page_title: Japanese poetry
section_title: Heian period
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese poetry / Heian period
caption_attribution_description: This photo shows a detail from an ema depicting Sugawara no Michizane. Jinja (Shinto shrine) Japan I took this photo.
context_page_description: Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language or ryūka from the Okinawa Islands: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang dynasty. Under the influence of the Chinese poets of this era Japanese began to compose poetry in Chinese kanshi; and, as part of this tradition, poetry in Japan tended to be intimately associated with pictorial painting, partly because of the influence of Chinese arts, and the tradition of the use of ink and brush for both writing and drawing.
context_section_description: The Heian period (794 to 1185) in Japan was one of both extensive general linguistic and mutual poetic development, in Japan. Developments include the Kanbun system of writing by means of adapting Classical Chinese for use in Japan by using a process of annotation, and the further development of the kana writing system from the Man'yōgana of the Nara period, encouraging more vernacular poetry, developments in the waka form of poetry. The Heian era was also one in which developed an increasing process of writing poems (sometimes collaboratively) and collecting them into anthologies, which in the case of the Kokin Wakashū were given a level of prestige, due to imperial patronage.
caption: Sugawara no Michizane is revered as the god of learning, as seen on this ema at a Shintō shrine.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2005:03:13 13:42:36", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8842", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "804", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "587"}