社寺参詣の歌謡

抄録

This essay deals with the texts of several songs recorded in Ryojin hisho, a partially-surviving collection of imayo texts compiled in the mid-12th century by the Cloistered Emperor Goshirakawa (1127-1192). They deal with shrines and temples known for the power of the deity worshipped in them, and reflect the custom of the times of traveling to these places to pray for various kinds of worldly benefits.
The typical song of this type has a text that lists the names of places or scenery that a traveller would pass through on the visit described. This type of poem is known in Japanese as “michiyuki”. An interesting feature of the texts of this type in Ryojin hisho is that they begin the description with places such as Kamogawa or Nishi-no-kyo that clearly represented some sort of physical or psychological frontier for contemporary dwellers in the metropolis of Kyoto.
Another type of text similar in nature to this type is that which lists famous temples and shrines. Of the examples to be found in Ryojin hisho, the order in which the names are cited is based on their relative distance from the capital; in some texts the description begins with a temple in Kyoto and follows a route away and then back, while in others the description begins at the religious centre situated furthest away and gradually approaches the capital. This appears to suggest that the texts reflect the experience of having walked from one temple to the next, that is, of having made a type of pilgrimage.