A central feature of traditional Japanese poetry (waka) is the use of utamakura―a category of poetic words, many of which are place-names or the names of features associated with them―to cultivate allusion and intertextuality between individual poems and within the tradition. In this book Edward Kamens analyzes a wide selection of poems to show how utamakura came to wield special powers within Japanese poetry. He reveals how poets in generation after generation returned, either in person or in imagination, to these places and to poems about them to encounter again the forms, styles, and techniques of their forebears, and to discover ways to create new poems of their own.Kamens focuses especially on one figure, "the buried tree," which refers to fossilized wood associated in particular with an utamakura site, the Natori River, and is mentioned in poems that first appear in anthologies in the early tenth century. The figure surfaces again at many points in the history of traditional Japanese poetry, as do the buried trees themselves in the shallow waters that otherwise conceal them. After explaining and discussing the literary history of the concept of utamakura, Kamens traces the allusive and intertextual development of the figure of the buried tree and the use of the place-name Natorigawa in waka poetry through the late nineteenth century. He investigates the relation between utamakura and the collecting of fetishes and curios associated with utamakura sites by waka connoisseurs. And he analyzes in detail the use of utamakura and their pictorial representations in a political and religious program in an architectural setting―the Saishoshitennoin program of 1207.

Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in Traditional Japanese Poetry

Literature & Fiction

Kamens, Edward

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

A challenging study offering a new perspective on classical Japanese poems and how they interact with and are part of material culture This generously illustrated volume offers a fresh perspective on classical Japanese poetry (waka), including many poems treated here for the first time in a Western-language publication. Edward Kamens examines these poems both as they relate to material things and as things in and of themselves, exploring their intimate connections to artifacts and works of visual art, sacred and secular alike, and investigating the unique rhetorical messages and powers accessed and activated through these multimedia productions. This book makes a major contribution to Japanese literary and cultural studies.

Waka and Things, Waka as Things

World Literature

Senshi was born in 964 and died in 1035, in the Heian period of Japanese history (794–1185). Most of the poems discussed here are what may loosely be called Buddhist poems, since they deal with Buddhist scriptures, practices, and ideas. For this reason, most of them have been treated as examples of a category or subgenre of waka called Shakkyoka, “Buddhist poems.”\nYet many Shakkyoka are more like other poems in the waka canon than they are unlike them. In the case of Senshi’s “Buddhist poems,” their language links them to the traditions of secular verse. Moreover, the poems use the essentially secular public literary language of waka to address and express serious and relatively private religious concerns and aspirations. In reading Senshi’s poems, it is as important to think about their relationship to the traditions and conventions of waka and to other waka texts as it is to think about their relationship to Buddhist thoughts, practices, and texts.\nThe Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess creates a context for the reading of Senshi’s poems by presenting what is known and what has been thought about her and them. As such, it is a vital source for any reader of Senshi and other literature of the Heian period.

The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senshi and Hosshin Wakashu (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Religion & Spirituality

U of M Center For Japanese Studies

<div>When the young Princess Sonshi became a Buddhist nun in the year 984, a scholar-official of the royal court was commissioned to create a guide to the Buddhist religion that would be accessible for her. He did so in the form of the illustrated works of fiction (monogatari) that appealed to women readers of her time and class. The text has survived in later manuscripts; the illustrations, if they ever existed, have not. This revised translation recreates Sonshi's experience of receiving this multimedia presentation, with illustrations selected to help contemporary readers visualize its content and essays that provide context on the religious and cultural experience of the author. The Three Treasures is a unique document that opens a window onto the world of Buddhist religious experience--especially for women--in high classical Japan, the time of Sei Sh&#333;nagon's Pillow Book and Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji.</div>

The Three Treasures: A Revised and Illustrated Study and Translation of Minamoto no Tamenori's Sanboe (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) (Volume 97)

Bushelle, Ethan

University of Michigan Press

The Three Treasures: A Revised and Illustrated Study and Translation of Minamoto no Tamenori's Sanboe (Volume 97) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

The Three Jewels: A Study and Translation of Minamoto Tamenori's Sanboe (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Univ of Michigan Center for

Senshi was born in 964 and died in 1035, in the Heian period of Japanese history (794–1185). Most of the poems discussed here are what may loosely be called Buddhist poems, since they deal with Buddhist scriptures, practices, and ideas. For this reason, most of them have been treated as examples of a category or subgenre of waka called Shakkyoka , “Buddhist poems.” 
Yet many Shakkyoka are more like other poems in the waka canon than they are unlike them. In the case of Senshi’s “Buddhist poems,” their language links them to the traditions of secular verse. Moreover, the poems use the essentially secular public literary language of waka to address and express serious and relatively private religious concerns and aspirations. In reading Senshi’s poems, it is as important to think about their relationship to the traditions and conventions of waka and to other waka texts as it is to think about their relationship to Buddhist thoughts, practices, and texts. 
The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess creates a context for the reading of Senshi’s poems by presenting what is known and what has been thought about her and them. As such, it is a vital source for any reader of Senshi and other literature of the Heian period.

The Buddhist Poetry of the Great Kamo Priestess: Daisaiin Senchi and Hosshin Wakashu (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

Poetry

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