Here’s this month’s poetry post from our friend, poet and translator, Keiji Minato. This will be the last post on Deep Kyoto this year. Happy holidays and see you all safely in 2012!
Haifu-Yanagidaru (『誹風柳多留』; 1765-1840) is a collection of maeku-dsuke (前句付), which are now commonly called ko-senryu (古川柳; old senryu). It is not one book but a series of 165 volumes published from the middle to the end of the Edo period. The first 24 volumes are particularly important, with KARAI Senryu (柄井川柳; 1718-1790), whose name is now used as the name of the genre of senryu, as its anthologist. The original genre of maeku-dsuke was invented in the Osaka-Kyoto area but really took off in the Edo (current Tokyo) area. At its peak, thousands of anonymous people in Edo submitted their works to Karai Senryu, who selected the best of them for publication first in newssheet formats and later in Yanagidaru.
The Kyoto depicted in Yanagidaru is naturally the one viewed, or imagined, by inhabitants in Edo, the rising city that at that time had begun having pride in its own culture, throwing away its inferiority complex for Kyoto, the previous cultural center of Japan. Certainly, since the Edo (or Tokugawa) Bakufu (江戸[徳川]幕府) was founded, Edo had been the political and economic center of the nation for more than 150 years. Numerous tiny poems in Yanagidaru clearly show Edo people’s confidence in their booming city and the excitement of living there: [Read more…]