Canonization of Medieval Japanese Poetry in Modern Japan

• In Event: Modernity, National Identity, and the Realm of the Arts in East Asia

Abstract

Waka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry. It is estimated that the oldest waka anthology was compiled around the late 7th to late 8th century and waka poems continued to be composed through the ages into the present. Although there are many brilliant translations into other languages of waka poems, some Japanese continue to assert that waka is essentially linked to the Japanese language and is therefore untranslatable.
In order to view the modern assumption that waka is untranslatable from a different angle, my paper will introduce translations theories developed in medieval Japan. Firstly I will examine how medieval poets attempted to link Japan to other regions within a Buddhist cosmology by developing a radical theory of waka translation. Secondly, I will compare the medieval translations theories with the modern assumption. I will discuss that this assumption is rooted in the cultural nationalism that enabled Japanese literary classics to become a foundation for ethnic and cultural identities. To distinguish Japan from other nations during nation-state construction, intellectuals wrote histories of Japanese literature that emphasized the tradition of waka as a specific Japanese form of poetry with a distinct history. I will show how medieval waka poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were hailed for their establishment of the concepts of wabi, sabi, and yūgen, notions that were tied to unique aesthetic principles that supposedly underlay Japanese society.

Author

• Mariko Naito, Meiji University