Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

The Waka (Japanese 31-syllable poetry) tradition asserts that Waka began with the god Susa-no-o’s song at Izumo, but this tradition has always been open to reinscription. This talk will trace the multiple and occasionally conflicting myths of waka poetry’s origins while considering how these narratives can be further fleshed out by attention to the surviving corpus of song-texts from the Nihon shoki and Kojiki.

Gustav Heldt (University of Virginia)

Zoom registration here.