Abstract
In the beginning of the thirteenth century, during the Shin-kokin period, waka poets
followed classicism, reusing words and subjects from old poems. At the same time, they
were in pursuit of atarashiki kokoro, or new content. New kokoro does not represent
perfect newness that has never been composed; it represents content that overlaps with
the classics. Moreover, the word atarashi has ambiguity; while new content is indeed
ideal, novel subjects and how to use words are avoided. On the other hand, the word
mezurashi means a kind of unexpectedness achieved by using old words in different
contexts from past works. Mezurashi becomes especially significant in post-Shin-kokin
waka.
Nevertheless, since the fifteenth century, old poetry has begun to be ignored, and the
focus has shifted to the kokoro of an individual poet. Atarashi, implying a newness that
nobody has composed before, is emphasised and involves mezurashi. Such idealisation
of novelty, which is regardless of differences from the old, brings the modern meaning
of ‘originality’ to medieval waka.
However, the classicism of waka never died until the modern era. Autonomous
systems that identify differences from the classics as a norm have existed; thereby waka
has acquired the extendibility and sustainability of composition.
