The Courting Of Kume No Zenji: The Allurement Of Waka Under The Tenji Court

UrbanScope Vol.3 (2012) 4-13 The Courting of Kume no Zenji: The Allurement of Waka under the Tenji Court Masahiro MURATA* Keywords: waka, Man’yōshū, Kume no Zenji, sōmon, Tenji era Explanatory Note This paper presents an analysis of the “Five poems exchanged in the courting of Ishikawa no Iratsume by Kume no Zenji” (poems 96-100, compiled under the reign of Emperor Tenji) found in the sōmon (poems of courting or dialogic exchange) of the Man’yōshū, Book 2. This representative set of sōmon is centered around the two pillars of the “bow” and the concept of “nochi no kokoro” (opposite of shoshin; the state of enlightenment achieved through accumulated training) and limns their relationship from the man’s initial overture, through their romantic acrobatics, and eventuating in wedlock. Within the context of these two pivot words, of particular notice is the name given to the male courter: Kume no Zenji. While it is impossible to know anything concrete about him, as he makes no other appearances in the literature, it is possible to extrapolate based on his putative name: “Kume,” according to mythology, is the family name of a brave warrior who is said to have accompanied the descent to earth of Amaterasu’s grandson; and “zenji” is the title of a priest that has achieved enlightenment through the teachings of the Buddha. It is this paper’s contention that this set of five poems, hinging on the pivot words of the “bow” and “nochi no kokoro,” is intimately connected to the dual nature of the name of “Kume no Zenji.” A product of the Tenji era (661-671), an emergent stage within the hundred-some years of the Man’yōshū’s compilation, these poems deserve particular attention within the study of early poetry in the archipelago as they reveal an advanced level of waka production and enjoyment from very early on. The present article was first published in Bungakushi Kenkyu (Studies of Literary History) No.26, Society of Japanese and Japanese Literature, Osaka City University, 1985. The original title is Kume no Zenji no tsumadoi: Tenji-cho fūryu no omokage (The Courting of Kume no Zenji: Remnants of the Literature of the Tenji Court). For the convenience of English readers, the translated article was fully reviewed, and necessary information about proper names, historical events, and Japanese titles was added. 1. In the face of anecdotic lacunae A written work’s anatomization often devolves on the information known about the author’s career. Saying nothing of Yamanoue no Okura, Ōtomo no Tabito, or Ōtomo no Yakamochi, poets of whom a relatively good deal is known, the identification of the elusive Kakinomoto no Hitomaro as a “court poet,” at least conceptually, greatly shed light on his character and deepened our understanding of his work. In this light, it is only natural that this area of inquiry within textual commentary has, regardless of success, continued its search into the lives of the poets. There is a significant number of authors, however, about whom no legacy remains. In fact, over forty percent of the Man’yōshū (A Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) poems, concentrated mainly in Books 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, lack any attending identification of authorship. Treatment of such poems of unknown authorship or of whose authors nothing is known naturally demands the appropriate methodological approach – efforts to treat these poems as if they were utaimono (“lyrical music”) or utagatari (“poem tales”) and the push to understand their forms of expression in this light being an important example. Kume no Zenji – the author of several sōmon (courting or exchange poems) under Emperor Tenji’s reign (662671) in Book 2 of the Man’yōshū – is o