Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

As part of the Print, Power, and Parable in Japanese Literature Speaker Series, this second session will feature Professor Citko’s talk, “How to Establish a Poetic School in Early Medieval Japan: Fujiwara no Shunzei’s “Reflections on the Man’yoshu Era” (Man’yoshu Jidaiko) and the Beginnings of the Mikohidari.”

Fujiwara no Shunzei introduced his poetic school, the Mikohidari, to the waka (Japanese court poetry) world with the composition of his first poetic commentary, Man’yōshū jidaikō. Dedicated to a son of Shunzei’s powerful patron from the Kujō family, the text was meant to be a demonstration of his expertise about Man’yōshū—the earliest extant collection of Japanese poetry which started to attract more attention in early medieval Japan. The compilation of Man’yōshū jidaikō was Mikohidari school’s first recorded attempt to demonstrate their expertise about the early history of waka. The text fits into Shunzei’s larger agenda of taking over power in the poetic world from Man’yōshū specialists of the Rokujō school, which he had already been in an open conflict with. Shunzei replaced the late Rokujō leader, Fujiwara no Kiyosuke, as a poetry master who would give a start to a poetic school that would later become the very force behind waka development.