Monday, April 29 | 12:00 PM | Virtual Levan Book Chats—Christopher Hepburn, Defining Waka Musically: Songs of Male Love in Premodern Japan
A discussion of Christopher Hepburn’s book, Defining Waka Musically: Songs of Male Love in Premodern Japan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). The author will be joined in conversation by Jennifer Guest (University of Oxford) and Stacey Jocoy (Library of Congress), moderated by Kerim Yasar (USC). Co-organized by the USC East Asian Studies Center and the Center for the Premodern World. REGISTER
About the Book:Defining Waka Musically considers how music, musicality, and ideologies of musicality are working within the specific construction of waka on the theme of male love in Kitamura Kigin’s Iwatsutsuji (1676) and Ihara Saikaku’s Nanshoku ōkagami (1687) by using a modified generative theory of music. This modified theory seeks to get at the interdependent meanings that may exist among the music, image, and the text of the waka in question. In all, this study guides the reader through five waka on the theme of male love and demonstrates not only how each waka is inherently musical but how the image and text may interdependently relate to the ways in which premodern Japanese song poets may not only have thought in and with sound but may have also utilized a diverse array of musical gestures to construct new objects of knowledge. In the case of this study, these new objects of knowledge seem to have aided in situating a changing musicopoetics that aligned with changing constructions of male desire. MORE
About the Author: Christopher Hepburn is a Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow in the Van Hunnick Department of History and the East Asian and Music Libraries at the University of Southern California. He is a musicologist specializing in premodern and contemporary East Asian history, art, and culture, with a focus on Japan and how premodern cultures use music and aspects of musicality to generate meaning and express their feelings, especially during moments of high emotional intensity. In addition to Defining Waka Musically, Christopher has contributed to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Oxford University Press).
About the Participants:
Jennifer Guest is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the reception of Chinese texts and modes of writing in early Japan. She is interested in understanding how the practices of literacy surrounding Chinese style texts were acquired and transmitted, how premodern Japanese readers and writers used these texts as a creative resource, and how these patterns fit into the broader comparative context of transregional literary languages in the premodern world. She is an author, with Jieun Kiaer and Xiaofan Amy Li, of Translation and Literature in East Asia: Between Visibility and Invisibility (Routledge, 2019).
Stacey Jocoy is the Music Division Reference Librarian at the Library of Congress. Prior to this position, she was Associate Professor of Music at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include Early Modern music; vernacular songs of the long seventeenth century; Shakespearean, Jacobean, and Restoration soundscapes; and Japanese animation.
Kerim Yasar is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at USC. He specializes in modern Japanese literature and cinema, media history, and translation studies. His first book, Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (Columbia University Press, 2018), examines the roles played by the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and sound film in the discursive, aesthetic, and ideological practices of Japan from 1868 to 1945. His second project, tentatively entitled Gestures in Light: The Body in Japanese Cinema, is a critical and theoretical meditation on physical expressivity and representations of the body in Japanese film from the silent era to the early twenty-first century.
The Levan Institute for the Humanities hosts Book Chats, conversations celebrating new books by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required.
I was in London yesterday at Japan House in Kensington at the invitation of the Japan Foundation to deliver a lecture entitled ‘Seeds in the Heart and Leaves of Words: Traditional Japanese Poetry Beyond the Haiku’.
I enjoy talking about waka, of course, but it’s always nerve-wracking speaking before an unfamiliar audience in public. There were a total of sixty-five attendees, who listened politely to what I had to say, and asked a number of good questions at the end.
Abstract
Poetry has been a part of Japanese life for more than a millennium, with the first major anthology of waka – poems in Japanese – compiled in the late eighth century. Later, it was to become an essential part of life for the aristocrats of the new capital city of Heian-kyō – modern Kyoto – and through their production and patronage exert a profound influence on almost all aspects of Japan’s cultural life, as warlords, warriors and merchants sought the social status and approval that came with the composition of poetry. Images from waka were used in painting, on clothing, and utensils of various kinds. Waka topics influenced which plants and animals were cherished, and which were not and subtly shaped Japan’s ideas of itself as a nation and people. Indeed, the influence of waka has been so pervasive and enduring that it’s possible to say without an understanding of waka, you don’t really understand Japan.
This lecture traces the development of waka from its early beginnings as a tool for communication and social relationships among the elite nobility, through its role in providing a ritual underpinning to the aristocratic state, and its development into an arena of critical and literary conflict between factions determined to maintain and promote their views of appropriate poetic style, leading eventually to the development of new poetic form such as the haiku. It reveals how and why waka thrived, and how its topics and the emotions associated with them came to express many of the attitudes which are considered quintessentially Japanese.
Last week, I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the 30th annual reenactment of the Kyokusui no en (also known as the Kyokusui no utage) 曲水宴 (‘Twisting Waters Banquet’) at the Kamigamo 上賀茂 shrine in the north of Kyoto.
The Kyokusui no en was a court event, originally of Chinese origin, the first record of which in Japan is as a celebration of the accession of Emperor Kenzō 顕宗. Kenzō’s reign is traditionally considered to have lasted from 485-87, although there is no independent historical evidence for this, so the exact dates of the first Kyokusui no en remain uncertain. Around the beginning of the Nara period in the eighth century, however, it became a regular part of the court’s cycle of activities, usually taking place on the 3rd day of the Third Month, or late March/early April according to the current calendar.
The event centred around poetry, as so many court events did. Chosen poets would seat themselves beside a stream, and sake cups would be floated down it to them. When the cup reached them, each poet would take the cup from the water, drink the sake, and recite a poem composed for the occasion, on a topic which had been provided. It appears that sometimes the composition took place on the spot, and thus under pressure of time as the cup floated down the stream, becoming a display of the poets’ versatility and skill, although at other times the poets were aware of the topic and had time to prepare.
Kamigamo Shrine has a traditional Japanese garden, the Shōkeien 渉渓園, featuring an artificial stream and moss-lawn, which was constructed in 1960 by the well-known landscape architect, Nakane Kinsaku 中根金作[1]. You can find a good set of pictures of the garden and its stream in its usual state here, and a brief description of it is included here in the shrine’s English information about its grounds.
The space remained largely private after it was built, although it is now open to the public, and it was not until 1993 that the first modern Kyokusui no en was held there, with the support of the Kyoto Murasakino Rotary Club.
The modern reenactment in this location is appropriate, as it is known that the then head priest, Kamo no Shigeyasu 賀茂重保 (1119-1191), held a Kyokusui no en there in 1182.
A poet’s place prepared
When I arrived at the site on Sunday, it was some time before the event was due to start, and thus I was able to get a good look, after being admitted, at it as it was prepared for the Kyokusui no en to begin. Five places, with mats for seating and scarlet umbrellas to provide shade to the poets, were already laid out, while members of the shrine staff hurried about sorting out the sound system. One of the features of the event that day was the presence of recreated Heian period incense (takimono 薫物), and the scent of that already drifted around the area.
Once the audience had assembled, prior to the main event, we were treated to a brief discussion of the difference between premodern waka 和歌 and modern tanka 短歌 by Reizei Kimiko 冷泉貴実子, a descendant of the premodern poetic geniuses, Fujiwara no Shunzei 藤原俊成 (1114-1204), and his son, Fujiwara no Teika 藤原定家 (1162-1241), who maintains the family legacy, as part of the Reizeike Shiguretei Bunko 冷泉家時雨亭文庫 Foundation.
This was followed by the formal recitation of two premodern waka, by reciters trained in the traditions of the Reizei family. The two waka were:
君がよはいくちとせにかあふひ草かはらぬ色にかみもまもらん
kimi ga yo wa iku chitose ni ka aoigusa kawaranu iro ni kami mo mamoran
My Lord’s reign will Endure for how many thousand years? The hollyhocks’ Unchanging hues Are surely protected by the god.
Shakua (Shunzei) Poetry Contest in 1500 Rounds 2149
Felicitation
さ月きてかものやしろのあやめぐさけふはこまさへひきくらぶなり
satsuki kite kamo no yashiro no ayamegusa kyō wa koma sae hikikurabu nari
The Fifth Month comes, and At the Kamo Shrine Sweet-flags Today, even the mounts Compete to pull!
Tame’ie Tame’ie gosha hyakushu 171
Both of these poems refer to the Kamo Shrine, Tame’ie’s directly and Shunzei’s indirectly as the hollyhock (aoi 葵) is its symbol and thus the deity he is referring to can be understood to be Kamo Wakeikazuchi no Ōkami 賀茂別雷大神, the god of Kamo, and thus both poems are appropriate choices for an event performed there.
Waiting for the kyokusui no en to start
This performance was followed by the formal procession of the dignitaries attending the event, the poets, musicians and other participants (children dōji 童子, whose job it would be to guide the sake cups along the stream, and shrine staff who would pour the sake and take care of other arrangements). Once everyone was seated, the event began, with formal announcement of the dai 題 (poetic topic) for this year, which was sawarabi 早蕨 (bracken).
Five poets took part in this year’s event: Nagata Kazuhiro 永田和宏, Saigusa Takayuki 三枝昂之, Reizei Tamihiro 冷泉為弘, Nagata Kō 永田紅 and Hirata Wakako 平田わか子. Of these, the first four are well known modern tanka poets, while Hirata is an amateur whose entry to this year’s contest for poems for the event was judged the best.
Following this, the musicians began playing gagaku 雅楽 (traditional court music) and the first sake cup was floated along the stream, while the poets began grinding their ink and writing their poems onto special strips of stiff paper (tanzaku 短冊) which are used for waka at these types of occasions. One by one, each had a sake cup floated to him or her, and took a drink.
Finally, the poets’ poems were collected, presented to the dignitaries for inspection, and then formally recited by the reciters.
Unfortunately, I don’t have permission to translate the poems, but the Japanese versions are as follows:
この先に早蕨萌ゆる原があるきみといくたび通ひたる径
kono saki ni sawarabi moyuru hara ga aru kimi to ikutabi kayoitaru michi
Nagata Kazuhiro
さわらびのまた萌え出づるときめぐり京の水辺に人は寄りゆく
sawarabi no mata moe’izuru toki meguri miyako no mizube ni hito wa yoriyuku
Saigusa Takayuki
神山のかくれ清水の小滝もとはるの色まし萌ゆるさ和羅美
kōyama no kakure shimizu no otakimoto haru no iromashi moyuru sawarabi
Reizei Tamehiro
早蕨は春の光をにぎりしめ開きゆくとき野は明るみね
sawarabi wa haru no hikari o nigirishime akiyuku toki no wa akaru mine
Nagata Kō
さわらびがこんなところに振り向けばああそうなのだあなたがいない
sawarabi ga konna tokoro ni furimukeba aa sō na no da anata ga inai
You can find more images of the event in the gallery here.
[1] For brief details on his life and career, see Ten Grotenhuis, Elizabeth (1995) ‘Professor Kinsaku Nakane – a reminiscence’, Journal of Garden History 15:4 pp.231-232.
This week, I was able to go down to the private view of an exhibition at Eton College, based around a gift of a complete set of the Twenty-One Imperial Anthologies of waka poetry, which was made to the college by Crown Prince, and later Emperor, Hirohito, following a visit he paid there in 1921.
Check out this video which I’ve put together about it, if you’re interested!
As part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind 2022, I have worked with two local artists on a project entitled A Mirror it does Seem. You can view the artwork produced for this project in the Futurecade exhibition, in Sheffield’s Millenium Gallery, 15-25 September 2022. I’ll also be giving a public talk on it at the Spiegeltent, at 2:00 p.m. on 16 September 2022.
This project is a collaborative artistic response by contemporary artists Alison Churchill and Roanna Wells to the theme of the moon reflected on water as expressed in three premodern Japanese poems, integrating their individual practices to combine both moving light and the stillness of watercolours into a new work. It was inspired by my work on premodern Japanese poetry and poetic criticism. Below, I provide some background on the poetry and the society and culture which produced it, while Roanna and Alison will discuss their collaboration and other work.
The term ‘premodern Japan’ obviously encompasses many centuries, but the period I’m most interested in runs from about 900-1200 when Japan was largely peaceful and its ruling nobility had settled in the city of Heian-kyō (modern day Kyoto) around the court of the emperor.
This was a time of significant cultural development in Japan, not least in literature and in poetry, in particular, because the writing and appreciation of poetry was an integral part of aristocratic life. Everyone in the nobility wrote poetry—in fact, it’s not going too far to say that you couldn’t be a functioning aristocrat without the ability to compose a verse when needed. There’s not really a modern English equivalent, but it would be like being a member of the upper classes in Jane Austen’s time and being unable to dance—you would be a strange figure of fun and ridicule, and not get invited to any parties.
I digress slightly, but there’s an actual example of such an individual mentioned in the writings of the time: Tachibana no Norimitsu (965-?). Norimitsu was by all accounts quite dashing—a number of sources tell the story of how he was able to kill three robbers in a swordfight (you can read my translation of one of these stories here)—but he is also known to have had a relationship with Sei Shōnagon (ca. 966-1017/1025) a court lady and the author of one of the most famous accounts of court life, Makura no sōshi (‘The Pillow Book’). Sei describes the end of their relationship in her book and portrays Norimitsu as a buffoon as he is unable to respond properly to any of her verses, and even refuses to do so!
Nobles used poetry for both describing the natural world and their feelings about it, and also their emotions in response to life events like births, deaths, travelling and, of course, falling in love and out of it. An individual was not free to compose about anything any way he or she liked, however—there were rules about what topics were suitable for poetic composition, about which emotions should be expressed depending upon the topic, and what words could and could not be used in poetry. There was also only one form for acceptable poetry: the waka, a short verse in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables.
The topic of our project, the moon and its reflection in water, was associated with autumn—the best night of the year for viewing it was believed to be the 15th day of the Eighth lunar month (around mid-September)—just when the Festival of the Mind is taking place. At this time of year, aristocrats would gather together, either at their estates, or at places where it was known the moon looked particularly beautiful, and enjoy the sight in each other’s company, composing poems as they did so. One just one such occasion:
When he had first gone to the residence of the former Regent and Rokujō Minister, and people were composing on the conception of long clear pond waters.
今年だに鏡と見ゆる池水の千世経てすまむ影ぞゆかしき
kotoshi dani kagami to miyuru ikemizu no chiyo hete sumamu kage zo yukashiki
Especially this year A mirror it does seem: This pond water – Clear through the passage of a thousand ages, How I long for its light!
Poems were exchanged between friends and lovers, sent to superiors, were written for recitation at functions held at court and the mansions of the senior nobility, and also to accompany artworks on the screens which were used for decorating aristocratic dwellings. So, there has been a long association between waka and artwork, making this project a continuation of this centuries old relationship.
Waka were also collected into anthologies so they could be passed down to individuals’ descendants as a social and cultural inheritance. Of course, in order to decide which poems were worth preserving, critical poetic standards had to be developed, and the formal criticism of poetry became increasingly important from the mid-eleventh century. One of the most important venues in which poetry was criticised was the poetry competition (uta’awase), where poets would present their work and have it criticised and judged by experts (for more information on uta’awase, see here).
Possibly the single most famous such contest, and certainly the largest judged by a single person is Roppyakuban uta’awase (‘Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’; 1193-94), my translation and commentary of which has recently been published (if you want to hear me talk about poetry contests, Roppyakuban uta’awase and the translation, watch the video, below:
One of the one hundred topics covered in this contest was ‘The View over Hirosawa Pond’ (hirosawa no ike no chōbō). This view was, of course, of the moon. The pond is still there in the north-west of Kyoto, and you can see some pictures of it (in spring, not autumn) here.
Two of the poems composed on this topic for the contest were:
Left (Tie)
澄み来ける跡は光に残れども月こそ古りね広沢の池
sumikikeru ato wa hikari ni nokoredomo tsuki koso furine hirosawa no ike
Limpid Traces of light Remain, and yet The moon shows no sign of age Above Hirosawa Pond.
Fujiwara no Sada’ie (1162-1241) 藤原定家
Right
隈もなく月澄む夜半は広沢の池は空にぞ一つなりける
kuma mo naku tsuki sumu yowa wa hirosawa no ike wa sora ni zo hitotsu narikeru
Completely full The moon is clear at midnight: Hirosawa Pond and the heavens Have become as one.
Fujiwara no Tsune’ie (1149-1209) 藤原経家
The Right state: we wonder about the appropriateness of ‘light remain’ (hikari ni nokoru) followed by ‘the moon shows no sign of age’ (tsuki koso furine)? These expressions are too similar in meaning to be used so close together. The poem also lacks any conception of a person doing the ‘Viewing’. The Gentlemen of the Left state: the Right’s poem has no faults.
Shunzei’s judgement: on the Left’s poem, I do not strongly feel that the expressions ‘traces of light’ (ato wa hikari ni) and ‘the moon shows no sign of age’ (tsuki koso furine) are particularly bad, but the gentlemen of the Right have identified them both as faults. As for the Right’s poem, I do not feel that there is much sense of a person viewing the scene in expressions such as, ‘pond and the heavens’ (ike wa sora ni zo), and the frequency of wa in tsuki sumu yowa wa, and ike wa, means the poem’s overall impression is poor; it is truly unfortunate that I cannot declare the Left, which lacks a sense of a View, the winner.
(McAuley, Thomas E. (2020) The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds: A Translation and Commentary. Leiden: Brill: pp.392-93)
Whether or not you agree with Shunzei and the participants’ opinion of the poems, it is these which inspired Roanna and Alison to collaborate in creating the artwork for this exhibition, which they discuss below.
Roanna Wells’ work involves a meditative process of repetitive mark making and often conveys a quiet but deep introspection expressed through simplicity of colour and pattern. The series created for this project gives a visual sense of the moon being reflected in water, but also touches on the idea of personal reflection and themes of self-exploration, growth and change.
Alison Churchill makes work in response to the mesmerising and constantly changing light patterns and reflections on Sheffield’s ponds, millraces and rivers. In this project she floods Wells’ meditative moon paintings with water patterns, and suspends the poems in translucent and reflective surfaces.
Gazing at light effects on water is a timeless activity, invoking inner reflection. This exhibit aims to create a contemplative space dissolving historical and cultural boundaries, inviting viewers to connect with the hearts and minds of the Waka poets — and possibly inspiring them to write poems of their own.
To find out more about Roanna and Alison’s work, see their websites:
I’ve decided to branch out and expand my social media activities with the addition of an Instagram account for selected waka translations, where I have suitable images to go with them. You can find the account under the name @utadokoro – (I went through a whole load of waka-related terms before I found one which wasn’t taken!) – and I’ve embedded the first post below. Check it out and follow it if you’re interested! There are only a few posts so far, but I will add more as the mood takes me.
Here’s an interview I recorded for the Exploring Premodern Japan YouTube channel, on premodern Japanese poetry contests (uta’awase 歌合) and my experience in translating Roppyakuban uta’awase 六百番歌合 (‘The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’). Make sure to watch to the end, where you can hear two of the waka being formally recited to get a sense of how the audience in the competition would have heard them.
This article examines the translation of the premodern Japanese thirty-one syllable poetic form known as waka. Set against the context of current scholarly work in Translation Studies on the practices and processes involved in the translation of poetry, as well as constraints imposed by the current nature of many waka as literary works which have been subject to a centuries-long process of canonization, it analyses the challenges posed by the poems to the translator in the following areas: first, form and identification, covering differing solutions to the lineation of waka translations. Second, the use of poetic diction in multiple poems, and the consequences of different solutions to this issue, considering the identity of many waka as elements in longer poetic sequences. Third, use of poetic metalanguage such as utamakura and makura kotoba; and finally, intertextuality, both in the form of references to earlier poems (honkadori) and to other literary sources. The author’s solutions to these issues in the course of his recent translation of Roppyakuban uta’awase (‘The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’; 1193-94) is compared with those adopted by other waka translators as a way of demonstrating the consequences which flow from the adoption of particular translation solutions to these issues.
Waseda RILAS Journal is open access, so anyone can read its contents, and I am in good company in this issue, because there are also the following other poetry-related articles, which emerged as a result of the symposium:
The final stop on my short book tour was at the University of California: Los Angeles, where I was able to relax in the pleasant surroundings of the UCLA Guesthouse, before going on to deliver a presentation on the translation process and critical conflict in the Poetry Contest in 600 Rounds.
Flyer
As with the other talks on this trip, it was a pleasure to meet fellow premodernists, both young and old, and the discussions of the work after I finished speaking were both stimulating and informative. It was great to hear about the exciting research being pursued by graduate students in premodern Japanese Studies at UCLA, and I look forward to hearing more about their research in future conferences and meetings.
