Early Modern Japan

The poetic salons in Kyoto during the early Tokugawa period were vivified by the simmering tension between the factions of Matsunaga Teitoku 松 永貞徳 (1571-1654) and Kinoshita Chōshōshi 木 下長嘯子 (1569-1649). These two poets hailed from fundamentally different socio-economic backgrounds, displayed contrasting personalities, developed diametrically opposed views on the proper decorum for composing waka, and competed against each other at poetry contests. They were also surprisingly fast friends. Chōshōshi, the nephew of Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 (1536-1598), held various distinguished military positions until his faction’s resounding defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara, after which he retired to luxurious seclusion just outside Kyoto. Teitoku, on the other hand, was born as the second son of a minor renga poet in the commoner district of Kyoto and through diligent effort overcame his relatively modest social standing to create vast intellectual and artistic networks. Although both men studied the art of poetic composition under the prominent daimyo-poet Hosokawa Yūsai 細川幽斎 (1534-1610), they responded to his version of the Nijō-lineage orthodoxy in fundamentally contrasting ways. Teitoku revered Yūsai with nearly religious devotion, zealously preserving and transmitting his teachings. Chōshōshi, on the other hand, adopted highly iconoclastic approaches to scholarship and composition, brusquely flouting literary precedents and social conventions as he saw fit. Despite these fundamental differences, Teitoku and Chōshōshi remained on friendly terms for over five decades until Chōshōshi’s death in 1649. Abundant personal records detail intense but affable disagreements at poetry gatherings as well as frequent poetic exchanges between the two poets throughout their long acquaintance. They also were active in the same social circles which included such luminaries as Neo-Confucian scholars Fujiwara Seika 藤原惺窩(1561-1619)and Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (1583-1657); courtier-poet Nakanoin Michikatsu 中院通勝( 1556-1610); Shinto scholar Yoshida Bonshun 吉田梵舜 (15531632); comic writer Anrakuan Sakuden 安楽庵策伝 (1554-1642); chanoyu practitioner and garden designer Kobori Enshū 小堀遠州 (1579-1647); raconteur Ōmura Yūko 大村由己 (1536-1596); Tokugawa governmental officials Itakura Katsushige 板 倉勝重 (1545-1624) and his son Shigemune 重宗 (1586-1657); and affluent merchants such as Suminokura Soan 角倉素庵 (1571-1631). Immediately after Chōshōshi’s death, however, a quarrel erupted in the normally placid world of Kyoto’s waka salons that suggested profound resentment and discontent was festering between the poetic factions headed by Teitoku and Chōshōshi. The incident was sparked by the publication of Chōshōshi’s personal poetry and prose collection, Kyohakushū 挙白集 (Collection of Offered Cups of Sake, 1649), which was compiled by Uda Kin’nori 打它公軌 (?-1647) and his son Kagenori 景軌 (dates uncertain) along with Yamamoto Shunshō 山 本春正 (1610-1682). Within months of the publication of the anthology, a scathing critique of its content and the compilers, titled Nan-kyohakushū 難挙白集 (Critique of Kyohakushū), was published under the pseudonym Jinkyūbō 尋旧坊 . Many scholars assume that Critique of Kyohakushū actually was composed by either Teitoku or a close disciple in part because Kin’nori, Kagenori, and Shunshō had all defected from Teitoku’s school to study under Chōshōshi. Viewed from Teitoku’s point of view, Chōshōshi’s experimental poetic style was problematical, but because Chōshōshi operated on the fringes of the Kyoto poetic circles he did not pose a major treat until Kin’nori, Kagenori, and Shunshō published his collected works. Thus, it is the text of Kyohakushū and the three disciples who compiled it, not Chōshōshi himself, who received