The Dōjō School’s Waka Poetry of the Famous Places on the Shoji Paper Doors in the Middle and Late Edo Period

Abstract

In mid-Edo Period the poets of the Dōjō school composed waka poems on the shoji paper doors at the “kirokujo” judicial office under the auspices of Emperor Sakuramachi. The aim of this paper is to trace the historical background of this work and explicate its exquisite treatment of the landscapes and histories of the famous places. It was a by-product of the two preceding works on the byōbu folding screens. One was produced at the “daijōe” imperial enthronement ceremony which was revived after the last one for Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado held about two hundred and seventy years. The other was the poems of the four seasons in the famous places of the Kantō district composed by the major poets of the imperial waka circle at the request of Tokugawa-Yoshimune. The shoji poetry was modeled after them, but it was an innovation. Until the Hōei Period the rooms in the imperial court had been furnished in Chinese style by the government. With waka poems and “yamoto-e” paintings the emperor boldly renovated them into the space of Japanese art. Later in the Kansei Period it inspired Emperor Kōkaku to make an unprecedented attempt to neo-classically ornament the Seiryō-den Palace with shoji poems. The collaboration of architecture, literature, and art had changed the palace into a site symbolic of the ideal of the country.