Abstract
Scholars have long been puzzled by the immense popularity of mid-Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) at the Heian court (794–1185), especially compared to the relatively limited attention given to other Tang poets known to have reached Japan. This article traces the origins of the Heian court's appreciation of Bai Juyi to what the author calls a “mode of reading” his poetic corpus, shaped both directly and indirectly by the Heian literati's familiarity with Yuan-Bai exchange poetry, whose significance was reinforced by regular poetic exchanges between Heian poets and envoys from the Kingdom of Parhae 渤海 (698–926) during the ninth and early tenth centuries. The article examines how the Heian-Parhae connection informed the reception of Bai Juyi's poetry and shaped the practice of Sinitic poetry in early Heian Japan. This is the second part of a two-part article, with the first installment appearing in the previous issue of the Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies.
By the mid-ninth century, the collected works of the mid-Tang poet Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) had begun to gain prominence as a source of poetic imagery and expressions in Heian Japan. However, before the seventy-volume edition of Bai Juyi's collected works became the standard reference for his poetry, independent fascicles of poems exchanged between Bai Juyi and his poetic interlocutors, such as Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831), were among the primary sources that Heian literati used to access mid-Tang poetry. Given the growing popularity of the Yuan-Bai style of rhyme-matching poetic exchange from the beginning of the Heian period, it is unsurprising that early Heian poets soon began engaging with the poetry of Bai Juyi (and Yuan Zhen) beyond the scope of exchange poetry. Nevertheless, Yuan-Bai exchange poetry remained a central element in the development of poetic literacy and performance in the early Heian period.
One area where the reception of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry became especially productive is the composition of Sinitic poetry for the imperial household at institutionalized annual banquets, at extrainstitutional banquets held at the imperial residence, or more generally, in sovereign-centered venues for poetry composition. From an early stage, Bai Juyi, as a model of poetic imagery and vocabulary, became closely associated with contexts of poetic production connected to Heian sovereigns. This is further suggested by the presence of Bai's poetic collections in Fujiwara no Sukeyo's 藤原佐世 (847–898) catalog Nihonkoku genzaisho mokuroku 日本国見在書目録 (Catalogue of the Books Currently Present in the Realm of Japan) of 891, which reflects the imperial household's ideal role as the primary custodian of continental knowledge and erudition in early Heian Japan.
In this article I identify three primary trends in which the popularity of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry influenced early Heian sovereign-sponsored poetry. First, poetic imagery and expressions from the Yuan-Bai poetic corpus were adopted by early Heian poets through a process of “reading” shaped by the cultural significance of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry; these elements subsequently found their way into the poetry that Heian literati composed for the imperial clan. Second, the topics chosen for composition at imperially sponsored poetry banquets in the late ninth and early tenth centuries display an increasingly uniform connection to verses extrapolated from poems by Bai Juyi or Yuan Zhen. Third, the poems exchanged with envoys from the Kingdom of Parhae 渤海 in the early tenth century, which demonstrate patterns of reception of vocabulary and imagery from the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry, show some stylistic convergence with the embryonic yet increasingly formalized genre of topic-line poetry (kudaishi 句題詩). This genre would later become the most prestigious style of poetic composition at the Heian court.
These patterns of quotation and poetic imagery are all interconnected, forming part of an early Heian “sphere of Bai's poetry.”1 While this sphere originated from Yuan-Bai exchange poetry as the driving force behind the reception of Bai Juyi, it quickly extended into the realm of Heian court poetry banquets. This article argues that this sphere of cultural interaction constituted a consistent thread of reception informed by a specific “mode of reading” of Bai Juyi's poetry. This mode was rooted in, and was further supported by, the popularity of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry and the continued poetic interactions with envoys from the kingdom of Parhae, in which this poetic style was performed throughout the early Heian period.
The Imperial Household, Poetic Tutoring, and Yuan-Bai Poetry
During the ninth century, Sinitic poetry rapidly developed into a valued form of cultural capital whose prestige reinforced the cultural legitimacy of the imperial lineage. Shortly after ascending the throne in 887, Emperor Uda 宇多 (r. 887–897) formed a close connection with scholars associated with the Sugawara clan, in particular with the renowned Confucian scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真 (845–903), by then the clan's patriarch.2 In the last decade of the ninth century, Michizane, along with other scholars such as his pupils Ki no Haseo 紀長谷雄 (845–912) and Fujiwara no Sugane 藤原菅根 (856–908), took charge of the Confucian education and literary training of Emperor Uda and his crown prince Atsugimi 敦仁, later Emperor Daigo 醍醐 (r. 897–930). Sugawara no Michizane appears to have been especially valued as a poetic tutor by the imperial household, as evidenced by two sequences of poems included in his personal collection, Kanke bunsō 菅家文草 (Literary drafts of the Sugawara House), composed at the request of crown prince Atsugimi.3 The importance of Bai Juyi's poetic imagery is particularly notable in the first sequence, a series of ten poems on topics associated with the end of spring, a seasonal motif prominently featured in Bai Juyi's poetry (Hiraoka 1976).
The influence of Sugawara clan's poetic literacy on imperial poetic activity is further exemplified by a banquet held early in Uda's reign, in the ninth month of 889, on the theme of “lingering chrysanthemums” (残菊). Ki no Haseo composed the preface for the event, and fourteen poets, including the sovereign, wrote poems on the topic “cherishing autumn while enjoying the lingering chrysanthemums” (惜秋翫殘菊).4 These texts are significant for their consistent use of seasonal and natural imagery associated with late autumn and chrysanthemums. Below is the incipit of Ki no Haseo's preface and two poems, by one Ono no Shigekage 小野滋陰 (dates unknown) and by Emperor Uda, respectively:
晩秋九月、夜漏三更、聖皇詔於侍臣、令各獻詩。即賜題目、惜秋翫殘菊。 蓋賞時變也。當時侍者、皆相語曰、凡情之難堪者、莫過於秋天、感之至 切者、莫深於歳暮、況復孤叢之將盡、寒花之纔殘 . . .
In the late autumn of the ninth month, when the water clock entered the third term of the night, the sage sovereign addressed his attendants and commanded that everyone present a poem. He bestowed the topic “cherishing autumn while enjoying the lingering chrysanthemums.” Indeed, this is none other than to admire the shifting of time. At that time, the attendants discussed among themselves: “Nothing is harder for the heart to bear than the autumn sky, and nothing evokes deeper emotion then the end of the year. How much more is this true when the solitary grass is about to fade and only a few cold flowers remain.”
—(Ki no Haseo, in Ōsone, Kinpara, and Gotō 1992: 316)
| 何處翫殘菊 | When are lingering chrysanthemums enjoyed? |
| 清商欲晚時 | When the autumn wind is about to cease. |
| 金花留北闕 | Golden flowers remain in the Northern Palace; |
| 玉蘂少東籬 | Pearl buds are scarce beneath the eastern fence. |
| 白露凝紅粉 | White dew gathers on the red powder; |
| 丹霜染素絲 | Cinnabar-red frost dyes the white threads. |
| 聖君殊愛惜 | The sage ruler treasures them especially: |
| 酈縣是應移 | It seems as if Li County had moved here.5 |
| —(Ono no Shigekage, in Hanawa 1960: 260) |
| 金風吹起欲終處 | When the golden wind arises and is about to cease, |
| 殘菊前簷堪愛芳 | We cannot but cherish the fragrance of the lingering chrysanthemums on the front veranda. |
| 何事殷勤今夜翫 | Yet what is it that we all cherish deeply tonight? |
| 明年此節示愚王 | That next year, at this very moment, the foolish ruler shall be revealed.6 |
| — (Emperor Uda, in Hanawa 1960: 262) |
As these texts show, both the preface and the poems systematically combine the seasonal moment of “late autumn”—the end of the ninth lunar month—with the imagery of “lingering chrysanthemums.” Evidence suggests that this particular chrysanthemum imagery first emerged in the poetry produced by Michizane and other members of the Sugawara clan. For instance, similar imagery appears in a late-autumn banquet held by the Sugawara household in 883, where Michizane celebrated his rise to clan leadership.7 At this event, Michizane's affiliates and students composed poems with short prefaces attached, including the following by Sugawara no Michizane and Ki no Haseo, the only ones extant:
仲秋翫月之遊、避家忌以長廢。九月吹花之飲、就公宴而未遑。蓋白菊孤 藂、金風半夜。
The midautumn gathering to enjoy the moon has long been interrupted due to family mourning, and I have no spare time in the ninth month due the official banquet of the flower-blowing wine. At this time, one solitary white chrysanthemum stands, as the golden wind last blows in the night.8
秋之云暮、唯菊獨殘。飲於叢邊、惜以賦之。
Autumn ends here, as only the chrysanthemums remain. We banquet by the grass, cherishing it and composing poems.
In these texts, the theme of “late autumn” is closely linked to the image of lingering chrysanthemums. While the chrysanthemum was traditionally associated with longevity and the auspicious Double Ninth date, and thus featured extensively in poems composed for the Chrysanthemum Banquet on the ninth day of the ninth month during the early Heian period, the imagery of “lingering chrysanthemums” beyond their prime, as used by the Sugawara clan, was a late ninth-century innovation.9 This association is likely derived from patterns found in the Yuan-Bai poetic corpus. On the one hand, the seasonal category of “end of the ninth month” or “late autumn” can be thought of as a counterpart to, and most likely a Heian derivation of, the “end of the third month” (or “end of spring”), a seasonal time that is particularly prominent in Bai Juyi's poetry. By the eleventh century, both temporal markers were firmly established in Heian seasonal imagination (Ōta 1981). On the other hand, the “lingering chrysanthemum” is also closely associated with the poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen. As shown by Gao Bingbing (2012), the trope of “lingering chrysanthemum” appears in continental poetry prior to and during the Tang period with a negative connotation, as it is usually used in contrast to the auspicious Double Ninth chrysanthemums and as a metaphor for the fading of the season and, in general, the passing of time. By contrast, poems by Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen feature a positive use of this trope, which suggests that the Sugawara clan's imagery may have drawn from and further developed the innovations introduced in Yuan-Bai poetry.
The Sugawara clan's use of late-autumn imagery, directly informed by Yuan-Bai poetry, is explicitly demonstrated in Michizane's preface for a late-autumn banquet held by crown prince Atsugimi in 893. On this occasion, poems were composed on the topic of “cherishing chrysanthemums at the end of autumn” (秋盡翫菊). Michizane's preface includes anonymous quotations that are, in fact, lines from poems by Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen:
古七言詩曰、大底四時心惣苦、就中腸斷是秋天。又曰、不是花中偏愛菊、此花開盡更無花。 詩人之與、誠哉此言。
A poem of old in seven-character lines says: “Throughout the four seasons, my heart is always full of pain; but among them, autumn breaks it the most.” Again, another poem says: “It's not that among flowers I especially love chrysanthemums; it's just that after this flower, no others bloom.” A poet's inspiration truly lies in these words.
The first couplet is from Bai Juyi's quatrain (jueju 絶句) titled “standing in the sunset” (暮立), which is now transmitted in the fourteenth volume of his collected works Baishi wenji (Collected works of Master Bai). The second couplet comes from a quatrain by Yuan Zhen titled “Chrysanthemum flowers” (菊花) included in the sixteenth volume of the Yuanshi Changqing ji 元氏長慶集 (Collected works of Master Yuan of the Changqing era).10 Overall, the preface in its entirety shows deep engagement with Bai Juyi's poetry as a source of vocabulary (Taniguchi 2006: 86–90). Significantly, the poems from which the couplets are taken do not originally belong to a sequence of exchange poems between Bai and Yuan. These couplets thus demonstrate how Michizane synthesized their poetry to create a new rhetorical framework for late-autumn chrysanthemum imagery. Thus, Michizane draws jointly from the corpus of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen, bringing together two poems that did not originally entertain a mutual explicit connection. This, I argue, suggests a mode of reading informed by the popularity of the poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen in Japan from the mid-ninth century and, more specifically, the cultural significance of the corpus of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry, of which manuscripts are known to have circulated independently from the two poets’ personal collections before and at the same time that the latter were becoming the standard edition.11 At least one modern scholar (Shinma 1994) has noted that Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen tend to appear together in quotations in Heian literary material. I argue that the popularity of the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry, itself a direct product of the established practice of poetic exchanges between Heian literati and Parhae envoys over the ninth and early tenth centuries, should be considered as the original driving force that facilitated the development of this reading pattern, as well as the gradual incorporation of Bai Juyi's poetic imagery and expressions into the Sinitic poetry of the Heian period.
As extant sources suggest, the poetic literacy developed by the Sugawara clan through their growing familiarity with the Yuan-Bai corpus also functioned as a bridge that connected the poetry of Bai Juyi (and Yuan Zhen) to the poetic practice of early Heian imperial court. Although the imperial court's gradual incorporation of poetic events uniquely associated with the Sugawara clan has been noted (Kitayama 2002), scholars have yet to fully appreciate how Michizane's late-autumn banquet transitioned from a Sugawara household event to one held at Emperor Uda's court, a shift strongly influenced by the role of Sugawara poets as poetic tutors to Uda and, later, his crown prince, Atsugimi.12 The explicit appearance of two couplets in Michizane's preface for the crown prince, along with the preface's brevity and simplified structure compared to those composed for institutionalized banquets, suggests that this event, and the texts produced for it, functioned as a site for the poetic instruction of Emperor Uda's crown prince. Similarly, the lingering chrysanthemum banquet hosted by Uda in 889 can be viewed as an event centered on the poetic mentoring of the sovereign. Ki no Haseo's preface, in particular, is highly idiosyncratic in both structure and content. While the verbatim quotation and careful explanation of the topic distinguish it from typical banquet prefaces, the passage quoting the discussion among the attending poets—possibly reflecting in writing a form of oral transmission—links it to other prefaces composed in educational settings, such as inaugural lectures on Confucian texts for imperial princes (dokusho-hajime 読書始). Furthermore, like Ono no Shigekage's composition, many of the poems exhibit a paratactic exposition, transforming the works from this banquet into a kind of repository of Sugawara-based seasonal imagery (synthesized from Yuan-Bai poetry), to be appropriated, both symbolically and practically, by the imperial court.
One line of transmitted texts from Sugawara no Michizane's personal collections includes a poem said to have been composed by Emperor Daigo upon Michizane's presentation of his collected works to the throne in 900. The final couplet of the poem reads, “As the Sugawara House [collection] surpasses Bai's style, from now on the latter will be left in a box under a pile of dust” (Kawaguchi 1966: 471). While Daigo's poem celebrates the poetic achievements of the Sugawara clan and honors his former tutor's expertise, the direct comparison between Michizane's collection and Bai Juyi's collected works, Hakushi monjū 白氏文集 (Ch. Baishi wenji) highlights the latter's prestigious status at the end of the ninth century.13 Furthermore, it also foregrounds the potential of both collections to serve as manuals for poetic learning and literary composition to be preserved and safeguarded by the imperial clan.
Bringing the Yuan-Bai Corpus into the Poetry of Institutionalized Banquets
The direct connection between Yuan-Bai poetry and the imperial clan from the late ninth century coincided with the growing and almost exclusive use of verses from the Yuan-Bai corpus as topics for imperially sponsored institutionalized poetry banquets. By institutionalized banquets, I refer to the poetic events officially held as part of the early Heian court's annual ceremonial calendar. From the early ninth to mid-tenth century, at least two such banquets were held regularly, where kidendō graduates were summoned to compose poetry on topics formally selected by the sovereign.14 The Palace Banquet (naien 内宴), held on the 20th, 21st, or 22nd day of the first lunar month, and the Chrysanthemum Banquet (kikka no en 菊花宴), also called Double Ninth banquet (chōyōen 重陽宴), held on the auspicious ninth day of the ninth lunar month, were the most significant of these events. These banquets, described in court ceremonial manuals as early as the ninth century, were held annually without interruption until the early tenth century. However, by the mid-tenth century, these institutionalized banquets began to decline and disappeared entirely in the latter half of the century.15 They were arguably the most prestigious venues for Heian poets to gain official recognition, as participants were selected from the ranks of kidendō scholars (Kudō 1993: 75–91).16 Here I examine how kidendō graduates, who were the first to incorporate the form and vocabulary of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry into their own compositions, used these innovations to enrich the idiom of banquet poetry at the early Heian imperial court.17
An example of the direct use of Bai Juyi's exchange poetry in Heian banquet poetry can be found in the work of the late ninth-century Confucian scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane. The following poem, composed on the topic “Autumn geese come with the sound of oars” (秋雁櫓聲來), was presented at a banquet sponsored by Emperor Uda on the tenth day of the ninth month in 891:
| 碧紗窓下櫓聲幽 | From behind the jade-green silk curtains of the window comes faintly a sound of oars; |
| 聞說蕭蕭旅雁秋 | From what I have heard, this is the lonely sound of geese traveling in autumn. |
| 高計雲晴寒叫陣 | A column [of geese] crying in the cold, aiming high where the clouds have cleared; |
| 乍逢潮急曉行舟 | A boat proceeding at dawn, having suddenly met a rapid tide. |
| 沙庭感誤松江宿 | Touched by the sandy courtyard, we mistakenly feel as though we are resting at Pine River. |
| 月砌驚疑鏡水遊 | Startled by the moonlit pavement, we wonder whether we may be idling at Mirror Waters. |
| 追惜重陽閑說處 | When they hear the idle voices still cherishing the Double Ninth, |
| 宮人怪問是漁謳 | The palace ladies will wonder whether they are listening to the fishermen’s songs. |
| —(Kawaguchi 1966: 380) |
The banquets held by Emperor Uda on the tenth day of the ninth month were usually small-scale gatherings conceived as a follow-up to the Double Ninth banquet held at his residential compound, outside the framework of institutional banquets (Hatooka 2005: 91–110). However, because the Chrysanthemum Banquet of 891 was conducted in an abbreviated form (hiraza 平座), without the sovereign's participation and with no poetry composition, it is plausible that this event served as a substitute for the institutional Double Ninth banquet.18 As be discussed later in this article, the use of a “topic line” (a verse taken from an existing poem) for composition directly links this banquet to institutionalized poetic events of the late ninth and early tenth centuries.
Significantly, the topic is drawn from a poem by Bai Juyi.19 Although Michizane's poem does not engage with the source poem for the topic, the appearance of the toponyms “Pine River” and “Mirror Waters” in the third couplet underscores Michizane's deep familiarity with the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry. These terms, in fact, are prominently used in the poetry exchanged between Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen to refer to the provinces of Hang (杭) and Yue (越), where both poets served as governors. Notably, a quantitative analysis of the poetry of Quan Tang Shi 全唐詩 (The complete poems of the Tang), reveals that this imagery is not common in mid-Tang poetry outside the Yuan-Bai corpus. For example, both terms appear in parallel verses in a poem Bai Juyi sent to Yuan Zhen. The relevant couplet and title are quoted below:
蘇州李中丞以元日郡齋感懷詩寄微之及予輒依來篇七言八韻走筆奉答兼呈微之。
Middle Deputy of Suzhou province Li [Liang] sent Weizhi [Yuan Zhen] and me the poem “First day of the year at the Governor's residence, recalling [you] with emotion.” I humbly replied by composing extemporaneously eight seven-character rhymes [i.e., eight couplets] based on his poem, and also presented my poem to Weizhi [Yuan Zhen].
. . .
| 長洲草接松江岸 | The grass on the floating islet touches the banks of Pine River; |
| 曲水花連鏡湖口 | The flowers along the winding waters reach the mouth of Mirror Lake. |
| . . . | |
| — (Bai 1999: 505) |
This poem was part of a larger exchange between Li Liang 李諒 (775–833), Bai Juyi, and Yuan Zhen, with Bai's response also sent to Yuan Zhen, indicating his intent to integrate the poem into the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry. Even if the above poem by Bai Juyi was not the direct source for Michizane's work, the presence of imagery directly associated with the Yuan-Bai corpus in a poem produced for an imperial banquet reflects both the expressive possibilities that the corpus afforded early Heian poets and the sociopolitical significance it had gained in early Heian Japan. The Yuan-Bai corpus, which paired together the mid-Tang poets Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen, appears to have shaped specific reading and quotation practices that also influenced institutionalized banquet poetry. By “reading pattern,” I refer to the tendency to pair vocabulary and expressions from both Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen's works, incorporating them together into new compositions. While Michizane's poem for Emperor Uda's 891 banquet draws its imagery from Yuan-Bai exchange poetry, Uda's late autumn banquet of 889 demonstrates that this reading pattern extended well beyond the boundaries of exchange poetry.
The reading patterns that emerged around the Yuan-Bai corpus in the ninth century also explain why verses from these two poets were consistently used as topics for composition at institutionalized poetic banquets from the late ninth century. During this period, banquet poetry began to increasingly rely on “topic lines” (kudai 句題)—verses from existing continental poems that were extracted and used as prompts for new compositions. By the end of the tenth century, this practice had evolved into the formal genre of kudaishi or topic-line poetry, with specific rules dictating how each of the four couplets in an eight-line regulated poem should engage with the thematic elements of the topic line.20 In the early Heian period, however, these rules were not yet fully developed, and poets approached their topics in varied and sometimes inconsistent ways. What is significant here is that, during the embryonic phase of topic-line poetry (late ninth to early tenth century), verses from Bai Juyi's poetry and, to a lesser extent, from Yuan Zhen's poetry were increasingly chosen as source material.
The appendix of this article lists all extant topic lines from the Palace Banquet (table A1) and the Double Ninth banquet (table A2) between the late ninth and early tenth centuries.21 When topics first began to be systematically used for institutionalized banquet poetry at the start of the Heian period, they were often drawn from passages in the Confucian classics or from texts included in the kidendō educational curriculum at the Bureau of High Education, such as the Wen Xuan 文選 (Selections of refined literature). Only in the second half of the ninth century do we observe a gradual shift toward topic lines (Mihara 1999). It has also been noted that many topics, whether from the classics or topic lines, were selected from those used in the jinshi (“presented scholar”) examination in the mid-Tang period, or in preparation for it (Li 2004). The evidence suggests, however, that Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen's poems, which make up a significant portion of the traceable topic lines, were central to this transition toward topic lines. Thus, their poetry became an integral part of topic-line poetic culture in early Heian Japan. This phenomenon is not only linked to Bai Juyi's popularity among the educated kidendō elite but also to a mode of reading continental sources that was shaped and reinforced by the simultaneous practice of exchange poetry with the envoys from Parhae and the circulation of Yuan-Bai poetry collections beginning in the mid-ninth century.
At the Intersection of Parhae Exchange Poetry and Banquet Poetry
Although the full development of the kudaishi genre in Heian Japan lies beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that lines extrapolated from the Yuan-Bai poetic corpus were a significant, if not dominant, component of the growing trend of topic-line poetic composition at early Heian institutionalized banquets. The role these lines played in the gradual process of standardization of the kudai poetry format, which later came to dominate mid- and late Heian banquet culture, warrants further investigation. Notably, the connection between Bai Juyi's poetry and Heian topic-line poetry can already be observed in Yuan-Bai–style exchange poems composed by Heian poets for Parhae envoys, suggesting that the format of topic-line poetry may have evolved in Japan under the influence of Yuan-Bai exchange poetry. As scholar Taniguchi Kōsuke (1993) has suggested, the use of continental sources in Yuan-Bai–style rhyme-matching poetry exchanged with Parhae envoys in the early tenth century reveals patterns that would later be fully formalized in the genre of topic-line banquet poetry. Consider, for example, the following poem composed by the kidendō scholar Ōe no Asatsuna 大江朝綱 (886–958) in the summer of 920. This poem was created in response to one that was sent by the Parhae ambassador Pae Ku 裴璆 (?–?) upon his arrival in Echizen 越前 Province, just before his voyage back to Parhae:
| 王道如今喜一平 | The royal virtue is such that right now all is peaceful, |
| 教君再入鳳凰城 | and thus it allows you to enter again the Phoenix Citadel.22 |
| 朝天歸路秋雲遠 | Autumn clouds are far from the road you travel on your return from paying homage to Heaven; |
| 望闕高詞夜月明 | The moon at night shines over the lofty words you compose, looking from afar toward the Palace. |
| 江郡浪晴沈藻思 | The water at the commandery on the bay is so clear that thoughts sink among the weeds; |
| 會稽山好稱風情 | The foot of Mount Kuaiji is a good place for chanting one’s feelings to the wind.23 |
| 恩波化作滄溟水 | As the benevolent waves turn into the open waters of the dark blue sea, |
| 莫怕孤帆萬里程 | Do not be afraid to raise your single sail for ten thousand li. (Tasaka 1985: 59–60) |
The title of the poem is “After Grand Ambassador Pae of Parhae reached the province of Echizen, he sent me a long verse. I was so moved that I composed one poem following the original rhyme scheme” (渤海裴大使到越州後、見寄長句、欣感之至、押以本韻). Pae Ku replied with another poem, to which Asatsuna responded with yet another. Although Pae Ku's poems do not survive, the two poems by Asatsuna purportedly follow the rhyme scheme of the poem by Pae Ku that initiated the exchange. Taniguchi (2006: 45–49) has observed how the corpus of poems exchanged by Ōe no Asatsuna with the Parhae envoys, some if not all of which survive in the Fusōshū collection, exhibits a consistent use of lore (koji 故事, “historical facts from the past”) drawn from historiographical works such as the Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (History of Later Han), Daoist texts such as the Zhuangzi 荘子, and encyclopedias such as the early Tang-period Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚 (Categorized collection of literature). Interestingly, references to lore associated with Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen appear in the same fashion. Taniguchi (1993) notes that in the poem quoted above, the “commandery on the bay” (江郡) and Mount Kuaiji (會稽) are toponyms that appear consistently, and almost exclusively, in the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry from the period when the two were in service as governors of the Hang (杭) and Yue (越) Provinces in the years 823–24. In this way, Asatsuna reimagines the Parhae ambassador and himself in the same fashion as Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen exchanging poems from faraway places. More important, the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry is used here as a repository of continental lore, similar to canonical texts such as histories and Daoist works. While it has been noted that Bai Juyi's collection also functioned as a repository of continental historical lore for early Heian poets (Satō 2016: 198–201), in Asatsuna's poem it is Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen that are used as lore. In later standardized kudai poetry, reference to continental lore associated with the topic (called honmon 本文, “classical anecdote,” in late Heian and medieval compositional manuals) would become expected, if not customary, in either the second or the third couplet of an eight-line regulated style poem.24 As already shown, the topic-line poem that Sugawara no Michizane composed for an autumn banquet held by Emperor Uda in 891, quoted above, displays the same attitude toward continental toponyms associated with the same provinces and appears almost exclusively in the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry (the “Mirror Waters” and “Pine River”).25 While the evidence is not yet sufficient to posit a direct correlation between Yuan-Bai–style exchange poetry and the later standardization of banquet poetry into the topic-line genre, it is worth noting that during a formative period for Heian Sinitic poetry, from the late ninth to the early tenth centuries, the two forms did converge in some way, and that this convergence was predicated on the significance of the Yuan-Bai corpus of exchange poetry in the early Heian period.
Conclusions: Tracing Bai Juyi–Based Poetic Literacy in Early Heian Japan
As discussed in the first installment of this article, Bai Juyi's poetry likely reached Japan in the early ninth century through the frequent embassies to and from the kingdom of Parhae. Initially, the poetic exchanges between Heian poets and Parhae envoys served as the primary site for the reception of the Yuan-Bai style of rhyme-matching exchange poetry. However, other elements of Bai's poetry gradually extended to various aspects of early Heian poetic performance. To be sure, the reception of Bai Juyi's poetry would develop in multiple and complex ways in the middle and late Heian period, encompassing the realms of both Sinitic and vernacular literature. However, by tracing the point of origin of such multifarious Bai Juyi–based literary culture to the emergence of a systematic outlet for the performance of exchange poetry in the rhyme-matching Yuan-Bai style from the beginning of the Heian period, and by locating the ramifications of exchange poetry into the broader poetic culture of scholarly clans, such as the Sugawara House, and of the imperial court, particularly in relation to imperial tutoring and topic-line poetry, I have sketched the contours of the trajectory that gradually installed Bai Juyi's poetry in the literary landscape of Heian Japan.
Notes
Kojima Noriyuki (1976: 175–220) used the phrase “literature of the sphere of Bai's poetry” (hakushiken no bungaku 白詩圏の文学) in relation to the poetic culture developed in Japan from the mid-ninth century.
Emperor Uda's association with the Sugawara clan might have been facilitated by his close connection with the kidendō scholar Tachibana no Hiromi 橘広相 (837–890), whose daughter had entered the court as Uda's consort prior to his incoronation. In addition to being trained at the Bureau of High Education, Hiromi had also entertained a close relationship with Michizane's father, Sugawara no Koreyoshi 菅原是善 (812–880), who maintained the position of professor of literature (monjō hakase 文章博士) at the bureau for more than twenty years.
The two sequences, of ten and twenty (only seventeen extant) poems, respectively, were composed in 895 and are included in the fifth volume of Michizane's personal collection.
Ki no Haseo's preface is included in Fujiwara no Akihira's 藤原明衡 (989?–1066) literary anthology Honchō monzui 本朝文粋 (Literary essence of our court, ca. 1060). All the poems survive in a small and composite collection titled Zatsugon hōwa 雑言奉和 (Harmonizing poetry in miscellaneous verses). In addition to the 889 banquet on lingering chrysanthemums, this collection includes poems composed in harmonization with a poem by Emperor Saga 嵯峨 (r. 809–823), from which the title is derived, and a sequence of poems presented by kidendō students and graduates at a banquet held to celebrate the seventieth birthday of the Confucian scholar Ōkura no Yoshiyuki 大蔵善行 (832–921) in 902.
Li County, in the Henan 河南 region, was traditionally associated with waters colored by golden chrysanthemums.
Uda's poem comes with one line of commentary: “As my talent is late to bloom, I should not be blamed [for my poem]” (朕以晚成人可不見毀). Accordingly, I interpret the last two lines as a self-loathing comment by Uda on the mismatch between the expected poetic literacy of a sovereign and his actual output.
On the Sugawara household banquets, see Kitayama 2002.
The “golden wind” is the autumn wind, so the night on which it last blows corresponds to the end of that season.
A detailed discussion of the development of seasonal imagery centered on the chrysanthemum flower in early Heian Japan's Sinitic poetry can be found in Honma 2002: 31–56. While the chrysanthemum gained prominence in Sinitic poetry with the establishment of the Double Ninth banquet in the early ninth century, by the late ninth century—and especially with the compilation of the Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (Collection of poems old and new) in the early tenth century—it had also begun to establish itself in the autumnal imagination of vernacular poetry (Shirane 2005: 44).
Both couplets also appear in later Heian collective anthologies such as the Senzai kaku 千載佳句 (Splendid verses of a thousand years), a categorically arranged collection of couplets from Chinese poems in two volumes compiled by the Confucian scholar Ōe no Koretoki 大江惟時 (888–963), and Fujiwara no Kintō’s 藤原公任 (966–1041) early eleventh-century Wakan rōeishū 和漢朗詠集 (Collection of Japanese and Chinese verses for chanting), a two-volume collection of couplets from Sinitic poems (and in a smaller proportion of excerpts from prose texts such as fu 賦 rhapsodies, jo 序 prefaces, and ganmon 願文 prayers) by Japanese and Chinese poets, as well as Japanese vernacular poems organized by category. Both anthologies, as a matter of fact, show a distinct preference for the poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen.
See the first installment of this article for a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies 24, no. 2.
As a matter of fact, Sugawara no Michizane was appointed assistant director of the Eastern Palace Chambers (Tōgū no suke 東宮亮), the institution that administered all matters concerning the crown prince, shortly after Atsugimi was selected as crown prince in 893.
From the beginning of the tenth century, tutoring of the sovereign and the crown prince on Bai Juyi's poetry became the purview of the Ōe 大江 scholarly house; thus, the Confucian scholar Ōe no Masahira 大江匡衡 (952–1012) proudly presents the continued Ōe lineage of Hakushi monjū tutors to the sovereign in his own personal collection Gō rihōshū 江吏部集 (Collection of the [assistant to the] Ministry of Ceremonial Ōe). Apparently, Masahira himself was tasked with producing an edition of Bai Juyi's seventy-volume collected works to be annotated with reading marks for imperial perusal (Hanawa 1960a: 221).
Ceremonial manuals such as the mid-ninth century Gishiki 儀式 (Ritual procedures) prescribe that the topic be selected by the two attending professors of letters (monjō hakase) currently in service at the Bureau of High Education. The sovereign then perused the proposed topics and made the final choice. By “ kidendō graduates” I refer to those who had been trained in the kidendō 紀伝道 (way of annals and biographies) curriculum at the Bureau of Higher Education (daigakuryō 大学寮), the institution that trained literate individual who fueled the bureaucracy of the state.
Banquets of Sinitic poetry, however, did not disappear from the Heian cultural arena. In fact, these events thrived from the mid-Heian period and are widely attested in sources such as aristocratic diaries. However, although Sinitic poetry maintained its prestige in middle and late Heian aristocratic society, sovereign-sponsored poetry banquets, though organized at times, in effect ceased to be part of the annual ceremonies of the imperial court; Takigawa 2007: 138–40 describes the gradual collapse of institutionalized court poetry banquet culture, showing that from the second half of the tenth century the very distinction between institutional and extrainstitutional banquets became increasingly blurred and significantly less meaningful. For a detailed analysis of the development of institutionalized poetic banquets in early Heian Japan, see Takigawa 2007: 31–144. For a discussion of the sociopolitical value of banquets of Sinitic poetry at the Nara and early Heian court, see Webb 2005, Heldt 2008: 51–59, and Steininger 2017: 47–61.
Official regulations in this regard are found as early as the Kōninshiki 弘仁式 (Procedures of the Kōnin era, 820), and are then reiterated in the later Engishiki 延喜式 (Procedures of the Engi era, 927).
As noted by Jason Webb (2005: 81–158), continental sources were used discretely and strategically in different settings of poetry composition as early as the Nara period.
Entries for both the Chrysanthemum Banquet and Emperor Uda's banquet on the following day are found in Nihon kiryaku 日本紀略 (Annals of Japan, abridged); see Kuroita 1988: 538.
Bai's original poem is titled “Clear view at the river pavilion. Ninth month, eighth day.” (河亭晴望、 九月八日); it appears in the fifty-fourth volume of Bai Juyi's original collected works Hakushi monjū (Baishi wenji). It is included in the twenty-fourth volume of the modern edition Bai Juyi ji 白居易集 (Bai 1999: 550–51).
Satō 2016 is to date the most comprehensive study on the kudaishi genre. Topic-line poetry has also received the attention of Western scholars: Denecke 2007 provides a comprehensive discussion of the formation and development of the kudaishi genre; Steininger 2017: 89–95 offers insights into the sociopolitical impact of topic-line poetry from the mid-Heian period.
Takigawa 2007: 441–82 presents a table of all the entries and the known topics for the early Heian imperial banquets.
The “Phoenix Citadel” is possibly a reference to the Parhae “superior capital” (上京), by that time permanently located in the “Dragon-Spring District” (龍泉府) near present-day Ning'an 寧安 city in northeast China.
“Weeds” (藻) and “wind” (風) are two words traditionally respectively associated with poetic texts and poetic recitation.
In the section where each one of the four couplets of an eighth-line poem is discussed, one manuscript of the late Heian poetic manual Sakumon daitai 作文大體 (Essentials of composition) prescribes that the “classical anecdote” should be used in either the second or the third line, where it is more in accordance with the structure of the poem. However, if the honmon lines are particularly well crafted, they should be used in the second couplet (Steininger 2017: 235).
Although not fully conforming to the norms of topic-line poetry that would be standardized in the late tenth century, Michizane's poem still displays some techniques of topic exposition that could warrant a description of it as a form of “proto-kudaishi”: four of the five characters from the topic are incorporated in the first couplet, and the two distinctive elements in the topic (the “autumn geese” and the “sound of oars”) are further thematized in the second couplet.
