Yamato Monogatari - Origin

Origin

The poems in Yamato Monogatari were written in a time when Japanese literature and art was flourishing, after having stopped communications with China. Deciding that the declining Tang dynasty was no longer worth communicating with, Japan became increasingly more conscious of its own culture through literary and artistic works such as poetry. During the early ninth century, nearly all literary works were Chinese, but by the end of the 10th century, nearly all the best literary works were done purely in Japanese. In addition, waka poetry was becoming more popular as opposed to classical Chinese poetry, even though at first it was as if Japanese styled poetry had never existed.

At the beginning of the Heian period, waka poetry was almost never practiced due to the popularity of Chinese poetry. It was at its lowest point in history some time between 800 – 850. Waka poetry did not begin to rise in popularity until 850 – 890, where it was revived by a group of six poets who would be later known as the Six Poetic Geniuses. At the same time, waka poetry was also being used in many court activities such as poetry contests. In 951, the establishment of the wakadokoro, or Poetry Bureau, and the compilation of the Gosenshuu helped to promote the creation of poems and poem anthologies such as Yamato Monogatari. At the same time, the development of the kana system of writing also helped to further Japanese literature by presenting a way through which Japanese phonetics may be written and read. It was with this writing system that the many tales and poems of Yamato Monogatari were written.

From Yamato Monogatari, we are able to see what kind of life the Fujiwara court nobles and officials were able to live. Filled luxury and influence, the lifestyle of the Fujiwara court nobles was one of courtliness (miyabi) and taste (fuuryuu). This helped fuel the writing style and poetry for that period of time. Poetry played a major role in their lives: acting as a pass time, and helping record the events of their daily lives. Leisure hours were spent gossiping about well-known poets and discussing the circumstances of which poems would be composed, even reminiscing about familiar poems. It was only inevitable to see that collections of these poems began to be created, one of them being Yamato Monogatari.