Kyōgen: comic plays that turn medieval society upside down

要旨

The Shinkokin wakashu or Shinkokinshu, commissioned by Retired Emperor GoToba and compiled by a team including Fujiwara no Teika under the close supervision of GoToba, is the eighth imperial collection of waka and the most influential in the medieval period. Teika's poem does not end on a noun, nor does it have a strong syntactical break. These next two qualities may be observed in the second Spring chapter of Shinkokinshu. Shinkokinshu is a pillar of medieval Japanese aesthetics, and it was the important poetic text of medieval Japan. The official agency had lay dormant since the mid tenth century, when it had served as an administrative base for the compilers of Gosen wakashu, the second imperial waka anthology. The anthology not only influenced later waka poets, it also became an important resource for noh playwrights, renga and haikai poets. Evaluation of Shinkokinshu by readers from the early modern period to the present has been largely positive.

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