The Lyrical Word: Language and Identity in Poetry and Poetics

                                                                             Sonja Arntzen 
                                                                        University of Toronto
 

            The Wakan rôei shû (Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing, Chaves and Rimer,
      1997) certainly marks a key moment in the process of assimilating Chinese poetry into
      the Japanese literary identity. It was the first anthology to treat both Japanese and
      Chinese poets of kanshi as equals, as well as placing waka and kanshi on an equal
      footing. The Wakan rôei shû can thus be said to have furthered the project begun by
      the Kokinshû to have Japanese poetry accepted as the equal of Chinese poetry, a
      project very important for pride in the national poetic tradition. Moreover, if the
      Kokinshû can be credited with laying the foundation for the canon of Japanese poetry,
      the Wakan rôei shû established a unified canon for Chinese and Japanese poetry that
      exerted influence even into the modern era. For an example of this, one can point to
      Kawabata Yasunari's alluding to a Po Chü-i couplet from the Wakan rôei shû as the
      epitome of Japanese sensibility in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. 

      This paper will address the following question: does the Wakan rôei shû represent an
      act of appropriation or even cannibalization of Chinese poetry, or does it rather
      demonstrate the interdependence and essential complementarity of the Chinese and
      Japanese poetic traditions? Slides from manuscripts of the Wakan rôei shû attributed
      to Fujiwara Yukinari will be used to illustrate how the calligraphic style of the
      anthology's most famous renderer mirrors the literary function of the work itself.

                                 From Masurao-buri to Taoyame-buri
 

                                                                     Lawrence E. Marceau 
                                                                    University of Delaware
 

            The early-modern scholar and poet Kamo no Mabuchi conducted research into the
      Japanese classics, notably the Man'yoshu, composed poetry in the Man'yo-cho metre,
      and lectured in classical philology and poetics at his successful academy, the Kemmon,
      in Edo. Mabuchi's academy is unusual for its age in that 20 percent of his recorded
      disciples were women. Mabuchi actively solicited women into his academy, and many
      of his female disciples went on to play a role in the history of early modern waka
      composition, including the talented Yuya Shizuko, Udono Yonoko, and Toki
      Tsukubako. 

      Mabuchi's poetics influenced these women, with its strong emphasis on gender
      distinctions relating both to ancient poetry as well as to geography. This presentation
      explores the relationships Mabuchi makes between ancient Yamato (site of the Nara
      capital) as a center for "masurao-buri," or "valiant masculine style," and Yamashiro
      (site of the Heian capital) as a center for an alternative "taoyame-buri," or
      "'soft-handed' feminine style." In an early form of the "climate and culture (fudo)"
      thesis later promoted by Watsuji Tetsuro and others, Mabuchi argues that the
      geography of Yamato by its very nature promoted masculinity, even among its women,
      while Yamashiro generated femininity among its inhabitants. This presentation delves
      into the complex interrelationships between gender, geography, and periodization as
      they appear both in Mabuchi's theories and in his school's poetry. The "act of
      writing," in the case of early modern Kemmon poetic composition, becomes a highly
      gendered attempt to recreate the "spirit of the ancients" in urban Edo.

                                                                        William O. Gardner 
                                                                         Middlebury College
 
 

      As suggested in the Call for Papers, issues of “language choice” relating to “the creation of
      historical worlds and national identities” have for much of Japanese history been emplotted in
      the matrix of Japanese spoken language and its phonetic representations versus the
      “linguistically unrelated script” of Chinese. I propose to give a paper on the poet Anzai Fuyue
      (1898-1965), whose work revisits this linguistic matrix in the new historical context of
      transnational Modernism and Japanese Imperialist hegemony in East Asia. 
      From his home in the Japanese-administered port city of Dalian, Manchuria, Anzai
      propagated an influential new style of Modernist poetry. He co-founded and edited the
      journal A (Dalian 1924-1928), and was a founding member of Shi to Shiron (Tokyo,
      1928-1931), the journal credited with laying the groundwork for Japanese postwar poetry.
      Anzai’s concise, witty, and sometimes brutal poetry is especially noted for its incorporation of
      unusual Chinese lexical elements. His exoticism was both spatial and temporal: maps and
      Chinese toponyms are important sources of his language and imagery, as are classical Chinese
      historical and literary texts. 
      Although his case is particularly striking, Anzai was only one of many writers testing the
      boundaries of the Japanese national and linguistic integrity during this period of Imperialist
      expansion. In my paper, I will explore the intersection of Modernism, Orientalism, and
      Imperialism in Anzai’s career, and address the ethical and theoretical challenges which the
      works of Japanese interwar Modernists pose to our conceptions of language and identity
      today.