Japanese Literature Quiz C

Heike monogatari

The Tale of the Heike, a war tale about the rise and fall of the Taira clan.

Taira / Heike

The warrior clan led by Kiyomori that ruled the court, and its color is red.

Minamoto / Genji

The rival warrior clan that defeats the Taira, and its color is white.

Which clan name goes with which color?

Taira (Heike) is red, and Minamoto (Genji) is white.

Parallelism

The Heike pairs similar people or events so they mirror each other, like Tsuginobu and Kikuō both dying loyal.

Taira no Kiyomori

The arrogant Taira ruler who became a novice monk at 51 and made his family untouchable at court.

What does the opening of the Heike say about the arrogant?

They don’t last long, like a dream one night in spring or dust before the wind.

Kakuichi (d.1371)

The blind biwa monk whose version of the Heike became the standard text.

Kenreimon-in

Kiyomori’s daughter, empress and mother of the child emperor Antoku.

Giō

A dancer (shirabyōshi) Kiyomori favored and then dropped.

Hotoke

The dancer who replaced Giō in Kiyomori’s favor. Giō and Hotoke together ;; Both end up leaving the world and becoming nuns.

Kiso (Lord Kiso, Kiso no Yoshinaka)

A rough Minamoto commander who took the capital before Yoshitsune and was later defeated by his own side.

Tomoe

Yoshinaka’s female warrior companion, famed as a fighter, and the subject of a nō play.

Kozaishō

The wife of the Taira warrior Michimori, whose story is about losing a husband in the war.

What does Michimori’s farewell at his post show?

His heart is divided between his wife and his duty, and Noritsune scolds him for it.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune

The Genji commander famous for bold attacks, like charging down the cliff at Hiyodori.

What does Yoshitsune show about going “far”?

He risks everything, over a cliff and through a storm, and even for his bow.

Taira no Atsumori

A young Taira warrior who played the flute and was killed by Naozane.

Kumagai Naozane

The Genji warrior who killed Atsumori, felt pity, and turned toward becoming a monk.

Saigyō (hōshi) (1118-1190)

A former warrior who became a wandering monk-poet and wrote hell poems and mountain poems.

Impermanence (mujō)

The idea that nothing lasts, which shapes the whole period’s poetry.

Shinkokinshū (c. 1205)

A poetry collection written after the wars, with a philosophical tone and bare images.

Allusive variation (honkadori)

Building a poem on an older poem, like Shunzei borrowing Bo Juyi’s “hut of grass.”

Yūgen

Mystery and depth, a dark beauty with elegance and restraint.

Sabi

The term for solitude and loneliness

Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)

Kenkō’s 243 short pieces, a zuihitsu (“following the brush”).

Kenkō (hōshi) (c. 1283-c. 1352)

A Tendai monk who wrote it, with both a courtier’s taste and a Buddhist’s warnings.

Michi

The “Way” or path of a calling or art, from the Chinese dao and the Sanskrit marga.

What do all the Ways require?

Dedication, discipline, detachment, humility, and urgency.

Noh/nō

Masked drama, whose name means “ability” or “accomplishment.”

“Sotoba Komachi”

A one-act nō play where priests debate old Komachi over a stupa, then Fukakusa no Shōshō possesses her.

What does the stupa debate show?

Komachi argues that she and the stupa are on the same level, and the priests end up bowing to her.

Zeami (Motokiyo) (1363/4-1443)

The great nō actor and playwright, son of Kan’ami, who wrote 21 treatises.

Two arts, three role types (nikyoku santai)

The two arts are song and dance, and the three roles are woman (feminine), old person (vulerable), and warrior (Martial).

Flower (hana)

Zeami’s peak of aesthetics, from Tsurayuki’s idea that poetry has its seeds in the heart and blooms into the flowers of words.

Zen

Enlightenment as awareness free from theoretical thinking, so the poems act it out instead of explaining it.

Kanshi

Poetry in Chinese, which the Zen death poems are, so they aren’t tanka.

Ikkyū (Sōjun) (1394-1481)

An eccentric Zen monk (taverns, brothels) who hated “intellectual Zen.”

Order Saigyō, Kenkō, Zeami, Ikkyū.

Saigyō (1118-1190), Kenkō (c. 1283-c. 1352), Zeami (1363/4-1443), Ikkyū (1394-1481).

Which came first, Shinkokinshū or the Heike’s standard text?

Shinkokinshū (c. 1205), and Kakuichi’s version dates to 1371.