The Way of Shikishima: Waka Theory and Practice in Early Modern Japan (review)

Edo literature boasted a range of new and lively popular genres that relegated traditional waka to the shadows. Literary histories, therefore, normally turn to subjects like haikai and renga; satirical types of poetry like kyōka, kyōshi, and senryū; the constantly changing varieties of narrative literature; or the thriving theater scene, all of which seem to preserve more of the vitality of Edo culture and spirit. Especially in Western studies of Edo literature, waka has played no significant role and instead has been dismissed as an elitist and fossilized genre that had already lost its creative power by the medieval period. The revival and modernization of waka, on the other hand, has been a topic for literary historians of the Meiji and Taishō periods, where amid the emergence of new poetic forms—this time under the influence of Western concepts —poets like Masaoka Shiki, Sasaki Nobutsuna, and Ochiai Naobumi put great efforts into reestablishing this traditional genre on modernist principles.

While literary histories have neglected waka, there has been an emphasis in social and political history on Nativism (Kokugaku), and especially on such major exponents as Kamo no Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane. In this context, Edo waka, and especially waka theory, has received some attention from more than one scholar.¹ In The Way of Shikishima, Roger K. Thomas shifts the focus from Nativism as a political and ideological stance to Kokugaku that "had its genesis in waka poetics" (p. xi), thus recontextualizing pivotal issues pertaining to this movement within the wider framework of waka poetry and poetics.

Actually, waka poems were produced in huge numbers in the Edo period, as waka belonged to those elite divertissements that were copied by wealthy commoners and spread by erudite poets and teachers throughout the country.² From the late sixteenth century, the strict isolation of tōshō—i.e., aristocratic—poetic practice and teachings broke down, and jige (commoner) poetic activities started to thrive from the seventeenth century onward. Although jige poets tended initially to adhere to established aesthetic traditions, with the rise of Kokugaku, interest shifted from the preservation of tradition to the search for an authentic and spontaneous expression of sentiments. The history of Edo waka is the history of jige poets gaining aesthetic and cultural dominance. The complex interaction of such social, intellectual, and literary trends is the focus of the book under review, in which Thomas offers a historical overview of waka poetry and poetics from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth. Edo waka history abounds with important figures, and they are difficult to arrange into groups and traditions; Thomas decided to solve this problem "by discussing poets individually in a roughly chronological treatment, focusing in each case on factors that tie their work to specific literary and cultural currents in their respective milieus and demonstrating how their work is expressive of the age in which they lived" (p.viii). By avoiding a theoretical, or thematic, approach, however, and focusing instead on the question how poetics reflect the time periods in which they were formulated, Thomas's book becomes rather similar in structure and content to the Japanese literary histories that have traditionally taken up Edo waka history.

Thomas begins with a short summary of the main ideological influences that have informed waka theory and practice, namely, Confucianism and sinology on the one hand and Nativism on the other, and concepts like makoto, which he defines as "an aesthetic ideal of genuine and unmediated expression" (p. xii), and "high" (ga) and "low" (zoku), terms that played an important role in contemporaneous Japanese interpretations of poetic styles and were—especially zoku—formidable instruments of literary critique.³ Under the heading "Tensions and Changes in Early Modern Society," he sums up the reconfigurations of class boundaries, the gradual decline of aristocratic dominance, changing perceptions of the public and private spheres, and the renascence...