic subject matter in the Japanese emulations. Tadamichi’s exercises in recreating the new ballads eventually convergedwith the emergence of the marginal in early medieval society as poetic subject
matter. Reading the new ballads was an act of misreading, deliberate or culturally determined, that helped clear poetic space and broaden the field of subject
matter.

Selected Bibliography
Unless otherwise specified, the place of publication is Tokyo.
Primary sources
Bo Juyi ji. Peking: Zhonghua shuju, 1979.
Bunka shûreishû. KOJIMA N ORIYUKI (ed.), Nihon koten bungaku taikei (hereafter
NKBT) 69, Iwanami shoten, 1964.
Genpei jôsui ki.
Gôdanshô. KAWAGUCHI HISAO/N ARA SHÔICHI (eds.), 1984, Gôdan shôchû, Benseisha.
Honchô ichinin isshu. K OJIMA NORIYUKI (ed.), Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei(hereafter ShinNKBT) 63, Iwanami shoten, 1989.
Honchô monzui. KOJIMA NORIYUKI (ed.), NKBT 69, Iwanami shoten, 1964.
Honchô mudaishi. Gunsho ruijû 9, Zoku Gunsho ruijû kanseikai, 1977, kan 128.
Hosshô-ji dono gyoshû. Gunsho ruijû 9, Zoku Gunsho ruijû kanseikai, 1977, kan 133.
Makura no sôshi. IKEDA K IKAN/KISHIGAMI SHINJI (eds.), NKBT 19, Iwanami shoten,
1958.
Murasaki Shikibu nikki shikibu. IKEDA K IKAN/AKIYAMA KEN (eds.), NKBT 19, Iwanami shoten, 1958.
Mido kanpaku ki. Dai Nihon kokiroku: Mido kanpaku ki 3 vols., Iwanami shoten,
1952-1954.
Montoku jitsuroku. Kokushi taikei 3, Keizai zasshisha, 1897.
43

For a stimulating study of the intratextual poetics of the yuefu genre and intratextual
readings of classical Chinese poetry in general, see Allen 1992.

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183

Nihon shishi. ÔTANI MASAO (ed.), ShinNKBT 65, Iwanami shoten, 1991.
Nittô shinkyû seikyô mokuroku. Dai Nihon bukkyô zensho 2 (Bukkyô shoseki mokuroku
2), Bussho kankôkai, 1914.
Quan Tangshi. Peking: Zhonghua shuju, 1985.

Japanese
ABE 1985
H ANABUSA 1971
HONMA 1992
KANEKO 1948

— 1943
K AWAGUCHI 1988
KINPARA 1987

KOMATSU 1965
O KADA 1954
ÔTA/K OBYASHI 1982
ÔTA 1994a— 1994b— 1994c— 1993— 1960SATÔ 1996—, 1987

A BE R YÛICHI , “Kanseki,” Abe Ryûichi ikôshû 3, Kyûko
shoin, pp. 1-75.
H ANABUSA H IDEKI , Haku Kyoi kenkyû, Kyoto: Sekai
shisôsha.
H ONMA Y ÔICHI, Honchô mudaishi zenchûshaku 1, Shintensha.
KANEKO HIKOJIRÔ, Heian jidai bungaku to Hakushi monjû:Michizane no bungaku kenkyûhen 1, Dai Nihon yûbenkai
kôdansha.
—, Heian jidai bungaku to Hakushi monjû: Kudai waka,
Senzai kaku kenkyûhen, Baifûkan.
K AWAGUCHI HISAO, Heianchô Nihon kanbungakushi nokenkyû, Meiji shoin (or. 1959-1961).
K INPARA T ADASHI , 1987, “Honchô mudaishi kanken: ‘jinrin’ no bu shosaishi o megutte,” (Kokugo to kokubun) Kenkyû to kyôiku 18, pp. 3-11.
K OMATSU SHIGEMI, Heianchô denrai no Hakushi monjû tosanseki no kenkyû, kenkyûhen, Bokusui shobô.
O KADA M ASAYUKI, revised edition, Nihon kanbungakushi,
Yoshikawa kôbunkan (or. 1929, Kyôritsusha).
ÔTA T SUGIO/KOBYASHI Y OSHINORI , Kandabon Hakushimonjû no kenkyû, Benseisha.
ÔTA T SUGIO (ed.), 1994a, Hakushi juyô o meguru shomondai (Haku Kyoi kenkyû kôza 5), Benseisha.
— (ed.), Nihon ni okeru juyô sanbunhen (Haku Kyoi kenkyû
kôza 4), Benseisha.
—, “Hakushi Tôdai shôhon ni tsuite: Kan Manji shisen(‘Baitan no okina’) o megutte,” Shigaku 63, 4, pp. 347-371.
— (ed.), Nihon ni okeru juyô inbunhen (Haku Kyoi kenkyû
kôza 3), Benseisha.
—, “Heian jidai ni okeru Haku Kyoi juyô no shiteki
kôsatsu,” Shigaku 32, 4, pp. 18-52; and 33, 1, pp. 402-442.
SATÔ MICHIO, “Shitai to shisô: Heian kôki no tenkai,” 11, 12
seiki no bungaku (Iwanami kôza Nihon bungakushi 3), Iwanami shoten, pp. 221-252.
—, “Hosshô-ji dono gyoshû kô,” Wakan hikaku bungaku kai(ed.), Chûko bungaku to kanbungaku2 (Wakan hikaku bungaku sôsho 4), Kyûko shoin, pp. 353-380.

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SHIMOSADA 1990-1991 SHIMOSADA M ASAHIRO, 1990-1991, “Nihon ni okeru Haku
Kyoi no kenkyû: Hakushi monjû ga Nihon bungaku ni ataeta
eikyo ni tsuite,” I: Sôron hen, Teichôsan gakuin daigaku
kenkyû ronshû 25, pp. 145-159; and II: Kakuron hen,
PACIFICA (Teichôsan gakuin daigaku kokuin bunkaki) 3,
pp. 25-64.

European languages
ALLEN 1992
BROWER/MINER 1961
CHERNIACK 1994

IDEMA /HAFT 1985

KONISHI 1991
PALANDRI 1977
RAZ 1985

SMITS 1994

VON VERSCHUER 1988

WALEY 1949

JOSEF R. ALLEN, In the Voice of Others: Chinese Music Bureau Poetry, Ann Arbor.
R OBERT H. BROWER/EARL M INER, Japanese Court Poetry,
Stanford.
S USAN C HERNIACK , “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54,
1, p. 5-125.
W ILT I DEMA /L LOYD H AFT , Chinese letterkunde, Utrecht/
Antwerpen: Het Spectrum. A revised English translation has
just been published: WILT IDEMA/LLOYD HAFT , A Guide toChinese Literature, Ann Arbor, 1997.
JIN’ICHI KONISHI, A History of Japanese Literature 3 (transl.
by AILEEN GATTEN/MARK HARBINSON), Princeton.
ANGELA C.Y. JUNG PALANDRI, Yüan Chen, Boston.
JACOB RAZ, “Popular Entertainment and Politics: The Great
Dengaku of 1096,” Monumenta Nipponica 40, 3, pp. 283298.
IVO S MITS , “Dichter und Dirnen—Literarische Beziehungenzwischen Aristokratie und sozialen Randgruppen im japanischen Frühmittelalter,” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 48, 1, pp. 51-62.
CHARLOTTE VON VERSCHUER, 1988, Le commerce extérieur
du Japon. Des origines aux XVIe siècle, Paris.
A RTHUR W ALEY , The Life and Times of Po Chü-i, 772-846
A.D., London.