Appendix 2

AESTHETIC IDEALS AND DEVICES

It would take at least a book-length study to give a comprehensive definition of the aesthetic ideals of the Japanese poetic tradition. Here I list only a few prominent terms as a way to map out the contours of Japanese poetic discourse. For examples and definitions I have looked to poem contests, essays, handbooks, and treatises, many of which were written not as literary criticism but as instruction for students, and beginning students at that. Still, they offer us a good window on the meanings of the terms in their proper historical contexts. It should be remembered, however, that many of the aesthetic ideals encountered in such texts were used not analytically but as terms of praise. And inevitably, different poets and critics did not always agree on how terms might be defined.

Another point to remember is that often terms do not claim to identify objective qualities so much as features that resound with the sensibility of the reader (or auditor)—an intersubjectivity. As Earl Miner says, “Both the condition and the appreciative sensibility are implied.”1 The working assumption is that to identify a quality such as loftiness (taketakashi) a reader or auditor must have the aesthetic capacity to respond to that quality, the model being one of resonance. Especially in premodern times, poetry was a matter of the refined sensibility and was believed to have a civilizing effect. It is not without significance that one of the paramount poetic ideals of the entire tradition—ushin, or kokoro ari, to be possessed of heart, sincerity, refined feeling—is commonly used in reference to both poems and people.

In addition to terms of praise, I have also included technical terms such as honkadori, or “allusive variation,” the uses and ramifications of which are aesthetic.

ari no mama 有のまま. Waka, renga, and haikai. A phrase that usually refers to poems of direct description or expression, presenting things “as they are”; i.e., without rhetorical devices or adornments. Although the phrase is occasionally used as a pejorative, from as early as the Yakumo mishō (1221?) of Emperor Juntoku (1197–1242), it is invoked in a positive sense, meaning roughly composing something directly or spontaneously.

Often description of a natural scene is involved, but not always. A commentary on The Tale of Genji by scholars of the Sanjōnishi lineage, for instance, uses the term in reference to a poem in the “Kiritsubo” (The Paulownia Pavilion) chapter of that tale (1:99) written by Genji’s mother when, ill and failing after persecution by other imperial ladies, she leaves the palace and retires to her home.2

The time has come	kagiri tote
and so in sadness I depart	wakaruru michi no
and leave you behind,	kanashiki ni
though what I wish for my life	ikamahoshiki wa
would be a different course.	inochi narikeri

This is a direct statement of sentiment, with no attempt at elegant repartee, no figurative language, and no natural imagery.

Yet natural imagery is a staple of poems in the ari no mama mode. Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) states as a general truth that “if one looks out on the scenes presented by the wind, clouds, trees, and grasses right before one’s eyes and composes on things just as they are [ari no mama], one will come to understanding.”3 And the renga master Sōgi (1421–1502) characterizes the following scene of natural description (Shin kokinshū, no. 594) by Minamoto no Michitomo (d. 1227) as “a poem that presents things as they are [ari no mama], lonely and cold.”4

“On ‘the moon at dawn,’ from Kasuga Shrine poem contest”

Here in the frost	shimo kōru
that freezes upon my sleeves,	sode ni mo kage wa
moonlight lingers on—	nokorikeri
as it used to in the dew	tsuyu yori nareshi
shining in the sky at dawn.	ariake no tsuki

This poem offers not straightforward description but a subjective comment involving a reasoning process on a natural situation.

More often, however, the term ari no mama is invoked when a poem offers more “pure” description of a landscape or a state of mind, as in a poem by Retired Emperor Hanazono (1297–1348), offered as an example by the warrior-poet Imagawa Ryōshun (1326–1420).

“On ‘winter wind,’ from a poem contest dated 1343”

I arise from bed	okite miru
and see as dawn strikes my eaves	asake no nokiba
the white of frost—	shimo shiroshi
my body feeling the chill	oto senu kaze wa
of a wind that makes no sound.5	mi ni samuku shite

Obviously, there is a human subject involved in this (or any other) poem, and it involves a reasoning process to understand that the wind makes no sound because the instruments it usually uses to amplify its sound—the branches of trees and bushes—are so frozen that they do not move. Still, what the poem offers is primarily observational and aesthetic rather than semantic, and the “truth” involved is more experiential than empirical (see makoto).

The ideal of ari no mama is often associated with arguments between the Kyōgoku and Reizei schools of the late medieval period with which Hanazono and Ryōshun were affiliated. A set of teachings of the Reizei house states the idea succinctly: “The most fundamental of styles is based on describing things just as they are [ari no mama], with no adornment.”6 An attack by the Nijō house summed up the Kyōgoku approach in the same way: “They don’t avoid poetic ills, don’t steer away from improper topics or proscribed words, and don’t bother with adornments; they just use everyday language and write about the scene they see right in front of their eyes.”7 But the general tendency to do justice to the world “out there,” especially the world of natural phenomena, is evident across all factions in the late medieval period and plays into the poetics of renga as well. A statement revealing the attitude appears in the writings of the renga master Asayama Bontō (b. 1349) in reference to the following verse by Shūa (d. 1377):

Thanks to the wind,	kaze areba
a boat expected tomorrow	asu no tomari ni
has arrived now.	fune no kite

Bontō prefaces his comments by saying that people say Shūa’s work is “clever” and “adorned.” In this case, however, he says that the poet is more than clever, producing an example of ari no mama that is ratified by real-world experience. “There is nothing unusual about a boat arriving early,” he argues, “because of a following wind.”8

Although not usually analyzed in terms of Kyōgoku poetics, a haiku by the modern poet Takahama Kyoshi (1874–1959) usually viewed as an example of shasei in fact models the ideal of ari no mama as realized in that medieval school exactly:

Sunlight plays	kiri hitoha
on one paulownia leaf—	hi atarinagara
as it falls.9	ochinikeri

A few synonyms for ari no mama that appear in medieval sources are ganzen, me no mae, and ma no atari—“right in front of the eyes.” A comment on a poem by Tani Sōboku (d. 1545), recorded by a disciple on the basis of conversations with the poet himself, provides an illustration.

“For a gathering sponsored by Hekidōsai at Odani Castle north of Lake Biwa”

In the garden, waves;	niwa ya nami
and above the miscanthus,	obana ga ue ni
an island offshore.	okitsushima

This is the place as it is, right before the eyes [ganzen]. The lake lies there before your eyes [me no mae], and this presents that vista—that is all.10

The more philosophical dimensions of ari no mama in the poetics of Kyōgoku Tamekane (1254–1332) seem to be absent here. Instead, the verse functions as a way to praise a host and draw the attention of all participants in a sequence to the beauty of their surroundings.

In the Edo period, the term comes up in haikai discourse and also in the writings of the popular samurai-poet Kagawa Kageki (1768–1843), who offers an inflection on the usual interpretation of the term. When describing actual scenery (jikkei), for instance, he says, the point is not to merely to describe “what one sees or hears just as is [ari no mama]” but rather to describe one’s own subjective feelings just as is, without resorting to ornament.11 One of his most famous waka (Keien isshi, no. 390) illustrates the point, presenting the poet very much “in” the scene:

As if moonlight	teru tsuki no
were cascading down on me—	kage no chirikuru
that is how I feel.	kokochi shite
As I travel through the night,	yoru yuku sode ni
how snow piles onto my sleeves!	tamaru yuki kana

aware あはれ; also mono no aware 物のあはれ. Waka, renga, and haikai. Moving, touching, sadly beautiful, pathetic. In works like The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, the word aware is used by characters (and narrators) to mean “moving” and is often used in reaction to scenes of beauty tinged with feelings of ephemerality. In poetic discourse, the word tends to be used in rhetorical situations that arise from sudden awareness of fleeting beauty, often perceived in slight fluctuations in quotidian experience.

An early medieval usage of mono no aware tei appears in a list12 where the following poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 765, “Laments”) by Fujiwara no Sanesada (1139–1191) is given as an example.

“Gazing at cherry blossoms at Hōkongōin during the spring after the mother of Kinmori had passed away”

Gazing at blossoms,	hana mite wa
I feel in no great hurry	itodo ieji zo
to make my way home.	isogarenu
No one is there, after all,	matsuramu to omou
to await my return.	hito shi nakereba

Often poems offered as examples of aware involve explicit statement of emotion, but in this case feeling emerges only from the poet’s situation. The fact that the poet is responding to the ultimate sadness of death—of his wife, in this case—is appropriate, for at its foundation aware is related to a Buddhist understanding of the uncertainty of human existence. Poems characterized as moving in effect often involve a melancholy state of mind ensuing upon loss, separation, privation, etc. Interestingly, another medieval list categorizes Sanesada’s poem as an example of ushin, “deep feeling” (see ushintei).13 These two terms are contiguous along the broad spectrum of aesthetic terminology.

In renga treatises and commentaries, aware usually refers to a scene or situation that is explicitly sad, often indicated directly by vocabulary. In a mock poem contest Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) uses it in reference to a link (Kabekusachū, nos. 1041–42) by the renga master Sōchō (1448–1532) that provides a specific dramatic setting for the tears of the verse to which it is linked.

Even at the Buddha’s name	hotoke no na ni mo
the tears come falling down.	namida ochikeri
Little remains now	tomoshibi no
of the light of my lamp	nokori sukunaku
as the year ends.	toshi kurete

Sanetaka’s comment is, “Refined and graceful in both feeling and diction, and touching [aware] in total effect.”14 The effect [sama] emerges from the way the emotion of the maeku is subtly contextualized in the link.

Aware also comes up frequently in haikai discourse. One example comes in praise by Yosa Buson (1716–1783) for a hokku by a disciple, Matsuoka Shisen (b. 1742), as aware fukashi, “deeply moving,”15 no doubt in reference to the poignancy implicit in a scene of morning glories in full bloom.

Morning glories.	asagao ya
Yesterday, today,	kinō kyō ni
in full bloom.16	sakitsukusu

The great nativist scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a rough contemporary of Buson’s, is well known for employing the term mono no aware as well. For him the phrase meant the “deep feeling” that things in the world evoke in the sensitive human being and, despite his strongly nativist affiliations, clearly relates to Buddhist ideas of transience. Rather than in the poetry of his own day, however, he saw it at work in some poems of Man’yōshū, in Shin kokinshū, and in The Tale of Genji.

daiei 題詠. Waka, renga, and haikai. Writing poems on prescribed topics, or poems written on prescribed topics. Generally speaking, from the earliest times the challenge of daiei was understood as precise articulation of the topic, adhering to its essence (see hon’i). This attitude is apparent in the “words of judgment” (hanshi) on the following round of a poem contest (Shōji ninen jūgatsu tsuitachi uta-awase) held in the Tenth Month of 1200 by Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239). On this occasion, all those participating in the event voted on judgments (shūgihan), but it was Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) who wrote the words up, and scholars assume that his opinions prevailed. The difference between the two poems, the first by Minamoto no Tomochika (precise dates unknown) and the second by Fujiwara no Takasuke (precise dates unknown), is obvious: the winning poem contains all the words of the topic (morning, withered, and field), whereas the loser concentrates more on a path through the fields and rather than “withered” uses “frost.”

“Morning on a withered field”

Left

In frost so deep,	fumiwakeshi
he may stray from the pathway	ato sae shimo ya
that others have trod—	mayouran
a traveler at morning	asa tatsu nobe o
searching his way through the fields.	tadoru tabibito
Tomochika

Right [winner]

When morning comes,	wakeshi no no
he gazes afar at grasses	chigusa no hate o
on fields he passed through—	kesa mireba
his heart withering within	kokoro ni karenu
as colors fade on the flowers.	hana no irioro
Takasuke17

The difference is not great, but one thinks that perhaps the poem of the left was written on the topic “frost on a path through the fields.” In the poem of the right, the phrase “heart withering within” is not that ingenious, but because it expresses the topic more unequivocally, we awarded it the win.18

The dominance of daiei in poetic practice and discourse cannot be overestimated, but it is also not true that all poems were written on dai. Sometimes poets wrote on immediate experience, and poems were also used in correspondence, in travel records, and so on. Furthermore, some poets were explicitly known for their “personal” poems not written on topics, among them the great priest-poet Saigyō (1118–1190), for instance, and Kenkō (d. ca. 1352), author of Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), who wrote the following (Kenkō hōshi shū, no. 74):

“Written when he saw gulls at play on an evening when the surface of the sea was utterly calm”

Off the beach at dusk	yūnagi wa
not a wave is to be seen.	nami koso miene
Far, far away,	harubaru to
gulls fly over the seashore:	oki no kamome no
rising, falling, that is all.	tachii nomi shite

It should perhaps be noted that in his own day Kenkō was considered somewhat less of a poet than Tonna (1289–1372), who was a true master of writing on topics, but still he was prominent in literary circles and was so admired that records say people memorized many of his poems.

Kōun (d. 1429) makes it clear that the ideal was to call to mind actual experience in the composing of daiei. “When you are in a poetry gathering and faced with composing on a topic, you should compose with the scenery of the place around you—the patterns of the clouds, the sounds of the wind, or the rain you have just heard—in your heart, and come up with a poem that is unusual in style and expresses some new idea.”19 Some Shinkokin-era poems employed natural imagery symbolically, but the mainstream of later medieval poetry stressed an approach informed by actual experience to lend a sense of sincerity. And, as noted in chapter 2, Shirin shūyō (mid-Edo) records a relevant conversation between Mushanokōji Sanekage (1661–1738) and his disciple Jiun (1673–1753) about the following poem on the topic “bush warbler at morning” by Tonna (Tonna hōshi ei, no. 10):

Morning after morning	asana asana
I go outside, and listen:	tachiidete kikeba
to where in haze	haru no no no
spreading over spring fields	kasumeru kata ni
a bush warbler sings.	uguisu zo naku

As Sanekage argues, this poem shows that even in poems on topics “new conceptions” were prized, and also that the feel of “actual experience” (jitsujō) was important.20

But what is it that is new in Tonna’s conception? The answer hinges on his allusion to an anonymous poem in Kokinshū (no. 16):

Setting up house	nobe chikaku
in a place not far from the fields,	iei shi sereba
I hear the voices	uguisu no
of bush warblers singing,	naku naru koe wa
morning after morning.	asana asana kiku

With this poem in mind, we realize that Tonna’s poem affirms his own identity as a person of feeling seeking proper aesthetic experience, while also ratifying the claim of the older poem to a basis in real experience rather than mere imagination.

Dai continued to be fundamental to Japanese practice among waka poets until the modern period and played a role in other genres as well. In renga, dai were assigned for hokku being composed for senku and manku (thousand-verse and ten-thousand-verse sequences). Furthermore, anthologies of linked-verse hokku organize verses according to traditional dai, as do hokku in haikai discourse in Edo times. Haikai poets often met to compose hokku (as opposed to sequences) on topics, many of them coming directly from the traditional canon. For instance, Takai Kitō (1741–1789) records a number of anecdotes involving composing on topics. “When some people got together and divided up topics involving “plum blossoms,” I drew “plum blossoms beneath the moon.’ ”

As if driven mad	mume ga ka ni
by the scent of plum—	kuruu ga gotoshi
clouds around the moon.	tsuki no kumo

Because my poem dealt with only the surface of the topic, only expressing a sense of lingering cold, people didn’t offer much praise.21

It is worth noting that Kitō’s note of disappointment about the reception of his verse shows that still in the mid-Edo period poets were concerned about how well a poem expressed its topic.

A final note: sometimes haikai poets seem to use dai and kigo (season word) interchangeably. Kaya Shirao (1738–1791), for instance, lists poems including the phrases hototogisu (cuckoo), akikaze (autumn wind), and samidare (summer rains) as examples of uta dai and poems including sumōtori (sumo wrestler), kannenbutsu (praising Amida in the cold), and watanuki (unpadded kimono) as haikai dai, adding that waka poets use only uta dai, whereas haikai poets can use both.22 All the words appear in standard lists of season words. Echoing Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Shirao also encourages haikai poets not to revert to the triviality of early-Edo haikai, but, even while writing on haikai dai, to compose poems of elegance and yūgen. A comment by Kitō on a hokku by his disciple Shunpa (d. 1810) illustrates the attitude:

“Third Month of 1786”

On “warm”

Still it’s warm—	atatakaki
as the sky is gone	higure no sora to
to dusk.	narinikeri

At first glance, not an impressive poem, but it expresses the real feeling of spring warmth coming from above, unfolding smoothly and without artifice, achieving a quality appropriate to the first verse in an anthology.23

Aristocratic poets of the Edo period continued to compose on topics into the Meiji period, and the same was true of many commoner poets. Yet there were poets such as Tachibana Akemi (1812–1868) who saw composing on dai as too confining and sometimes jettisoned the practice.

en 艶. Waka, renga, and haikai. Charming, lovely, delicately evocative. The term is especially important in the aesthetics of Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204). Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239) famously described Shunzei’s own poems as possessing “charm [en], profound meaning, and also pathos [aware].”24 The following poem by Jien (1155–1225) describing the subtle natural transition from summer to autumn, written for a poem contest held in 1193, provides a glimpse into what it meant to Shunzei, who acted as judge (see Roppyaku-ban uta-awase, round 312):

“Autumn, round 6—‘lingering heat’ ”

Summer remains here,	aki asaki
in the still shallow rays	hikage ni natsu wa
of autumn sunlight;	nokoredomo
but where dusk darkens the fence	kururu magaki wa
wind blows over the reeds.	ogi no uwakaze

Adherents of the scholarly Rokujō house were dubious about the phrases aki asaki hikage (shallow rays of autumn sunlight) and kururu magaki (dusk darkens the fence), but Shunzei had no objection to either phrase and characterized the kururu magaki in positive terms: “On the contrary, it sounds charmingly beautiful.”25 It was probably the syntax, which might be rendered in unnatural English as “darkening fence,” that offended one side and impressed the other. The word magaki generally refers to a wattle fence of bamboo or tree branches, usually found around a cottage. Thus the poem suggests the presence of a feeling subject.

In renga, the term en often refers to scenes of great beauty that have courtly resonances. For instance, a link by Sōchō (1448–1532) praised by Shōhaku (1443–1527) as charming presents a woman remembering her lover by his scent (Sōchō hyakuban renga-awase, p. 62).

A sad thing it is—my dream,	honoka naritsuru
now nearly faded away.	yume no awaresa
Only a scent	tamakura no
on my arm he used for sleep—	kaoru bakari o
all that remains.	nagori nite

Yet the renga master Shinkei (1406–1475) suggests that for himself, at least, en can emerge even from rustic scenes, scenes that otherwise might be offered as examples of his idea of the cold and spare (hieyase). “Nothing is more charming than ice. The fine scenes [fuzei] of a thin layer of ice on a rice field after harvest, or icicles hanging from the aging eaves of a roof thatched with cedar bark, or grasses and bushes encased in frozen drops of dew in a withered field—are these things not captivating and charming [omoshiroku en ni mo haberazu ya]?”26

Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) uses the word en only a few times, implying something like “gentility.” In a poem contest, he praises a poem by Kusakabe Kyohaku (d. 1696) as “refined and charming [yū ni shite, en nari].”

Where to go	izukata ni
for a little holiday?	yukite asoban
Year-end cleaning.27	susuharai

Susuharai—literally, “brushing the soot away”—refers to year-end cleaning, which by convention was done on the thirteenth day of the Twelfth Month. Kyohaku’s verse presents the somewhat pathetic plight of someone who has no place to go while the cleaning is done. There is humor in the situation, but yū and en emerge from the association with old calendrical traditions and the image of the subject ruminating on where to go.

fūga 風雅. Waka, renga, and haikai. Courtly elegance, proper poetry, poetic spirit. From the beginning fūga was closely associated with the idea of a proper “courtly” life grounded in ancient Chinese ideals and high standards of taste as well as rules of order and propriety. The definition by Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) is decidedly didactic: “If the content of a verse is upright and the words subdued, then it will blend with the voices of an orderly world. This is what is meant by renga of courtly elegance.”28

Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and his disciples sometimes use the term to mean poetry—proper, serious poetry, that is—in a general sense. Thus Bashō and his followers claimed that the spirit of fūga animated all genres of poetry: “Chinese poetry, uta, renga, haikai—all are fūga.”29 And in a famous statement, Bashō says that fūga is found in the work of the artists he admires most across generic boundaries. “The waka of Saigyō, the renga of Sōgi, the paintings of Sesshū, the tea of Rikyū—the same thing that runs through all of these. Things that cleave to fūga follow creation and befriend the four seasons.”30

A related term is furyū 風流, which in early times derived from Chinese concepts and seems to have meant something like an elegant life, grounded in court lifestyle, etiquette, and aesthetics. It is a close synonym of miyabi, “courtly taste.” In Bashō’s school it is sometimes used to mean poetry: “The one quality that flows through what the world calls furyū is this: you are moved by something and let it work on your feelings, in the end breathe it out in words as a poem. This is the foundation of Chinese poetry, uta, renga, and haikai, and if you allow not a thread of the personal into it, that is what is called true art [fūga].”31

heikaitei 平懐躰. Waka, renga, haikai. The ordinary or plain style. The word is used in a negative sense, meaning “ordinary” or “prosaic” by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204), Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239), Emperor Juntoku (1197–1242), Tonna (1289–1372), and Kōun (d. 1429). However, sometimes it also appears as a more neutral term, in reference to certain works of Saigyō (1118–1190), in particular,32 who uses the word in a positive way himself.33 Among his poems, the following is often mentioned as an example of the “ordinary” style.34

As if to say	nageke tote
“Suffer!” moonlight shines down—	tsuki ya wa mono o
but that cannot be.	omowasuru
Yet that is where my crying eyes	kakochigao naru
seem to want to look for blame.	waga namida kana

Since it appears in both in Senzaishū (no. 929) and Ogura hyakunin isshu (no. 86), compiled respectively by Shunzei and his son Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), this poem cannot be easily dismissed. Yet it should also be remembered that Go-Toba, Shunzei, and others stressed that Saigyō was an exceptional talent whose style was not a good model for younger poets.35

Among later medieval poets, it was Shinkei (1406–1475) who used the term heikai in a positive sense, in reference to his own waka (Kanshō hyakushū, no. 77) no less.

“Love, using the image of ‘bridge’ ”

Over the ages	furinikeru
Itada Bridge has descended	yoyo no itada no
into ruin,	hashi yori mo
yet more obvious still	koboruru mono wa
is the way my tears fall down.	namida narikeri

This poem is a shinku [closely linked poem; see shinku soku] and ordinary, but still it holds some interest. This, too, is one style.36

Another of Shinkei’s poems (Kanshō hyakushū, no. 56) that he characterizes as “entirely in the heitai style”37 suggests a connection to his “chill” aesthetic (see hieyase).

The desolate scene	susamajiki
of a heavy, frigid sky,	sora no keshiki mo
and the sound of wind:	kaze no oto mo
both bring with them the sadness	kanashisa souru
of winter, now surely come.	fuyu wa kinikeri

One remembers again that in one of his essays Shinkei says that “nothing is more profoundly moving or refreshing than water” and “nothing is more elegant than ice.”38 The elevation of the mundane and seemingly ordinary into artistic significance was clearly part of his project.

Heikai also comes up occasionally in haikai discourse, usually pronounced not as heikai but as konashi and often refers to unconventional or somewhat forced treatment of serious topics. In a positive sense, however, the idea was also instrumental in the developments of karumi, or “lightness,” in the poetics of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694).

hieyase 冷え痩せ. Waka and renga. Cold and spare. An ideal particularly for the renga master Shinkei (1406–1475), who uses a number of similar terms—hiesabi, hiekōritaru, samuku yasetaru, etc. In one of his works (Tokorodokoro hentō, p. 290), he praises a hokku by Mashita Mitsuhiro (d. 1441) as an example of what he means.

Blow on, storm winds—	fuke arashi
in those reeds faintly sparkling	ogi ni honomeku
in moonlit dusk.	yūzukuyo

Like this one, many of the poems Shinkei identifies with the term and its synonyms present stark, cold imagery, but his student Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) says that is not enough: “When it comes to what in the world of poetry we call hieyase karabitaru, there are many who say it is a rotting willow, a withered plum tree, frost falling on a bridge, or a night of snow and ice. If that were true, how easy it would be.”39

The implication is that the most important element in this mode is rhetorical restraint: not just cold imagery but also spare style and chilly feeling. One of Shinkei’s own (Chikurinshō, no. 418) links perhaps illustrates the point:

On the path, no footsteps show—	fumu to mo mienu
as dew hardens into frost.	michi no tsuyu shimo
No one passes by	yuku hito mo
and the night goes silent	shizumaru tsuki no
in white moonlight.	shiroki yo ni

Shinkei’s link in this case contains no inherently cold image, although one might say it “borrows” the frost of the maeku; but at the center of it is a pared-down image of night quiet that makes for the chilly effect. Elsewhere Shinkei himself argues that “in summer, when one sits by pure flowing water or by a spring, one feels a chill; and when one hears the word ‘autumn water’ one also feels cool and refereshed.”40

A late Muromachi renga handbook attributed to Sōgi (but perhaps a compendium of sorts including teachings of Shinkei and Kenzai as well) includes words of caution about the chilly mode: “For novices, to be too fond of creating the effect of hiesabitaru will retard their progress in the art.”41 It was probably considered the province of true masters.

hon’i 本意. Waka, renga, and haikai. Essence or essential nature. Sometimes the term is used to refer to the accumulated “precedents” related to a word or image; sometimes it is used in the more abstract or philosophical sense of “essence.” In the late medieval period hon’i comes up mostly in reference to the proper treatment of specific topics (dai), words or images, but sometimes it is evoked in a more general way, as when Asayama Bontō (b. 1349) says that a verse in which someone asks for clouds to cover the moon is contrary to hon’i.42 Obviously, this reveals a conservative attitude toward tradition and a strong commitment to the maintenance of a harmonious community of poets, sharing a common past as inscribed in the canon.

A statement by the renga master Satomura Jōha (1524–1602) is apposite. “In spring, great winds may blow and rainstorms arise, but to make the winds calm and the rainfall gentle—this is to adhere to hon’i. Again, spring days may on occasion be short, but in renga the practice is to describe them as long and languorous.”43

Haikai poets, who often defined themselves in opposition to old strictures, were more likely to ignore old conventions. Yet the persistence of season words in haikai shows that the old prescriptions were still at work in various ways in haikai discourse. And, ironically, the “newness” of haikai is in fact often dependent upon our knowledge of hon’i, as is apparent in the following example (Iozakura, p. 117).

My dream, shattered—	yume karete
by a dog barking far off	hatsuaki inu no
as autumn begins.	tōne kana

This poem by Mizuta Saigin (d. 1709) obviously challenges our expectations concerning two things. First is the topic/season word “autumn begins,” which in earlier times would have been treated with more elegance; and second is the sound that wakes the speaker from sleep, which in waka or renga would usually be the wind or a bell sound, and certainly not a dog. In this sense the verse is quite literally constructed by toying with hon’i. The same is often true in comic forms.

honkadori 本歌取. Waka, renga, and haikai. A form of explicit intertextual reference involving the appropriation of a line or lines from an earlier “foundation poem” (honka) in order to create an allusive variation on the original. Generally speaking, one or two lines would be “borrowed,” and borrowing too much was frowned upon. The following is a classic example of the technique in a poem by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) written in 1198 (Shin kokinshū, no. 40) for a sequence commissioned by Reverend Prince Shukaku (1150–1202):

All across the sky	ōzora wa
the scent of plum blossoms moves	ume no nioi ni
like spreading haze;	kasumitsutsu
yet it is not clouded over—	kumori mo hatenu
the moon on this night in spring.	haru no yo no tsuki

This highly evocative description of the moon shining dimly in the haze of a night fragrant with the scent of plum blossoms might even be called surreal. But Teika knew that his readers would recognize that it was grounded in allusion, the lines kumori mo hatenu / haru no yo no tsuki coming from a poem by Ōe no Chisato (dates unknown; the poem was written in 894 but appears as Shin kokinshū, no. 55) in only slightly varied form.

On the line “Neither shining, nor clouded over—the murky moon”:

Not shining clear	teri mo sezu
and yet not clouded over	kumori mo hatenu
is the murky moon	haru no yo no
on this night in springtime—	oborozukiyo ni
a thing beyond compare.	shiku mono zo naki

Teika also knew that readers would recognize the line from a Chinese poem by Bai Juyi (772–846) that had served as Chisato’s topic (dai), making for another layer of allusion. Whereas Chisato does little more than restate the topic, adding a word of praise, however, Teika engages with it by adding the fragrance of plum blossoms spreading through the night, obeying the general requirement that allusive variations should in some way “make it new.” And the resonances of the poem do not stop there, for Teika cannot have been unaware of a scene in the “Hana no en” chapter (Under the cherry blossoms) of Genji monogatari (1:246) in which the sister of Kokiden, one of the women the eponymous character is pursuing, quotes Chisato and thereafter in the tale is known as Oborozukiyo, “Lady of the Murky Moon.” Thus Teika’s poem represents not just honkadori but also honzetsu, allusion to a tale or other prose source. It is because of these layers of reference that Teika’s poem is often elicited as an example of a poem with yojō (overtones). The kind of allusive variation it displays is especially important in the Shin kokin era but continues as a prominent technique in both waka and renga into the future.

Honkadori in renga functions much the same as it does in waka, with the same goal of not simply repeating the content of the foundation poem but also either echoing it in subtle ways or engaging with it creatively. An example of the latter comes from Kochiku (nos. 541, 542), the personal anthology of Tani Sōboku (d. 1545):

As I gaze out	nagametsutsu
into unending nightfall—	taenu yūbe o
it pierces to the core.	mi ni shimete
Who says a mountain village	tare uki yori to
is better than the cruel world?	iishi yamazato

This link obviously contains an allusion to an anonymous poem from one of the “Miscellaneous” books of Kokinshū (no. 944), a poem that any poet in Sōboku’s day would have committed to memory.

Things are forlorn	yamazato wa
in a mountain village—	mono no sabishiki
surely that is so;	koto koso are
but life there is easier	yo no uki yori
than back in the cruel world.	sumiyokarikeri

As a commentary says, Sōboku’s link enters into a dialogue (mondō) with the poem, disputing the idea that the lonely life in a mountain village is easier than life in the cruel world. “Who says so?”

Haikai poets also use honkadori as a technique. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), however, especially in his mature work, often seems to have favored a vague kind of intertextuality over actually borrowing lines, hence his praise of an anonymous poem that appeared in a poem contest from the late 1670s.

Loneliness—	sabishisa ya
it comes down to this:	tsumaru tokoro wa
autumn dusk.44	aki no kure

Rather than alluding to one particular poem, this hokku refers to scores of poems from the classical tradition, beginning with at least Kokinshū. The author of the anonymous hokku is unknown, and rather than point out the allusions Bashō simply says, “Coming to the understanding of the idea of the ephemerality of all things [jakumetsu] through the loneliness of an evening in autumn is deeply moving [aware fukashi].”45 One cannot help but think that all this was on Bashō’s own mind when just a few years later (in 1680) he composed a hokku (Arano, no. 737) that is generally considered to inaugurate the Bashō style:

On a bare branch	kareeda ni
a crow comes down to roost.	karasu no tomarikeri
Autumn dusk.	aki no kure

Bashō’s hokku is generally seen as polemical: a declaration that haikai imagery—a crow, here—could fit into the longer tradition represented by “evening in autumn,” which stood for nearly eight hundred years of poetic history. Thus general resonance with literary canons is more important than reference to any particular text.

Allusion across poetic genres was not common, but it did occur, as the following waka (Keien isshi, no. 796) by Kagawa Kageki (1768–1843) attests:

What did he mean	furinikeru
talking about that old pond?	ike no kokoro wa
I don’t know.	shiranedomo
But even now you can hear	ima mo kikoyuru
the sound of water.	mizu no oto kana

No student of Japanese poetry could miss the reference here to one of Bashō’s most famous hokku (Haru no hi, no. 316), which—as Kageki’s poem wryly suggests—had already generated much interpretive attention even by the mid-1800s.

At an old pond	furuike ya
a frog takes a plunge.	kawazu tobikomu
The sound of water.	mizu no oto

honzetsu 本説. Waka, renga, and haikai. Allusive variation on a scene from a tale or other prose work. Such allusions are commonplace in waka as well as in renga, and somewhat less frequently in haikai.

One example of the technique elucidated by Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) refers to scenes from the “Yadorigi” (Ivy) chapter of The Tale of Genji (5:393–402) that involve Niou and Nakanokimi meeting in the former’s Nijō mansion in the autumn, as the crickets make her miss her former “mountain home” in Uji.

Voices weary from lamenting—	nagekiyowaritaru
crickets at the end of day.	higurashi no koe
In sad autumn,	uki aki ni
who is it that would be off	tare yamazato o
to a mountain home?	tazenuran

As Yoshimoto says, this link carries only the “vestige” (omokage) of the Genji scenes, “calling them to mind only vaguely.”46 The link uses phrases from several poems and prose passages, evoking the episode as a whole.

The word honbun 本文 is a synonym of honzetsu, often referring to allusion to lines from Chinese texts.

hosomi 細み. Haikai. Spare, slender, bereft, forlorn. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is reported to have said of the following hokku from Sarumino (no. 1668) by Yasomura Rotsū (d. 1738), “The verse has [the quality of] hosomi.”47

Are even the birds	toridomo mo
in bed for the night?	neitte iru ka
Yogo Sea.	yogo no umi

Here in the skies above the Yogo Sea, a lake north of the much larger Lake Biwa, we see no birds, which we can imagine dotting the waters below, already retired for the night. Some scholars posit a connection between hosomi and the ancient term kokorobososhi, “desolate and forlorn” or “in low spirits,” but here the focus is more on the spare, monochromatic imagery of the poem and its accompanying mood of chilly loneliness.

jimon 地文; jimon no uta 地文の歌, jimon no renga 地文の連歌. Waka, renga, and haikai. Background and design. A term derived from weaving that was first used in reference to the composition of waka sequences (particularly the hyakushu, or one-hundred-waka sequence), encouraging poets to create a fairly small number (ten to twenty) of striking poems and then create less-striking efforts as a “background” (ji) against which the “design” (mon) could stand out. The same technique was recommended for the composition of renga sequences, although critics and commentators seldom stopped to clearly define their terms. Still, there can be no doubt that, just as variety of subject matter and technique was important in the za, so was the ideal of a mix of aesthetic textures.

Especially in formal venues, some images—blossoms, the moon, and snow, for instance—were more likely to be elevated into design verses than, say, field grasses or swamp water or sparrows. A comment by a disciple on a link by Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) makes it equally clear, however, that it was not so much the predetermined nature of materials that decided the issue as how they were treated in the linking process.

Back in the mountains,	okuyama ni
a meager life, hard to bear—	kurashiwabitaru
holed up for winter.	fuyugomori
Hailstones striking the window,	mado utsu arare
withering wind at the eaves.	noki no kogarashi

The maeku is a background verse. With the words “hailstones” and “withering wind” we move into design. The meaning is that one finds life hard to bear hearing the hail and wind.48

The comment makes it clear that design relates not just to imagery but also to style, rhetoric, and dramatic content. It is as much the spare syntax—really nothing more than juxtaposition—and aesthetic minimalism of the link as the harshness of the scene that makes the scene stand out. Ultimately, it is the whole effect of the link against the backdrop of the maeku by which we as readers “move into design.”

Furthermore, when it came to renga, it is clear that the terms were sometimes used in regard to linking technique and not just the aesthetic qualities of individual verses. A treatise on linking techniques by Sōgi (1421–1502) implies this when it says that mon no tei involves, “bringing flowers into bloom on withered trees, attaching flowers to clouds … having tree cutters lament cutting trees in spring and grass cutters so sensitive that they search for ways to avoid harvesting the autumn grasses—that is the essence of this style.”49

From the beginning, those who used the term ji probably did not mean that background verses should be considered inferior to design verses, but only less impressive. Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275) said that “always a truly excellent poem has nothing arresting [omoshiroki] about it,”50 and Asayama Bontō (b. 1349) expressed the same idea: “Not every link should be fine [yoshi]. Composing ji renga [background links] is crucial. The ji renga of an adept will be simple, correct in diction, and have a pleasing quality about it [mezurashiki fuzei]. The ji renga of someone unskillful will be disappointing, like the pines at Sumiyoshi.”51 Sumiyoshi was a famous utamakura with which pines were nearly always associated—something so predictable as to be considered disappointing.

It is in the writings of Tonna (1289–1372) that we begin to see the emergence of “background” composition as a positive aesthetic aim. “Most people understand a poem that has some outstanding quality as design and a straightforward poem that does not stand out as background. But if we define a good poem as one that is gentle, beautiful, and lofty, then we should call such a poem design and refer to a poem that has some outstanding quality as background.”52

In the work of Sōgi (1421–1502) and his poetic lineage, considerable stress was put on the composition of background links as an essential part of training and practice. This in turn led to similar attitudes among later haikai poets, including Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), who not only adhered to the ideal in his linked verse but also adapted it to the organization of hokku anthologies.53

karumi かるみ. Haikai. Lightness. An ideal embraced by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) in his last years. For him, it seems to have been not a matter of subject matter but one of simplicity and understatement in rhetorical treatment, without reliance upon erudite references or the distraction of figurative language. He is quoted as saying that the effect was like “looking at shallow water in a gravel-bottomed stream”54—implying a contrast with a river where the water courses by over rocks and boulders.

A verse (Zoku sarumino, no. 3449) Bashō composed in the summer of 1694, the year of his death, serves as an example of the ideal. “He was in Ōtsu in the summer, when a letter came from his older brother, asking him to come home to celebrate the Festival of the Dead.”

The whole house goes,	ie wa mina
staffs in hand, white-haired—	tsue ni shiraga no
to visit graves.	hakamairi

Here humorous detail—old people tapping their way along—might be said to “lighten” the mood of what could easily be portrayed in more somber terms, given the nature of their journey.

Although we have only hints about Bashō’s conceptions, it is clear that he used karumi in contrast to omomi, or “heaviness,” referring to poems that were heavily rhetorical and literary, and that karumi implied certain qualities of character—modesty, stoicism, and a quiet and casual demeanor.

keikizuke 景気付. Renga and haikai renku. Linking through scenery. Treatises offer a number of variations of this technique, one of the most prominent being linking scene to scene, as illustrated in a link (Chikurinshō, no. 1496) by Sōzei (d. 1455):

At day’s end, a bell sounds,	kane o kagiri ni
the sun already gone down.	hi koso irinure
On a far mountain,	tōyama no
amidst the clouds of evening—	yūbe no kumo ni
a temple appears.	tera miete

This is a close link that might be said to simply expand the dimensions of a suggested landscape. However, the link also continues a theme and mood.55

In haikai renku, linking through scenery continued to be a prominent technique. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) sometimes uses the word keshiki as a synonym for keiki,56 but he also uses the older term, as in his praise for a link by his disciple Rika (precise dates unknown) presenting a scene of Tadasu Grove in the southern Kamo area of Kyoto.

A shrike calls once—	mozu no hitokoe
and evening sun gives way	yūhi o tsuki ni
to the moon.	aratamete
At a Tadasu sweets stall	tadasu no ameya
autumn grows cold.57	aki samuki nari

Here we encounter no figurative language, no affective words, just a landscape, although the presence of the sweets stall adds a dimension of everyday life.

keikyokutei 景曲体; also keiki 景気. Waka, renga, and haikai. Other synonyms are keshiki and nari. Scenery or atmosphere. In Guhishō, an essay attributed to Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), the term keikyoku, a synonym of keiki, is explicitly identified as belonging to the larger category of miruyōtei, “the style of visual description.”58 The word keiki, which appears in both waka and renga discourse, sometimes means simply “scenery,” but more often it is a term of praise referring to “beautiful or emotionally charged scenery” and usually implying the creation of an atmosphere of symbolic overtones. The anonymous author of Gukenshō says, “What we call the keikyokutei is to bring out the particular attractions of each of the seasons—that is the kind of poem that qualifies.”59

Kamo no Chōmei (1153–1216) says that “in what the world usually calls a good poem … a scene floats up against the sky” the way a stitched patterns stands out against a background in weaving.60 He offers a famous poem (Kokinshū, no. 409) often attributed to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (fl. ca. 680–700) as an example:

In the dim, dim light	honobono to
in the early morning mists	akashi no ura no
on Akashi Bay,	asagiri ni
a boat fades behind the isles—	shimagakureyuku
my heart going in its wake.	fune o shi zo omou

Certainly this poem presents natural description, but, as Chōmei notes, it is also “replete with overtones” that suggest separation and heartache.

The renga master Sōzei (d. 1455), drawing on medieval waka treatises, used keikyoku as a term of praise for links using natural scenery that “appear to be shallow but are deep.”61 And the idea of keiki as atmosphere that surrounds a poetic scene is also of great importance to Shinkei (1406–1475) and Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510). But renga masters sometimes discouraged overreliance on scenery. Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) wrote that “if one uses words skillfully and creates rich conceptions, then one can create masterful renga without using scenery.”62 Yet at the same time, Asayama Bontō (b.1349) taught that “one is unlikely to produce something truly interesting without scenery and overtones.”63

A hokku by the renga master Shōhaku (1443–1527) is identified as an example of keiki by a disciple:

Scented with plum,	mume ga ka ni
haze spreads among the skiffs	irie kasumeru
out in the cove.	obune kana

An ingenious description of the area in front of a gate; a scene of skiffs in a cove where haze faintly scented with plum is spreading over the water. A hokku that presents a beautiful scene.64

Here it is probably the idea of haze carrying the scent of plum that elicited the praise, which expands the concept beyond the strictly visual to include the olfactory and by implication perhaps all the senses.

In the poetics of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), keiki was used in both an analytical sense and as a term of praise. In a general way, he thought of scenery verses as “lightening” the tone of a sequence, playing a role much like ji verses.65 Hattori Tohō (1657–1730) quotes the master as praising the following hokku by Mokudō (1666–1723) as a superb model of the ideal.

Spring wind.	harukaze ya
The sound of water moving	mugi no naka yuku
through a field of wheat.	mizu no oto

Lest we take the ideal of keiki too lightly, however, Bashō adds a word of warning to students: “People think scenery verses are easy, but this is off base. This is a matter that requires great care. In renga, the term used was keikyoku, and masters of the past refrained from composing such verses, limiting themselves to one or two in a career. They were being strict with their students, because keiki verses are so easy to mimic. In haikai we are not as strict as they are in renga. They were strict because it is so easy for keiki verses to sound antique.”66

Surely “one or two in a career” is an exaggeration, since in another statement Bashō said, “As for my verses, I use nothing but keiki.”67 But the warning reminds us as readers to look carefully at scenic verses, which often contain subtly affective elements. A “spring wind” is a mild and welcome thing, and the gurgle of water unseen but flowing in a field of wheat stands for life and the harvest.

Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) was a major proponent of keiki in hokku, which he associated with Yosa Buson (1716–1783).

kokorozuke 心付. Renga and haikai. Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) defines this technique as “linking only by kokoro, casting off any word links or assocations.”68 The technique demanded subtlety and rhetorical skill and thus was not recommended for beginners; but it was expected of masters. Sōgi (1421–1502) elucidates the method in a commentary on a link from his own hyakuin dating from 1495:

A hovel at Naniwa,	naniwa no koya wa
thatched rudely with reeds.	ashi no karibuki
Living here now	sumikaete
where once was a capital—	miyako no ato no
only common folk.	iyashiki

Here it appears that nothing links back to a hovel rudely thatched with reeds, but the term “common folk” holds the link together. I think this is what is referred to as kokorozuke.69

The link in this case may contain no formulaic association with anything in the maeku, but the scenes fit together well and are similar in mood.

In the world of haikai renku, especially of the Bashō school, the general trend was toward more emphasis on linking by suggestion (nioi and its synonyms), which can be conceptually traced back to the ideals of kokorozuke, soku (distant linking), and yojō (overtones). A commentary by Matsuo Bashō (1644–694) on three verses from a sequence by his disciples gives a sense of things.

Lightning flashes	inazuma no
in gaps between trees:	ko no ma wo hana no
like blossom’s glow.	kokorobase
Kyohaku

To link “between trees” to lightning is very clever [omoshiroshi]. Indeed, one might call lightning “flowers on an autumn night.”

In a field, a cast-off priest	tsurenaki hijiri
opens his knapsack.	no ni oi o toku
Kifū

This is a superb verse, either on its own or as a link. Just as lightning strikes in the chilly gloom of night, a priest is making his bed in the fields. What people call the new way of looking at things in haikai—this is what it comes down to.

Hordes of people—	hito amata
getting things ready	toshitorimono o
for New Year’s.	katsugiyuku
Yōsui

This is a superb verse: it takes the night a priest is unable to find lodging and makes it into the last night of the year. That is original of itself. And the scene of people bustling around, transporting things in preparation for the New Year, just as the priest beds down in the fields—that is one of the finer links of recent times. One should appreciate the way the link transforms the maeku.70

In the traditional vocabulary of renga poetics, these links would be called kokorozuke. In other words, there are no automatic or formulaic links between words in the verses. Instead, as Bashō makes clear, the poets have created links by (re)interpreting the maeku: the priest and his knapsack do not have any necessary relationship to lightning strikes or flowers, nor are there any sure formulaic connections between the priest and his knapsack and people bustling around at year’s end.

kotobazuke 詞付. Renga. Linking by words, usually in contrast to kokorozuke, or linking primarily by kokoro. A cousin of yoriaizuke but generally hinging on very specific word associations ratified by tradition. Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) gives an example (Chikurinshō, no. 1129) by his teacher, Shinkei (1406–1475).

Rain will be coming, no doubt:	ame ni ya naran
the sound of the wind blowing.	fuku kaze no oto
Out in the paddies	sue nabiku
where tall bamboos are swaying—	tanaka no take ni
the song of a dove.	hato nakite

These verses fit well together as scenery, wind blowing in bamboos near rice paddies before rain. But Kenzai explains that the question of why rain will be coming is answered by a specific word association between “rain” and “dove” that is based on an old popular saying, “The song of the dove summons rain.”71

In one of his essays Shinkei himself criticizes Asayama Bontō (b. 1349) for links in which the verses are just placed next to each other with no subtle connections and challenges the conventional dichotomy of kokoro versus kotoba: “There should be no such thing as a link that is not a kokorozuke. What we call close links and distant links in waka, these are all kokorozuke.”72

makoto まこと, 実, 誠. Waka, renga, and haikai. Truth, sincerity, honesty. This word appears in the Kokinshū preface and in many medieval writings. Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275), in a treatise by Tonna (1289–1372) is reported to have said to a student, “You should put makoto above all else, and be sure you adhere to the principles of the world [dōri].”73 The concept figures greatly in the thinking of Kyōgoku Tamekane (1254–1332), for whom direct apprehension of the “truth” is the whole purpose of poetry: “Whether it be a scene of cherry blossoms, the moon, break of day, or end of day, one should become the thing one is confronting and reveal its makoto.”74 In his own work, this often yields poetry of careful observation without the distraction of figurative language, as is demonstrated in the following (Gyokuyōshū, no. 2220):

“Mountain hut in the wind”

Wind from the mountain	yamakaze wa
blows over my bamboo fence	kakio no take ni
and goes on its way:	fukisutete
then from pines on the peak	mine no matsu yori
it echoes once again.	mata hibiku nari

Makoto continued to be important into the Edo period, partly under the influence of Zhu Xi Confucianism, in which it was figured as the metaphysical ground for virtuous behavior. The term is used in critical writings by the court poet Karasumaru Mitsuo (d. 1690) and other elite poets writing in the waka form, but it was also used by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), who is quoted as saying that makoto was the foundation of serious poetry (fūga) in all forms and that it was the quality that synthesized the dynamic forces of fueki ryūkō, “the unchanging and the changing.” Nativist scholars and plebian poets as disparate as Ban Kōkei (1733–1806) and Tachibana Akemi (1812–1868) also used the term to mean sincere and straightforward expression of one’s own feelings, in opposition to what they considered the excessively rhetorical, mannered works of many of their contemporaries.

It is perhaps in the writings of the haikai poet Uejima Onitsura (1661–1738) that makoto received its most complete hegemony, as revealed in his famous dictum, “There is no haikai outside of makoto”75 and in injunctions to “Let your spirit traipse through the skies and experience the makoto of snow, the moon, and cherry blossoms.”76 In poems like the following (Onitsura haiku hyakusen, p. 198) he created “objective” tableaux reminiscent of Tamekane: “Written on the spot in response to Reverend Kūdō, who had asked him, ‘Just how is that you perceive your own haikai?’ ”

Out in the garden,	teizen ni
blooming whitely—	shiroku saitaru
camellias.	tsubaki kana

Implicit in Onitsura’s makoto is the idea that it appeals to the individual poet in even the smallest and most seemingly insignificant of things and events, revealing that the most profound truth of all is the principle of constant change.

mirutei 見躰, ken’yō 見様, miruyōtei 見様躰. Waka and renga. The style of visual description. See also keikizuke. A seemingly unproblematic term, but it should be remembered that the Nijō school interpreted it to mean not spare and realistic description but rather description rendered with elegant and courtly refinement, as in an early poem (Shūi gusō, no. 755) by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) recorded in a medieval commentary of the Nijō school as an example of the ideal.

“From a hundred poems on ten topics”

From between the clouds	yūdachi no
of an evening thundershower,	kumoma no hikage
sunlight starts to show;	haresomete
on the slope in front of me—	yama no konata o
a white egret passing by.	wataru shirasagi

A scenic poem [keiki], in the style of visual description. The idea is that the egret looks all the more white because it is flying in front of green mountains.77

The poem alludes to lines from a Chinese poem, “Two yellow warblers sing in green willows; a line of white egrets rises into the blue sky” by Du Fu (712–770),78 thus adding an extra layer of richness and evocative power to the scene. This is even more obviously true of a poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 340) by Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1104–1177) listed in a medieval text as in the visual style.79

“Composed for a hundred-poem sequence presented to Retired Emperor Sutoku”

Through a thin mist—	usugiri ni
flowers wet with morning dew	magaki no hana no
on my wattle fence.	asajimeri
Who was it that once declared,	aki wa yūbe to
“In autumn, it is evening”?	tare ka iikemu

This is not natural description so much as a subjective comment on natural description, alluding in the last line to a statement in the famous preface to The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon,80 but still it focuses on the beauty of the scene itself, rather than on symbolic or emotional referents.

The term keiki used in waka, renga, and haikai commentary and criticism can be seen as an extension of mirutei. But in 1452 Sōzei (d. 1455) is still using the old term in reference to a tsukeku by Asayama Bontō (b. 1349).

Again a change begins	mata kawariyuku
in autumn’s lonely mood.	aki no sabishisa
Off through the leaves	ko no ha fuku
storm winds blow toward miscanthus,	arashi no sue no
clustered in far fields.81	murasusuki

nadaraka なだらか. Waka and renga. Smooth, gentle. A term used by Minamoto no Toshiyori (1055–1129), Fujiwara no Akisue (1055–1123), and others and picked up later by Fujiwara no Tameie (1198–1275), who declared that “a poem of fine total effect [sugata] is one that has smoothly flowing diction [kotoba nadaraka ni iikudasu] and is highly refined.”82 The ideal was important in Nijō poetics in the late medieval period, which stressed what modern scholars call heitanbi (elegant simplicity). Among the poems Tameie lists immediately after his pronouncement is one by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204; Senzaishū, no. 1151) that indeed unfolds smoothly as a simple statement of a profound truth.

“On ‘deer,’ written for a hundred-poem sequence of laments”

From this world of ours	yo no naka ya
there is no path of escape.	michi koso nakere
Even in the mountains	omoiiru
where I go to flee my cares	yama no oku ni mo
I hear the call of a stag.	shika zo naku naru

A later poem (Saishōsō, p. 433) by Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537), written in 1524, shows that the ideal was still in effect.

“On ‘the beginning of summer’ ”

So cool it is	asamidori
as it blows across leaves	wakaba o wataru
green with new growth.	suzushisa wa
No longer is it the wind	hana ni itoishi
I hated in the flowers.83	kaze to mo nashi

Rather than straightforward natural description, we encounter here a flowing statement of the simple truth of how immediate, subjective context conditions our response to natural phenomena.

nioizuke にほい付. Haikai. Linking by scent. An extension of the idea of yojō, or “overtones,” inherited from court poetry. The notion is that a “scent” can drift from one verse to another, becoming the basis for a link. Hattori Tohō (1657–1730) offers as an example the first two verses of a linked-verse sequence (Hisago, nos. 1472–73) involving Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Hamada Chinseki (d. 1737), and three other disciples.

Too confusing,	iroiro no
they have so many names.	na mo magirawashi
Spring grasses.	natsu no kusa
Jolted by wind,	utarete chō wa
a butterfly wakes.	me o samashinuru

Tohō says the link is based on the “scent” of the word magirawashi, “confusing,” which suggested to Bashō the idea of a sleeping butterfly being suddenly thrown into confusion by the wind in the summer grasses.84 It is easy to imagine the butterfly as actually out in the grasses, but the link does not go that far: it simply catches the scent of “confusion” in the previous scene and creates a corollary.

In another comment on a link by Bashō from the same anthology (Hisago, nos. 1450–51) that is commonly noted as an example of nioizuke, Tohō explicitly mentions overtones.

In autumn wind	akikaze no
people in the boat cringe	fune o kowagaru
at waves’ sound.	nami no oto
Where the geese head:	kari yuku kata ya
White Sands, Young Pines.	shiroko wakamatsu

Here the poet takes on the surplus feeling [kokoro no amari] of the maeku and articulates it through scenery [keshiki].85

The place-names Shiroko and Wakamatsu are located on the coast in what is modern Mie Prefecture. Each evokes a natural image—white sands (shiroko) and young pines (wakamatsu).

Nioizuke is sometimes used as a comprehensive term for Bashō’s variety of kokorozuke, or “linking by feeling or suggestion,” encompassing other terms such as hibikizuke (linking by echo), omokagezuke (linking by vague allusion), and utsurizuke (linking by transference).

okashi をかし. Waka, renga, and haikai. Witty, novel, amusing, interesting. The term implies creativity in conception and rhetoric and is one of the commonest terms of praise in poem contests and commentaries. Minamoto no Toshiyori (1055–1129) uses it in reference to a poem by Minamoto no Kunizane (1069–1111) from a poem contest held in 1100.

“Round 13, on ‘love at night’ ”

Overwhelmed by love,	omoi amari
I gaze out and see a sky	nagamuru sora mo
of gathering clouds.	kakikumori
Even the moon, it would seem,	tsuki sae ware o
is intent on shunning me.86	itoikeru kana

Okashi is a quality of most good poems, and its use does not necessarily imply contrast with, for example, aware. In his judgment of a poem in a contest held in 1172, Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) explicitly refers to the following poem by Inbunmon’in Chūnagon (precise dates unknown) as “deeply moving” (aware fukaku), but also amusing in total effect (sugata okashi).

“Lament”

To the river depths	minasoko ni
my body has now sunken,	waga mi wa shizumi
arrived at its end.	hatenuredo
Yet endlessly the currents	ukina o nagashi
carry on my sullied name.87	seze zo kawaranu

Okashi does not appear quite as often as omoshiroshi in either renga or haikai discourse, but Yosa Buson (1716–1783) is still using the term in a critique of hokku by his disciple Teramura Hyakuchi (1748–1836) in the late 1700s.

Stormy winds.	kogarashi ya
Baggage is transported,	funeni wo uma ni
boat to horse.88	tsumi kawaru

What makes the verse effective is of course the stormy winds, which blow at the clothing of the teamsters and lend a sense of urgency to their labor—an amusing observation, according to Buson.

omoshirotei 面白躰. Waka, renga, and haikai. The clever, ingenious, or arresting style. A term usually applied to the conception or rhetoric of a poem. The medieval poet and scholar Kōun (d. 1429) praises the following poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 359) by Fujiwara no Yoshitsune (1169–1206) as “achieving a profound level of cleverness, of the sort beginners should not hope to approach.”89

“On ‘autumn evening,’ composed for poem contest of hundred-poem sequences”

I was not musing,	mono omowade
so where could it have come from—	kakaru tsuyu ya wa
this dew on my sleeves?	sode ni oku
Ah, but I was gazing out	nagametekeri na
on an evening, in autumn.	aki no yūgure

The amusing quality here derives from the speaker’s tears, shed spontaneously in response to an action (gazing out at the sky on an autumn evening) that the tradition defines as inevitably sad. In that sense it is a play on convention, though nothing that even approaches sarcasm or cynicism. Indeed, one might even read a sense of weariness into the last two lines that serves to keep the attitude wistful and sincere.

One challenge for the beginning reader of Japanese poetry is that the ingenious quality of a poem assumes recognition of conventions and the canon. The following poem attributed to Tonna (1289–1372),90 for instance, is not incomprehensible on its own but gains greatly in interest if one recognizes the way it cleverly engages a famous earlier poem (Shūishū, no. 15) by Taira no Kanemori (d. 990), quoted here immediately after Tonna’s:

For you to visit—	towaruru mo
why, surely this is something	itodo omoi no
I did not expect,	hoka nare ya
the flowers on my high plums	tachie no ume wa
having now scattered and gone.	chirihatenikeri

Composed for a screen painting depicting visitors coming to a house where plum blossoms were in bloom:

Ah, it must be	waga yado no
that you saw the high plum trees	ume no tachie ya
blooming ’round my house:	mietsuran
never had I expected	omoi no hoka ni
that you would come and visit.	kimi ga kimaseru

Kanemori’s poem gently accuses the visitor in the screen painting of being more interested in enjoying the plum blossoms than their owner. Tonna’s poem, on the other hand, is more in the nature of compliment, suggesting that his visitor has more admirable motives.

A certain amount of creativity was of course required to succeed in either waka or renga. In the latter, cleverness is especially important in the creation of links. An anonymous commentator91 praised the following link (Chikurinshō, no. 767) by the renga poet Gyōjo (1405–1469) as omoshiroshi.

A lingering figure,	tatazumu kage zo
visible in the moonlight.	tsuki ni miekeru
Enough, so be it!	yoshi saraba
Before the rumors begin,	kaerusa isoge
I will hasten home.	na ya moren

The maeku in this case presents objective description: someone, or something, is lurking in the moonlight. Gyōjo ingeniously decides to create a love verse, putting words in the mouth of a man who is so wary of being discovered that he decides to hurry along home. No doubt we are to imagine him waiting outside a woman’s house for a way to visit undetected. For whatever reason—rejection, or simply bad timing—he is forced to give up.

sabi さび, sabitaru さびたる. Waka, renga, and haikai. Lonely, forlorn, desolate, bleak. A noun form derived from the verb sabu, “to be deserted, old and worn, rusty,” and the adjectival verb sabishi, “lonely.” The verb form appears often in poems and is not as explicitly an aesthetic term as, say, yūgen.

A poem by Saigyō (1118–1190) from a mock poem contest judged by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) illustrates the ideal. It is, as Shunzei says, a poem of deep resonances that produces “a total effect of loneliness [sugata sabitaru].”92

In the long Ninth Month	nagatsuki no
the light of the moon shines down	tsuki no hikari no
late into the night.	kage fukete
In the fields skirting the slope	susono no hara ni
a stag is calling.	ojika naku nari

Here the imagery is spare and monochromatic, the phrasing direct and unadorned; and the scene is literally devoid of any direct statement of human presence.

Yet usage of the term is not always so linked to stark natural imagery. In his judgment on the following poem on the topic of lament by Jakunen (b. 1119?), Shunzei praises “the overall effect as lonely and desolate [sugata sabite kokorobosoku].”93

“Lament”

Awake in the night,	nezame shite
I find all around me sad.	mono zo kanashiki
Ah, how few are they—	mukashi mishi
people I saw in days gone by	hito wa kono yo ni
who still remain in the world.	aru zo sukunaki

In this case the effect of sabi emerges more from direct statement and the depiction of a state of mind than from external features in a landscape.

In renga criticism and commentary, sabi is not used as an aesthetic term so much as a descriptive one. A link by Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) is glossed by his student as sabishiki tei nari, which may simply mean “a lonely scene” but may also mean “in the mode of loneliness.”94

Who might it be, all alone,	tare karagoromo
striking mallet upon robe?	hitori utsuran
So cold blows the wind;	kaze samuku
and out on my ruined eaves	aretaru noki no
I see dewdrops.95	tsuyu o mite

A synonym of sabi that appears in commentaries occasionally is karabitaru, meaning “sere, desiccated, or withered,” which harks back to Santai waka (no. 1202) by Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239). Kenzai uses the term in reference to a tsukeku (Chikurinshō, no. 197) by Ninagawa Chiun (d. 1448).96

He fastens his aging gate	furuki kado sasu
as spring ends in falling dusk.	haru no kuregata
Out in the weeds	yomogiu ni
wind blows in from the pines—	matsukaze fukite
blossoms all gone.	hana mo nashi

Sabi continued to be used as a term of praise into the Edo period, although in haikai discourse the ideal went through rather predictable inflections. For Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), it was the formula of sabi plus light humor that was the very essence of haikai. Mukai Kyorai (1651–1704) said this about the term, offering an example from among his own hokku that he said was praised by Bashō.

Sabi is the hue [iro] of the verse; it does not mean only a lonely verse. Imagine an old man in armor on the battlefield, or wearing fine clothing at a banquet—still his age will be apparent. Sabi can be there in a lively scene or in a quiet scene. An example is by Kyorai:

Blossom guards	hanamori ya
poke white heads together	shiroki kashira o
for a chat.	tsukiawase

Master Bashō said, “The hue of sabi emerges well here’ and was very pleased with the verse.”97

The white-headed old men chatting together beneath the blooming cherry trees obviously contrast with the flowers that surround them, symbolizing temporality and drawing attention to the theme of human aging and decline, but only in the most gentle way.

In a work published in 1812, Kaya Shirao (1738–1791) still uses terms like okashi and yūgen, as well as descriptive phrases deriving from Shinkokin-era aesthetics such as hosoku karabitaru (spare and withered), which he employs to praise a hokku (Arano, no. 968) by Bashō.98

“Written when visiting someone’s house”

As I thought:	sareba koso
a house crumbling at will	aretaki mama no
beneath frosts.	shimo no yado

This poem was written when Bashō was on a visit to Tsuboi Tokoku (d. 1690) in his hut, an out-of-the-way place where Tokoku was living after running afoul of the law. Again, “a house crumbling” is not something one would find in classical poetry, but beyond that the resonances with medieval poetry of more elevated diction are obvious.

shasei 写生. Haikai, tanka, and haiku. Sketch, sketching from life. A term used by Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), which he came to after serious engagement with painting, Western and Asian. Among other things, Shiki recommended that poets take walks and write haiku in response to scenes along the way, a practice still common today, especially among amateur haiku poets. Discursively, the idea is closely related to both ari no mama (things as they are), makoto (truth, sincerity) and to the emphasis in Bashō’s approach on being attentive to actual phenomena, sharing with those ideals the sense of subjective engagement with objects and events. The following poem written in 1894 is an example from Shiki’s own works, which was the direct product of his walks in the Negishi district of Tokyo.

Farmers harvesting.	ine karu ya
Above cremation grounds,	yakiba no keburi
no smoke today.	tatanu hi ni

How pleasant it seems to go notebook and pencil in hand to stroll on the outskirts of Negishi, relishing the mystery of sketching things [shasei] firsthand.99

shinku soku 親句疎句. Waka and renga. Close linking and distant linking. Another concept, like ji and mon, that derives from medieval waka discourse. In several treatises, waka whose upper and lower halves adhered through explicit word associations, reasoning, or syntactic relations were referred to as shinku (close verses), while halves less obviously linked were called soku (distant verses). Different factions and poets often differed in their opinions of which of the modes should be the ideal. The unknown author of the thirteenth-century treatise Guhishō dismissed shinku as too ordinary: “Poems in the shinku mode usually are too conventional in their phrasing, making connections like leaves growing from branches that rise from the foot of the tree, and therefore are no more than ordinary, rarely amounting to anything unusual.”100

The author of Kaen rensho kikigaki (1315), on the other hand, attacked soku as too obscure.101 Speaking broadly, poets of the Nijō faction seem to have favored close verses, while the Kyōgoku and Reizei factions embraced soku more readily, as is reflected in a comment from an essay attributed to a member of the latter: “Someone said shinku are seldom truly excellent, but among soku there are many fine poems. True? I wonder.”102

Poems like the following (Shin kokinshū, no. 38) by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) in which the two halves are linked primarily by contiguity and could each be taken separately—indeed, almost like two verses in a renga sequence—were referred to as soku (distant verses):

On this spring night,	haru no yo no
the floating bridge of my dreams	yume no ukihashi
has broken away:	todae shite
lifting off a mountain peak—	mine ni wakaruru
a cloud bank in empty sky.	yokogumo no sora

Shinkei (1406–1475) gives us our most original definition of close and distant linking in linked verse: “Shinku is having form, soku is formless; shinku is the Buddhist teachings, soku is Zen.”103 He, too, was of the opinion that most truly excellent waka were soku, perhaps showing the influence of his teacher, Shōtetsu (1381–1459), who had studied under a Reizei master.104 For whatever reason, he championed the idea of distant linking in renga more than any other master, producing a number of superb examples himself, such as the following, which was called a model of the technique by Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) and elicited a comment from Sōgi (1421–1502):

Smoke rises up	keburi tatsu
from a mountainside village,	fumoto no sato no
hidden in the trees.	kogakurete
A skiff lies abandoned	obune suteoku
by an inlet at day’s end.	e koso kurenure

Here the link does not accommodate the maeku at all. If one simply puts the two scenes next to each other, they look like a Chinese ink painting, and there seems to be no gap between them. This is a style of its own, and among Shinkei’s verses one will find many like it. But this is very much the skill of a virtuoso. If a beginner develops a penchant for this kind of thing, a certain disjointedness will be sure to result.105

From the following statement by Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510), one of Shinkei’s premier students, we know that Sōgi’s characterization is genuine: “If you just put two verses of scenery next to each other, they will end up linked in feeling.”106 But Sōgi’s passage is less an endorsement than a word of caution, no doubt representing the experience of a working renga master who was concerned that young poets, in particular, should master close linking thoroughly before attempting anything more sophisticated—which was something that Shinkei echoed in a general way in his own writings. In one of his essays Shinkei also noted that both shinku and soku in the end must be linked by feeling, or kokoro.107

Most links in any renga sequence were of course shinku. A link by Sōgi (Guku wakuraba, no. 923) shows that even “close” links could be complex.

Confusion, enlightenment—	mayoi satori wa
it’s a matter of the heart.	kokoro ni zo aru
The evening bell rings	yūgure no
at a temple in the fields—	nodera no kane ni
as someone waits.	hito machite

The maeku in this case articulates an unequivocal Buddhist message, but long precedent dictates that the tsukeku be categorized as love. (Hearing a temple bell announce evening while looking forward to meeting a lover is a common trope.) The link depends on the conventional association of evening bell and temple back to the word satori, “enlightenment.” Together, the verses nonetheless present a complex state of mind that mixes themes: the bell either brings a tryst to mind or a call to something else.

The kind of linking later favored by Bashō (1644–1694) and his disciples, often referred to as nioizuke (linking by scent), may be thought of as an extension of the idea of soku. (See nioizuke.) Yet above all, Bashō taught that “linking” was basic to linked verse: “Never did a single one of his verses not link.”108 He had harsh words for those who simply lined up verses without bothering to link them and quoted a statement by Shinkei as his authority about some poets in ages past: “They would just put the moon, blossoms, and the snow haphazardly, and when verses make no links to their maeku, it’s like lining up dead people all decked out in fine clothing.”109

shiori しほり or sabishiori さびしほり. An enigmatic term related to and often coupled with sabi. Withered and bent, shriveled, or, more expansively, a quality that adheres as a sort of pathos in ordinary, everyday things. Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is reported to have said that the following poem (Zoku Sarumino, no. 3472) written by his disciple Morikawa Kyoriku (1656–1715) had the quality.110

Those ten dumplings—	tōdago mo
how small they are now.	kotsubu ni narinu
Autumn wind.	aki no kaze

The ten dumplings (dago, or dango)—typically sold on a string or skewer—were sold at a particularly arduous stretch of the Tōkai Road running from Edo to Kyoto, near Utsunoyama Pass, which is where Kyoriku composed the verse, in the autumn of 1692. The “sensitivity” shown in the verse is to two groups suffering as the cold weather sets in: vendors, who are challenged to make a go of it when the number of customers declines, and travelers. The crucial component is that all of this is accomplished through a small and transient object that ironically has a kind of warmth to it, dumplings. The image is also a fine example of karumi (lightness).

shūitsu 秀逸, shūka 秀歌, shūku 秀句. A masterwork or tour de force. Not restricted to any one style, but superb, excellent; synonymous with mon in some cases. Sometimes used in reference to poems involving outstanding wordplay. Many poets use shūitsu and shūka as terms of praise, meaning “superb,” while using shūku in reference to poems of (overly) conspicuous wordplay.

Kamo no Chōmei (1155–1216) analyzes a poem (Shūishū, no. 224) by Ki no Tsurayuki (d. 945) as a shūitsu partly because it is not contrived:

Overcome by love,	omoikane
I go out in pursuit of her—	imogari yukeba
the river wind	fuyu no yo no
so cold in the winter night	kawakaze samumi
that the plovers are crying.	chidori naku nari

No poem has more allusiveness [omokage] than this one. One person said that, “Even on the twenty-sixth day of the Sixth Month, in the worst heat of the year, if I chant this poem I feel cold.” Generally speaking, however graceful in idea or diction a poem may be, anything that seems contrived is a failing. This poem is like trees on a peak—not something constructed—or grasses in the fields—not something dyed—or the way flowers show their various colors in the fields in spring or autumn. It is a superb poem [shūka], in the way it brings things together naturally, expressing itself in a straightforward way.111

tadagotouta ただ事歌, 徒事歌. Waka and haikai. Waka in colloquial style. In the Kokinshū preface, tadagotouta is introduced as a style of composition, signifying a “correct” style. In later texts, however, the word comes to mean “direct and unadorned,” and it is often used as a pejorative signifying the synonym “everyday language” (tadakotoba) indistinguishable from prose. A Nijō critique of a poem (Gyokuyōshū, no. 1005) by Kyōgoku Tameko (d. 1316), sister and ally of Kyōgoku Tamekane (1254–1332), is dismissive:

“From among her winter poems”

Following the wind,	kaze no nochi
hail falls in a sudden burst—	arare hitoshikiri
passing quickly by;	furisugite
then again, from between the clouds,	mata murakumo ni
spills light from the moon.	tsuki zo morikuru

It’s as if the author means to say something in everyday language. One could say this isn’t a poem at all.112

Poets of the Kyōgoku persuasion would of course have considered the poem’s directness admirable. But a comment by Sōzei (d. 1455) on a link by Kyūzei (1282–1376) makes it clear that the somewhat slightly tentative connotations of the term persisted even among progressive poets.

I cannot make my way	ukiyo no naka wa
out of the cruel world.	ide mo yararezu
In bamboo growing	kuretake no
in the shade of a mountain:	hayamagakure no
moon in a window.	mado no tsuki

This link uses tadakotoba [of the maeku] yet creates an effect of polished beauty. The association is one that no kind of beginner would fail to think of.113

As a student of Shōtetsu’s (1381–1459), Sōzei was no doubt somewhat sympathetic to Kyōgoku poetics, but his admiration was reserved for more refined rhetoric.

It was not until the Edo-period poet Ozawa Roan (1723–1801) that tadagotouta gained another true champion. “To speak of what one is thinking of at the moment, in the language one normally uses, in a way that makes sense—that is what I call uta.”114 In his case the approach often translates into rustic scenes, like the following poem (Rokujō eisō, no. 595) set in the farmland north of Kyoto.

“Composed when he was visiting Ono with a friend and came upon peasant women carrying firewood on the mountain path near Jakkōin”

She’s just like me,	waga goto ya
all grown old and tired out—	oite tsukareshi
this peasant woman	shizugame no
going home late down the path	okurete kaeru
in the mountains of Ono.	ono no yamamichi

Roan began his career studying under a master of the noble Reizei house, but poems like this one so offended his teachers that he was later excommunicated.

taketakakiyō 長高様. Waka, renga, and haikai. The lofty, grand, or dignified style. Often the term is used in reference to poems that show grand vistas, usually accompanied by elevated rhetoric, dignified subject matter, and simple, somewhat archaic diction and phrasing. The following two poems are obvious examples. The first (Gyokuyōshū, no. 701) is by Princess Shikishi (1149–1201) and the second (Kinkaishū, no. 34) by Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192–1219).

“From a hundred-poem sequence”

Where are they going,	izukata e
those wild geese calling out now	kumoi no kari no
in the clouds above?	suginuramu
Far off in the western sky	tsuki wa nishi ni zo
the moon is going down.	katabukinikeru

“Written on ‘spring moon at an old capital’ ”

Who is living here,	tare sumite
who gazes out in reverie?	tare nagamuran
At the moon shining	furusato no
on a spring night in Yoshino,	yoshino no miya no
capital in ancient days.	haru no yo no tsuki

The first of these poems presents only imagery: wild geese whose calls take the reader’s eyes up to clouds in the heavens, and the moon declining majestically on the far horizon. Sanetomo’s poem is more conceptually complex, but it, too, includes the grand image of the moon shining down, this time on the mountain recesses of Yoshino, a place with a long history whose name conjures up events of ancient times.

In renga, the term is often used in praise of individual verses, hokku, or tsukeku, but sometimes it is applied to linking technique that enhances a lofty atmosphere. In the following link (Tsukubashū, no. 156) by Kyūzei (1282–1376), for instance, a maeku elevated in diction and dramatic in theme elicits an equally lofty tsukeku.

“Composed when a hundred-poem sequence was held at the home of the regent”

Contemplating, I realize:	omoeba ima zo
that the end has now come.	kagiri narikeru
Out in the rain,	ame ni chiru
blossoms fall as dusk descends	hana no yūbe no
with mountain winds.	yamaoroshi

Here Kyūzei answers, “What is it that has come to an end?” with the highly traditional image of cherry blossoms in a stormy sky. The link contains time-honored imagery, rain, blossoms, evening, mountains, wind, and the phrasing of the verse is smooth and elegant. The link was regarded as an example of taketakashi by Asayama Bontō (b. 1349)115 and praised in a somewhat later treatise of unknown authorship as also displaying both mystery and depth (yūgen) and overtones (yojō),116 another indication that such terms were not mutually exclusive.

In his evaluation of the following hokku by his disciple Takarai Kikaku (1661–1707) Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) uses the word taketakashi:

Haze fades	kasumi kiete
and Fuji stands naked—	fuji o hadaka ni
fleshy with snow.	yuki koetari

Looks like the first verse for an anthology, expansive and lofty. It is a scene of early spring, not hazy, and the way Fuji appears right before one’s eyes [ari no mama], “ fleshy with snow,” is novel indeed.117

The words “naked” and “fleshy” mark Kikaku’s verse as haikai, but still the poem presents a grand vista that he feels worthy of the term taketakashi. Decades later Takai Kitō (1741–1789) goes a step further in describing a hokku by Itō Shintoku (1633–1698) as both yūgen and taketakashi.

Thin cloud cover—	usukumori
and beneath, fine groves	kedakaki hana no
of cherry trees.118	hayashi kana

ushintei 有心躰; kokoro aru tei 心有る躰. Waka, renga, and haikai. The style of deep feeling, refined feeling, sincerity. A quality of refined emotional power that according to medieval texts attributed to Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) was felt necessary in all properly courtly poems (Maigetsushō, p. 128). The term does not appear in the judgments to poem contests or commentaries as often as aware, okashi, or yū, but that may be because it was a quality that was assumed and not often singled out.

Tonna (1289–1372) says that the Nijō school deems the following poem (Gosenshū, no. 1240) by Archbishop Henjō (816–890) the very model of ushin.119

“Written when he had first shaved his head as a priest”

Surely my mother	tarachine wa
did not imagine me thus—	kakare tote shimo
when she drew me near	mubatama no
to stroke my hair as a boy,	waga kurokami o
my tresses of jet-black.	nadezu ya ariken

Taking the tonsure and giving up on worldly ties and ambitions was innately a somber act, but rather than depicting the event directly Henjō approaches the subject by conjuring up the nostalgic image of his mother stroking his hair as a boy, thus adding a sort of narrative depth to the scene and a strong sense of nostalgia. This kind of subtlety or restraint is a constitutive element of the “refined feeling” implied by the term ushin.

Tonna emphasizes that same quality of emotion arising from reflection in one of our longest definitions of the term: “One should take care in understanding the style of deep feeling. People in recent times take something of arresting style that is exciting and skillfully done as the style of deep feeling. But that is incorrect. Thinking carefully about things—whether it be the feelings we have about the wind, clouds, grasses, and trees or the rise and fall of fortunes in the world of human affairs—that is what I would call the style of deep feeling.”120

A poem by Emperor Go-Murakami (1339–1368) provides another example, this one in which the poem itself expresses deep feeling while at the same time claiming the capacity for refined feeling in its speaker (Shin’yōshū, no. 1141).

“Topic unknown”

By a cock’s crow	tori no ne ni
I am roused from my sleep,	odorokasarete
and in the quiet	akatsuki no
I lie awake as dawn comes—	nezame shizuka ni
thinking about the world.	yo o omou kana

Once again, in renga, the highest praise goes to links that display the ideal, especially in the writings of Sōgi (1421–1502) and his disciples. Sōgi identifies one such example (Chikurinshō, no. 206) by Nōa (1397–1471) and adds a few words of analysis:

One so familiar, yet now gone—	narenishi hito mo
into the world of dreams.	yume no yo no naka
Mountain blossoms.	yamazakura
And then only green leaves	kyō no aoba o
to gaze on alone.	hitori mite

Here the sense of the link is that as one gazes out on nothing but green leaves on branches far back in the hills—that is, after the cherry blossoms have all scattered from the trees in full bloom one had gotten so used to—one sees that those who grew accustomed to the blossoms are in that same world of dreams. The idea is one of overwhelmingly deep feeling, expressed in diction that is also extraordinary. This is the kind of verse one should savor.121

Sōgi himself aimed at achieving the effect of ushin in all his work. Early in his career, in a letter to a disciple, he went so far as to record one of his own works (Wasuregusa, nos. 1621–22) as an example of what he meant by the term.122

The pathway dwindles away	michi kasuka naru
by an old temple in Saga.	saga no furudera
Perhaps he thinks:	kaeru na to
“You living in the cruel world—	ukiyo ya hito o
you’d best not return.”	omouran

The “refined feeling” in this link is attributed by the speaker of the tsukeku to a hermit living in Saga whose resolution is strong enough to allow the path to his hut to dwindle away in order to discourage visitors—or at least, that is what the speaker guesses. The way the statement is offered as a surmise softens it and results in a note of subtlety.

As late as 1786, the haikai master Takai Kitō (1741–1789) uses ushin to describe the following link by himself and Miura Chora (1729–1780):

Briefly I stop,	tatazumeba
and more snow comes down	nao furu yuki no
on the night road.	yomichi kana
Coming up behind—	waga ato e kuru
people, their voices cold.	hito no koesabu

This hokku presents a scene that focuses only on the snow piling up on a night road. Truly, if you get tired and stop walking and just stand for a moment, you do feel like the snow starts falling harder and you mustn’t stop, and so you instinctively start moving on.… As for the second verse, it presents a deep feeling: you are walking or standing on a night of heavy snow and think that you are the only one out, but then there is someone behind you, and you hear a cold-sounding voice saying, “Damn this snow!”123

The comment makes it clear that in this context ushin refers to the suggestion of human feeling implied by koesabu, “cold-sounding voices.” It is a kokorozuke, relying not on verbal associations but responding masterfully to the feeling of the previous verse in a way that seems so natural that the verses quickly seem to literally belong together.

yariku やり句. A “kind” verse. A verse designed to move a renga sequence in a different direction. Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) says the term applies not only to verses that “open” a sequence when it seems “stuck”124 but also to verses that shift to a distant or “open” perspective or “cast one’s thoughts into the distance,” and Sōgi (1421–1502) uses the term in reference to a link that moves from one category into another—“kindly shifting” from “seasonal links” to “love.”125

The following example comes from a solo sequence by Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) in which the previous three verses (including the maeku given here) all offer spring scenes, employing such images as the bush warbler, blossoms, a spring morning, and the New Year. Kenzai creates a simple verse without any natural imagery at all, creating a pivot to move forward in the sequence into new possibilities:

Out in the world, too,	yo no naka mo
all pass from the ending year	mina aratama no
to one sparkling new.	toshi koete
Once again, I grow older—	nao furimasaru
and what else am I to do?126	mi o ika ni sen

Here Kenzai does little more than expand the scene, expressing a very ordinary sentiment: no figurative language, no reasoning, no high diction. He alludes to a Kokinshū poem (no. 28)—a frequent strategy in the case of yariku—but merely repeats it, rather than engaging with it.

Springtime arrives,	momochidori
with its scores of little birds	saezuru haru wa
chirping out their songs	monogoto ni
and renewal all around—	aratamaredomo
except here, where I grow old.	ware zo furiyuku

In some articulations, yariku seems to mean “simple” or even “offhand,” while it is sometimes used synonymously with jirenga, or “background verses” (see Yashima Shōrin’an naniki hyakuin, p. 205). This same kind of thinking is apparent in a quote from the haikai poet Uejima Onitsura (1661–1738):

In the za, at a time when one or two clever links have been created, most people will put some extra effort into the next link, hoping to produce something even better; only the rare person will nonchalantly produce a yariku. If everyone is struggling to create a fine verse, it becomes less likely that a fine verse will be produced. In the wake of a straightforward verse—that is when another fine verse will appear. Contributing a yariku at the right moment is something beyond the abilities of the inexperienced.127

Whether in renga or haikai, the za remains a social space in which all participants are expected to think of the group—and the text it will produce—before themselves.

yasashi やさし. Waka, renga, and haikai. Gentle, graceful; often paired with en (charming, lovely) and aware (moving). Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239) alludes to the following poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 1303) by Gishūmon’in no Tango (dates unknown), who “wrote many graceful poems.”128

“Composed on ‘love: meeting, then not meeting,’ for a poem contest held in the Third Month of 1201”

“I will not forget”—	wasureji no
so you said, but what has become	koto no ha ika ni
of the words you spoke?	narinikemu
The dusk I waited for came—	tanomeshi kure wa
bringing only autumn wind.	akikaze zo fuku

Here the “gentle” quality comes from the restrained rhetoric and the tonal delicacy of the final line.

Yasashi appears in renga commentaries as well. Shinkei (1406–1475) uses it in one of his essays in reference to a link without known authorship.

Blossoms scatter	sakura chiri
and colored leaves fall and rot	momiji kutsuru
in a mountain village.	yamazato ni
All alone, as daylight ends—	hitori kureyuku
blasts of withering wind.	kogarashi no kaze

The way this link is done is graceful. Nothing links back to blossoms or colored leaves, but in the end the verses are well linked.129

In this case, the maeku presents two important images, cherry blossoms and colored leaves. Rather than linking to either or both of them more specifically, however, the poet uses a winter image that smoothly moves on from spring and autumn into dusky winter. Thus we end up with three images, all of ancient origin in the courtly tradition, presented in a simple, delicate conception based on the simple progress of time.

In his judgment of a hokku contest, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) says of the following poem by Takarai Kikaku (1661–1707), “The blossoms far off in the fields in Meguro—very yasashi. The idea of having already seen the blossoms at Ueno and Yanaka is apparent outside the words of the poem.”130

Searching blossoms.	sakuragari
Today let’s get a guide—	kyō wa meguro no
to Meguro.	shirube seyo

Here the meaning of yasashi seems closer to “elegance” or even “gentility,” perhaps. The point is that whoever is the subject of the poem is someone who truly enjoys the beauty of the cherry blossoms, enough to go away from the groves in the heart of Edo.

yasetaru tei やせたる躰. Waka, renga, and haikai. The spare, sere, or desolate style. In one of the few documents we have that show an attempt to compose poems that explicitly embody prescribed aesthetic qualities, Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239) used the term hosoku karabitaru, “spare and withered,” a synonym for what later was referred to as yase or yasetaru tei. This poem (Santai waka, no. 16) by Fujiwara no Yoshitsune (1169–1206) is among those composed for Go-Toba’s exercise.

In a field of reeds	ogihara ya
the autumn wind, late at night,	yowa ni akikaze
blows over dewdrops—	tsuyu fukeba
jewels unforeseen, falling	aranu tama chiru
onto my bedding of straw.	toko no samushiro

In late medieval times, in the writings of Shinkei (1406–1476), in particular, the spare style would become important as an influence in the development of his core concept of the aesthetic of “coldness” (hie).

yōen 妖艶, yōenbi 妖艶美. Waka. Ethereal charm. An extension of the ideal of en articulated by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) usually involving rich imagery and complicated syntax, with little overt emotion. In his Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Our Time, 1209), Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241) says that both yōen and yojō are lacking in the work of poets of the Kokin era, implying these are more recent development in courtly poetics. In the judgment of an uta-awase held in 1232, Teika uses it in reference to a spring poem by Shunzei’s Daughter (d. after 1252), singling out the phrase “morning frost.”131

“On ‘haze above a river,’ for a poem contest held at Iwashimizu Shrine”

Even more chilly	hashihime no
grows morning frost on the sleeves	sode no asashimo
of the Bridge Princess;	nao saete
and blowing over the haze—	kasumi fukikosu
the wind on Uji River.	Uji no kawakaze

What goes beyond Shunzei’s en in this case is a very rich tableau of images combined with the highly romantic associations of an allusion to the first of the so-called Uji chapters of The Tale of Genji, which concentrate on the melancholy lives of sister princesses living in that area south of Kyoto. Beyond that, the scene evokes the image of Princess of Uji Bridge, a mythological figure. Teika’s focus on the term “morning frost” is no doubt meant to praise the originality of placing so cold an image in the center of a spring poem. The overall effect of the poem is one of profound beauty tinged with antique charm and an air of romantic potential.

The word yōen appears seldom in poetic discourse after Teika, who used it only in his final years. Two centuries later, however, Ichijō Kaneyoshi (1402–1481) used it to describe the overall effect and diction of a poem by Emperor Go-Hanazono (1419–1470).

Gazing from afar,	magaikoshi
I once mistook for clouds	kumo no yosome no
those cherry blossoms—	hanazakura
blossoms brought to mind again	omoi zo izuru
by white snow on the peaks.132	mine no shirayuki

Go-Hanazono’s short meditation on memory and sensory confusion involves layers of imagery that are mirrored in highly elliptical syntax. In the original poem the phrase hanazakura functions as a pivot of sorts, at the same time ending the first three lines and then beginning the last three——“seen-from-afar cherry blossoms” and “cherry blossoms that are called to mind again [by] white snow on the peaks.”

Whereas many other terms from the waka tradition—aware, omoshiroshi, taketakashi, and yūgen, for instance—appear frequently in renga and haikai discourse, appearances of yōen, again, are rare.

yojō or yosei 余情; kokoro no amari 心の余. Waka, renga, and haikai. Overtones, overflowing feeling, reverberations. Sometimes identified as a separate style but more often a quality of poems in other styles, especially yūgen, ushin, and sabi. One of the earliest appearances of the term is Waka kuhon (post-1009) by Fujiwara no Kiyosuke (1104–1177), where the following anonymous poem (Kokinshū, no. 1077) is listed as an example.133 Kiyosuke does not explain himself, but most scholars argue that the overtones are a product of the way the poem presents the imagined, as opposed to immediately witnessed, scene of hail falling in the mountains:

Deep in the mountains	miyama ni wa
the hail must be coming down.	arare fururashi
Here in the foothills	toyama naru
autumn colors appear now	masaki no kazura
on the leaves of the vines.	irozukinikeri

Another classic example of a poem replete with overtones is this one by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241; Shūi gusō, no. 1658) composed in 1198 for a fifty-poem sequence commissioned by Reverend Prince Shukaku (1150–1202). Like many poems associated with yosei, this one involves an allusion:

Alone, I hear	hitori kiku
raindrops fall on a stairway	munashiki hashi ni
now deserted—	ame ochite
as the path I took coming	waga koshi michi o
is buried by withering winds.	uzumu kogarashi

This poem might also be analyzed as an example of sabi, but the “deserted stairway” inevitably suggests depths not revealed, and also constitutes an allusion to the following evocative lines by the late-Tang-dynasty poet Zhang Du from Wakan rōeishū (no. 307) on the topic of falling leaves:

In autumn’s third month, how long the palace water clock drones on!

Raindrops fall on the deserted stairway.

How will my home garden fare, ten thousand leagues away?

Leaves lie deep outside my window.

That the Chinese poem is incomplete and known only in fragments perhaps adds to the sense of overtones.

Medieval poets used this term from the waka tradition in several ways. Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388) defines the term as, “Leaving something unsaid, thus creating something of interest because of its overtones.”134 And the sense of the term by Imagawa Ryōshun (1326–1420) in reference to the following highly atmospheric link created by Kyūzei (1282–1376) is clearly synonymous with earlier usages:

The night must be growing late—	yo ya fukenuran
no one is making a sound.	hitooto mo sezu
In hazy moonlight,	tsuki kasumu
in the tidelands of a bay—	shiohi no ura
a moored boat.135	tomaribune

Why is the person up so late in the night? Is he—or she—waiting for someone? And does the boat signify a visitor? The link is thus based on enhancing a mood latent in the maeku, creating suggestions of meaning and emotion of the sort encountered in poems of the Shin kokin era.

At other times, however, commentators use the word “overtones” to refer to a poem that itself seems to function as a reverberation or aesthetic extension of a famous waka, a variety, in other words, of allusive variation. A link (Kochiku, nos. 441–42) by Tani Sōboku (d. 1545) illustrates the method.

Outside my hut door	kusa no to ni
even the sun pales in thin mist—	hi mo usukiri no
the mountains lonely.	yama sabishi
Far away, I see someone	ochikatabito o
on a rope bridge, on a peak.	mine no kakehashi

Here the maeku does not contain any allusion of itself, but in the last line—“the mountains lonely”—the author saw an opportunity to evoke a famous travel scene by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241; Shin kokinshū, no. 953).

“Written as a ‘travel’ poem”

With autumn wind	tabibito no
blowing back the flowing sleeves	sode fukikaesu
of a traveler,	akikaze ni
how lonely in evening light	yūbe sabishiki
is the bridge up on the peak!	yama no kakehashi

In Teika’s poem, the vantage point of the speaker is not clear: it could be taken as third-person description from a distance, or something more immediate, a narrative close-up of what is going through the mind of the traveler as he crosses a plank bridge over a perilous gorge. In Sōboku’s verse, however, the vantage point is clarified: a man stepping out the door of his lonely mountain hut looks up through pale mist to spy someone far away crossing a bridge, as Teika’s traveler did. Thus a sort of potential latent in Teika’s scene, one of its overtones, is realized in a renga link.

Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) used the word in reference to poems that used allusion or finely inflected ambiguity to suggest things beyond the surface. Mukai Kyorai (1651–1704) quotes him as saying that a hokku “should not say everything,”136 following the example of Shōtetsu, who wrote virtually the same thing: “The best poems are those that leave something unsaid.”137 Furthermore, Bashō’s penchant for linking by “scent” (nioizuke) may also be closely correlated to the rhetorical creation of overtones. The haikai poet Kagami Shikō (1665–1731) makes the identification explicit: “Yojō is a term used in waka; in haikai, we use the words hibiki [echo] and nioi [scent].”138

Writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Nationalist scholar Ishiwara Masaakira (d. 1821) is still using the term yojō, citing as an example a poem from Shin kokinshū (no. 1666) by Kojijū (fl. ca. 1160–1180) that describes a nun at her morning devotions, picking anise to place on her altar:

Wet now from dew	shikimi tsumu
on anise I picked at riverside	yamagawa no tsuyu ni
in the mountains:	nurenikeri
such are my ink-black sleeves	akatsukioki no
when I arise at dawn.	sumizome no sode

His explanation is that the phrase “arise at dawn” (akatsukioki no) “makes one think of tears shed on the speaker’s sleeves when she parted from a man in her younger days.”139

yoriaizuke 寄合付. Renga and haikai. Linking by associations—i. e., by established connections between words, images, or ideas, as an example (Chikurinshō, no. 105) by Ninagawa Chiun (d. 1448) demonstrates.

Gradually engulfed by haze:	kasumikometaru
forest groves, tree after tree.	kigi no muradachi
Headed toward the scent	minu hana no
of blossoms not yet in view,	nioi ni mukau
I cross the mountain.	yama koete

First and most obviously, the season is spring and involves the two paramount indexes of the season: haze in the first verse complemented by blossoms in the second. Furthermore, the verses are linked by the semantic associations between “engulfed by haze” and flowers “not yet in view,” as well as “forest groves” and “mountain.” As Inawashiro Kenzai (1452–1510) says in Keikandō (p. 124), being able to link verse to verse in this way was the most fundamental requirement of participation in renga composition. Needless to say, this required education in the canons of Japanese poetry.

yū 優, yūbi 優美. Waka, renga, and haikai. Polished, highly refined, and elegant; related to fūryū. One of the most frequently encountered terms in both judgments and commentaries; a courtly kind of beauty, usually involving well-established, elegant imagery, polished to a high sheen, and implying the activity of a highly refined and courtly sensibility. Fujiwara no Akisue (1090–1155) applies it to the following poem (no. 24) by Minamoto no Kanemasa (d. 1128?) in the Naidaijin-ke uta-awase poem contest in 1119.

“Evening moon”

So meager the light	yūzukuyo
from the early evening moon.	tomoshiki kage o
Yet how it enchants	miru hito no
the heart of one gazing up—	kokoro wa sora ni
as if rising into the sky!	akugarashikeri

In his judgments on a poem contest, Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–2004) praises the following poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 23) by Fujiwara no Yoshitsune (1169–1206) as “coming across as refined [yūbi] in total effect and diction.”140

“Lingering cold”

In the sky above,	sora wa nao
haze has yet to appear	kasumi mo yarazu
and the wind is cold;	kaze saete
it has the feel of coming snow—	yuki ge ni kumoru
a moonlit night, in spring.	haru no yo no tsuki

Rather than simple description, Yoshitsune offers a sort of aesthetic reveling in a natural scene as mediated by courtly traditions—sky, haze, wind, snow, moonlight, all modulated by the seasonal context of spring.

The word yūbi, “refined beauty,” is a synonym of yū. Sōchō (1448–1532) uses it to praise a link by Sōgi (1421–1502).

My feelings go deep	kokoro fukaki mo
yet are shallow after all.	asaku koso nare
Deep in the mountains	okuyama ni
I find cherry trees in bloom—	ireba hana saki
and people living there.141	hito sumite

In this case the speaker of the maeku is not clearly defined, but the link makes him into “a person of feeling” who cannot escape his own gentility. Sōchō says, “The effect of the link is to create a scene right before our eyes; furthermore, it is a peerless example of yūbi.”142 The speaker’s heart was committed to leaving the world behind, but when he confronts the beauty of blossoms and people living near the cherry groves, he realizes that his resolve was shallow after all.

A usage of yū by Takahashi Riichi (d. 1783), in reference to a hokku by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), tells us something about how the ideal was often inflected in haikai discourse. The hokku was composed on a journey in 1684, well known because it appeared in his travel record Nozarashi kikō (Record of bones bleaching in the fields, 1685, p. 285):

At roadside	michi no be no
a rose mallow flower—	mukuge no uma ni
eaten by my horse.	kuwarekeri

Riichi adds that this hokku has the touch of humor (okashimi) proper to haikai, but then says that Bashō “softens” (yawaragu) and adds refinement (yū) to the poem by means of its articulation (tsukuri).143 Frustratingly, he doesn’t explain himself, but most likely he means that the way Bashō presents it, there is something elegant in the scene, something that draws attention to what is a common autumn flower first of all, only then introducing a nonchalant horse. One can even say that it represents a small epiphany in which the poet gains more appreciation for the fragile beauty of the rose mallow as he sees it disappear.

yūgen 幽玄. Waka, renga, and haikai. Mystery and depth, profound feeling or meaning. This term of praise, which poets borrowed from Buddhist texts, involves a type of beauty that has about it something of the mysterious or ineffable. The term was given one of its most elegant definitions early on, in an essay by Kamo no Chōmei (1155–1216):

When it comes to the yūgen style … the essence of it is overflowing feeling [yojō] that appears outside the words of the poem, scenery that is there but not overtly present in the poem’s conception. If one’s idea is of deep significance and one’s words have attained the heights of elegance, then excellence will have been achieved as a matter of course. The sight of the sky on an autumn evening has no color and no voice; yet without realizing why, the tears well up in one’s eyes … Through the mist one gets only glimpses of autumn mountains, but, ah, how enchanting, how alluring are the colored leaves as they appear in the mind—surely superior to what one would see with one’s eyes. What challenge is there in stating one’s idea overtly, praising the moonlight as “shining into every corner,” or blossoms as “glorious.”144

Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) also used the term, albeit sparingly; and so did his son, Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), the latter in reference to a poem (Shin kokinshū, no. 533) by Minamoto no Toshiyori (1055–1129) that he praised as “ineffably beautiful, with images faintly hovering in the background and a most lonely atmosphere.”145

In my home village	furusato wa
all is buried by leaves fallen	chiru momijiba ni
at autumn’s end;	uzumorete
in memory fern on my eaves	noki no shinobu ni
the autumn wind is blowing.	akikaze zo fuku

No doubt it is the idea of someone listening to the wind blowing at autumn’s end that elicited the term “lonely” (sabishiki) from Teika. His use of yūgen, however, is inspired by the word shinobu, or memory fern, which grows on eaves not well tended, so suggesting passage of time. And the word shinobu can also mean to yearn for, to remember, or to conceal, adding to the sense of deep feeling hinted at but not fully expressed.

Yūgen persisted as an ideal into the late medieval era, in waka and in renga (and in Noh drama), in virtually all factions. Kōun (d. 1429), for instance, praises the following poem (Shoku goshūishū, no. 192) composed for a screen painting by the conservative figure Nijō Tameyo (1250–1338) as having all the qualities of the true style of the highest level of yūgen.146 It is a deceptively simple poem on the surface—until one connects it to an earlier work by Murasaki Shikibu (precise dates unknown; Shin kokinshū, no. 191), quoted here immediately after Tameyo’s poem.

Once and once only	hototogisu
a hototogisu called	hitokoe nakite
in Kataoka Grove—	kataoka no
passing by just this moment	mori no kozue o
up in the tops of the trees.	ima zo sugunaru

Once at dawn, when she was in seclusion at Kamo, someone said, “I wish a cuckoo would call”; she looked up and saw the beauty of the treetops in Kataoka Grove.

While I wait here	hototogisu
for the voice of the cuckoo	koe matsu hodo wa
in Kataoka Grove,	kataoka no
I may well be drenched	mori no shizuku ni
by dews falling from above.	tachi ya nuremashi

The “ineffable depth” Kōun sees in Tameyo’s poem derives from the way the cuckoo reminds the reader of how people in the same place three hundred years before had made a wish that is realized—in the imagination, of course—only today, and only once. Also involved is the fact that Tameyo’s poem was composed for a “putting on the train ceremony” (a rite signifying attainment of adult standing for women) for a princess (Senseimon’in, 1315–1362), which made the allusion to court culture of the distant pass astute and appropriate. The multiple mediations are part of the effect.

The other poet closely associated with yūgen is Shōtetsu (1381–1459), who invoked it in describing the following poem—one of his own (Sōkonshū, no. 3098). Obviously he meant it less as praise than as analysis, and it cannot be by chance that his brief words of exegesis hark back to Chōmei in a circular fashion.

Flowers bloomed and fell	sakeba chiru
in the space of just one night,	yo no ma no hana no
as if in a dream—	yume no uchi ni
leaving no confusion now	yagate magirenu
about white clouds on the peaks.	mine no shirakumo

This is a poem in the style of yūgen. Mystery and depth is something that is in the heart but unexpressed in words. The moon veiled in thin clouds, or the bright foliage on the mountains concealed in autumn mists—such poetic conceptions are regarded as having the effect of mystery and depth. But if one asks in which particular feature the mystery and depth is to be found, it is difficult to specify exactly.147

In renga discourse, yūgen is applied less frequently than, say, omoshiroshi, or even en, and it is used more often by men who were not just renga poets but also waka poets, such as Shinkei (1406–1475) and Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537). Yet Sōgi (1421–1502) still mentions it as part of his recipe for poetry, along with taketakashi and ushin; and it remained an important ideal.148 It usually implies a beautiful natural setting, themes of loss and separation, understated rhetoric, and a hint of courtly culture and values. Shinkei singles out a link (Zoku Sōanshū, no. 653) by Tonna (1289–1372) as an excellent example.149

All but deserted—	furusato to
yet still in the old village	naru made hito no
people live on.	nao sumite
Wind blowing in the reeds	ogi fuku kaze ni
and someone beating a robe.	koromo utsu nari

The word furusato has a range of meanings, from old capital (there were many such places in the areas around Nara and Kyoto that had been capitals long ago), to hometown, to, literally, an “aging village.” The first verse does not commit itself—it could be an abandoned capital, but it could just as well be a village abandoned for some other reason. Already the scene is replete with visions of an imagined past, but all the verse tells us is that—inexplicably—people persist in living there. Rather than providing an explanation, Tonna adds to the sense of mystery by introducing a woman beating a robe on a fulling block somewhere in the distance. Who she might be, why she might be living there, whether she is alone or not—these are questions that he does not answer, producing a sense of mystery and a depth of feeling that are the essence of yūgen.

Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) uses the word yūgen frequently in his contest judgments, and in a statement quoted by Morikawa Kyoriku (1656–1715) makes it clear that yūgen still functioned as a positive value in the world of haikai. “In composing hokku one should adhere to the orthodox style. Take what you see and hear, and make a verse from that. You should communicate feeling through yūgen expressed in loneliness and delicacy [yūgen no sabihosomi miekakete].”150