Making One Hundred Poems Every Month: The Waka Poetics of Maigetsu-shō

Abstract

In the mid-tenth century Sone-no-Yoshitada created his own style of rendering one hundred poems as a unit. Later the style had been established as a convention, but in the process it had been often modified for individual practices. In Maigetsu-shō, for example, the alleged author Fujiwara-no-Teika insisted on the importance of making a hundred poems every month and adapted Sone's method for his training program for the prolific production of poems. Although it seems to be extraordinary, Teika's version of one hundred poems contributed much to the poetics of the mid-Kamakura Period.