In his Kokubungaku-shi-kouwa Sakutarō Fujioka stated that Kino-Tsurayuki originally wrote Tosa-nikki to the memory of his lost child. This alleged origin of the work was also reworked into a fable in Konjaku-monogatari-shū. This paper will first philologically outline the process in which such a private writing has generated a modern literary genre called diaries. Then I will consider the editorial policy adopted by the anonymous compiler of Konjaku-monogatari-shū in using the legend of Tosa-nikki as a work dedicated to the dead child.
The first series of miscellaneous poems in Yoritomo-shū consists of those rendered at the time of the editor Minamoto-no-Yoritomo's long-waited-for promotion to a higher rank. Therefore they contribute much to creating his image of a “patient poet in the reign of the Heike Family,” as is shown in the phrase “a mountain guard silently looking up at the moon from the woods.” In compiling the collection of private poems, Yoritomo included some works by Hachijō-In's acquaintances because he was then patronized by her. But their poems were strategically separated from his to leave no trace of political influence. Such an editorial manipulation indicates Yoritomo was actually not so much a naive man of letters as a politically resourceful person.
Shin-goshūi-waka-shū is often said to be more complicatedly compiled than any other collection of ritual poems. It can be roughly divided into two parts; in the first half of the collection the arrangement is irregular because the prayers for eternal peace are sometimes interrupted by the religio-philosophical poems on the separation of Shintoism from Buddhism. In the latter half of it, however, the general tone obviously changes due to the editorial intention of one of the compilers, Nijō-Tameshige. Although most of them are about Sumiyoshi Shrine, there are less religious poems but more lyrical ones, dedicated to muses rather than to gods.
Chokusen-meisho-waka-shoshutsu is a collection of poetical words edited by Sōseki in 1506. Interestingly enough, words in this glossary are listed in Japanese syllabic order instead of being geographically classified. This peculiar arrangement may have occurred in the process of rewriting its original text Chokusen-meisho-waka-yōshō because it is very likely that the editor-poet then came to know Jūyondai-shū-utamakura, another glossary which also arranged words in the same method. This article will examine the effect of intertextuality on the making of Chokusen-meisho-waka-shoshutsu.
The episode of Minamoto-no-Yorimasa's uprising triggered by a quarrel over a horse is differently treated in each edition of Heike-monogatari. Both the Kakuichi-bon edition and Genpeiseisui-ki set the episode in the beginning of the story, but each narrates it from a different perspective. While the former features Yorimasa and his colleagues to tell the story on the subjective basis, the latter describes the riot from a bird's eye view to explain its historical meaning. Thus the same spatial arrangement of the episode makes outstanding a difference in historical outlook between the two editions.
Most Shinto accounts about the origin of the country were written from the late Heian Period to the Kamakura Period, but they were made in ancient style to put on the aura of classical literature. Like other religious writings, those accounts came to be systematically categorized and compiled in the late Kamakura Period. This article will examine the method of categorization and compilation in medieval Shintoism with Ruijū-jingi-hongen, Gengen-shū, Jindai-no-maki-hiketsu, and other texts.