Un'yō Wakashū

The Un'yō Wakashū (雲葉和歌集) is a Japanese waka anthology compiled by Kujō Motoie in the Kamakura period. Only eleven of a presumed twenty volumes have survived.

Compilation and date

The Un'yō Wakashū was the shisenshū (privately-compiled anthology) of Kujō Motoie.[1]

The collection has been dated to between the third month of 1253 and the third month of the following year.[2] This date was arrived at on the basis of the last dated poem (#904) having been composed during a visit by the retired emperor to Tennōji in the third month of 1253,[2] and Fujiwara no Narisane (藤原成実) being referred to as a courtier of the Senior Third Rank, when he was promoted to the Junior Second Rank on the eighth day of the third month of 1254.[2]

It is thought that Fujiwara no Tameie's publication of the Shoku Gosen Wakashū in late 1251 provided part of the impetus for the compilation of the Un'yō Wakashū.[3]

Contents

The Gunsho Ruijū text and others include ten volumes on: spring (in three parts), summer, autumn (in three parts), winter, congratulations and travel,[2] but the Shōkōkan text includes an additional volume of love poetry.[2] This brings the total number of surviving volumes to eleven,[2] and a total of 1,032 of its poems survive in at least one of the extant texts.[2]

The Fuboku Wakashō (未木和歌抄) preserves an additional thirty-odd poems that originally came from the lost volumes of the Un'yō Wakashū,[2] and based on the content of these poems it is theorized that the lost volumes (including the one volume of love poetry that survives in a single manuscript) were: love (in five parts), miscellaneous (in three parts), Shinto and Buddhism.[2] The size, distribution and topics of the volumes, ordering of the poems and so on are all modeled on the imperial collections.[3]

In total, at least one poem by each of 287 poets are included among the surviving portions.[4] The compiler's father, Kujō Yoshitsune, is most represented, with 36 poems.[4] He is followed by Fujiwara no Shunzei and Emperor Go-Toba with 34 each;[4] Fujiwara no Ietaka with 33;[4] Fujiwara no Teika with 31;[4]Jien with 30;[4] Emperor Juntoku with 28;[4] and Jakuren and Emperor Tsuchimikado with 25 each.[4][lower-alpha 1]

The collection itself does not have any standout characteristics, but the selection of poems reveals Motoie's tastes as a poet.[3]

Textual tradition

It is assumed that the collection originally comprised twenty volumes,[3] but only eleven are extant.[3]

The National Diet Archives hold two copies of the text,[3] and other copies have been preserved in the Shōkōkan and elsewhere.[3]

Notes
    1. Satō (1983, p. 328) gives slightly different figures: Shunzei with 36; Go-Toba and Yoshitsune with 35 each; Teika with 33; Juntoku, Jien and Ietaka with 29 each; Jakuren with 26; Tsuchimikado with 25; and Saigyō with 22.

    References
    1. Handa 1999, p. 26; Satō 1983, p. 328.
    2. Handa 1999, p. 27; Satō 1983, p. 328.
    3. Satō 1983, p. 328.
    4. Handa 1999, p. 27.

    Works cited
    • Handa, Kōhei (1999). "Jakuren no Shisen-Wakashū Nyūshūka nitsuite". Nishōgakusha Daigaku Ronshū (in Japanese). Nishogakusha University. 42 (1): 25–45. Retrieved 2017-10-18.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
    • Satō, Tsuneo (1983). "Un'yō Wakashū". Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten 日本古典文学大辞典 (in Japanese). 1. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. p. 328. OCLC 11917421.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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