Fuboku-waka-shō is one of the major thematic poetry anthologies of medieval times. It features several originally edited poems by Saigyō which are included neither in Sanka-shū nor in other collections. But until recently little attention has been given to them because of the anthology's problematic nature. In response to some new studies of Fuboku-waka-shō this article will demonstrate that the poems provide an important clue to the existence of Saigyō's lost works which were allegedly possessed by the Reizei Family at the time of the completion of the anthology. Here I will also focus on one of them to historically consider the evaluation of Saigyō's work from the Muromachi to the Edo Period.

Eguchi is a Noh play about Saigyō's and Shōkū's encounter with the Buddhist saint Samantabhadra in the guise of a prostitute. The former's episode has several sources; the account of Saigyō's communion with the sacred prostitute in Senjū-shō, the comment on her song in reply to the monk in Saigyō-monogatari, and his theatrically masochistic style found in his own poetry collection Sanka-shū. The aim of this article is to redefine the Noh play as a fable of Saigyō's transcendental experience in terms of these “pre-texts.”

In spite of his reputation as a “renga” master, Saigyō's poems are seldom included in poetical literature from the Muromachi to the early Edo Period. Especially there are very few citations from his private collections. The classification of all the cited items indicates that they are most frequently from Saigyō-shōnin-shū, but even then many of them have undergone some revision. Such unpopularity can be attributed to the organic compilation of his poetry collections which permits no easy quotation.

Owing to his relation to the Jimon school of the Tendai sect, Saigyō is often seen in the image of an ascetic monk who practiced the hard training of Shugen-dō in the mountains. The image was so influential in literature that he became a model to be referred to in creating a stoic character. In Gikei-ki, for example, Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune is obviously modelled after Saigyō as a Shugen-dō practitioner when he retreats to the northern territory in the guise of an ascetic hermit.

Saigyō-an is a hermitage in the depths of Mount Yoshino where Saigyō lived a secluded life. According to Yoshino-shiori and other regional handbooks of the Edo Period, it was located on the shore of a spring now called Koke-shimizu. As is seen in the confusion of Saigyō-an with Jiun's hermitage in Yoshino-shiori, however, they are generally unreliable. So it was reconstructed at the present site thirty years ago on the basis of the testimonies of the two eyewitnesses Motoori-Norinaga and Ueda-Akinari.