Poets in Their Place: Reflectons on Poetic salons in Early Medieval Japan

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the notion that around A.D. 1100 Japanese poetic practice witnessed the first major turning point in a process of 'medievalisation' which would eventually lead to the establishment of poetry as an independent art. The literary salons of twelfth-century Japan form an important beginning of this process. While the salons were the breeding grounds for poetry as art, they were not completely autonomous literary zones. The social setting of the act of composition to a large extent determined the poets' possibilities for innovation. The organisation of such settings and their ceremony are considered here. Attention is also given to the ways in which the poetic practice might differ for poets of Chinese verse and practitioners of poetry in Japanese. Finally, the salons' publications are discussed as a method of raising the status of their poetic production.