Poetic essence (hon'i) as Japanese literary canon

要旨

POETIC EsSENCE (HON'!) production of the work and the production of the value of the work." 2 A canonical text in this sense is constantly re-produced.Canon formation is thus concerned not only with the immediate producers of the work-the authors, the scribes, the printers, etc.-but with those agents and institutions (such as commentators, patrons, temples, schools, museums, publishing houses) that produce or re-produce the value of the text and that create the consumers and audiences capable of recognizing and desiring that value.Many of the texts that we now think of as long-standing classics such as the Man'yoshU, Kojiki, and Heike monogatari were in large part canonized in the modern period as a result of a radical configuration of notions of literature, genre, language, and learning that occurred in the late nineteenth century, a process closely related to the emergence of linguistic and cultural nationalism in the Meiji period and later.Of particular interest here is the fact that the Japanese literary canon over many centuries consisted not only of a body of selected, authoritative texts but of a canon of hon 'i, or poetic associations, which lay at the heart of the literary canon.Like the textual canon, this canon appeared at first glance to be remarkably stable, to the degree that it has been widely considered the tradition.Japanese attitudes toward nature, particularly the four seasons, are basically derived from these hon' i or poetic associations, and these attitudes toward nature and the seasons are widely regarded as being the bedrock of Japanese culture as a whole.But like all canons, this one is a constructed tradition, which has been constantly being produced and re-produced by different social communities.I would like to indicate how this canon was constructed, what it consisted of, and some of the ways in which it has been transformed as a consequence of a shift in the transmitters of that canon. 3

主題