Kokin Wakashū

The Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集), commonly abbreviated as Kokinshū (古今集), is an early Heian waka Imperial anthology, conceived by Emperor Uda (r. 887–897) and ordered by his son Emperor Daigo (r. 897–930) in approximately 905. Its finished form dates to c. 920, though according to several historical accounts the last poem was added to the collection in 914. The compilers of the anthology were four court poets, led by Ki no Tsurayuki and including Ki no Tomonori (who died before its completion), Ōshikōchi Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine. Its name means "Collections of Ancient and Modern Times."

Significance

The Kokinshū is the first of the Nijūichi Daishū (二十一大集), the twenty-one collections of Japanese poetry compiled at Imperial request. It was the most influential realization of the ideas of poetry at the time, dictating the form and format of Japanese poetry until the late nineteenth century; it was the first anthology to divide itself into seasonal and love poems. The primacy of poems about the seasons pioneered by the Kokinshū continues even today in the haiku tradition.

The Japanese preface by Ki no Tsurayuki is also the beginning of Japanese criticism as distinct from the far more prevalent Chinese poetics in the literary circles of its day. (The anthology also included a traditional Chinese preface authored by Ki no Tomonori.) The idea of including old as well as new poems was another important innovation, one which was widely adopted in later works, both in prose and verse. The poems of the Kokinshū were ordered temporally; the love poems, for instance, though written by many different poets across large spans of time, are ordered in such a way that the reader may understand them to depict the progression and fluctuations of a courtly love-affair. This association of one poem to the next marks this anthology as the ancestor of the renga and haikai traditions.

Structure

The exact number of poems in the collection is a matter of dispute. The online edition contains 1,111 poems. The collection is divided into twenty parts, reflecting older models such as the Man'yōshū and various Chinese anthologies. The organization of topics is however different from all earlier models, and was followed by all later official collections, although some collections like the Kin'yō Wakashū and Shika Wakashū scaled the model down to ten parts.

The following divisions of the Kokinshū mention the Japanese names of the parts, their modern readings, and their English translations.

topic	parts
Seasons	1-2	Spring	春歌	haru no uta
	3	Summer	夏歌	natsu no uta
	4-5	Autumn	秋歌	aki no uta
	6	Winter	冬歌	fuyu no uta
	7	Congratulations	賀歌	ga no uta
	8	Partings	離別歌	wakare no uta
	9	Travel	羈旅歌	tabi no uta
	10	Acrostics	物名	mono no na
Love	11-15	Love	恋歌	koi no uta
Miscellany	16	Laments	哀傷歌	aishō no uta
	17-18	Miscellaneous	雑歌	kusagusa no uta
	19	Miscellaneous Forms	雑躰歌	zattai no uta
	20	Traditional Poems from the Bureau of Song	大歌所御歌	ōutadokoro no on'uta

The compilers included the name of the author of each poem, and the topic (題, dai) or inspiration of the poem, if known. Major poets of the Kokinshū include Ariwara no Narihira, Ono no Komachi, Henjō and Fujiwara no Okikaze, apart from the compilers themselves. Inclusion in any imperial collection, and particularly the Kokinshū, was a great honour.

References

• Saeki, Umetomo (1958). Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei: Kokin Wakashū. Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 4-00-0600087. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

• Kojima, Noriyuki (1989). Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei: Kokin Wakashū. Iwanami Shoten. ISBN 4-00-240005-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Miner, Earl (1985). The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton University Press. pp. 186–187. ISBN 0-691-06599-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• McCullough, Helen Craig (1985). Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1258-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

• Brower, Robert H. (1961). Japanese court poetry. Stanford University Press. LCCN 61-10925. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)