KAMAKURA PERIOD

Kamakura period: translation

(1185–1336)

The Kamakura period refers to the late medieval era of Japanese history that saw the emergence of the warrior or samurai class, which replaced the elegant court culture of the HEIAN PERIOD that had flourished for more than 400 years. It was a period that also saw the emergence of Buddhism as the popular religion of Japan, and as a significant influence on the literary productions of the period, the most important of which were the legends that were ultimately collected to form the very influentialTALE OF THE HEIKE.

By the 12th century, the power of the Heian imperial court, dominated by the Fujiwara clan, began to fall apart. The provincial governors were forming into a warrior class, the imperial bureaucracy was paranoid and inept, and retired emperors were attempting to control events from behind the throne. After the imperial succession of 1156, the new emperor sought the support of the two most powerful warrior clans in Japan: the Minamoto (or Genji) clan and the Taira (or Heike) clan. Before long the clans themselves began a power struggle, one that left the Taira in charge of Kyoto as de facto rulers of Japan, while the Minamoto retreated to the provinces east of the capital. For 20 years the Taira enjoyed their position of power, and created a court on a scale as grandiose as any the Heian rulers had ever envisioned. In a bloody civil war (called the “Gempei war”) that raged throughout the country from 1180 to 1185, the Minamoto clan returned and ultimately destroyed the Taira clan completely. Having won political, economic, and military power, the Minamoto set up a government in Kamakura, east of Kyoto, dominated by samurai warriors that were to control Japanese society for 200 years. The aristocracy was allowed to keep the capital at Kyoto, but without any real power. For the next two centuries, the aristocrats engaged in numerous plots to restore the ancient power of the Heian court.At the same time, they also tried to work with the military government to retain as many rights and privileges as they could from the old system. Because it was so integral to the identity of the Heian court culture and the aristocrats’ sense of status, traditionalwaka(poetry in Japanese) was preserved and encouraged by the court. In 1202, the retired emperor Go-Toba commissioned five editors, led by the highly respected poet Fujiwara no Teika, to compile theShin Kokin waka-shū(orNew Kokinshū), a collection of 1,978wakain 20 books, imitating the structure of the originalKOKINSHŪ. To the classifications of the originalKokinshū(dominated by nature poetry and love poetry), theNew Kokinshūadded a section of Buddhist poems and a section of Shinto poems.Unlike theKokinshū, the new anthology contained few anonymous poems, and included nearly all contemporary verse. Also, most of the poets included were professional poets. The days of gifted courtiers writing occasional poetry as a social expectation were gone.

While most of the warrior society outside of Kyoto had little use for the elegance of TANKA poems, there were a few exceptions. The poet Saigyō (Satō Norikiyo), a Buddhist priest whose 94 poems in theNew Kokinshūwere only a small fraction of the 1,552 poems he published in a collection of his own poetry, had been born into a samurai family. More surprisingly, Minamoto no Sanetomo, the third Kamakura shogun (chief samurai and practical ruler of Japan), married an aristocrat’s daughter and studiedwakapoetry as well as music and other court arts. He wrote some 700 poems before being assassinated at 27 by his political enemies (led by his own nephew). Outside of the Kyoto court, Buddhism proved to be an important influence on literature of the Kamakura period. Buddhism had been imported from China centuries earlier and was an important feature of the Heian court, but it was not until the Kamakura period that a new school of Buddhism was developed by Buddhist priests interested in appealing to the general population. The new Japanese Buddhism promised rewards to the faithful in a heavenly paradise after death (called the Pure Land), even for those who never achieved enlightenment in this life.

At the same time, a number of aristocrats took refuge from the tumultuous times by taking vows as Buddhist priests and renouncing the world, retreating to isolated areas outside the cities or the great monasteries in Nara and Kyoto. The result was a genre that became known as “recluse literature,” the best-known example of which is “An Account of a Ten-Foot Square Hut,” by Kamo no Chōmei. Kamo describes his retreat from the transient world, leaving behind the fallen capital and the world of suffering that accompanies human attachment to material things. Living in a small hermitage outside Kyoto and focusing on his ultimate rebirth, Kamo develops an attachment for the tranquil life he has created for himself, and ironically fears that this attachment will stand in the way of his enlightenment and his entry into the Pure Land.

Another form of Buddhist literature is seen in collections of what were calledsetsuwatales, short stories with clear morals that may have been put together for use in Buddhist sermons. The last such collection, compiled between 1279 and 1283, was called theShasekishū(Sand collection). It was assembled by the Buddhist priest Mujū Ichien, who, some critics claim, was more interested in the moral lessons than in a well-told story. But the most important impact of Buddhism on late Kamakura letters was in the spread ofkatarimono(or ballads), particularly those calledheikyoku(Taira songs), beginning in the 13th century. Theheikyokuwere poems concerned with incidents during the bloody Gempei war between the Taira and the Minamoto clans. The ballads were sung by blind Buddhist monks calledBiwa Hoshi—so called because they were accompanied by abiwaor lute. These were wandering singers who traveled about the country, particularly to the homes of the new samurai warrior class, whose recent ancestors were the subjects of the ballads. Thus the narratives of the war were given a heavily Buddhist coloring by their narrators, who generally attributed the downfall of the Taira clan to the sins of its leaders. By 1371, these older tales had been collected and compiled into the considerable text that today is generally known as theTale of the Heike.

Another period of bloody warfare from 1336 to 1392 finally destroyed the power of the aristocracy in Kyoto completely and brought to an end the Kamakura period. But theTale of the Heikeis the most important literary work to come from this period. It reflected the values of the new warrior culture: values of honor, loyalty, courage, and sacrifice. At the same time it reflected the new widespread Buddhist morality of its compilers.

■ Kato, Shuicho.A History of Japanese Literature: From the Man-yōshu to Modern Times. New abridged edition. Translated and edited by Don Sanderson. Richmond, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1997.

■ Keene, Donald.Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

■ Miner, Earl, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell.The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.