This is a small-scale contest sponsored by Yōzei some years after he had left the throne. Other than the first round, where a ‘Tie’ is noted, there are no judgements, nor have the poets’ names been recorded. The competition’s most significant feature, therefore, is that it is the sole extant contest on the topic of ‘Love and Summer Insects’ and as such established many of the images and vocabulary usages which subsequent poets used when composing related poetry (Hagitani 1963, 183).
This is one of the most historicially significant poetry competitions because it is the first example we have of an uta’awase as a formal event, where a range of rituals and procedures took place, and poems were judges. We possess this information about it thanks to an extended preamble to the contest text, believed to have been written by Ise, describing who participated in it and how the contest was conducted.
As can be seen from the list of participants above, the majority of poems for the contest were composed by well-known and respected poets of the time. However, these poets did not, in fact, actually present their own work when the contest took place. This was done by a number of more senior nobles, as follows:
Left
Right
(Leader) Imperial Princess Kaishi 誨子内親王 (?-953) Imperial Prince Atsuyoshi 敦慶親王 (888-930) Imperial Prince Atsukata 敦固親王 (?-927) Middle Counsellor (chūnagon 中納言) Fujiwara no Sadakata 藤原定方 (871-931) Captain of the Outer Palace Guards, Left Division (saemon no kami 左衛門督) Fujiwara no Arizane 藤原有実 (847-914) Minamoto no Muneyuki 源宗于 (?-939) Taira no Yoshikaze 平好風 (dates unknown)
(Leader) Imperial Princess Ishi (Yoriko) 依子内親王 (895-936) Imperial Prince Atsumi 敦実親王 (893-967) Imperial Prince Sadakazu 貞数親王 (875-916) Prince Kanemi 兼覧王 Middle Counsellor (chūnagon 中納言) Minamoto no Noboru 源昇 (848-918) Captain of the Outer Palace Guards, Right Division (uemon no kami 右衛門督) Fujiwara no Kiyotsura 藤原清貫 Kiyomichi きよみち
The judgements on the poems were provided by Uda himself, after Fujiwara no Tadafusa 藤原忠房 (?-929), who had been asked to perform the role, failed to attend.
The contest was originally intended to have ten rounds on each of its topics for a total of eighty poems, but as a result of the performance taking longer than expected, the second two topics on Summer and Love were curtailed to five rounds each.
This is the oldest extant example of a senzai awase 前栽合, a contest where examples of different types of plants were compared and appreciated. These events could be relatively informal, with a group of close friends sitting together at someone’s house looking out at the grounds and admiring the plants in the garden; or very elaborate, with plants specially grown for the occasion and presented in manufactured settings. Poems were often composed to accompany the enjoyment of the plants, but these were less frequently judged than was the case in other uta’awase.
We know nothing of the details of this contest, other than that it was sponsored by Tokihira during the period when he was Minister of the Left (905-908) and, given the plants and content of the poems, it would seem to have been an autumn contest.
The only record of this contest is a single poem in Fubokushō (XXIV: 11156) with the headnote ‘From a poetry contest at Sadafumi’s house’ (sadafumi no ie uta’awase 定文家歌合). While this is a variant title used for the earlier ‘Poetry Contest held by Sadafumi, Assistant Captain of the Outer Palace Guards, Left Division‘, the poem here does not occur in that competition’s text, nor is its topic suited to the other contest Sadafun is known to have held, and thus it seems more likely that this is from another, minor contest.
