Chinese Poetry in Hiragana : Kana-shi in Thought and Practice

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In the Edo period there was a type of poetry called kana-shi. In terms of form and style it was modeled on Chinese poetry (kanshi) yet written with a mixture of hiragana and kanji. It can be thought of as a literary form that occupied the space in between haikai and Chinese poetry. Kana-shi was frequently composed in the early eighteenth century by Morikawa Kyoriku, Kagami Shikō, and other disciples and associates of Matsuo Bashō, and it took shape amid rising nationalist sentiment and an accompanying decline in the status of Chinese poetry and prose. Influenced by the mood of this intellectual environment, kanashi seems to have emerged as an ambitious literary form that, while modeled on Chinese poetry, sought to reconstruct it as Japanese. This essay considers these and related issues through analyses of specific poems. It also introduces several related poetic styles that developed in the same time period, arguing that kanashi was a precursor of famous works like Yosa Buson’s “Mourning the Old Sage Hokuju” as well as the newform poetry (shintaishi) of the Meiji period.

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