Dōmyō Ajari and love poetry

―In special relation to amorous anecdotes ―（2）

Abstract

　This study investigates the relationship between love poetry and monk poets in the literature of the Heian period. Special attention is paid to love poems in the section of love poetry in Hachidai-shū (the eight imperial collections of waka poetry). Love affairs are generally prohibited to monks who ought to be devoted to Buddhist spiritual discipline. However, humor and laughter perceived in those love poems give reality to monks’ love affairs and, consequently, persuade the readers fairly well. Seen from creation of literature, humor and monks’ love can be combined as innovative and creative factors of poetic art.

　Love poetry, especially poems exchanged between lovers involving monks drastically increase in number in Goshūi-shū. As for the love section of Hachidai-shū, Dōmyō is best known as the monk who made a number of such poems. His licentiouness characteristic of depraved monks emerges as humor and secularity, which seem to endorse the truth of his love anecdotes. His love stories and frivolity of his love poems have much in common. They both share a poetic term, toneri-no-neya, which expresses monk’s affective feelings towards lay people. It can be safely said that this shared term provides enough evidence to the assumption that the people around Jinzen, who is the mentor of Dōmyō, influenced him in his creation of waka poetry.