Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman Comparisons PDF

Classical World Literatures
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Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman
Comparisons
wiebke denecke
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Denecke, Wiebke.
Classical world literatures : Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman comparisons / Wiebke Denecke.
pages. cm.
ISBN 9780199971848
1. Classical literatureHistory and criticism.
and criticism. I. Title.
PA3010.D46 2013
809dc23
2012046082
2. East Asian literatureHistory
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-freepaper
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FrZ
fortunati amoris divinatione
denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen
da sie dich behten
auf allen deinenWegen
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
CHAPTER1
Setting the Stage:Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman

Constellations 20
CHAPTER2
Starting avant la lettre:An Essay on How to Tell the

Beginnings of Literature and Eloquence 62
CHAPTER3
Latecomers:Of Ornament, Simplicity, and

Decline 81
CHAPTER4
City-Building or Writing? How Aeneas and Prince

Shtoku Made Rome and Japan 120
CHAPTER5
Rome and Kyoto:Capitals, Genres, Gender
CHAPTER6
Poetry in Exile:Sugawara no Michizane and

Ovid 203
CHAPTER7
Satire in Foreign Attire:The Ambivalences of

Learning in Late Antiquity and Medieval Japan
CHAPTER8
EPILOGUE
154
234
The Synoptic Machine:Sino-Japanese and

Greco-Roman Juxtapositions 265
Beyond the Comforts of Inuence:Deep
Comparisons 289
Bibliography
Index
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has taken time and courage. Ihave been blessed with people around
me who made sure that neither was in short supply. Without them Icould have
never embarked on this ambitious project. Ihad some fairly circumscribed Chinaand Japan-related book projects lined up, when suddenly opportunity struck in
2004: a long-awaited and eye-opening trip to Greece with my husband Zolti
and my parents, and a conference on transcultural literary history hosted by a
Swedish research group at Villa Brevik outside of Stockholm, where Ipresented
faute de mieux on early Japanese and Latin attempts at writing literary history,
made me realize that this book needed to be written. I found myself wanting
to make it up to my formidable teachers of Latin and Greek at the humanistic
Max-Planck Gymnasium in my hometown of Gttingen who taught me the love
of grammar and Greek and Latin literature from childhood, before Icould even
utter a word in a foreign language other than my native German:the late Fritz
Tamm, Helga Strhlein, Oscar Mattner, Wolfgang Fauth, and Otta Wenskus. Ifelt
Ihad let them down, having drifted to studies of classical China and Japan instead
of staying with my passionate interests in Classical Antiquity.
But the idea was not enough. Ineeded encouragement to work on the comparison of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman cultural constellations for which
Icould not look to any previous pioneering scholarship. Throughout, Zolti was
the most vigorous fan of the project; David Damrosch an enthusiastic supporter
when the road was bumpy; Michael Puett an ever-inspiring advocate of bold comparative work; and the positive response to the earliest seed chapters from Wai-yee
Li, Katharina Volk, and Stephen Owen gave me further condence that this could
work. Aconference on Translatio: Translation and Cultural Appropriation in the
Ancient World, which David and Iorganized at Columbia University in 2006,
conrmed the impression that scholars of Greco-Roman, Near Eastern and Indian
antiquities were all too eager to ask a new set of compelling comparative questions. An emerging wave seemed underway.
Graced with support on so many fronts, Iwas lucky to spend time in stimulating communities that allowed me to devote myself to the project. The period at
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the Society of Fellows at Columbia University, under the directorship of David

Johnston, proved crucial to the initial phase of hunting and gathering. My time
as a fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study thanks to the Mellon
Foundation pushed the project to a new level. Thanks go to Provost Liz Boylan
and my department chair Rachel McDermott for allowing me that time away
from Barnard College. Conversations with Nicola di Cosmo, Heinrich von Staden,
Caroline Bynum, Dan Potts, Denis Feeney, and Ben Elman led the way. Ican only
apologize to Patricia Crone for not following her urgent prodding to introduce
a Persian-Arabic perspective into my epilogue; but the instructive resonances
and divergences with the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellations remain
within my collateral vision. Sat Michios continuous support through a four-year
long Center of Excellence project at Kei University in Tokyo gave me the opportunity to dive into a number of challenging kanbun texts. Suzuki Sadamis hosting
at the International Research Center of Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto
under the auspices of a Japan foundation fellowship allowed a previous Tokyo-ite
immersion in the old capital and its research communities. And a stay at the
American Academy in Rome, thanks to Carmela Vircillo Franklin, let me change
roles and gaze back from Rome toKyoto.
This book has beneted from the inspiration of a few projects that unfolded
in parallel:the work with Pete Simon, Martin Puchner, and our small group of
editors on the Norton Anthology of World Literature (3rd edition, 2012)was a memorable journey of comparably daunting scope. Albert Hostdts inspired support
at Brill Publishers for the new East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture book
series, which Zhang Longxi and myself are editing, helped establish a new venue
for cross-cultural comparative studies with an East Asian component, which will
hopefully invite further conversations that Itry to start in this book. Discussions
and workshops with my colleague Sunil Sharma and the core group of our Boston
University Comparative Studies of the Premodern World Initiative have been a
great foyer for enterprising comparative thinking and collaboration. Iam pleased
to be part of the lively crowd of the young Modern Languages & Comparative
Literature Department at BU:William Waters, Pat Johnson, and Gina Sapiro gave
me a warmest welcome when Ijoined the faculty in 2010; the collegial ambiance
and day-to-day collaboration with my colleagues Cathy Yeh, Sarah Frederick, Keith
Vincent, Yoon Sun Yang, Huang Weijia, Anna Elliott, Sunil Sharma, Margaret
Litvin, William Waters, Peter Schwartz, Gisela Hoecherl-Alden, Abigail Gillman,
and Robert Richardson has been a pleasure.
I am greatly indebted to those who volunteered to read draft chapters and oered
ample wise advice and welcome correction: Lewis Cook, Kathryn Gutzwiller,
Peter Kornicki, Wai-yee Li, Stephen Owen, and James Uden. David Damrosch
and Denis Feeney were innitely generous with their time, reading and thinking
through incarnations of the entire manuscript. Ihave equally beneted from valuable discussions about specic points in the manuscript with Haruo Shirane, Sat
Michio, Kno Kimiko, Kannot Akio, Yoshihara Hiroto, Uchida Mioko, Hatooka
Akira, Yamamoto Tokur, Shinma Kazuyoshi, and WangYong.
The hosts and audiences on the occasion of lectures at Columbia University,
Zhejiang Gongshang University (Hangzhou), University of Venice, Kei
x | Acknowledgments
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University, Meisei University (Tokyo), Princeton University, Harvard University,

Yale University, University of Hong Kong, Nichibunken (Kyoto), Kansai University
(Osaka), and Boston University have provided great food for thought. And conferences and panels at various AAS and ACLA Annual Meetings and EAJS conventions, at Harvard University, Fudan University (Shanghai), Boston University,
and Tsinghua University (Beijing) have helped me place my project into ever-new
frames and stimulating conversations.
I could have accomplished nothing without the lifeline of this project:the various libraries at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Kei, Nichibunken, and Waseda
University (Tokyo). I am most grateful for the great assistance I received from
patient librarians in these various places. They helped with books, materials,
smiles, and everyday goodhumor.
The publication of this book would have been considerably delayed without
the tireless and clever help of Sumiyoshi Tomohiko (Shid bunko, Kei Institute
of Oriental Classics) and Iwasaki Yuko in gathering some tough permissions
for visuals. Je Henderson, Paul Taylor (Warburg Institute), Sandy Paul (Trinity
College Library, Cambridge), and Peter Green have also greatly facilitated the permissions process. Thanks go to Daniel Poch and Dustin Dixon for their meticulous help with proofreading. I am also truly grateful to Bonnie Costello and the
Boston University Center for the Humanities who most generously supported this
project with a publication production grant.
This book does not t any clear disciplinary or thematic categories in the publishing world. Iwas all the more impressed with Stefan Vrankas careful initial
probing into the manuscript and enthusiastic support for its publication with
Oxford University Press. His broad vision, keen judgment, creative mind, and
exemplary eciency never fail to surprise me. Working with his expert assistant,
Sarah Pirovitz, has been a joy. And I am grateful for the indefatigable eorts
Stacey Victor and Molly Morrison devoted to the careful production of this book.
Lastly, Iwould like to thank two more unpredictable forces for their gracious
support:the anonymous reviewers for their strong advocacy of this project and
their oering of immensely helpful and extensive comments; and our son Simon
for patiently waiting for mommy to nish her manuscript before taking his resolute dive out into this wondrousworld.
Boston, May2013
Acknowledgments
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INTRODUCTION
1. The Relative Age of Cultures

Like people in a community, cultures in contact have relative ages. A community might respect older peoples life experience and wisdom or consider them
a reactionary burden to society. In turn, youth can be the blessed phase of bold
courage and innovation or the period of life when everything that is dubious about
human beingsblind ignorance, unbridled libido, oblivious disdain for the voice
of reason and wisdom of experiencebursts out and threatens a communitys
cherished values. Regardless of particular images of youth or old age, the relative
age of people and cultures plays out on the grounds of seniority and inferiority,
cultural and political capital, expectations of rise and decline, novelty and tradition. The youth of the United States of America is the closest site in todays world
that allows us to experience the drama of the relative age of cultures. And in the
decades to come the economic and political tte--tte between the young America
and the newly-young age-old China will not just prove decisive for our daily lives,
but also provide a monumental spectacle for the study of the relative age of cultures and the purposes it canserve.
This seems to be an apt moment to turn our gaze back by a few millennia and
reect on some particular ways in which the drama of relative age played out in
early East Asia and the Ancient Mediterranean, in particular in Early Japan and in
Ancient Rome. This book explores how writers of younger cultures were aected
by the presence of what we will call an older reference culture. How did Latin
and Early Japanese authors write their own literature through and against their
cultural models of Greece and China? How did authors of the younger cultures
respond to the challenge of appropriating foreign precedents of genres and literary forms, rhetorical sophistication and poetological reection, conceptual vocabulary and lexical imagination for their writing in a dierent language and within
new political and cultural contexts? How did they navigate between the attractions
of cultural self-colonization, which promised access to a realm of venerable renement and sophistication of the reference culture, and the desire for self-assertion
fueled by cultural pride and anxious competition for recognition?
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Unlike with individual peoples minds in a community, there is of course no

such thing as an Ancient Japanese or Roman collective consciousness vis--vis the
older Chinese or Greek civilizations. Perspectives on the reference cultures were
manifold and contradictory; and the political and cultural constellation between
China and Japan and between Greece and Rome underwent signicant changes
throughout the periods considered in this book, namely Ancient Japan during the
Nara (710784) and Heian Periods (7941185), and Ancient Rome from the Middle
Republic of the third century bce to the Late Roman empire of the fth century
ce. In particular, the Greco-Roman constellation changed drastically during the
rst centuries of Roman literary production. Anumber of Roman writers of the
third and second centuries bce were Greek or Greek-speaking, while living on
the Italic peninsula that was rapidly becoming the master of the Mediterranean;
by the rst century bce the Greek motherland and many Hellenized areas of the
Mediterranean were under Roman rule and Greece had to deal with its sudden
political submission to what had once only been a primitive polity in the Italic
area of Latium, negligible in the greater scheme of powerful Hellenistic states
dominating the Eastern and Western Mediterranean.
The Greeks had not always been older. In Platos dialogue Timaeus they seemed
like innocent infants to Egyptian priests:
Then one of the priests, a very old man, said:Solon, Solon, you Greeks never
grow up. There isnt an old man among you. What do you mean? Solon replied.
None of you have mature minds, the priest replied. You have no ancient tradition to imbue your minds with old beliefs and with understanding aged by time.1
This is how an aged Egyptian priest scolds Solon, one of the Greek Seven Sages,
when Solon visits the city of Sais in Egypt and has little to oer when asked to tell
his Egyptian hosts about the Greek past. What the Greek Solon cannot deliver,
the Egyptian priest does: he divulges to Solon the glorious past of the city of
Athens, saying that Athens fought back the powerful dynasty of the sunken island
of Atlantis. In so doing, it saved not just itself, but most of the Mediterranean,
even up to Egypt, from being enslaved by the Atlantides. Thus, according to the
Egyptian priest, Athens has a glorious past, even if Greeks cannot remember
it. This is because, unlike Egypt, where historical records survive intact, Greece
and the rest of the world were regularly conagrated by res and deluges that
destroyed all previous records of civilization. In the Timaeus the old Critias, possibly modeled on Platos great-grandfather, relates how the hieroglyphic record
saved Athens unknown past from oblivion.
The main subject of discussion in the Timaeus is the origin of the cosmos; and
Critiass account of Solons experiences in Egypt is only a prelude to the philosopher Timaeuss long exposition of the generation of the world and humankind.2
1
Timaeus 22b. Translation from Watereld 2008, 9.
: , , , . ,
; . , , :
.
2
For the complex play with beginnings in the dialogue, see Sallis1999.
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But the two accounts are connected by the vertiginous trompe loeil of relative
time scales through which Plato manages to give Greece and Athens old pedigree, despite the Egyptian priests lament over their childish ignorance. Consider
the telescopic (or should we say, teletemporal?) setup of Solons account of his
experiences in Egypt:On the day of the festival for the Egyptian goddess Neith,
identied with the Greek Athena, a very old Egyptian priest tells young Solon
a tale about the pre-history of Athens, which Solon later in life tells Critias, the
young son of a friend of his; the very same Critias at the age of ninety tells this
to his ten-year-old grandson Critias during a festival that features competitions
in poetry recitation. It is this child Critias who in old age relates the incident to
Socrates as a speaker in Platos Timaeus. With generous counting, Solons tale
about the all-too-youthful Greeks is about half a dozen generations old by the time
it is imparted to its listeners. Thus, Platos lengthy explication of the transmission of the story becomes structural evidence of Greeces deep historical memory,
which competes with the literal grain of the story and seems to confer the prize of
wisdom and old age onEgypt.
Replacement or subtle transposition is one of the key procedures in Timaeus.
There is a dynamic of transposition between Egypt and Greece, Athenas city of
Sais, and Athenas Athens, an Egyptian priest and a Greek sage. Then there is the
transposition of a Socratic tale into one told by Critias:we learn in the Timaeus that
Socrates had sketched his ideal state just a day before (in what is known as Platos
Republic) and that Socrates expected to be paid back for his eorts, asking his
interlocutors to apply his outlines of an ideal state to a concrete city; it is no coincidence that the Timaeus is set during the Panathenaic Games, an annual festival
celebrating the goddess Athena, and that Critias complies with something like a
praise hymn to Athena and Athens, the hitherto unknown savior of the world from
Atlantic military aggression.
Lastly, there is a seemingly ingenuous replacement of bad imitative with good
philosophical Platonic poetry:Plato replaces his attack on Homer and on poetry
as an imitative, deceptive art, which Socrates had advanced in the last book of
the Republic, with a praise of Solon as a poet in the Timaeus. Critiass grandfather
claims that Solon would have been more famous than Homer or Hesiod had he
only had the time to frame his experiences in Egypt in poetry. Although the myth
of Atlantis has captured the imagination of generations of readers, since the rst
commentaries on it were written in the Early Academy, and persists in our mapping of the world, Plato is our single source for the tale of Solon and Atlantis. That
he relates it in a philosophical dialogue, lling in for the poetry Solon did not get
to write, shows that the Timaeus is not just a time-tale about the relative age of
cultures, Egyptian and Greek, but also about the relative age of forms of wisdom,
older poetry and younger philosophy.
Platos Timaeus and Critiass hymn to pre-deluge Athens, as recovered from
Egypt, is a relentlessly suggestive tale and a virtuosic exercise in trying to
out-past its rival, as Eviatar Zerubavel has called the attempt to make one tradition or culture look older than the others. In Caesars Calendar: Ancient Time
and the Beginnings of History Denis Feeney masterfully traces the politics of time
Introduction
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and out-pasting in the Ancient Mediterranean.3 At rst sight Critias has Egypt
out-past Athens, but Plato has Athens also out-past Egypt. Out-pasting is a
reaction to the perception of historical atness, the experience through cultural
contact that ones own culture lacks the historical depth available to the members
of an older reference culture.
2. Reference Cultures
I will use the term reference culture to describe the roles that the older cultures of
China and Greece played in the literary cultures of early Japan and ancient Rome.
Unfortunately, our current conceptual vocabulary for describing cross-cultural
processes often fails to render important characteristics in the Sino-Japanese
and Greco-Roman cultural constellations. The metaphorical talk of mother and
daughter cultures, probably inspired by the life sciences, leaves us wondering
about the absence of the patria, while also reducing the process of active cultural
appropriation to a process of biological replication. It encourages old and pervasive prejudices against Rome and Japan as cultures lacking creative independence
and originality. The curse of the imitative has haunted studies of Japanese and
Roman culture in equal measure, though to dierent eect. Latinists are scholars of a long-lost empire that existed on distant territory (at least for American
Latinists) and are part of a global community of scholars in various countries of
Europe and North America, each with more or less legitimate national traditions
of Classical and Latin studies. Arguments about the originality of Roman culture
or lack thereof seem to be part of the teasing between Hellenists and Latinists and
a function of professional pride, but they can only step on long-rottentoes.
Japan, in contrast, is a living nation state still headed by an imperial family that
administers the heritage of a continuous imperial tradition, presumably stretching back more than two-and-a-half millennia. Claims to Japanese uniqueness,
an intellectual club against the prejudice of a lack of originality, have survived
from the imperialist period into the postwar era.4 Japanese scholars growing up in
the fabric of Japanese society and researching their own national literary tradition
are indirectly aected by this cultural framework and produce undoubtedly the
largest part of research on Japanese literature in the world. Scholars outside Japan
can contribute to the rich eld of national literary studies (kokubungaku

),
but the center of authority in the eld of Japanese literature is unmistakably Japan,
not a transnational set of claimants that accepts each other on quite equal terms,
as is the case with the eld of Classics in Europe and the West. Thus, the curse of
the imitative has haunted Latinists more than Japanese literature scholars, who
3
Feeney describes in particular how the synoptic time-tables in works by the church fathers
Eusebius and Jerome showed graphically that Hebrew and Asiatic history reached much further
back than pagan Greek and Roman history. Feeney 2007, 29. Feeneys inspired study of how the
process of synchronizingmatching important events in one locale with those in anothercreated
shared history, and shared cultural identity (as well as competition over both) in the Hellenistic
Mediterranean and in Rome has much to say about the question of relative age in general.
4
For an analysis of the symptoms and implications of the debates around Japanese uniqueness, see
Dale1986.
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can naturally rely on their national cultural condence. But for both elds the
terms mother and daughter cultures, though they sound cozy, direct our view
on the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellation in an unproductive direction, suggesting a passive and imitative reception rather than active and creative
appropriation of the reference culture.
Many studies of intercultural communication and acculturation processes
rely on the concepts of source culture and host/target culture, borrowed from
linguistics and translation studies. If applied to the translation of a text from a
source language (SL) into a target language (TL) the terms are useful, because
they refer to two concrete linguistic and physical objects and to the one specic
moment in time when somebody consciously transfers, in whatever slavishly literal or creatively imagined way, an extant original set of sentences into a new
language, producing a new set of sentences. However, once the linguistic transposition process is applied metaphorically to cultural translatio the terms fail to
describe what is most fascinating about the process of cultural appropriation and
acculturation. There is no one source or origin, in double ways: There was no
essential source China, when rulers and elites from the Japanese archipelago
started to model their state more closely on Chinese and Korean precedents from
the seventh and eighth centuries onward. What they gathered about China was
a coincidental mix of traditions picked up from various locales, books, and people
during a period of disunion, the Six Dynasties Period (220589), and the new, ethnically diverse cosmopolitan Tang Empire (618906). Yet more importantly, what
early Japanese extracted from the inux of Chinese books into the archipelago
and the direct experience of the very few Japanese who had visited China, and
what they then chose to adapt for their own purposes, is yet farther away from any
imaginary source China. There was no singular source text for translators
to workfrom.
Nor was the host culture necessarily a hospitable host: when a new
wave of Hellenistic culture reached Rome due to its conquest in the Eastern
Mediterranean in the second century bce, many Romans, such as Cato the Elder,
made vehement arguments against hosting it. They were conscientious objectors against the host role in their public poise, but they were themselves already
heavily Hellenized and had little control over the messy and overwhelming inux
of Greek luxury goods, philosophical ideas and technical terms, religious cults,
Greek rhetoricians and doctors that changed the face of Roman culture and
Roman self-understanding within a few generations. Thus the host metaphor
vastly downplays two of the most intriguing and tantalizing aspects of cultural
contact: the degree of initial resistance to the foreign and the uncannily rapid
adoption of the foreign that is soon no longer consciously hosted, but considered as own. And there was no target culture either:Greek immigrants into the
Italic peninsula did not target Latium and Rome with their cultural inuence.
Neither did Chinese emperors target Japan with a conscious mission civilisatrice
that would have gone beyond their rm conviction that barbarians who were
lucky enough to be exposed to the transformative power of Chinese civilization
could become cultivated and morally superior individuals and would greatly benet from cultural contact withChina.
Introduction
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Curiously, despite the fact that human relations are at the heart of processes of
cultural contact, metaphors drawn from the language of human relations fail to
capture crucial aspects of the dynamics of cultural exchange between early Japan
and China, and of Greece and Rome, respectively. What then about the concept
of reference culture? How can it draw out those aspects and allow us to get a
more palpable sense of the abstract notion of a Sino-Japanese constellation and
a comparable Greco-Roman cultural constellation? First, there is the legal meaning of reference, the referral of a matter to a higher legal authority for ultimate
decision. Both China and Greece loomed as cultures that not just served as the
basis of Japanese and Roman legal culture, but also, metaphorically, had the status
of a higher authority, a cultural superego that could be drawn on for ones own
justication.
Second, in ethical terms, the association with an older reference culture
granted a certicate of civilized conduct, much like a reference letter. Younger
cultures would be elevated by their association with an older reference culture and
show themselves to be on the side of civilization, not barbarity. When, for example, the Chinese Emperor Xuanzong (685762) closes a farewell poem addressed
to a Japanese ambassador about to return to Japan with, thanks to this astonishing Confucian gentleman, our royal transformative power will shine brightly
abroad,5 he makes the Japanese ambassador a attering compliment, placing him
on equal moral ground with Chinese subjects because he has received the benets of royal transformative power. In the case of Japan, we can pinpoint when
Chinese stopped considering the Japanese simply as one out of the many barbarian states surrounding China. Chinese had associated the Japanese archipelago
with Wo (pronounced Wa in Japanese), possibly meaning the land of the dwarf
people for almost half a millennium, but started to use a much more attering
epithet in the early eighth century: Nihon

, Root of the Sun. Although Wa
continued to be used, the new nomenclature signied that the Chinese no longer
lumped Japanese together with the dozens of barbarian polities that regularly
sent ambassadors and paid tribute to the Chinese court, but were now elevating
Japan to a Confucian state with Confucian subjects like the ambassador Emperor
Xuanzong addressed, who had acquired the values of Chinese civilization.
Third, the concept of a reference culture also brings out the material dimension of how Chinese and Greek civilization shaped Japanese and Roman communities and social space. In a social science context, a reference group is a
control group of individuals with certain behavioral patterns considered normal
against which behavioral scientists measure the aberration of social behavior. Of
course, neither Japan nor Rome was aberrant, China or Greece were no absolute
golden standard, and there is no gure of a demiurge, the social scientist comparing two groups, who is undertaking his experiments with early Japanese and
Ancient Romans. Rather, individuals living in Japanese and Roman society were
part of social practices that originated in part in their older reference cultures
and that profoundly shaped the material landscape they inhabited. The Athenian
Yin jing bi junzi / wanghua yuan zhaozhao Quan Tang shiyi 1, 10241. See
also Zhang Buyun 1984,12.
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institution of annual ritual events featuring theatrical performances was eventually adopted in Rome and resulted in the construction of Greek-style theaters by
the mid-rst century bce.6 Chinese centralized rule had resulted in a highly compartmentalized, checkerboard structure of Chinese urban centers, and when early
Japanese rulers tried to enhance their grip over larger parts of territory through
centralization measures, they came to construct capitals based on the model of
Chinese capitals such as Changan. The checkerboard structure of modern-day
Xian in China and of Nara and Kyoto can still be enjoyed by the leisurely strolling
visitor. Thus, political measures and social practices in the reference cultures
produced material culture such as cities and theaters, visible frames of reference, which Japanese and Romans adopted and adapted to their own purposes.
In a fourth, linguistic, sense reference means the thing to which a word
refers. The word and signier Rome refers to the city and signied Rome
in the visible world. The linguistic meaning of reference is particularly useful
in thinking about younger cultures that develop in close symbiosis with older
ones. Beyond the references that authors of the younger culture could make to
specic books and texts of the older culture, to which we will turn momentarily,
they also developed images of the older culture as an object reference, an icon
often designed to closely converge with or diverge from their own image. In the
early modern world of European Rococo a chinoiserie was a decorative element
that introduced European reimaginations of Chinese style elements into interior
design, furniture, pottery, or garden architecture. The orientalizing wall paintings and porcelains in the Chinese Teahouse that Johann Gottfried Bring constructed for Frederick the Great in the Potsdam palace of Sanssouci were made
to please Prussian eyes. Similarly, though called Pekings, the decorative silken
wall screens were produced in Prussian silk factories that had adopted East Asian
techniques of silk production to satisfy their domestic demands. The concept of
chinoiserie originated in the visual culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe, where reports about Chinese arts, philosophy, and politics publicized by
missionaries working in China fuelled the emergence of China as a domestic
icon. But we could also apply the term to early Japan and speak of chinoiseries
in Japan. Early Japanese texts variously show China as an exotic foreign country,
as unsurpassed in its authority, or, quite to the contrary, either not comparable
to Japan or simply, as Japan. When the reference culture becomes an object
reference, an icon of sorts, the older culture is not engaged on its own grounds,
but staged in a play whose rules the younger cultures determine. In this sense the
reference culture could become a large-scale iconic signier in the eyes of the
younger cultures beholders that signied more than any of its actual historical
incarnations.7
6
There was, of course, a reversal of this process in Rome, after it conquered Greece:Romans
introduced features characteristic of the Roman forum and, later, of the Roman imperial cult into the
Greek cityscape. See Walker1997.
7
For a collection of essays analyzing ways in which certain texts and genres have constructed
China as an iconic object of knowledge, see Hayot, Saussy, and Yao 2008. The editors of the
volume coin the suggestive term Sinography for a proposed history of the distinctive constructions
of the iconic object China in sinology.
Introduction
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
Two further connotations of reference bring us to this studys specic focus

on Japanese and Roman literary cultures. There is the bibliographical dimension
of the word reference, meaning the use of a reference work for study and scholarly verication. Japanese and Roman literary culture relied heavily on the thesaurus of Chinese and Greek literary learning. Young Japanese aristocrats studied
the canon of Confucian Classics to derive values of moral behavior and acquire
polished eloquence just as adolescent Romans read Homer and the tragic poets to
reect on human conduct and enhance their rhetorical training. Yet more importantly, the canon of the reference culture was not studied as naked text, but read
alongside a great variety of scholarly reference works from China and Hellenistic
centers of learning.
Lastly, the concept reference culture points eloquently to the most microscopic symptoms of cultural intertwinement:allusive references that authors
of the younger culture make to texts produced by authors of the older reference
culture. This more strictly textual aspect of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman
relation, which we can capture with terms such as creative emulation, parody,
allusion, or, in more recent parlance, intertextuality, has engendered a scholarly eld and methodology of its own. Tracking down presumable allusions in
Japanese and Roman texts to their Chinese and Greek source of origin has been
one of the most fundamental paradigms for textual criticism of Japanese and
Latin literature. This scholarly instinct has produced meticulous, impressive
commentarial apparatuses and editions. It has added depth to our reading of
the Japanese and Roman texts by excavating the layers of echoes from Chinese
or Greek texts that a Japanese or Roman author might have intended to underlay
his words. At the same time, when focusing on tracking down allusions to their
presumed origins in the reference culture without exploring their signicance,
it can encourage lingering prejudices against Japanese and Roman literatures
as mere imitative shadows of their Chinese and Greek sources, a mere locus
passivus of their reference cultures locus classicus. Yet, in the past twenty some
years allusion as a form of literary inventiveness and creative self-assertion has
received much attention, in particular in Latin studies and, to a limited degree,
in Japanese literary studies. Literary reception studies are a lions share of what
Japanologists and Latinists have done and do with their texts. Therefore, the concept of a reference culture, a culture that Japanese and Latin authors point to
through an innite number of allusive vectors, seems especially apt to capture
the characteristic nature of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman cultural constellations and their comparability.
It is in particular the bibliographical and literary aspect of reference in reference culture that distinguishes the Greco-Roman constellation from the engagement between Egypt and Greece, which we touched upon with the Timaeus. In
Greek writings on Egypt there is much admiration of its ancient civilization and
we can see a great scientic and ethnographic curiosity in authors like Herodotus
and Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Plutarch and Iamblichus. Also, after the conquest
of Greece by Alexander the Great, Alexandria in Lower Egypt became the scholarly center of the Hellenistic world and its librarians and scholars lived in contemporary Ptolemaic Egypt while working on Greek grammar and producing
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
the foundational editions and commentaries for classical Greek literature. There
were even members of the Egyptian priestly elite such as Manetho, Apion, and
Horapollon Nilotes, who wrote in Greek while mastering the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic sources of their own tradition. But the Greeks curiosity was not
matched by Egyptian interest in Greek culture. The Egyptians did not even have a
precise term for the Greeks, but hieroglyphic texts call them those who squat in
the swamp holes, which was an epithet used for people imagined to live in the
extreme North (much as the Greeks would call people living in unknown northern
realms Hyperboreans, those beyond the North Wind).8
It is extraordinary that, as Jan Assmann puts it, whereas the Greeks showed an
eager interest in the culture and the land of Egypt without, however, making the
eort to study the language, the Egyptians learned Greek without getting interested
in Greek culture and geography.9 Late texts like the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of apocryphal treatises written in the rst three centuries of the Common Era,
explain the absence of textual engagement between Egypt and Greece with secrecy
commandments:
Leave this text untranslated, so that these secrets remain hidden from the Greeks
and their irreverent, feeble, and orotund speech does not undermine the dignity
and vigor of our language and the energy of the names. For the discourse of the
Greeks, though outwardly impressive, is empty, and their philosophy is nothing but verbose noise. We by contrast, we employ not words but sounds full of
energy.10
Attributed to Thoth, the Egyptian god of scribes, and his Greek embodiment
Hermes Trismegistus, the Corpus Hermeticum sounds at times like a Greek collection with Oriental religious coloration, but at other times like an Egyptian text
lled with Neoplatonic thought. This corpus shows probably the most intimate
mutual engagement between Greece and Egypt and is so ambivalent that the
reader constantly wonders which is the tenor, and which the vehicle of this
comparative allegory of Egypt and Greece. The argument against translation in
this passage, ironically written in Greek, is an argument about the loss of the magical power of original Egyptian words and names, a prominent concern in cultures
with a written tradition and in particular of mystery cults in multilingual contexts.
Thus, the passage tells us more about the logic of secrecy in mystery cults and in
the milieu of hermetism in Egypt that produced this corpus of texts.11 It can hardly
explain the puzzling disjunction between Greeks enthusiasm about Egyptian culture and customs, but lack of interest in learning to read Egyptian texts. For the
Greeks, Egypt was fascinating and challenging because it was old and venerable
but it always remained the distant exotic other. This remarkable feature of the
Egypto-Hellenic cultural constellation and the lack of textual engagement with
the other culture explains why Egypt never became a reference culture in all the
Assmann 2005,41.
Ibid.,41.
10
Quoted from Assmann 2002,396.
11
On the milieu of hermeticism in Egypt and the Corpus Hermeticum, see Fowden1986.
9
Introduction
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
connotations of the term noted above, but always remained on the level of the linguistic object reference, an Orientalized icon. Traces of this iconization persist
to this day in scholarship, museum culture, and fashion.
3. The Comparative Imperative

In Chapter 1 we will examine in more detail the similarities and complicating
divergences that justify the comparison between Japanese and Roman literary
cultures, which is the focus of this book. We will see that both developed late
against the backdrop of the highly sophisticated literature of their reference cultures and reect on its implications. We will also see that they both started from
a scholarly world in their reference cultures that had already produced a canon of
literature and learning, when the younger literary cultures emerged, which then
came to serve as the basis for elite education in both younger cultures. That the
Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellations were radically dierent in their
geopolitical and linguistic dynamic, and that their literary cultures had their distinctive spectrum and hierarchy of genres, complicates our comparison. But it
also gives it further depth, because these three dissimilitudes will allow us in the
chapters to come to more easily distinguish choices and preferences of particular Japanese and Latin authors from more systematic dierences between their
texts that are rooted in the fundamental divergences of the Sino-Japanese and
Greco-Roman constellations.
The rst chapter will provide justication for the comparative project of this
book, but the justication of a particular comparison says hardly anything about
the motivation for undertaking it. Why plunge into an enterprise covering so many
grounds and texts that, on top of being vast, have been so well trodden and scrutinized by such a variety of unrelated specialists that need to be engaged, letalone
satised? This book tries to open a new eld of study, hoping that others will
follow. There is an increasing number of inspiring studies comparing the intellectual, cultural, and scientic history of early China and Greece. Karl Jasperss Axial
Age paradigm, which locates the emergence of the worlds most important philosophical and religious traditions in India, China, Europe, and the Middle East in
the last half of the rst millennium bce, has certainly encouraged such comparative approaches.12 More recently, historians have started to pursue comparisons of
China and Rome in the context of global studies of empire and bureaucratic formations.13 Yet to my knowledge nobody has so far undertaken an extended study
involving literatures of multiple early East Asian and Mediterranean cultures, as
this book does in comparatively exploring the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman
literary constellations.
12
Important edited volumes and monographs on comparisons of Greece and China include Reding
1985, Raphals 1992, Lu 1998, Shankman 2000, and Shankman and Durrant 2002. For comparisons
in history of science, see the extensive work of G.E. R.Lloyd, including Lloyd 2005. For a graceful
comparative study of Greek and Chinese medicine, see Kuriyama 1999. Beecroft 2010 is an inspiring
study comparing early Greek and Chinese poetry through the lens of concepts of authorship.
13
See for example Scheidel 2009, and Mutschler and Mittag2008.
10
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
My project has been driven by a restless, inevitable urgency, the sense of a

comparative imperative that has been imposing itself as the only means to keep
intellectually sane in our ever more intertwined global world. It is not simply the
product of a liberating intellectual aneurism that more casual comparative enterprises of previous generations, so Ilike to imagine, could indulge to freely engage
in. But the nostalgia for such comparative aneurism is much less sweet than
todays formidable challenge to conceptualize the tremendous cultural and historical gaps of our economically and physically interconnected world. To understand
the urgency of the project a few words about its authors trajectory are in place. As
a German citizen Iwas trained as a Sinologist and Japanologist in Germany, several European countries and the United States, accompanied by periods of study
and work in China and Japan. But the rst foreign languages I learned when
growing up were Latin and Greek. Iwas about to embark on university studies of
Mediterranean antiquity, when a stay in Chinain the context of medical studies
Ipursued in parallel to my degrees in East Asian languages and Greek and Roman
philosophyput me on a path toward premodern China and Japan, and led eventually to PhD studies and teaching posts in East Asian studies in the United States.
Many readers of these lines will probably have trajectories that are similarly brimming with exposure to life and work on dierent continents, and reading, thinking, and arguing in a host of dierent languages and through the lens of various
academic traditions. This holds also true for many of my students, whose family
histories, emigration and immigration experiences, and unusual combination of
disciplines and languages produce a vertiginously rich world. Exposure, perhaps one of the most iconic words for the current globalization process, imposes
as well. We cannot choose whether our reading of a Japanese Noh play will aect
our long-standing cherished readings of Greek drama; whether a sudden passion
for Sanskrit poetics might warp our previous convictions about Chinese literary
thought; or whether our knowledge of Hungarian grammar, which allows for the
inection of an innitive depending on the agent or implied personal pronoun,
will make all languages that do not allow for it (most, Iguess) suddenly look sorely
imprecise. We cannot chooseour exposure will impose. Keeping track of this
continuous and salubrious intellectual contamination is both a biographical enterprise for many of us and the urgent call of our present moment, which makes the
comparative unprecedentedly imperative in our scholarly pursuits. In the end,
my students anxious desire to tame the confusion of loose ends, make revelatory
connections and inscribe them into the mental map of their dreams and goals in
life has been the strongest motivation for me to take the comparative imperative
seriously and write this book. Their curiosity and persistent questions deserve
answers, or at least strategies for answers.
While trying to better understand the cultural dynamics between Chinese
and Japanese literary cultures, Icame to see the Greco-Roman case as an excellent vantage point from which to better grasp the Sino-Japanese constellation.
As Iwent along, my motivations for the project exceeded the simple utilitarian
calculus of gaining a better glimpse of Japan through Rome. I discovered that
Iwas drawn to a comparison focused on antiquity, because comparative work on
the formative early stages of cultures would be particularly important to notice
Introduction
11
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
and question old habits. Comparisons might be equally valuable, but they matter
dierently:Greco-Roman antiquity sets the stage for virtually all grand narratives
of Western cultural history, and so does Chinese antiquity for East Asian cultural
history. By working on the most overdetermined, classical periods on both sides,
my study hopes to shift well-known ground to greatest eect for our contemporary
self-understanding.
This decision also guided me away from other grand comparative projects that
are often evoked by Japanologists, but largely still await pioneering treatment:for
example comparisons involving early Japanese and medieval European literatures
that examine the dynamic between classical and vernacular languages and literatures, the rhetoric of courtly love, or the emergence of romance and tale literature.
To accommodate the Greco-Roman comparison, Ialso decided to focus exclusively
on the Sino-Japanese constellation in Japan and to stay away from the triangular
Indo-Sino-Japanese mindmap that, naturally, informs much of popular Buddhist
literature in early Japan. For the questions and Latin authors I am treating,
Judaism or Christianity was simply not relevant, just as for early Japanese elite
literature the Sino-Japanese constellation was the dominant cultural paradigm
until the medieval period, when the triangular constellation including India came
to deeply penetrate literary culture. For a comparison of two triangular cultural
constellations Iwould have needed to move into both Europes and Japans medieval period and would have treated completely dierent questions and authors. As
the chronologically and conceptually more fundamental comparison, focusing on
ancient Rome and early Japan and the related Greco-Roman and Sino-Japanese
constellations appeared more attractive to me. Needless to say, this is also the
comparative project that seemed in tune with my expertise and interests.
Also, I framed my study in this particular way because I wished to revisit
our repertoire of common comparative tools. The logic of comparison is inherently binary and ontologizing, which leaves us with disarmingly few choices for
description, same/similar/dierent, and even fewer choices for judging historical
developments, extant/absent. This ontologically tinged vocabulary, which claims
that cultures are in a certain way, plagues most binary East-West comparisons,
whether they propagate dichotomies and dierence or argue against them. The
binary model creates ontological ellipsis, the sense that, in comparison to Greece,
X did not exist in China (with X=experimental science, epic, democracy, individualism, etc.). Formulated in this brute way such comparison might simply
sound ridiculous and harmless, but the lingering prevalence of arguments based
on cultural binaries, which inevitably produces the failure of one tradition on
anothers ground, should make us concerned. Zhang Longxi has boldly fought
against this conceptual prejudice in much of his work, most notably in Mighty
Opposites: From Dichotomies to Dierences in the Comparative Study of China.14
Ihave framed my comparison as a quadruple constellation, which, although it
still consist of two binaries, avoids essentializing dichotomy and the creation
14
Zhang 1998. Zhang goes even a step further, moving away from both dichotomy and dierence,
toward a new emphasis on cultural similarities and anities in Zhang2007.
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
of false ellipses. China and Japan, and Greece and Rome, are not conceived as
cultural binaries, but as long-standing constellations of cultural reception processes, of cultural translatio. Thus, when we come to compare the four literary
cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean and East Asia, we are not in fact comparing cultures, but reception processes. This constitutes a double move. First, we
shift from an ontological to a dialectical comparative approachfrom asking, for
example, how do Japanese and Latin literature compare? to asking how did
Japanese and Latin authors deal with the historical atness of their own tradition
vis--vis their reference cultures? Also, we move from a comparative approach
that results in detecting ellipsisthe absence of something that makes one of
the cultures look decientto an approach that prots from catachresisthe
temporary application of an existing name to something that does not have one.
We can get stuck in unproductive ellipsis by saying, for example, In Japanese literary culture the earliest literature was highly valued, so that a rich textual record
dating back to the earliest period survives today; in contrast, Roman literary culture lacked that respect for its origins, which led to the loss of most of early Latin
literature. Only once we apply the Japanese case to the Roman one through productive cross-application, catachresis, can we make unexpected discoveries and
ask intriguing questions:as we will see, the Japanese case shows that Romes loss
of its early literature is not necessarily the norm and cannot be explained away by
the assumption that early stages of literary production are awkward and simply
propaedeutic for a greater future and thus deserve their loss. Which aspects in
Roman literary culture facilitated the loss of early works? And, in catachrestic
turn, which features of Japanese literary culture, if applied to the Roman case,
would have prevented the loss of early Latin literature? (For the curious reader,
Iaddress these questions in Chapter3.) Indeed, comparison should be a two-way
catachrestic laboratory rather than a trial court imposing on one party the guillotine of ellipsis and cultural deciency.
Catachresis might also be the term to describe how the East Asianists and
Classicists can learn from each other if they choose to engage more closely. For
the scholar of early China and Japan, there is so much in the eld of Classics
to admire and aspire torst and foremost, a nearly ambidextrous training in
Greek and Latin that constitutes a rare exception in East Asian studies. China
scholars, unlike Hellenists, have little incentive to seriously study premodern
Japan. In contrast, Japan scholars would have every reason to also be China specialists, but with the demise of the Chinese and Sino-Japanese canon in Japanese
education in the latter half of the twentieth century and the nationalist focus on
vernacular Japanese literature, the mainstream of Japanese literary studies has
not encouraged parallel in-depth study of Chinese literature. However, Iconsider
myself part of a heartening new wave of Sino-Japanese literary studies that has
been gaining steam over the past decade in the United States and in East Asia.
As the reader will notice, I have consciously put a spotlight on Sino-Japanese
literature in this book in an attempt to restore it to the central positionnow
hardly recognizablethat it had well into the twentieth century in Japanese literary culture. At this point it is hard to imagine how there could ever be a eld
of classics (East Asian, that is, and with a lowercase c to distinguish it from
Introduction
13
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
its well-established venerable Western sibling), because national rhetoric has

now become the constitutive master-narrative of literary historiography and criticism in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. That is precisely where we could and
should learn from the eld of Classics and take our cues from the liberating
momentum of this Catholic, denationalized eld, which might have distinctive
national schoolsBritish, German, Italian, and so forthbut can boast a cosmopolitan, egalitarian academic ethic. That neither Greece nor Italy can easily lay
claim to an unbroken legacy going back to Ancient Greece and Rome helps this
transnational spirit. In contrast, the political, linguistic, and cultural continuity
of the dierent modern East Asian nations, and the legacy both of Chinas traditional hegemony and of Japans modern imperialism in the area, has made such
transnational spirit little attractive.
Another enviable characteristic of the eld of Classics is the in-depth mastery
of the relatively limited corpus of Greek and Latin literatures. This is not the case
for East Asian studies, where subgroups of scholars working on certain periods
(such as Early China) or genres (such as vernacular ction) certainly share a
grounding in their corpus of materials. But the mastery of a body of texts is not
dening for the identity of East Asian Studies as a whole and does not constitute
the central assumption and arena for scholarly debate. We are reminded of this
when we see an index locorum at the end of books published in Classics indicating
the pages where passages from certain Greek or Latin authors are discussed; such
an index is not part of the template for books published on East Asian literatures.
There are many reasons why a well-dened textual corpus is not the dening platform for China or Japan studies:rst and foremost it has to do with the sheer volume of texts produced over many more centuries in a much larger geographical
area. But ideological reasons have also played a central role:though Sino-Japanese
literature had enjoyed a place at the top of the genre hierarchy of Japanese literature until the early twentieth century, a nationalistic emphasis on Japanese
vernacular literature has lobotomized the most authoritative half of Japanese literature. Today most middle-aged Japanese are unable to even decipher and understand Sino-Japanese texts, which their grandparents might still have jotted down
with quotidian ease. This has another eect. Thanks to the in-depth mastery of
the Greco-Roman textual corpus, Classics as a eld has created much more, and
thus also much more subtle, thinking about literary reception and intertextual
processes both within and across languages. This asymmetry will surface time
and again throughout thisbook.
The most fundamental dierence between Classics and East Asian Studies
is, of course, their respective standing in todays academic landscape. If Classics
is often called the oldest of area studies, East Asian studies is one of its youngest specimen in the West. Currently, class enrollments, funds, and publicly perceived relevance strongly favor modern over premodern subelds. Quite to the
contrary, the sense of centrality of Classics within the traditional spectrum of
humanistic study in European cultural history gives the eld an incomparable
gravitas.
Yet, Classics gravitas has suered corrosion in the last decades, a fact that
one might lament but also see as a terric chance. Here is Charles Martindales
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
prophetic advice for its restoration, drawn from an article that muses on the future
of the emerging eld of reception studies, devoted to the exploration of the legacy of Greco-Roman antiquity in Western cultural history:
Whats in a name? In the years to come people may, or they may not, nd reception a useful label for certain scholarly activities. . . . Two things above all Iwould
have classics embrace: a relaxed, not to say imperialist, attitude towards what
we may study as part of the subject, and a subtle and supple conception of the
relationship between past and present, modern and ancient. Then classics could
again have a leading role among the humanities, a classics neither merely antiquarian nor crudely presentist, a classics of the present certainly, but also, truly,
of the future.15
This is an exciting vision for the future of Classical Studies. All Ican add is that it
would be yet more exciting if classicists added to the proposed subtle and supple
conception of the relationship between past and present, modern and ancient a
similarly subtle and supple conception of the relationship between Greco-Roman
and other antiquities. It may seem that this would only add one more comparative angle to the relations between past and present, modern and ancient, which
are comparative projects of sorts. However, this angle would have a yet more
thought-provoking eect and allow for a leading role of Classics with a much more
global gravitas. It is most pleasant to imagine how a fuller engagement with other
antiquitiesin particular Near Eastern, Indian, East Asianwith their distinctive
shapes of historical, intellectual, religious and literary traditions, could create new
questions, even new answers, and certainly a new conceptual vocabulary for the
traditional eld of Classics.
Now that Ihave sketched what East Asianists such as myself might admire in
the eld of Classics, it would be appropriate to give Classicists an incentive to look
beyond their traditional geographical and linguistic boundaries and elaborate on
what the study of China and Japan can oer them. Among other things this book
tries to make a seductive case for dialogue. Because we rst need to make our
way through its chapters before reecting on what attractions young elds like
East Asian Studies in the West might hold for more mature ones like Classics, we
postpone this task to the Epilogue. Thus we end our introduction close to where
we had begun, with the drama of relative ageof disciplines.
***
Let us start on our course. Chapter1 lays the foundations for our comparison of
Japanese and Roman literary cultures. It discusses three fundamental similarities between them and three divergences that complicate our comparison. Both
literary cultures were latecomers vis--vis their reference cultures; due to their
belatedness they started against the backdrop of highly sophisticated stages of
literary productionChinese Six Dynasties and Early Tang literature for Japan,
and Hellenistic literature for Rome; and their education systems were based on
the adoption and adaption of the literary canon developed by scholars of their
15
Martindale and Thomas 2006,13.
Introduction
15
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reference culture. However, the geopolitical constellation of China and Japan, and
Greece and Rome, respectively, were radically dierent. Because Rome, unlike
Japan, conquered its reference culture early in its history, there was a disjunction
between cultural (Greek) and political (Roman) capital. Also, the linguistic constellation of Japanese and Roman literary cultures was radically dierent. While
Japanese developed a reading technique that allowed them to read Chinese texts
without the need for translation, Latin literature started with the translation and
adaptation of Greek texts. The third divergence between Japanese and Latin literary cultures was their dierent spectrum and hierarchy of core genres:Forms of
short lyrical poetry headed the hierarchy of literary genres in Japan. In contrast,
epic poetrywhich did not exist in China and Japanand dramawhich did not
develop until the early modern period in East Asiawere prominent genres in
early Latin literature.
The remaining chapters are designed as case studies devoted to particular
questions and themes and explored through a highly selective set of examples
from Japanese and Latin works. Chapter2 and 3 are devoted to one of the fundamental similarities of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellation, their
position as latecomers. Chapter2 explores what kind of strategies Japanese and
Latin authors designed to tell the beginnings of their own literature and eloquence in a way that allowed their own tradition, despite its historical atness, to
compete with Chinese and Greek precedents. It showcases four texts from four
dierent historical moments, on the Japanese side the Florilegium of Cherished
Airs (Kaifs

, 751)the rst Japanese anthology of Sino-Japanese poetry
(kanshi
)and the Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems (Kokinwakash

, 905), the rst imperial anthology of vernacular verse. We will show
how Ciceros account of the development of Greek and Roman eloquence in his
dialogue Brutus bears striking resemblance to the strategy of the Kaifss compiler and that the interpretation of Roman reception of Greek literature of the
early imperial historian Velleius Paterculus shows interesting resonances with the
strategies in the Kokinsh Prefaces.
Chapter3 explores how notions about simplicity, ornateness, and cultural (or
literary) decline, which could be blamed on foreign inuence, became one of
the arenas in which the ambiguous psychology of the younger literary cultures
unfolded. The claims to natural and self-sucient beginnings of indigenous literature and eloquence stood in stark contrast to the fact that both Japanese and Latin
Literature emerged in dialogue with a highly rened stage of literary development
in their reference cultures. By examining texts from the rst two Japanese poetry
anthologies Florilegium of Cherished Airs, the Collection of Myriad Leaves (Manysh

), and the earliest waka poetics, Fujiwara no Hamanaris Code of Poetry (Uta
no shiki
, 772)alongside with Ciceros Brutus and On the Orator (De oratore)
and Horaces Satires, this chapter argues that Latin writers had good reasons to be
more aggressive, more diplomatic, and more embarrassed vis--vis Greek precedent than their Japanese colleagues vis--vis the Chinese tradition.
The next three chapters revolve around the symbolic centers of the Roman
and Japanese Empires, rst comparing founding gures of state formation, such
as Aeneas and Prince Shtoku, and then moving to images of the capitals, Rome
10/12/2013 8:03:03 PM
and Kyoto, as sites of literary production. Achapter comparing Japanese and Latin
exile poetry closes the sequence on the symbolic centers of two very dierent
empires. Chapter4 compares how the legendary gure of Prince Shtoku and of
Aeneas were both founding gures of the new Roman and Japanese state, but also
empowered by their connection with their respective reference culture. Aeneas
was sometimes depicted as Greek, while Prince Shtoku was recognized as the
incarnation of the Chinese Buddhist patriarch Huisi. Why does Virgils Aeneas
appear as a dutiful and domestically minded city-builder, giving laws and ensuring
the worship of the domestic gods he brought from Troy, whereas Prince Shtoku
is depicted most of all as a consummate writer and interpreter of texts? This chapter argues that there was little advantage in making Aeneas into a hero of literacy,
whereas it was highly protable in the East Asian context to make a Japanese
symbol of state foundation into a brilliant writer.
Chapter 5 compares the capitals of Rome and Kyoto as literary spaces, rst
reminding us how very unlike Kyoto and Ancient Rome were as capital cities and
then exploring how these dierences informed literary production along two vectors:the vector of time and the vector of romance. How did Heian authors and
how did Augustan authors locate the capitals they inhabited in time? With what
kind of teleologies, vectors of destiny, did they endow their cities and how did the
genres they chose inect their capital visions? We examine Virgils Aeneid and
the eleventh-century poetry anthology Wakan reish

(Collection of
Japanese and Chinese-style Poems for Recitation). We then explore how Augustan
Rome and tenth- and eleventh-century Kyoto were the sites of literary revolutions
that were intricately connected with the urban fabric and capital culture:a new
literature of romance. What were the rules and assumptions of this new game of
love? To explore these questions we compare some of Propertiuss (ca. 4916 bce)
Elegies with moments from Sei Shnagons (ca. 9661017) Pillow Book (Makura no
sshi

).
Chapter 6 concludes the cycle of chapters on the symbolic centers of the
Japanese and Roman empires by examining texts written by poets exiled from
the capital. In 901 Sugawara no Michizane, a prominent statesman and poet, was
degraded to the oce of governor of Dazaifu in Kyushu, far away from the capital,
but close to developments in Korea and China. In 8 ce Augustus sent Ovid into
exile at Tomi, previously a colony of Miletus mostly inhabited by descendants of
Greek merchants and Getes. Some themes are strikingly similar in Michizanes
exile poetry and Ovids Tristia and Letters from Pontus:the sorrows of being misunderstood by barbarians or uncongenial people, memories of the glorious times
had in the capital, and the hopes of a return, which neither in Michizanes nor
in Ovids case came true. Yet the chapter argues that there are signicant dierences in their exile experience and poetry that are rooted in the dierent position
of poets in Romes and Early Japans society, their respective poetic decorum, and
their dierent relationship to the reference cultures Greece andChina.
The last two chapters explore prominent strategies of self-denition through
and against the image of the older reference cultures:satire and what I will call synoptic texts. If exiles praised the ultimate grandeur of the capital as symbolic cultural center, there was one area of cultural achievement that both RomeandJapan
Introduction
17
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self-consciously lacked: indigenous philosophical traditions. Precisely that lack

made philosophers in Rome and Confucian scholars in Japan into much coveted
exemplars of authority and erudition. At the same time, it made them into ready
targets for satirical attack. Chapter7 explores the role of the satirical in the relationship of Japanese and Latin authors to the older thought traditions of China
and Greece, by comparing the hitherto neglected Genji Poems (Fu Hikaru Genji
monogatari shi

, thirteenth century), a medieval recreation of
Murasaki Shikibus Tale of Genji in Sino-Japanese verse, to Martianus Capellas
Marriage of Philology and Mercury (fth century ad), an inuential compendium of
the Seven Liberal Arts framed as an allegorical marriage tale. The chapter argues
that the Genji Poems and Martianuss Marriage both show how serious aesthetic
and philosophical critique joins hands with parody and satire that serves as a
tool of canonization, of cultural reconciliation, and empowering self-deprecation
toward the cultural hierarchies rooted in the reference cultures.
Satirizing those aspects of the reference culture that the younger cultures
perceived as lacking in their own traditions was one way of relating to the reference culture. Another strategy was to directly juxtapose the reference culture with
ones own culture in the form of synoptic texts, a rather exceptional form of
texts that juxtapose Greek with Roman elements and Chinese (or Sino-Japanese)
with Japanese. From the small number of synoptic texts Chapter 8 selects the
Newly Selected Anthology of Myriad Leaves (Shinsen Manysh

, 893), a
poetry anthology that juxtaposes vernacular waka with Sino-Japanese quatrains,
and compares it to Plutarchs Parallel Lives (Bioi parallloi, after 96 ce), which
juxtapose biographies of famous Greek mythical gures, politicians, and military
commanders with carefully chosen Roman correlates. Because Plutarch was a
Greek living in the Roman Empire, this chapter thematizes again the disjunction between political and cultural capital that Romes conquest of Greece brought
about and that did not occur in premodern Japan. The chapter argues that the
very act of juxtaposition inuenced the representation of cultures on both sides,
resulting in iconized vignettes of cultural competition and complementarity for
the purpose of aesthetic or moral education.
In a book of this scope it would have been impossible to represent all periods, genres, and authors evenly. It is ultimately also undesirable. Ihave instead
focused on particular themes and issues and selected the Japanese and Latin texts
that appeared most interesting and illuminating as such, and most resonant as a
comparative pair. The reader will see that Ihave placed enormous emphasis on
certain works by Cicero, on Virgils Aeneid, and, more generally, on works from
the Late Republican and Augustan Periods. From the rich post-Augustan imperial
literature Ionly include three outsiders:a lesser historian (Velleius Paterculus),
an imperial Greek author (Plutarch), and a Latin writer from Late Antiquity that
basically only medievalists care about (Martianus Capella). On the Japanese side
Ihave given strategic attention to Sino-Japanese texts, some of which are canonical and representative (such as Michizanes poetry), while others are exceptional
or even obscure (the poetic exchange between Yakamochi and Ikenushi in the
Manysh or the Genji Poems). Because the comparison between Aeneas and
Prince Shtoku was too attractive and productive to leave out, Ihave even included
18
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a Buddhist hagiographical biography for comparison with the Aeneid. Although it

might sound counterintuitive, the reader will see in each of the case study chapters how the asymmetries in text selection serve a heuristic purpose and, surprisingly, sometimes precisely enable us to gain representative insights through bold
comparison of very particular texts.
Now it is time to lay the foundations for the more specic case studies and to
take a closer look at fundamental similarities and dissimilitudes of the two cultural constellations that are the focus of thisbook.
Introduction
19
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CHAPTER1
Setting theStage
Constellations
1. Foreground:Approximations
StartingLate
At least three fundamental similarities between the literary cultures of early Japan
and Rome encourage their comparison. First, both Japanese and Roman literatures were jumpstarted based on Chinese and Greek literary precedents, which
served as sophisticated models for script, lexical borrowings, rhetorical sophistication, and a great variety of literary genres and verse meters. Both Japanese and
Roman literatures were self-conscious latecomers, with a strong sense both of
themselves and of their belatedness vis--vis their reference cultures.
Starting Rened
The second fundamental similarity was an indirect consequence of the
rst:because they were latecomers, Japanese and Roman literary cultures developed against the backdrop of highly sophisticated stages of literary development in
China and Greece. If we count back to the earliest parts of the Confucian Classics
dating to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045771 bce), Japans earliest historical
annals and poetry anthologies from the eighth century faced the voluminous outpour of more than one-and-a-half millennia of textual record in China. In the last
ve hundred years preceding the rise of literature in Japan, Chinese writers of
the Six Dynasties Period (220589) and the early Tang Dynasty (seventh century)
experimented with ever more ornate forms of poetry and prose:they developed
the highly polished genre of regulated poetry that demanded attention to tonal
patterns and parallel structures and wrote in a variety of prose genres that prescribed the use of parallel lines. The latest Chinese literature to reach Japan at
the beginning of its literary culture in the late seventh and eighth centuries was
a far cry from the oldest parts of the Classic of Poetry (
Shijing, compiled ca.
600 bce), but both temporal book ends and much that happened in-between (and
that reached Japan in book form) become the basis for the edgling Japanese
literary culture. Consequently, simplicity and sophistication mingled in ways that
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would have been unthinkable in its reference culture China, which took centuries
and millennia to develop the densely allusive literature available to the very rst
known Japanese authors.1
The rst authors writing in Latin in the third century bce had only about half a
millennium of previous Greek literary record to shoulder, if we count back to the
rst records of the Homeric epics around the eighth century bce. The considerably shorter temporal cart between the beginning of Greek and Latin literatures
resulted in a more synchronous unfolding of Hellenistic and early Roman literatures. In contrast to the half millennium of more ornate literary experiments in
China that preceded the earliest Japanese literary works, Hellenistic literature,
with its poised exuberance and rened postures, took o in the late fourth and
third centuries bce. To put a symbolic date on this phenomenon: Callimachus,
poet, critic, and scholar employed at the Library of Alexandria by Pharaoh Ptolemy
II Philadelphus and a dening gure of Hellenistic taste for Roman poets, died
around 240 bce. Livius Andronicus wrote Latin versions of two Greek plays during this very same year, a date which Romans at least since Cicero xed as the
beginning of their literary tradition. To grasp it through an imaginary crosscultural chiasmus, the Six Dynasties Period that early Roman authors had to grapple
with was much shorter than Chinas Hellenistic Period, against the backdrop of
which Japanese authors set out to write their own literature. But the self-conscious
awareness of their latecomer status was so crucial for both Japanese and Latin writers that the next two chapters, Starting avant la lettre:Ways to Tell the Beginnings
of Literature and Eloquence, and Latecomers: Of Simplicity, Ornament, and
Decline are entirely devoted to exploring the literary psychology of traditions that
developed late in symbiosis with an older reference culture. We will then return to
the question of how Japanese and Latin authors were aected by the fact that their
literatures developed in the face of an arguably joyfullyor turgidlyexuberant
Hellenistic Six Dynasties Period in their reference cultures. Let us now move
to the third fundamental similarity between Japanese and Latin literary cultures.
Starting Canonical:Early Japanese and Roman Education

Again, the (Japanese) ruler asked the (Korean) land of Paekche to present worthy
men if they had any. When they had received the command, they thus presented
one named Wani-kishi. They also presented the Confucian Analects, in ten volumes, and the Thousand-Character Classic, in one volume, all together eleven volumes. (This Wani-kishi is the ancestor of the Fumi no Obito lineage of scribes).

2
record of ancient matters (kojiki
,presented to the throne in 712ce)
The study of language and literature (or grammar) was once not even known at
Rome, much less respected, since the community, being then uncultured and
1
To get a taste of the rened literary culture of the latter part of the Six Dynasties see Tian 2007. For
an inspiring introduction to Hellenistic literature see Gutzwiller2007.
2
Kojiki 26668. (Reference is to page numbers unless otherwise noted).
Setting theStage
21
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devoted to warfare, did not yet have much free time for liberal learning. The
rst stages of this study, too, were undistinguished, inasmuch as the earliest
teachers, who were at the same time poets and half GreekI mean Livius and
Ennius, who are on record as having taught both languages privately and publiclymerely claried the meaning of Greek authors or gave exemplary readings
from their own Latin compositions [ . . . ] In my view, therefore, the rst person to
introduce the study of grammar to the city was Crates of Mallos, a contemporary
of Aristarchus. Sent to the senate by King Attalus between the Second and Third
Punic Wars, at just about the time of Enniuss death, Crates fell down and broke
his leg in a sewer-hole in the neighborhood of the Palatine and spent the whole
time of the embassy and of his recuperation constantly giving a host of lectures
and holding frequent discussions, thereby providing an example for our countrymen to imitate. Still, they imitate him only to the extent that they carefully
reviewed poems that had as yet not been widely circulatedthe works of dead
friends, or of any others they approvedand by reading and commenting on
them made them known to the rest of the population aswell.3
Grammatica Romae ne in usu quidem olim, nedum in honore ullo erat, rudi scilicet
ac bellicosa etiamtum civitate necdum magnopere liberalibus disciplinis vacante.
initium quoque eius mediocre extitit, siquidem antiquissimi doctorum, qui idem
et poetae et semigraeci erantLivium et Ennium dico, quos utraque lingua domi
forisque docuisse adnotatum estnihil amplius quam Graecos interpretabantur
aut si quid ipsi Latine composuissent praelegebant. [ . . . ] Primus igitur, quantum
opinamur, studium grammaticae in urbem intulit Crates Mallotes, Aristarchi
aequalis:qui missus ad senatum ab Attalo rege inter secundum ac tertium Punicum
bellum sub ipsam Enni mortem, cum regione Palati prolapsus in cloacae foramen
crus fregisset, per omne legationis simul et valetudinis tempus plurimas acroasis
subinde fecit assidueque disseruit ac nostris exemplo fuit ad imitandum. hactenus
tamen imitati, ut carmina parum adhuc divulgata vel defunctorum amicorum vel
si quorum aliorum probassent diligentius retractarent ac legendo commentandoque
etiam ceteris nota facerent.
suetonius (c. 69122 ce):on grammarians and rhetoricians
The third fundamental similarity between Japanese and Latin literary cultures was
that literary production was rooted in the adoption and adaptation of the educational canon of their reference cultures. Children of elite families studied the
Confucian Classics and canonical Chinese histories and poetry at a state academy
set up based on Chinese precedent in the late seventh century and, increasingly
since the ninth century in schools run by hereditary scholarly family lineages.4 At
least since the second century bce children of Roman elite families received training in Greek poetry, drama, and rhetoric, often from private tutors.5
De grammaticis et rhetoribus 12. Translation from Kaster 1995,5.

The date and surrounding conditions for the foundation of the Academy is disputed. See Hisaki
1990, 2249. On education in early Japan see also Momo 1994, Borgen 1986, 69112, Ury 1999,
Shirane 2000b, and Ceugniet2000.
5
Fundamental works on Hellenistic and Roman education include Marrou 1971, Bonner 1977,
Cribiore 2001 and Morgan1998.
4
22
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Although the memorable anecdotes from the Record of Ancient Matters and
Suetoniuss On Grammarians and Rhetors, which encapsulate the earliest introduction of education and learning into early Japan and Rome, respectively, are
both probably apocryphal and anachronistic, they illustrate crucial points about
the similarities and dierences of education in both cultures. Certainly, the earliest Japanese chronicle, presented to the court in 712, represents conditions at
the early eighth century court: by that time the Analects, a collection recording
Confuciuss (551479 bce) words in conversation with disciples and rulers, and the
Thousand Character Classic, a Six Dynasties collection of four character phrases,
were widely used as writing primers. This situation was projected back to events
during the late fourth and early fth centuries, when Japan requested worthy
men from the Korean state of Paekche and one Wani arrived at the Japanese
court. Wanis arrival as depicted in the chronicle marks the earliest introduction
of books, and indeed introduction of the technology of writing into Japan is consciously framed by eighth-century interests to relate writing to power and scribes
to the edgling Japanese court.6 The Korean state of Paekche is represented as
in a tributary relationship to Japan; and the authors of the chronicle are eager to
connect contemporary scribal kinship groups to their continental origins on the
Korean peninsula.7
A similar anachronism can be detected in the writings of C. Suetonius
Tranquillus (c. 69122), a highly educated scholar of the equestrian order who
served as literary advisor and supervisor of the public libraries of Rome for some
time during the reigns of Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Suetonius has his own
agenda, when he surveys the history of the study of grammar and rhetoric in Rome
through the roughly three centuries from their beginnings to his own time in the
part of his biographies on famous men that treats grammarians and rhetors. That
Suetonius wrote biographies of emperors as well as of learned men such as poets,
historians, philosophers, and teachers says more about his identity as a scholar
and as an imperial functionaryin a court culture, where education, patronage,
and public service were closely intertwinedthan about the place of learning in
the preceding three centuries he covers. Also, the Record of Ancient Matters plays
the Korean state of Paekche up as transmitter of the technology of writing and of
books (though playing it down as a tribute state to Japan); similarly, Suetonius
condent of Roman accomplishments in a mature Roman empiredownplays
the inuence of Greek grammar and rhetoric on Roman literary culture.
Both moves show the Japanese and Roman cultural pride that our authors
project back onto the periods in which the anecdotes are setpossibly the late
fourth century ce for Wanis arrival in Japan and the third century bce for Livius
Andronicuss and Ennius in Rome. But despite the obvious traces of our authors
own interests in the depiction of events that predate them by roughly three hundred years in both cases, both vignettes of the origin of learning and education
6
On Japanese book imports from China until the end of the Heian Period see Kornicki 1998,
27888.
7
On more scenes of literacy and the presence of scribes at court from the rst to sixth centuries see
Lurie 2011, Chapter2.
Setting theStage
23
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still capture signicant realities of early Japanese and Roman education systems.
In both cultures education was based on the precedents of their reference cultures:Writing, books, and learning arrived in Japan through the mediation of the
Korean peninsula from China, in a context that implies later elite court culture
and central political control. Similarly, the study of grammar and poetry did start
in Rome under Greek inuence. But in contrast to the court setting sketched in
the vignette in the Record of Ancient Matters, where the previously Korean transmitter stays on in Japan and becomes the founder of a lineage of professional
scribes, grammar education was introduced by a traveling Greek, Crates of Mallos,
when he was briey stranded in Rome. Although Crates moved on, half Greeks
like Livius Andronicus and Ennius from the Greek-speaking Italian South, were
among the rst permanent teachers of grammar inRome.
The dierent degree of state involvement in both vignettes is remarkable:On
the one hand there is a Korean emissary to the Japanese court. On the other, there
is Crates, who comes from Asia Minor on a diplomatic mission to Rome, but his
introduction of grammar teaching to Rome is unrelated to his ocial mission.
The people of Rome were lucky that he broke his leg in a sewer holeplumbing being one of the glories of Roman material cultureand used his time of
recovery for private lectures to the Roman public. That Suetonius describes the
teaching of the semi-Greeks as negligible and ascribes the introduction of grammar to the trivial, absurdly coincidental breaking of a Greek leg underlines his
agenda of showing the triumphant self-sucient evolution of Roman civilization
from crude beginnings to the renements of his day and keeping Greek inuence
down to a minimum.8
Still, that none of the propagators of education in Suetoniuss account are
state-employed points to one fundamental dierence between the Roman and
early Japanese education systems. Undoubtedly, the degree of state involvement
in education was considerably higher in early Japan. Not only was there a State
Academy (daigakury

) in the capitaland for some time also in the provincesthat was sponsored by the state; until the ninth century the imperial court
even sponsored a select amount of students and monks for their studying abroad
in China. Some of them studied in China for many years and were a costly burden
for the Japanese court. It is true that after the ninth century, when the Fujiwara
clan came to dominate government posts at court, studying at the State Academy
became less attractive, because it ceased to be a venue for obtaining high oce.
Therefore, private tutoring at home or in the schools sponsored by the hereditary
scholarly families such as the Sugawara and the e became the norm. However,
throughout the Heian Period the Academy retained its symbolic signicance as
the locus of the commitment of the Japanese imperial court to Confucian learning and its foundational importance to Japanese society: the semiannual ritual
observances to Confucius (sekiten

) were held in the Academy, its professors
gave lectures on Chinese texts for the emperor at court, and together with their
8
The topos of the contempt for elementary writing teachers and grammarians might also play into
Suetoniuss judgment of Livius Andronicus and Ennius. See Harris 1989, 237.
24
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students, they were regularly called into imperial presence to compose poetry on
ocial court occasions.
In contrast, education was a more private aair in Rome. There was hardly any
centralized educational eort from the government, unless we regard the repeated
expulsions of Greek grammarians, rhetoricians, and philosophers considered dangerous to public morals as an educational eort. Personal tutors hired for home
instruction played a crucial role in Roman education. Some Greeks actually criticized the lack of state involvement in Roman education.9 The status and ethnic
background of these tutors is another major dierence of education in Japan and
Rome captured in our two vignettes. Wani might count as something of a tribute
gift to the Japanese court, but he was no slave and became the ancestor of a lineage of scribes that had the privilege of providing service to the emperor. Livius
Andronicus was allegedly captured when Rome sacked his hometown Tarentum
in Southern Italy and came to Rome as a slave, later taking on the name of the
man who freed him.10
Education in Rome would have been unthinkable without the great number
of Greek-speaking slaves or freedmen, who taught grammar and poetry to the
children of the Roman elite.11 These were for the most part bilingual individuals
who could read, write, and speak both Greek and Latin. Although eighth century
Japanese chronicles claimed immigrants from the Korean peninsula like Wani
as ancestors of scribal lineages and a large number of both students and teachers at the State Academy in the seventh and eighth centuries were of peninsular
descent,12 there was no instruction in conversational Chinese (only, for some time,
specialized training in Chinese-style pronunciation of words) and native speakers
of Chinese played no role in Japanese education.
It would have been unthinkable in early Japan to encounter somebody like the
philosopher and orator Favorinus (ca. 80160), who came from the city of Arles
in Latin-speaking Gaul and, when delivering lectures in Greek in Rome, presumably enthralled even those few in his audience who did not understand Greek
but relished the melody of his voice and the rhythms of his speech. Even if those
few monks and scholars who had studied in China and must have learnt Chinese
for conversation had decided to deliver a public address in Chinese, there would
hardly have been any audience at all who would have understood them. And the
dramatic point about the ability of those in Favorinuss audience who did not
understand but could at least enjoy Greek would not make sense in an anecdote
about a public lecture delivered in any Chinese dialect in early Japan:no speaker
desiring to make himself understood would have made that language choice and
no spectators would have found joy in listening to mumblings in a language foreign to virtually everybody in the audience.13
As Cicero relates in De re publica4.3.3.

For arguments that speak against this theory see Suerbaum 2002,95.
11
For biographies of grammarians see prosopography of Christes 1979. For a fascinating cultural and
sociological portrait of the profession of grammarians in Late Antiquity see Kaster1988.
12
See table in Hisaki 1990,40.
13
Philostratus Vitae sophistarum (Lives of the Sophists),491.
10
Setting theStage
25
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One implication of this contrast between a Japanese centralized education system and a lack thereof in Rome is that, while we know the Japanese examination
system in detail, we hardly know anything about how students performance was
measured in Rome. The State Academy was modeled on the Chinese education
system. Since the foundation of a State academy under Emperor Wu of the Han
Dynasty in 136 bce, a variety of state-sponsored educational institutions developed. By the Tang Dynasty there were six state institutions in the capital and regular civil service exams, which became the main mechanism in the recruitment of
government ocials and political elites until the early twentieth century, when the
civil service exam system was abolished during the last chaotic years of the Qing
Dynasty, the end of imperial China.14 Chinas exam culture not only shaped the
ruling elites who governed China through the centuries, but it also drove many
areas of intellectual and cultural production:many of the most productive intellectuals of the Song Dynasty contributed to erce debates over the exam curriculum,
and their stances on learning, self-cultivation, and the relevance of schooling to
life were shaped by the development and exigencies of the examination system.
Exam culture also found expression in a whole subgenre of novels devoted to
poor but talented young men who nally triumph in the face of adversity through
success in the exams, handily matched by success in romantic aairs. Whereas
a centralized examination system fostering social mobility, intense competition,
endless disputes over the curriculum between participants in the system, and the
lore of spectacular success or failure shaped the social fabric and imagination of
Chinese society, there is no indication that there were any formal exams administered by teachers or the government in Greco-Roman education.15
The State Academy in Japan never had its Chinese models scale or importance
as a road to government oce, especially with the rise of the Fujiwara clan in the
ninth century, but its curriculum focused exclusively on Chinese canonical texts.
Until the early twentieth century Chinese and Chinese-style literature had the
highest status in the hierarchy of three major textual canons: the Chinese, the
Buddhist, and the vernacular Japanese canon, which took shape as a subject for
formal education only in the Late Heian and early Medieval Periods, beyond the
temporal limits of this study.16
There were several tracks of study, including the track focusing on the Confucian
Classics (Mygyd

), a Law track devoted to legal codes (Mybd

),
a mathematical track (Sand

), and a track focusing on Chinese literary and
historical works (Monjd

, Kidend

). This last track was rst considered of lesser status and only added in 730, and included the study of the foremost
Chinese anthology of poetry and literary prose, the Literary Selections (Wenxuan
, early sixth century) and the three earliest Chinese ocial histories (Records
of the Grand Historian (ca. 91 bce), Book of the Han Dynasty (92 ce), Book of the
Later Han Dynasty (445 ce)). But it became the most prominent one through the
14
On Chinese education and the exam system see Lee 2000, Miyazaki 1976, and Elman2000.
Morgan 1998,79f.
16
For an overview of the development of these three canons into the modern period see
Shirane2000b.
15
26
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eighth and ninth centuries. In the mature form of the curriculum, the student in
the popular Literature and History track would rst have to study the Confucian
Classics and then take an entrance exam administered by the State Academy, the
bureau exam (ryshi
), which would make him a Provisional Scholar of
Letters. He would then have to pass an exam administered by the Ministry of
Ceremonial, the ministry exam (shshi

), which upon passing would make
him a Scholar of Letters. The two best candidates of this exam would receive
a government stipend and the title of Distinguished Scholars of Letters. They
were qualied to try taking the highest level of exam in the examination system,
which was administered under imperial auspices and included the composition of
examination essays on policy issues based on Chinese canonical texts.17 Although
only a small fraction of students passed the highest level in the examination system, the study of the Wenxuan and the Chinese ocial histories in this popular
track provided all students with an intimate familiarity with Chinese historical
events and protagonists, with the stylistic variety of various prose genres used in
ocial correspondence, and with precious literary vocabulary. The popularity of
this track, which was a Japanese modication of the Chinese curriculum, can at
least partly explain why Heian scholar poets were so prone to larding their texts
with Chinese historical anecdotes and recherch allusions to Chinesetexts.
The elaborate Japanese examination ladder contrasts dramatically with what
little we know for sure about the Hellenistic and Roman curriculum. While we
have several early Japanese law codes that contain regulations of personnel, curriculum, and exam procedures and we only need to problematize the relation
between the codes and their execution, it is hard to grasp a generalized Hellenistic
or Roman curriculum in our sources. We can imagine that because of a lack of
central control and of an examination system, the teaching curriculum was probably much looser and more varied. There is the notion of an enkyklios paideia, a
comprehensive education, which dates as far back as Aristotle but takes on various meanings depending on the text. Quintilian (ca.35100), a scholar and rhetorician from Hispania who is our most extensive source on education and rhetorical
training in Rome, denes it as learning how to read and write, and as studying
grammar and literature, geometry, astronomy, and principles of music and logic;
and, obviously, rhetoric and philosophy, the ultimate goals of such a comprehensive education, which he describes in his large pedagogical treatise on rhetoric.18
This program approaches the late antique and medieval curriculum of the
Liberal Arts, the Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, and the Quadrivium of
Arithmetric, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. But how it was studied and how
much of it was studied in a rigorous curriculum even during Quintilians time is
unclear. Scholars of Greco-Roman education are increasingly moving away from
their previous assumption of a clear-cut curriculum where students would have
proceeded from learning with a reading and writing teacher, followed by successive training in grammar, poetry, and rhetoric. Because this curricular model
17
18
Between 704 and 931 apparently only sixty-ve men passed this level. Ury 1999,371.
Institutio Oratoria 1.10. For various denitions of enkyklios paideia see Morgan 1998,3339.
Setting theStage
27
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does not t the contradictory statements in received sources and is also not backed
up by recent archeological evidence from papyri excavated in Egypt, Teresa Morgan
has argued to replace the curricular template with a core/periphery model of
education.19 The core that most people learned and practiced longest was learning how to read and write through the copying of alphabets, syllabaries, gnomic
moral sayings, and, on a more advanced level, word lists containing names of protagonists from Homeric epic, Greek drama, and Virgil in the Latin-speaking West.
The periphery would include a much more varied set of materials, like Euripides
and Menander, or the more advanced study of rhetoric.
Thus the image of the curriculum that authors like Quintilian give us is an
image of education of the highest echelons of society, who would indeed become
orators or political players. They would be trained in the various types of rhetorical propedeutical exercises, progymnasmata, that Quintilian describes in Book
Two and Three of his Institutio. They range from simpler exercises like the paraphrase of a saying (chreia) or a maxim (sententia), the paraphrase of a fable (fabula,
apologus), or a mythological scene (narratio) to more elaborate exercises like the
developing of rhetorical commonplaces, the elaboration and description of a given
topic, praise speechesencomiaor denunciations of legendary and historical
gures, and the impersonation of famous heroes in the prosopopoeia. The most
demanding exercises were controversiae and suasoriae, mock speeches arguing a
legal case or deliberating on a question of general importance, which prepared
the aspiring orator for court litigation and public speaking.20 Whether trained in
oratory on Quintilians model or drilled in the composition of examination essays
on Chinese canonical texts (and of poetry on assigned topics), the ultimate goal of
this kind of education was to master various registers of language, to have a command of canonical classical texts, and to hone ones ability to write articulately and
speak eloquently, relying on the creative use of the store of knowledge and experience with those texts that the diligent student had amassed through years of study
and practice. Although the political system of the Nara and Heian courts and the
Roman Republic and the Roman Empire were vastly dierent and required dierent sets of skills from their respective participants, the ability to write and speak
well was coveted in both political and literary cultures.
Japans and Romes late start had also signicant implications for their education systems. Unlike Chinese and Greek literary culture, Japanese and Roman
education developed on the basis of previous canonization eorts and scholarly
literature of their reference cultures. In China scholarly culture took o with the
Han Dynasty, when scholars assembled a Confucian canon, wrote extensive commentaries, and began to be employed at a State Academy founded by Emperor
Wu. By the time of the earliest Japanese literature, Chinese scholars from the
Han through the Tang Dynasties had written commentaries (even ocially sanctioned subcommentaries to commentaries) that were used alongside a great variety of dictionaries, containing explanations on meaning and pronunciation of
19
Morgan 1998,6789.
On rhetorical exercises see Bonner 1977, 25076 and, against the background of relevant excavated
Egyptian papyri, Morgan 1998, 190239.
20
28
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characters, and encyclopedias that brought synonymical expressions, loci classici,

and associations of poetic topics to the ngertips of the aspiring student working
on his literary compositions.21 In turn, Hellenistic scholars had produced standardized texts, added punctuation and accentuation, developed theories of literary
genres and grammar, and commentaries that become the basis for literary studies
in Rome.22 Put simply, learning for a Nara or Heian Japanese and for a Roman was
a radically dierent process from that of a Chinese before the Han Dynasty or a
Greek in classical fth-century Athens.
Our two vignettes contain, again, suggestive indications of this point. Not coincidentally, Suetonius gives us an intriguing synchronism:the mission of Crates of
Mallos to Rome and the beginning of grammar studies in Rome coincided with the
lifetime of Aristarchus of Alexandria, key gure in the development of a system of
critical marks facilitating the reading of Homer and the poets. Although the foundation of the library and museum at Alexandria around 285 bce lay much closer to
the beginnings of literary production in Latin in the latter half of the third century
bce, the prolic studies of grammar, lexicography, and textual criticism that the
Alexandrian head librarians produced spread quickly in the Greek-speaking world
and had profound impact on Roman students and writers. Among the recently
excavated papyri there are more copies of the Iliad and Odyssey than of all other
texts combined, and the rst two books of the Iliad were apparently particularly
popular for grammar training. Apapyrus fragment dating to around 145 bc from
the Egyptian city of Tebtunis features lines from the second book of the Iliad. With
some luck it was preserved because the papyrus on which it is written was later
reused as casing for a crocodilemummy. (see Figure 1.1)
Although we cannot be sure how many school texts did indeed include critical
marks, this one is a good example of those that did feature them:The horizontal
stroke in the upper right corner is an obelos, which indicates lines that are considered inauthentic. The oblique stroke next to the second line and on the bottom of
the column marks the beginning of a new section. These signs taught students
notions of textual authenticity and invited them to narrative and prosodic analysis
and it was based on this educational experience that Romans came to write their
own literature.
The Analects and the Thousand Character Classic mentioned in the anecdote
about Wani had as prominent a role in Japanese education as Homer had in
Hellenistic and Roman education. Note that our vignette of the beginnings of
learning in Japan expressly mentions an edition of the Analects in ten books, a
clear indication that this copy of the Analects was not a naked version of the text,
but probably an edition that included the commentary of the prominent Chinese
scholars Zheng Xuan (127200) or He Yan (190249). Thus even the very rst
book that reached Japan, if we believe the Record of Ancient Matters, was the product of Chinese scholarly eorts that in turn shaped the experience of its Japanese
students. The discovery of Egyptian papyri has made it possible to study literacy
21
On writing primers and educational aids prevalent in the formative period of the seventh and
eighth centuries see Tky daigaku kyy gakubu 2007,332.
22
On genres of Greek scholarship see Dickey2007.
Setting theStage
29
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fi g ur e 1 . 1 The Homeric Epic as Hellenistic SchoolbookText

Homers Iliad, Book 2, lines 172210. Tebtunis Papyrus 4, Egypt. Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.
and education based on writing samples and documents produced directly by students rather than based on the views of education propagated by philosophers of
education like Quintilian. In comparable fashion, the discovery of several hundred thousand of inscribed wooden tablets (mokkan

) since the 1960s has
revolutionized our view of the emergence of multiple literacies in seventh- and
eighth-century Japan and the acquisition of writing skills.23
Although the Analects seems to have been more important as a text for practicing ones calligraphy and writing skills, reproducing the original text rather than
accompanying commentaries, the samples of passages from the Analects surviving on excavated wooden tablets show intriguing traces of another type of scholarly notation:If Roman students read Greek canonical texts in Greek inscribed
with critical marks developed by Hellenistic scholars from Alexandria, Japanese
students came to read Chinese canonical texts in accordance with Japanese, not
Chinese, syntactical order and developed their own set of critical marks to facilitate the reading of Chinese texts. This reading technique was called kundoku
,

or reading through glossing and Japanese scholars still use it today, even to read
23
For an overview of the discovery of the wooden tablets and its implications for our view of early
Japanese literacies see Lurie 2007. On wooden tablets inscribed with passages from the Analects and
Thousand Character Classic see Tno1977.
30
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fi g ur e 1 . 2 The Analects as Japanese SchoolbookText

This wooden tablet shows the opening of the Confucian Analects in garbled word
order. Instead of

(The Master said:To learn and sometimes review

what one has learnt, (is that not pleasure)?), it reads
. Scholars have
argued that the inversion of sometimes and review and the omission
of the object marker (what one has learnt) indicates that the scribe produced
the Analects passage based on assumptions of Japanese gloss-reading (kundoku) of
Chinese texts. Tokushima kenritsu maiz bunkazai sg sent. Shikoku, Japan.
Classical Chinese texts. We will discuss this complex reading technique further
below, but let it suce here to say that the Japanese from early on added to the
layers of Chinese scholarship inscribed into the Chinese canonical texts they studied, their own system of reading marks that allowed them to vocalize the Chinese
texts in Japanese.
Thus, Chinese canonical texts like the Analects were used by Japanese students to acquire familiarity with Japanese scholarly reading practices such as
gloss-reading. Although the earliest extant manuscripts containing critical marks
for gloss-reading date only to the late eighth century, the practice of transposing
Chinese texts into Japanese word order, a crucial operation of gloss-reading, is
clearly much older:a wooden tablet from the second half of the seventh century
features the opening lines of the Analects, with character inversions of the original
text in accordance with Japanese word order.24
24
For further discussion of this tablet and its implications for our understanding of the development
of writing in Japan see Lurie 2011, Chapter4.
Setting theStage
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We have identied several signicant points of dierence in the education systems of early Japan and Rome such as the dierent degree of central government
involvement in education, the divergent social status and cultural background of
educators, the formative presence of the examination system for the elite culture
of China and Japan and the lack of indications for exams in the Greco-Roman
world. But all these dierences do not seem to have much aected the similar
ways in which Japanese and Roman students wrote the canon of their reference
cultures into the works they came to produce as writers and scholars during their
lives. The extensive copying, memorization, and study of canonical Chinese and
Greek texts, including the scholarly cultures inscribed in their editions, became
the basis for Japanese and Roman literary production. Without them, there would
not have been a comparable Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellation and
no book aboutthem.
Let us turn now, however, to the dierences in these constellations that complicate our comparison.
2. Depth:Dissimilitudes
Geopolitics
How carefully the magistrates of old regulated their conduct to keep intact the
majesty of the Roman people and their own can be seen from the fact that among
other indications of their duty to preserve dignity they steadfastly kept to the
rule never to make replies to Greeks except in Latin. Indeed, they obliged the
Greeks themselves to discard the volubility which is their greatest asset and
speak through an interpreter, not only in Rome but in Greece and Asia also,
intending no doubt that the dignity of Latin speech be the more widely venerated
throughout all nations. Not that they were decient in attention to polite studies,
but they held that in all matters whatsoever the Greek cloak should be subordinate
to the Roman gown, thinking it unmeet that the weight and authority of empire
be sacriced to the seductive charm of letters.25
Magistratus vero prisci quantopere suam populique Romani maiestatem retinentes
se gesserint hinc cognosci potest, quod inter cetera obtinendae gravitatis indicia illud
quoque magna cum perseverantia custodiebant, ne Graecis umquam nisi Latine
responsa darent. quin etiam ipsos linguae volubilitate, qua plurimum valent, excussa
per interpretem loqui cogebant non in urbe tantum nostra sed etiam in Graecia et
Asia, quo scilicet Latinae vocis honos per omnes gentes venerabilior diunderetur.
nec illis deerant studia doctrinae, sed nulla non in re pallium togae subici debere
arbitrabantur, indignum esse existimantes illecebris et suavitati litterarum imperii
pondus et auctoritatem donari.
valerius maximus (early first century ce):memorable doings and sayings
25
Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium II.2.2. Shackleton Bailey 2000,139.
32
10/12/2013 8:03:06 PM
Chinese chief administrator of the city of Zhengzhou to Japanese monk Ennin on the
ninth day of the sixth month of 845 ce, when Ennin had to leave China during the
Buddhist persecutions under Emperor Wuzong:
Buddhism no longer exists in this land. But it has been said since ancient times
that Buddhism will ow toward the East. Iwant you to do your best to reach your
homeland soon and propagate the Buddhist Law there. Your disciple has been
very fortunate to have seen you many times. Today we part and we are not likely
to meet again in this life. When you have attained Buddhahood, Ihope that you
will not abandon your disciple.

, , . , , .

,
.

,

.

,
.26
ennin, record of a pilgrimage to tang china in search of the law (nitt guh
junrei kki )
Comparisons are not inconvenienced, but enabled by controlled dissimilitude.

Below I focus on three points of substantial dissimilitude between literary cultures of Early Japan and Rome that complicate our comparison and give it depth.
The most formative dierence was geopolitical:The Roman Empire conquered
the Greek mainland by 146 bce, during what still counts as the archaic period
of Latin literature, and became the agent that spread Hellenistic culture in its
Roman inections throughout the Mediterranean and later Europe. In contrast,
premodern Japan had no history of conquest that would have bound it politically
to its reference culture. It was never conquered by China, nor did it defeat China
until the rst Sino-Japanese War in 1895, about a millennium after the Heian
Period, the classical period for Japanese literature to which later ages would look
back with nostalgia. The unexpected and completely unprecedented reversal of
cultural hierarchies in East Asia, which happened in the late nineteenth century
and culminated in the Japanese imperialist colonization of parts of China, Korea,
and Southeast Asia between 1895 and 1945, was indeed a phenomenon of great
improbability.27 If current frictions between the Chinese and Japanese governments focus on economic hegemony, historical atrocities, and expected apologies,
they are only a tip of the real iceberg:the still undigested shock on the part of the
Chinese that a belated, insular culture like Japan could have reversed the millennia-old dynamics of the East Asian cultural hierarchy. Up to that point China,
despite shifting dynasties, governments, and territorial shapes, had always been
the hegemonic reference culture in East Asia, uninterruptedly, without a conquest of Greece, a fall of Rome, a rise of Europe and recent American world
hegemony. If we apply the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 ce, the symbolic date of cultural reversal in East Asia, to the Roman timescale (equating it with 146 bce, the
Roman conquest of Greece), we are now, with 2013 ce, in 28 bce, three years after
the fateful battle of Actium, when Augustus, still Octavian at that point, routed
26
Text based on Ono 1992,472.

For the radical change of Japanese perspectives on China and Japanese travelers experiences in
China see Fogel 1996. For the change of Chinese perspectives on Japan see Lu2004.
27
Setting theStage
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the eet of Mark Antony and cleared the way for becoming emperor of a great
empire to come. Indulging this virtual historical calculus can give us a taste of
how very novel, seen longue dure, the shift of cultural hierarchies in East Asia
has been. And it leaves us to wonder what kind of exciting new cultural, political,
and economical balances will emerge in the future, particularly because, unlike
with Rome of 28 bce, the Japanese empire in East Asia was short-lived, not lasting
beyond half a century.
Because of the fundamentally dierent geopolitical situation, Greece and
Greek-speaking people became physically and psychologically integrated into
Roman aairs in ways that China never became in premodern Japan. If we arrange
the ways cultures can relate to each other in order of political and psychological
proximity, conquest is the closest and most coercive type of relation, followed by
colonization, migration, and self-colonization or, as the anthropologist Michael
Herzfeld has called it, crypto-colonialism, the most voluntary form of submission to powerful foreign cultural inuence without any direct political or military
imposition.28
To put it simply, Greece and Rome had a shared history of earlier Greek colonization of the Western Mediterranean, including the Italic Peninsula, and of later
Roman conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Greek mainland and
the Hellenistic states that had followed in the wake of the dissolution of Alexander
the Greats conquest empire. In contrast, premodern China and Japan had no
documented shared history of mass migration to speak of, but a history of unilateral large-scale self-colonization on Japans part. In other words, while people and
territories were physically integrated in the Greco-Roman constellation, they were
distant and remote in the Sino-Japanese constellation, where imported Chinese
texts rather than native Chinese teachers with their texts and textual expertise
transmitted continental culture to Japan. The implications of this radically dierent mode of cultural translatioone through slave-teachers and texts, the other
almost exclusively textualare hard to exaggerate, as they profoundly shaped just
about any aspect of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman cultural relation. Iwill
not sketch them here, but leave it to the chapters of this book to tease out how the
dierent modes of cultural translatio led to incommensurable, yet still comparable, positions and concerns in Japanese and Latin authors.
Romes demographic and geopolitical dierence from Japan started with the
waves of Greek colonization in the Western Mediterranean and on the Italic peninsula.29 The Great Greek Colonization that created the Greek cultural sphere
of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy and Sicily peaked between 750500 bce,
when Greek-speaking people of about twenty Greek municipalities on the Greek
mainland, Aegean islands, and the West coast of Asia minor, modern-day Turkey,
created a couple of hundred trading ports on the coasts of Southern Italy, the
Black Sea, and Gaul. The Greeks were not the only trade colonizers, but at the
same time the Phoenicians, in search for precious metals, set up their trade ports
28
29
Herzfeld2002.
Boardman 1980, Chapter5. Snodgrass 1994,110.
34
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throughout the Western Mediterranean. The Greeks also competed with simultaneous Etruscan colonization in northern and central Italy. Overpopulation at
home, political crises, or the lure of trade prots all might have contributed to
these large-scale migration movements, and the eect was spectacular:southern
Italy became a major stage of Greek cultural developments such as Pythagorean
philosophy, vase painting, and even Greek drama. Thanks to his successive visits to Sicily, Aeschylus was very popular in Italy and he even devoted a play to a
Sicilian topic, the Women of Aetna, which celebrated the founding of the city of
Aetna. His play Persians was reproduced there right before or after its presentation
in Athens in 472 and a ood of vases in the fourth century with theater scenes
from Aeschylus and Euripides attests the close connection between the Italian
Greek cities and the Greek motherland.
Although the direction of demographic and cultural ows had initially been
from Greece to Southern Italy, it is crucial to note, in contrast to Japanwhich
lacked comparable Chinese coloniesthat already in the fourth century bce,
before the Roman conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean, the cultural ow
went both ways, to Italy and back to Greece. An illustration of this two-way
ow is that Italic Greeks competed, literally, on the Athenian stage:the Sicilian
tyrant Dionysius Iof Syracuse (r. 405-) fought the competing Carthaginians and
Phoenicians and brutally conquered territories for Syracuse with an iron rst, but
distinguished himself more nobly when his play Ransom of Hector won rst prize
in the drama competition in Athens in 376bce.30
When Dionysius Is play won rst prize in Athens, the small city of Rome was
threatened by Celtic invasionsthe Gauls had taken Rome in 390and was just
about to enter a new phase, moving toward mastering the peninsula and getting
involved in maritime commitments. Only the third century bce saw Romes direct
involvement in the aairs of the southern Italian Greek-speaking cities. After a
decade of struggle over Tarentum, a prominent Dorian colony on the heel of the
Italian boot, which called on King Pyrrhus of Epirus (nowadays the border region
between Greece and Albania) to ght pro-Roman factions, Rome captured the city
in 272 bce, making it pay heavy compensation. This was an important date in
the conquest of Graecia Magna, for Rome the Greek-speaking territories closest
to home, and it led to Romes rst extensive exposure to Greeks and Greek culture. Only the second century brought Rome in direct interaction with Hellenistic
states outside of Italy and led eventually to the conquest of the Greek mainland,
with the defeat of the Achaean League at Corinth in 146bce.
This phase, when Rome expanded its power beyond the Italic peninsula into the
Eastern Mediterranean, seems to hold the key to long-standing scholarly debates
about the nature and motives of Roman imperialism. To counter opinions that see
Rome as an always already bellicose predator set to conquer the world from early
on, Arthur Eckstein oers an alternative reading of Roman military and diplomatic
engagement in the Eastern Mediterranean during the decisive period from 230 to
170 bce. In his view Romes role changed from being one of many players in a
30
For Greek drama in Sicily see Dearden 1990, 23142, in particular p.234.
Setting theStage
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long-prevailing Hellenistic multipolar anarchy to being the hegemonic power in

a now Rome-centered unipolar hierarchy, which eventually enabled the rise of the
Roman Empire.31 These developments were not predictablethere are repeated
signs that Rome was not keen on conquering and keeping territories in the East
during this periodbut rather induced through a power transition crisis. The
Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt faltered after ca. 207 bce and threw the Hellenistic
multi-polar system o-balance, leading to a hotly debated pact between Philip V
of Macedon and Antiochus III of the Seleucid empire, another Hellenistic successor state to Alexanders conquests, which covered large stretches of land from
Syria to Bactria and modern-day Afghanistan. According to Eckstein, this set o a
diplomatic revolution, and Rome eventually decided to intervene.32 At least since
280 bce the Hellenistic state-system power balance had been tripolar, a balance
among Macedon, the Seleucid Empire, and Ptolemaic Egypt. In long and costly
wars, Rome curbed two major players in the Hellenistic multistate system: it
foiled Antiochuss ambitions to bring Greece to its knees in 188 bce and abolished
the Macedonian royal dynasty in a third Macedonian War (171168 bce). Ecksteins
compelling analysis of Romes gradual emergence as a hegemonic power in the
Eastern Mediterranean eectively undoes the common teleology of Romes rise
and triumph and instead recaptures the period preceding Romes hegemony as
a period of political maneuvering in a multistate Hellenistic world whose rules
broke down with the crisis in Egypt, not simply because of Romes aggressive
imperial ambitions.
Ecksteins analysis of the power balance in the Mediterranean during the third
and second centuries bce resonates with recent scholarship on the Chinese inuence sphere in East Asia, which moves away from a priori assumptions of Chinese
hegemonic dominance and shows instead mutual stimulation and consolidation
in an ever uid East Asian multistate system, emphasizing the political agency of
Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, to name just the very few of those states that survived
in some form into the modern period and still have a voice to remind the world of
their national histories.33 It also underscores the surprise eect that Romes gradual conquests in the East must have had on its contemporaries:they were perhaps
not as surprising as Japans defeat of China in 1894, but marked the beginning of
a cultural reversal of world-historicalscope.
It is no exaggeration to say that Romes conquest of the Greek mainland was
one of the single most inuential moments for Western cultural history, as we
know it unfolded. It is also one of the single most important dierences from
the Sino-Japanese, and overall East Asian, cultural constellation. True, in contrast to China during the Tang Dynasty (and even during the more segregated
Six Dynasties Period) Greece was not a single state, but consisted of multiple
Hellenistic States that shared the Greek language, or dialects thereof, and Greek
culture. Still, Romes defeat of the Achaean League at Corinth in 146 bce was not
one of many isolated Roman victories in the Eastern Mediterranean, but came
31
Eckstein 2008,381.
Ibid., 181270.
33
See in particular Wang 2005, and Holcombe2001.
32
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to represent the endpoint of a longer process of the submission of Greece and

the Greek world to Rome. As Michael Herzfeld remarks on the status of Greece
in Western cultural history, Greece may be unique in the degree to which the
country as a whole has been forced to play the contrasted roles of Ur-Europa
and humiliated oriental vassal at one and the same time.34 Although Valerius
Maximus, the author of Memorable Doings and Sayings quoted above, has a dubitable reputation for being superstitious, unreliable, and chatty, his anecdote about
the old Roman magistrates captures the signicance of this event in a symbolic
tableau:but they held that in all matters whatsoever the Greek cloak should be
subordinate to the Roman gown, thinking it unmeet that the weight and authority
of empire be sacriced to the seductive charm of letters (sed nulla non in re pallium
togae subici debere arbitrabantur, indignum esse existimantes illecebris et suavitati litterarum imperii pondus et auctoritatem donari). The submission of the Greek cloak
to the Roman toga meant a disjunction between political and cultural capital, the
weight and authority of the empire that faced the sweetness (suavitas) of letters
and cultural sophistication associated with Greeks. Although Valeriuss formulation gives culture a lightweight role in contrast to imperii pondus et auctoritas, the
Roman anxiety of being perceived as lacking learning (studia doctrinae) lurks
in Valeriuss defense of the magistrates linguistic violence, their imposition on
Greek-speaking people to communicate in Latin not faute de mieux, but paradoxically malgr mieux. This anxiety motivated Roman clichd invectives against the
defeated little Greeks, the Graeculi, who were cast as voluble, inept, lighthearted,
and eeminate, against the self-aggrandizing gravity, dignity, piety, and military
valor of the Romans.35
Debates about what Romanization of Greece meant on a political, administrative, cultural, religious, artistic, and literary level, how Romanization under
Roman rule in general diered from Hellenization in the wake of the successor states of Alexander the Greats empire, and how to divide agency between
the Romanizers and their Romanized subjects have produced a voluminous
literature in the last decades.36 What is crucial for our comparison with the early
Japanese situation is the physical integration of Greek and Latin-speaking populations that was a direct result of Romes conquest of Greece. Studying rhetoric
and philosophy in Athens or Asia Minor became a common element of Roman
elite education, a great number of Roman businessmen and traders resided in the
Greek-speaking world, and tens of thousands of Roman veterans inhabited almost
fty settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean under Augustus alone.37 In turn,
each conquest of Greek-speaking territory led to an inux of Greek slaves to Italy,
34
Herzfeld 1987,19.
For further prejudices see Alcock 1993, 132, in particularp.28.
To name just a few central titles:rst, on Romanization:the groundbreaking studies in Gruen
1984 draw our attention to the Hellenistic premises on which Rome expanded its domination
over the Mediterranean; see also Woolf 1998, Macmullen 2000, and Wallace-Hadrill 2008. On
Greece under Roman rule:Woolf 1994, Alcock 1993, Alcock 1997, and Swain 1996. On literary and
intellectual developments in Rome and Roman Greece, in particular the Second Sophistic revival
during the rst centuries of the Common Era:Anderson 1993, Whitmarsh 2005, and Goldhill2001.
37
Macmullen 2000, Chapter1 and the map on p.89.
35
36
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where they would often work as teachers and tutors in Roman households. The
history of spectacular expulsions of educated Greeks from Rome, something that
to my knowledge is not attested for Chinese from early Japan, is only thinkable
in a world where actual people and not just cultures embodied in imported texts
collide and coexist.
Greek-speaking philosophers, sometimes also rhetors, were expelled repeatedly in the earlier phase of Greek and Roman cultural rapprochement. This was
certainly a symptom of ambivalence toward increasing Greek cultural inuence
during the second century bce.38 The most famous drama of expulsion unfolded
in 155 bce when an embassy from Athens that included representatives of the
Stoic, Peripatetic, and Academic schools was sent to ask for a reduction of a ne
Athens had incurred for attacking a neighboring city in Attica, came to Rome.
Its leader Carneades of Cyrene, head of the Platonic Academy, spoke one day in
favor and the next day against the value of justice, making sure to mention Rome
as example of how to become powerful through injustice. Cato the Elder was so
incensed by this insult and the perdious logic of the sophistical argument that
he asked the Senate to throw the philosophers out of the city. Equally interestingly,
Latin rhetors were expelled in 92 bce by a decree stating that we have been
informed that there are persons who have established a novel sort of instruction
and that the youth gather at their school; that these persons have styled themselves Latin rhetoricians, and that young persons idle away whole days there
(renuntiatum est nobis esse homines qui novum genus disciplinae instituerunt, ad quos
iuventus in ludum conveniat; eos sibi nomen imposuisse Latinos rhetoras, ibi hominess
adulescentulos dies totos desidere).39 Though clothed in a Latin name and probably
indeed Romans in esh, these people were clearly the Roman equivalent of Greek
rhetoricians or philosophers, dangerous because of their proverbial seduction of
the young. This decree was issued by the prominent orator Crassus, censor at
the time, whom we will encounter in later chapters as the charismatic speaker
in Ciceros dialogue On the Orator. The dissolution of the school has been interpreted as an attempt of the Roman aristocracy to monopolize access to the training in the civic tool of oratory. However, the precedent of expulsions of Greek
rhetoricians and philosophers facilitated the argument for it and made it possible
to adduce the well-worn clich of the corruption ofyouth.
The expulsions are a fascinating phenomenon, especially given that the Roman
political establishment was so little interested in getting involved in education otherwise. It is important to point out that they were signs of Greco-Roman proximity
rather than distance. Only because Greek speakers had such a pervasive presence
in Rome and became the brain trust of the Roman education system could they
come under suspicion.
The massive migration movements caused by the Great Greek colonization
of southern Italy and the Roman conquest of Greece contrast sharply with the
probably extremely limited movement of actual people between the continent and
38
For an overview of expulsions of foreigners and certain professional groups such as religious cult
leaders and actors from Rome see Noy 2000,3747.
39
Suetonius, De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus 25.2. Kaster 1995,3031.
38
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the Japanese archipelago after the seventh century and the large-scale process of
self-colonization the Japanese engagedin.
There are at least three major dierences in the early Sino-Japanese geopolitical constellation compared to the Greco-Roman case. First, nowadays questions of
ethnicity and linguistics, often tinged by nationalist undertones, dominate the discussion over the early period before centralized state formation in the late seventh
and eighth centuries. Second, there was an intermediary third player, the states on
the Korean peninsula, which played a major role in transmitting new technologies
from China or of their own.40 Third, the Chinese world order was not based on
conquest and direct rule, but on a cultural inuence sphere and tribute system
enacted through an investiture system in which the Chinese court gave titles and
gifts to chiefs of surrounding polities and expected regular tribute missions to the
Chinese capital as symbolic return.
Let us begin with the rst aspect, the national veil that hovers over questions
of ethnicity and linguistics in discussions of Japans origins. The origins of Rome
and the enthusiastic search for archeological and textual clues about Romes early
development are certainly an urgent topic of inquiry for historians, opera lovers,
and tourists alike. Yet, Idare say its urgency is incomparable to the feverish public
search for historical identity pursued in todays Japan. The question of where the
inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago came from, how they relate to their continental neighbors on the Korean peninsula and China, to which language family they
belong, how the various Japanese, Korean, and Chinese sources relating to early
events on the Japanese archipelago compare with each other, and how they relate
to the wealth of recently excavated archeological materials is of premier national
importance in Japan.41 The assumption that Japan and the Japanese have always
possessed a distinctive cultural essence that makes them unique and exceptional
whether in their origins, in their peculiarly creative reception of Chinese culture,
or in their paradoxically successful way of Westernization through which they preserved their traditional national characterhas been so pervasive in Japan that
it would be wrong to call it a nationalistic ideology. Rather, it is an ingrained culturalism that is blind to its nationalistic bias. According to one estimate, more
than a thousand books on Nihonjinron

, theory on the nature of the
40
This is of course a complex situation in the case of Rome:there are the various Italic people
such as the Etruscans, Oscans, Umbrians, Messapians, and so on who had long-standing relations
with the Greek cities in Italy and certainly had a mediator function. Further aeld, there were
large empires in close contact with Hellenistic culture, such as the Seleucid and Macedonian
kingdoms, the Ptolemaic kingdom, or the Carthaginians. But our sources do not suggest that
any of these minorities or empires developed a rich national literature as the Romans did. Thus,
for Latin literature, Greek and Greeks were the only reference culture in the full sense explained
above. Feeney reminds us how exceptional and surprising the emergence of Latin literature truly
was:After 240 bce the preservation of vernacular poetic (and eventually not only poetic) texts
became a distinguishing mark of Rome as welland of nowhere else in the non-Greek Western
Mediterranean. Feeney 2005, 231. Emma Denchs work is crucial for understanding the complex
psychology of Romes multiethnic state. For an overview see Dench2010.
41
An account of the thorny issues around the origins of the Japanese, combining biological
anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, genetics, and ethnography is Hudson 1999. On archaeology
and identity issues see also Denoon, Hudson, McCormack, and Morris-Suzuki 1996, Part
IArchaeology and Identity.
Setting theStage
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Japanese, were published between 1945 and 1990, arguing each in more or less
similar ways for the uniqueness of Japan, its people and its history.42 This type of
inquiry ourishes both in public and academic circles. Against this background
it is interesting that the theory about the ethnic origins of Japanese culture that
has gained the strongest scholarly consensus since the 1990s emphasizes Japans
major indebtedness to the continent. In the dual-structure hypothesis proposed
by the Japanese anthropologist Kazur Hanihara in 1991, immigrants from what
today is Northeast China and Korea are the ancestors of most Japanese. He proposed that, in a rst step during the Pleistocene, immigrants from Southeast
Asia and Southern China settled the Japanese islands; these were the ancestors
of the Jmon

people, whose corded-ware pottery scholars use to dene
the Jmon Period (ca. 10, 000300 bce). In this society of hunters and gatherers intruded immigrants from the Northeast Asian continent during the Yayoi
Period (ca. 300 bc-300 ce), introducing wet-rice cultivation and bronze and iron
metallurgy into the Japanese islands. They settled all islands of the archipelago
except for the northern island of Hokkaido and the southern chain of the Ryukyu
Islands, so that the indigenous Ainu people in Hokkaido and the Okinawans
should be considered remnants of the earlier Jmon population.43 Although the
Jmon people were not completely replaced, genetic data does indicate that the
massive immigration from northeastern China and Korea during the Yayoi Period
contributed the lions share of todays Japanese geneticpool.
Thus, unlike with Ancient Greeks and Romans, who shared Indo-European
ethnic, linguistic, and religious roots, and unlike modern Greeks and Italians,
who might care about their role as cultural cradle and catalyst in Western cultural
history but much less about any unique national essence rooted in ethnic attributes, modern Japanese care deeply about their origins and about the question
of how immigration from China and Korea shaped their prehistory, which could
potentially threaten their claim to uniqueness. Until the rst mention of a polity
called Wa on the Japanese islands in Chinese sources of the third century ce,
there is no textual evidence to support our reading of the prehistoric archaeological record. Chinese ocial histories, which discuss tribute missions and polities
in the Chinese inuence sphere, and later Japanese and Korean annals, which
record their own emerging state formation, give a spotty picture of sustained
contact zones. But they fail to give us a sense of how much of the signicant
technology transfer during that period from the continent to the Japanese Islands
happened through diusion of ideas or how much of it happened through migration of actual people and artisans.
This is the period when the mediation of Chinese inuence through the state
formation on the Korean peninsula was decisive. To return to Ecksteins hypothesis, the emergent Roman state was part of an anarchic multipolar Hellenistic
state system, kept in some kind of balance through the three main powers of
Ptolemaic Egypt, Macedonia, and the Seleucid Empire, before Rome emerged
42
43
Hudson 1999,234.
Ibid.6081.
40
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as a unipolar hegemonic power in the Mediterranean in the late third century

bce. Rome, both before and during the empire, functioned in a world of manifold ethnicities and cultures, but, except for the Etruscans in the archaic period,
there was no prominent singular intermediary of dierent linguistic and cultural background through whose transmission and transformation Rome would
have gained access to Greek culture. The Greeks in Greece and in the colonized
world of Magna Graecia were basically Greeks, in contrast to the states on the
Korean peninsula that were linguistically and culturally distinct both from China
and Japan. Although China had established four commanderies on the Korean
peninsula during the Han Dynasty in 108 bce, the state of Koguryo was established in the North by the rst century ce, followed by the foundation of the states
of Silla in southeastern Korea and Paekche in southwestern Korea around the
fourth century ce. Until 668, when Silla destroyed the two other kingdoms of
the so-called early Three Kingdom Period and unied the peninsula under its
rule, the hostilities between these states and their rivalries over Chinese attention
was a driving force both for state formation in early Japan and for the transmissionand sometimes Korean transformationof Chinese technologies.44 State
formation of Silla and Paekche in the fourth century seems to have run parallel
to the emergence of a state with some form of centralized government, as can be
seen from the uniform distribution of labor-intensive keyhole-shaped tombs from
southern Kyushu to northern Honshu that archeologists have used to designate
the Tomb Period (ca.300552 ce). Archeological evidence for this period indicates a large-scale inux of Korean-borne technology: ironworking, gold, silver
metallurgy, stoneware manufacture, and the use of horses and horse equipment.
They also included writing, Buddhism, Buddhist architecture and sculpture,
and Chinese-style law and bureaucratic accouterments such as surnames, titles,
and ranks that helped build a central government.45 Some of these technologies
required the presence of expert artisans and cannot have reached Japan only as
ideas without the experts to execute them. William Wayne Farris has proposed
four mechanisms by which technologies spread from the Korean peninsula to
Japan:trade, immigration, plundering of Japanese troops involved in battles on
the peninsula, and fourth, an ocial exchange between Japan-friendly states such
as Paekche, who granted critical goods and services to the Japanese in return for
their military support.46 But again, the proportions of the actual demographics
behind these exchanges, which could give us a better sense of the type of cultural
translatio taking place in prehistoric Japan, remain hard tograsp.
Japanese earliest annals, the Record of Ancient Matters and the Chronicles of
Japan (Nihon shoki

) from the eighth century, do give us some glimpse
of the inux of people and technologies from the Korean peninsula and family
44
Important studies of Japanese state formation include Barnes 1993, Chapters13 and 14, Barnes
2007 and Piggott 1997. For a history of Japanese state formation from an East Asian perspective see
Holcombe2001.
45
For an overview of the relations between early Japan and the Korean peninsula see Farris 1998,
Chapter2 and Holcombe 2001, 165214.
46
Farris 1998,121.
Setting theStage
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registers of aristocrats indicate that as much as a third of the eight-century bureaucracy could trace their origins to Korea since 300 ce.47 However, the archeological record suggests a much greater Korean immigration than the annals indicate
for the period between 300 and 700. And there are clear biases in the way the
eighth-century Japanese court wanted to have their history represented. First,
there is a persistent bias against Silla. The Yamato regime in Japan was a traditional ally of Paekche, which even sent their princes to Japan for protection during
tensions with Koguryo and Silla, and kept Japanese troops and interests involved
on the peninsula. After all, it was the lifeline to advanced Chinese technology
and culture. When Silla destroyed Paekche in 663 in the process of the unication of the peninsula, there was a last great wave of highly skilled immigrants
that brought continental know-how to the Japanese archipelago. On the eve of the
emergence of fuller literacy and the beginning of literary production in the eighth
century, immigration from the Korean peninsula came to a decisive, historically
inuential halt. Thereafter, Japan was to be bound to the continent mainly by
embassies and imports, not by migration and ethnic integration like in the early
period leading up to the seventh century.
The third important dierence of the Sino-Japanese from the Greco-Roman
geopolitical constellation was the political texture of Chinese cultural hegemony
in East Asia. Since the Han Dynasty (206 bce220 ce), China started to connect
surrounding polities to its empire in a multistate system of investiture. Chieftains
of surrounding polities would receive titles and prestige goods such as inscribed
seals and mirrors from the Chinese court in return for tribute gifts and political
allegiance to the Chinese emperor shown through regularcostlytribute missions. Polities on the Japanese islands participated in this system since at least
57 ce, when Emperor Guangwu of the Han entrusted a seal to a messenger from
Wa.48 State formation on the Korean peninsula and the Japanese islands was in
large part an outcome of securing access to Chinese titles and technologies and
the local chieftains on the archipelago thus enhanced their domestic inuence,
particularly before the unication of Japan in the hands of the Yamato monarchs
in the Kinai area around Nara and Kyoto in the fth through seventh centuries.49
Although Japan had sent numerous missions to several Chinese dynasties
since the rst attested mission in 57 ce, the embassies to the Sui (581618) and
Tang courts (618906) ushered in a new phase of cultural interaction with the
continent and China. From the seventh to the late ninth century the Japanese
court appointed about twenty missions to China. From a Chinese perspective, the
Japanese missions were conveying tribute to the court of the Son of Heaven in
the capital Changan, as dozens of other states and polities did. From a Japanese
perspective the missions were costly and complex diplomatic maneuvers, especially during the stormy period of the Silla unication of the Korean peninsula
in the late seventh century. Later missions functioned increasingly as channels
47
Ibid.121.
For an overview of the history of Sino-Japanese relations see Fogel 2009, Chapter1Sino-Japanese
Relations:The Long View, and Kimiya1965.
49
See Wang 2005,1732.
48
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for cultural exchange, transporting Japanese monks and students to China or,
very occasionally, Chinese envoys and monks to Japan, and enabling the importation into Japan of books, Buddhist scriptures, and devotional objects. To a limited
degree, the missions provided trade opportunities, and gave the Japanese envoys
the chance to gain high rank or other coveted rewards both before their departure and after the successful completion of the mission to compensate them for
the great dangers.50 Japans Tang missions paradoxically foreignized China for
the Japanese while at the same time providing the very channels to familiarize
them more thoroughly with contemporary Chinese culture. The standard narrative about the Tang missions, which emphasizes the familiarization aspect of the
process of cultural exchange, overlooks the fact that China became foreign to the
Japanese envoys only in the moment they stepped on Chinese soil. Thoroughly
familiar with the Chinese world in the Chinese canonical texts they were raised on
in Japan, the cultivated envoys must have experienced nothing less than a culture
shock when they reached the actual China after their perilous trip. So much was
unfamiliar:The foreign-sounding language; the dealings with the Tang bureaucracy, which paid for their stay but monitored them on every step; the sudden
encounter, during the pompous tribute ceremony, with envoys from the Korean
Peninsula, Cambodia, or Tibet and with the mixed urban populations of the Tang
Empire that included Arab merchants, Persian doctors, and people of Nestorian
or Jewish faith; the monumental scale of the imperial court compared to its modest incarnation of Nara and Kyoto; the exotic products that the growing monetary
economy of the markets of Tang cities had tooer.
This form of cultural translatio was also very peculiar in another respect:we
might almost call the Japanese embassies a synecdoche of cultural exchange
between China and Japan, rather than an extensive and regular ongoing process of
exchange. During the twenty embassiesoften merely one every few decades
only a minimal number of highly educated Japanese individuals actually went
to China and interacted with Chinese ocials and literati, monks, merchants,
and clerks; each embassy had at most a hundred or a few hundred members,
most of whom were seamen handling the ships. When carrying out their mission
and attending the tribute ceremony in the Chinese capital Changan, the envoys
engaged in very brief diplomatic interactions of symbolic valueonly a few days of
ceremony after many months of travel by ship and on horseback. But these eeting
moments of symbolic value were given utmost attention and lavish nancial support from the Japanese court for almost three centuries until the late ninth century,
when they were somewhat inexplicably abandoned as too costly, too dangerous,
or perhaps less pressing after the fall of the Tang in 907 and the ensuing chaotic
Five Dynasties Period. Yet, and here comes the power of the synecdoche, those
few eeting encounters of the embassy members and the longer study periods of
a very small number of Japanese students and monks in China who accompanied
the missions had a disproportionately formative impact on Japanese society:on
50
For a history of the Tang missions see Charlotte von Verschuer 1985, Wang 2005, Tno 1999,
Wang 1998, and Furuse 2003. For the Tang context of foreigners, visitors, and ethnic identity see
Abramson2008.
Setting theStage
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how cities and temples looked and which devotional objects they contained, on its
ritual observances and law codes, on fashion in poetry, music, and painting, herbs,
medicine, divination; in short, on just about anything.
All factors that distinguish the Sino-Japanese from the Greco-Roman constellationgeopolitical distance from the reference culture versus its physical integration and conquest; modern nationalist involvement in historical debates in East
Asia versus symbolic dissolution into a shared Latin heritage in the West; the
presence of a prominent third player, the Korean peninsula, versus its lack in
the Roman world; and, lastly, the strange type of cultural translatio eected in
the Japanese tribute missions within the framework of the Chinese investiture
system versus a cultural translatio that involved a demographics of migration and
exchange of populationsall these factors made China into a somehow distant
and malleable phenomenon for early Japanese.
In premodern Japan there was no disjunction between cultural and political
capital, which Romes conquest of the Greek-speaking world brought about in the
ancient Mediterranean. Japan remained marginal to the Chinese world order, in
line with its role of a younger culture vis--vis its reference culture. This marginality gave Japanese authors great freedom to imagine themselves in relation to
a third space, a China shaped by Japanese exigencies and desires. This third
space had nothing very conscious and nothing necessarily ctional about it,
although it could take extreme forms of wishful thinking in literary accounts of
imaginary voyages to China that play out fantasies of inverting the cultural hierarchy between China and Japan.51
Is the Japanese monk Ennin
(793864), who accompanied the penultimate embassy to the Tang in 838 and was forced out of China in 847 because
of Emperor Wuzongs persecution of Buddhism, dreaming a dream of prophetic
Japanese importance in a world where it was lacking? As we learn from the diary
quoted above, which Ennin wrote during his stay in China, a Chinese ocial of
the city of Zhengzhou, who had always looked out for Ennin, dashes on horseback
after the Japanese monks who are anxiously eeing China, expelled due to the persecutions. In the moment of cultural crisis, when a Chinese emperor was eager to
please Daoist quacks and ll the empty state coers by forcing tens of thousands
of tax-exempt monks and nuns into taxable laity and sacking the wealth of their
monasteries, the Chinese ocial from Zhengzhou subjects himself as a disciple
to a Japanese monk and prophetically declares Japan into the place of the future,
a haven for Buddhism on the verge of extinction at home. Buddhism no longer
exists in this land. But it has been said since ancient times that Buddhism will
ow toward the East. Iwant you to do your best to reach your homeland soon and
propagate the Buddhist Law there.52
For Japanese monks, India and China were the countries of the origin of
Buddhism. The monks went to China in search of the Law, to study the newest
developments in Buddhist doctrine, practice with Chinese and Indian masters,
51
For an intriguing analysis of a few such tales and plays see Sakaki 2007, Chapter1.
For a translation and study of Ennins diary see Reischauer 1955b and its companion volume
Reischauer1955a.
52
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and bring home Buddhist texts, paintings, and devotional objects. Ennins diary is
rather factual and sober and it is thus not impossible that the ocial of Zhengzhou
did indeed grace the Japanese monk with these attering words of adieu. But they
are only imaginable in a context of Chinese cultural cataclysm. The infamous
burning of books by the First Emperor of the Qin in 213 bce or the Buddhist
persecutions under Wuzong were the type of moments for which Chinese did
imagine a role of importance for Japan, the role of an outsourced receptacle
for precious cultural goods about to perish in China. In the early modern period
Chinese intellectuals recoveredand imaginedall those Chinese books preserved only in Japan; to this day exciting nds in hidden-away Japanese imperial, private, or temple libraries of Chinese materials lost in China are important
events in the eld. But we should not forget:whereas Rome became the receptacle
that assimilated and propagated Hellenistic culture through its empire, subjecting the Greek cloak to the Roman toga, Japan was marginal to China. Only in
moments of Chinese cultural cataclysm could it rise to its own imagined historic
role in East Asia; and even then only, from the Chinese perspective, as a conscientious receptacle of Chinese belongings that should be claimed back by their true
owners at some point in a better future.
Language
Linguistic conguration of the Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman constellations is
another site of complex divergence that gives depth to our comparison. In both
premodern Japan and Rome, writers, most often members of the educated elite,
would have intimate knowledge of both their reference cultures and their own
literary tradition. It was not enough to understand Chinese and Greek, but for cultural literacy one needed to know and inhabit the genres, authors, myths, themes,
associations, and metaphors distinctive of each literary tradition. Yet Japan was a
monolingual empireforms of vernacular Japanese were the basis of oral communicationwhile Romes Republic and Empire grew multilingual in proportion
to its conquests. As Romes territory expanded beyond Latium and local relevance,
Rome became ever more multilingual. Latin coexisted in the early period on the
peninsula with a host of Italic languages and dialects such as Umbrian and Oscan,
or even non-Indo-European languages like Etruscan, but no substantial corpus of
high literature was produced in these other languages that would have entered the
canon of Roman education.53 Although Ennius (239170 bce), whom we encountered in Suetoniuss biographies of grammarians above, was trilingual and had
reputedly the three hearts of Greek, Oscan, and Latin, he wrote his Annals, an
epic history of Rome where he introduced the Greek hexameter into the Latin
epic tradition to come, in Latin, not in Oscan.54 Thus, although the Roman world
was multilingual, its literary culture was largely conned to the mastery of two
languages, namely Latin andGreek.
53
For an overview of spoken and written languages of the Roman world see Harris 1989, 17590. The
rst handbook to provide detailed overview of the various languages and literatures of the Roman
empire will be Selden and Vasunia (in preparation).
54
For early Italic languages and their relation to the diusion of writing see Mauro Cristofani1999.
Setting theStage
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To clearly formulate the crucial dierences between the pattern of literacy in

Rome and Japan at the outset:At least since the second century bce, the Roman
elite was bilingualthey spoke both Greek and Latin; their education was bicanonicalthey were trained in both the Greek and growing Latin literary canon;
and their literary production was predominantly monoliteratethey wrote their
works in Latin. True, early Latin historians like Fabius Pictor had written works in
Greek to present the history of the rise of Rome in favorable light to a Hellenistic
audience, and obviously Greeks living under Roman domination would write in
their Greek mother tongue.55 But none of the great Latin authors produced a work
in Greek that became the foundation of his fame. The Japanese scheme of literacy
was radically dierent. The early Japanese elite was monolingualwith the exception of very few individuals who came from the continent or studied in China
for a long time, Japanese could not speak Chinese; their education was tricanonicalincluding the Chinese canon, and the growing Sino-Japanese and vernacular
Japanese canons; and their literary production was biliteratethey produced texts
in both Sino-Japanese and the vernacular, and many genre-dependent hybrid idioms in between.
It was both easier and more dicult for Romans to acquire Greek language
skills than it was for Japanese to read Chinese. Learning Greek was easier for a
speaker of Latin, because both languages are Indo-European, inecting languages
that share lexical roots and syntactical patterns. Latin has more cases than Greek,
while Greek has inections for a middle voice between active and passive voice
or an Aorist inection to express particular aspects of the past tense, but they are
both highly inected languages. In contrast, Chinese and Japanese belong to two
unrelated large language families, the Sino-Tibetan and, arguably, the Altaic languages, respectively. Once Japanese started to write their own language with the
help of Chinese characters and the uses of writing expanded with the emergence
of a more centralized state in the seventh century, much of the Chinese lexicon was
imported and still constitutes the shared lexical pool between modern varieties of
Chinese and Japanese. Yet in terms of syntax, Chinese and Japanese belong to
opposite ends of the linguistic spectrum:Chinese is an uninected, so-called isolating language, lacking cases, tenses, and inections. Japanese, in contrast, is an
agglutinative language, inecting words through glued-on suxes and auxiliary verbs or particles. Moreover, it is an SOP language (subject-object-predicate)
as opposed to Chinese, which like English is an SPO language, where the object
follows the predicate of a sentence. Thus, learning to read Chinese was more difcult for the Japanese, because the languages are syntactically so dierent that the
Japanese needed to switch word order and add a host of suxes and inections to
a naked Chinese sentence in order to make sense of it in Japanese.
However, in another way it was much more dicult for a Roman to learn Greek
than it was for a Japanese to learn Chinese. Alphabetic languageslanguages that
are recorded based on the sound produced in pronouncing the wordshave the
55
For the rst two generations after Livius Andronicus we had, as Denis Feeney notes, a striking
chiasmus:the Greeks [such as Andronicus and Ennius] are writing drama and epic in Latin, and the
Romans [such as Fabius Pictor] are writing ethnographic history in Greek. Feeney 2005,237.
46
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disadvantage of requiring translation.56 Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet, but

one has to learn lexicon and grammar to be able to understand a text in Latin
letters written in Hungarian. Si ilarly, Latin speakers would not be able to understand a Greek sentence, even if it were written in Latin, not Greek, letters. They
would have to learn lexicon and grammar to make sense of a Greek sentence.
Not so for highly logographic languages such as the East Asian ones, that use
characters for writing words, which might be pronounced dierently depending
on whether a Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Vietnamese person voices it in their
vernacular language. The Japanese developed a reading technique, which, as mentioned above, was called kundoku, or reading through glossing, which allowed
the reader to read out Chinese sentences in accordance with Japanese syntax. The
famous opening of the Confucian Analects, which in modern Mandarin reads xue
er shi xi zhi, bu yi yue hu

(to learn and sometimes review
what one has learnt, is that not pleasure?) (Analects 1.1) could be vocalized by a
Japanese reader as manabite toki ni kore o narafu, mata yorokobashikarazu ya.57
The Japanese vocalization of a Chinese sentence through the kundoku reading
method involves three procedures:rst, the association of logographs of Chinese
origin with Japanese words (e.g., the logograph (review), pronounced xi in
Mandarin with the Japanese word narafu with the same meaning); second, the
transposition of the resulting words into Japanese word order (e.g., by placing
the object before the verb:inverting the Chinese xi (reviewing) zhi (that which
(one has learned)) into the Japanese kore (that which (one has learned) narafu
(review); third, the addition of grammatical suxes and particles (e.g., the
Japanese object marker o in kore o narafu (review what one has learnt).58
Although one could technically call this transposition an instant translation
on the goand there is much debate about this issueit was a reading technique
that students would learn from childhood on as the natural way of reading Chinese
texts, and it did not involve the learning of a foreign language, as the Chinese text
was voiced in Japanese vernacular.59 Not only did the Japanese the kundoku reading method that enabled them to read Chinese texts directly, without the need
for translation. More importantly, from the seventh throughout the early twentieth century, Japanese authors produced texts in reverse kundoku:they wrote
texts in Chinese word order and without Japanese grammatical markers, which,
if written in a genre that favored pure Sinitic style over a hybrid of Chinese and
Japanese vernacular, were perfectly readable for Chinese (and premodern Korean
and Vietnamese, for that matter). This literature has been called Sino-Japanese
56
For further reections on the impact of phonographic versus logographic scripts on literary
cultures see Denecke (forthcoming).
57
As with glossing or translating, there are many other ways in which this phrase could be vocalized
and was vocalized throughout history. For a few dierent readings of this sentence through history
see Kin 2010,72f.
58
For further explanation of the nature and development of kundoku see Lurie 2011, Chapter4.
59
There was also an alternative way of reading called ondoku (reading by (original) sound),
which involved reading each Chinese character with approximating Chinese pronunciation in
Chinese word order. However, this reading technique was probably limited to very special genres and
occasions, such as the recitation of rhymed Chinese-style poetry, the memorization of primers, or the
ritual chanting of Buddhisttexts.
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or Japanese kanbun
, (Japanese Chinese).60 The ingenuous method of
kundoku for reading, which eliminated the necessity of translating Chinese, and
its reverse application by Japanese authors in writing, which created a whole independent literary canon of Japanese kanbun produced by Japanese authors, led to
an intriguing linguistic constellation of premodern Japanese literary culture. As
mentioned above, Japanese literary culture was largely monolingual, biliterate,
and tricanonical; or, put dierently, a literary culture whose participants used
Japanese in oral communication were familiar with the Chinese and Japanese
literary corpus, and mastered the three canons that made up the Chinese and
Japanese literary corpus:the Chinese canon on the one hand, and the indigenous
Japanese canonwhich consisted of literary works divided into Japanese kanbun
and vernacular Japaneseon the other. Japanese kanbun was the written language
associated with the court bureaucracy, scholarship, and Buddhism. While aristocratic women also received ample education in Chinese and Japanese kanbun
literature, the authors producing Japanese kanbun were almost exclusively male
during the Heian Period. Vernacular Japanese, or wabun, literature
had its

own set of genres, some of which were strongly associated with female subjectivity, private sentiment, and romantic emotions.
Japans monolingual, biliterate literary culture with a triple canon is a particularly interesting case even within East Asia, because the literary cultures of Korea
and Vietnam functioned for a long time virtually only in the Chinese-style idiom
and did not develop vernacular literatures until much later, whereas Japanese
authors produced a rich literature in the vernacular and in Japanese kanbun,
Chinese-style, or Sino-Japanese literature, from the outset. It is also distinctive
because it is strongly gender-inected and highly genre-bound. As one can expect
with a long and multifaceted literary tradition, the association of the female gender with vernacular and of male court culture with Sino-Japanese writing is much
more complex and also varies depending on historical period, but gender stays
always a relevant category when it comes to the choice of language and genre
in literary production. Also, unlike Latins functioning as a spoken lingua franca
among the educated elites of medieval and early modern Europe, Japanese kanbun
was only a grapholect,61 an idiom that was produced when a Japanese reader
needed to vocalize texts written by Chinese or by Japanese in Chinese-style kanbun. Japanese spoke only Japanese, but could communicate within the sphere
of Chinese writing with Chinese, and people in Vietnam and on the Korean
Peninsula through their Chinese-style writing in the form of so-called brush
talk, conversation carried out with brush and ink in written Chinese for lack of a
common vernacular language.
Chinese characters have shaped East Asia, understood as the Sinographic
sphere, over the last two millennia. Chinese-style writing has gradually disappeared from East Asia over the last hundred years, when vernacularization movements, in unison with modern nationalisms, called for vernacular writing styles;
60
The nomenclature is hotly debated. For an incisive overview of the complex issues at stake see
Kornicki 2010 and Wixted1998.
61
See Lurie 2011, Chapter4.
48
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in China itself, literary Chinese, the lingua franca of East Asia, has itself been
displaced by vernacular Chinese in the radical reform movements of the early
twentieth century. Although this process of vernacularization started already in
the early modern period, new power constellations and modern language nationalisms have eradicated the written language that had shaped East Asia for so long
and allowed sophisticated (if silent, nonvocalized) communication across borders.62 Today, in the aftermath of the demise of the Sinographic sphere, the
people of East Asia ironically need to rely on English to understand eachother.
That the Greco-Roman linguistic constellation was bilingual and monoliterate,
while the Sino-Japanese constellation was monolingual and biliterate, had profound consequences for their respective literary cultures. These dierences are
evident from their earliest beginnings. The most important implication was that
Latin literature started with the translation of Greek models, whereas Japanese
literature began as a continuation of Chinese literary production, supplemented by
literary production in vernacular genres that had no Chinese precedent.
Let us consider this contrast between the need for translation from Greek
into Latin literary culture and the blurred boundaries of Japanese literary culture
vis--vis Chinese literature by looking at some of the earliest products of Latin
and Japanese literary culture. Livius Andronicusone of the semi-Greeks in
Suetoniuss vignette of the beginnings of grammar instruction in Romepossibly
came as a prisoner of war to Rome when his hometown of Tarentum in the heel
of Italy was sacked by Rome in 272 bce. He worked as a grammar teacher and
probably also actor, while writing his own plays. The date of 240 bce, when he
translated into Latin two Greek plays on the occasion of the Roman games, came
to be seen as the beginning of Latin literature by Ciceros times. He received high
public honors when composing a hymn in honor of Juno in 207 bce, whereafter
his guild of scribes received a public building for use.63 Today only about sixty fragments, preserved in the works of authors or grammarians of the Republican and
Imperial periods, survive of Livius Andronicuss writings, mostly from plays with
Greek-sounding titles and from his translation of Homers Odyssey into old Latin
Saturnian verse. As a grammar teacher, Livius must have frequently taught this
central text of the Hellenistic curriculum. That he was familiar with scholarship
on the Odyssey is evident from a fragment where he inserts a Hellenistic commentary rather than translating the original Homeric text.64 But his Odusia was not a
pedestrian paraphrase of the Greek original for those of Liviuss Roman students
who did not know their Greek. The surviving fragments of his translation show
traces of literary ambition, of an attempt to produce an artistic translation and registers in Latin that could express this ambition. Except for the popular literature
of drama, translation of Greek literature into Latin was mostly of aesthetic and literary interest, not necessarily of practical value, since Roman elites were bilingual.
62
For a compelling comparative perspective on vernacularization in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam see
Kornicki2008.
63
For a brief portrayal of Livius Andronicus see Conte 1994b, 3942 and Fuhrmann 2005, 99101.
64
Feeney 1991,100.
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Luckily, the opening lines of Liviuss Odusia survive and we can witness how
he rendered the famous opening praise of Ulysses:Andra moi ennepe, Mousa,
polutropon! (Of a man tell me, Muse, of many turns Homer, Odyssey, I, 1). This
is how Livius says it, making large steps toward adapting Greek meter, rhetoric,
and meaning to the Latin language as a new medium for literary pretensions:
Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum65 (Of a man tell me, Camena, a
turnedone)
What a bold vision Liviuss adaptation of the Greek phrase reveals: There is
Liviuss sensitivity to rendering the archaic dignity of the Greek ennepe (tell)
into thealready by Liviuss timesolemnly archaic Latin insece. There is the
great leap of cultural adaptation and approximation: rather than sticking with
the resonant Greek Museorigin of all literary inspiration, to which Ennius
shortly afterward would strategically revertLivius gives the Muse a Latin name.
Camena, one of the ancient Italic water divinities associated with a spring outside of Romes Porta Capena, was a name that echoed Roman song (Casmena/
Carmena-carmen) for Liviuss reader. And third, there is the sly self-referential
evocation of Liviuss translation project in the epithet versutum (a turned one)
that literally refers to far-roaming Ulysses of many turns (poltropos in the
Homeric text). It also refers to Ulysses as pars pro toto, who stands in for the
Odyssey and Homeric epic that Livius here turns, translates (vertere) for the
rst time into Latin.66 Vertere is the technical term for translation. When the
early Latin playwright Plautus makes fun of himself in the explanatory prologue
of one of his plays by saying Vertit barbare ([Plautus] translated [the play] into
the barbarian language of [Latin]) the reference to translation from Greek into
Latin seems like a pose of comic self-detachment. Might Plautus be mocking
those Greeks who mock Latin by calling it a barbarian language? There is nothing comical in Livius, but we have a similar degree of self-consciousness in translating the opening line of the Odyssey:There is Ulysses, whose adventures Livius
intends to present with the help of the Greek Muse transferred to Latium just
before the gates of Rome. But there is also the joyously celebrated gain in translation that Roman song, Carmen, is heralded by the new muse, Camena, and that
the transposition of Ulysseswhose adventures had long been associated with
Italic shoresto Rome and into the Latin language is a new theme, a meta-theme
of the epic in translation.
How do texts from Japans literary beginnings deal with the transposition of
literature from China to Japan? We will see that the Roman drama of translation
contrasts with a Japanese drama of continuity. Although Japanese chronicles
and early poetry anthologies contain songs that are associated with legendary
emperors of high antiquity, we only get a glimpse of an emerging literary culture
in the late seventh century with the court of Emperor Tenji (r. 668671). Tenji gets
65
Livius Andronicus I, 1.Latin text from Warmington 1982, 24. For brief commentary on Liviuss
fragments see Verrusio1977.
66
On all three points see Hinds 1998, 5862. For further thoughts on possible signs for Liviuss
self-perception and self-representation see Suerbaum 1968,112.
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associated with the foundation of the State Academy and with the hosting of court
banquets, during which he would call on courtiers with literary learning to compose poetry on the occasion. Let us look at two poems from Emperor Tenjis era as
a way to think through the dierent beginnings of Japanese and Latin literatures.
The very rst poem in the earliest preserved Japanese poetry anthology,
Florilegium of Cherished Airs (Kaifs

) compiled in 751, is by Emperor
Tenjis son Prince tomo. The unfortunate prince was later killed by Tenjis
brother Tenmu, who assumed the throne after a brief war of succession in 672;
but here he is in the peaceful period before the civil war, celebrating his fathers
rule at one of the literary banquets that was recently introduced to courtlife:

In service at a banquet
His August Radiance sparkles like sun andmoon
His Imperial Virtue covers Heaven andEarth
T h e Three Talents (Heaven, Earth, Mankind) line up in grand

prosperity
And myriads of states show their obedience as loyal subjects.67
This praise poem in honor of Emperor Tenji resorts to cosmic proportions and
Chinese solemn vocabulary to praise a ruler of a edgling state without even a
stable capital yet. All metaphors projecting cosmic grandeur, such as Heaven and
Earth, the Three Talents, and the myriad states of faithful loyal subjects, are
resonant expressions from the Confucian Classics and lend their radiance in this
somewhat elementary poem to a Japanese ruler. In accord with Chinese political
cosmology, cosmological imagery creates political resonance: Tenjis radiance is
equal to sun and moon, his virtue is made greater than Heaven and Earth, and
the alignment of the triad of Heaven, Earth, and Mankind ensures prosperity.
The cosmo-political resonance is also expressed in the numerous parallelisms
that keep numbers and cosmic elements in strict order. This is a Chinese-style
poem (kanshi
), a quatrain consisting of four lines with ve characters each;

although from the perspective of Chinese imperial panegyrics nothing is particularly new about this poem, it is a new poem, written in the vein of Chinese panegyric poetry by a Japanese prince of a edgling polity on the periphery of the
Chinese empire.
How did vernacular poetry (uta ) from the same period, which was without
Chinese linguistic and genre precedent and could not rely on the continuation
of established Chinese practice, look like? In a poem from the earliest anthology
of vernacular poetry, the Collection of Myriad Leaves (Manysh

, ca. 759),
Princess Nukata (ca. 638690s), whom Emperor Tenji had presumably snatched
away from his brother Tenmu while they were still princes, composed the following poem in response to an unusual request Emperor Tenji made of his palace
minister:
When the Emperor [Tenji] commanded the Palace Minister, Fujiwara no Asomi
[Kamatari], to match the radiance of the myriad blossoms of the spring mountains
67
Kaifsno.1.
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against the colors of the thousand leaves of the autumn mountains, Princess
Nukata decided the question with thispoem:

When spring comes forth

That lay in hiding all the winter through,
The birds that did not sing
Come back and sing to us once more;
The owers that did not bloom
Have blossomed everywhere again.
Yet so rife the hills
We cannot make our way to pick,
And so deep the grass
We cannot pluck the owers to see.
But when on autumn hills
We gaze upon the leaves of trees,
It is the yellow ones
We pluck and marvel for sheer joy,
And the ones still green,
Sighing, leave upon the boughs
Those are the ones Ihate to lose.
For me, it is the autumn hills.68
Though the palace minister, not Nukata, is asked to answer the call of a courtly pastime, Nukata jumps in with her poem and decides to deliver her choice. As a poem
celebrating the aesthetics of choice, where not the decision but the poetic explanation for it counts, it resonates strongly with the literary culture of the Chinese
Six Dynasties. Raising her voice in the last phrase to announce her decision with
are wa, as for me adds bold charm to the game. The perfectly balanced parallelismsbirds and owers, hills and grass, yellow and green leaveshave beneted
from the Chinese poetic habit of parallelism, but also replicate the underlying
theme, the choice between binaries. Nukatas decision is based on two beautiful
moves. First, to choose the best, one needs to see all options. That disqualies the
spring blossoms, because they are so abundant that one cannot even get into the
overgrown hills to pick them. An aesthetics of scarcity, the ever thinning leaves
of autumn, make choice possible, intuitively a more mature solution. Second, the
sad joy of grasping the workings of time, rather than enjoying the freshness of the
immediate moment, is an equally mature aesthetic stance:we pluck the yellow
ones in the joy of the moment, but sigh preemptively about the green ones not yet
ripe to go, whom we anticipate to turn yellowsoon.
How should we pinpoint the intriguing contrasts between literary beginnings
with Livius Andronicuss Odusia in Rome and the literary beginnings at Emperor
Tenjis courtly poetry banquets in Japan? There is the obvious: Liviuss text is a
68
Manysh 1.16. Translation from Cranston 1993,175.
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translation of an extant Greek text, while Prince tomos and Princess Nukatas
poems are newly created poems. They either continue the subgenre of Chinese
imperial panegyrics or are written in the distinctively Japanese vernacular verse
form, but tinged by the dynamic of Chinese poetic pastimes and the rhetoric of
Chinese literary tropes. By implication, Liviuss text is less directly tied to the
political scene:he does not need to lavish praise on the powerful or show o his
poetic eloquence and mature aesthetic judgment. Yet he manages to introduce
into the opening of his translation the Latin drama of translation, of transposing
the Greek muse to Latium, and allows it to gain in the process.
And there is the less obvious dierence:Liviuss lines only survive because Aulus
Gellius (130180 ce), a polymath living during the reigns of Hadrian, Antoninus
Pius, and Marc Aurel, quoted the line to illustrate the curious archaic spelling of
insece (tell!) without the usual u in insecue. In his Attic Nights he remarks:
I found in the library at Patrae a book of true antiquity by Livius Andronicus with
the title Odyssey. It contained the rst line with the word inseque spelled without the letter u:Of a man tell me, Camena, a turned one.69
Oendi enim in bibliotheca Patrensi librum verae vetustatis Livii Andronici, qui
inscriptus est in quo erat versus primus cum hoc verbo (inseque) sine u
littera:Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum.
Even in the Late Republic somebody like Cicero said Livius Andronicus was not
worth a second reading and two centuries later, by the time of Aulus Gellius, Liviuss
Odusia wasted away on remote library shelves and attracted only the attention of
those interested in orthographic idiosyncrasies. Aulus Gellius was keenly interested
in questions of translations from Greek into Latin of literary and philosophical texts
as well as of didactic prose.70 Even somebody like Aulus Gellius who was tuned into
questions of the value and means of translation could apparently only look at Liviuss
translation as a fossilized repository of archaic spelling habits instead of grasping its
signicance as a courageous and witty beginning of literary culture inRome.
Latin literature from Livius Andronicuss time into the rst century bce only
survives in fragments, except for the corpus of Plautuss and Terences plays and
Catos treatise On Agriculture. Aulus Gellius is a vivid illustration that early writers
like Livius Andronicus fell out of favor after the Late Republic and ceased to be
transmitted whole, except for serving as a quarry for treasure seekers of grammatical and lexical curiosa.
In contrast, not only were Prince tomos and Prince Nukatas poems transmitted intact until today; they survived inside entire poetry collections. The rst
anthology of Chinese-style poetry, the Florilegium, is a modest collection of 120
poems. But the rst anthology of vernacular poetry, the Manysh, survived practically intact in twenty volumes with more than 4,500 poems and was graced with
a commentarial tradition at least since the medieval period. Manysh studies are
69
Noctes Atticae XVIII. 9.5. Text from Rolfe 1967,329.

For Aulus Gellius and his remarks on translation and the comparative contrast of Greek and Latin
see Foegen 2000, 190220.
70
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a vast eld in modern Japanology, with its own journals, specialists, and a voluminous annual output of scholarship. And the Manysh is only one of the many
large texts that survived from the eighth century, the rst century of full-edged
literary production in Japan. Iam not spelling out these facts to incite the envy
of Latinists, for whom the early Japanese textual cornucopia evokes ever more
melancholy feelings over the scarce and inherently biased shards of early Latin
literary production that survived the times. Rather, the radically dierent preservation pattern of early Japanese and Latin literatures gives us a new vantage point to
reect on how and why Japanese treasured and transmitted much of their earliest
literature and why, in contrast, so much of early Latin literature islost.
I would argue that the dierent preservation pattern is not unrelated to the
fact that Roman literature started with translation, while Japanese literature did
not need it and was rather rooted in the continuation, variation, and adaptation of
Chinese practices. Let us think for a moment about the implications of this dierence. First, the need to translate and the very possibility (and everyday practice) of
putting a Greek original side by side with a Latin translation enhanced a pervasive
perception among Latin authors that the Latin language was decient and poor in
contrast to Greek. This linguistic inferiority complex of the poverty of our forefathers language (patrii sermonis egestas) was commonplace, discussed extensively
and repeatedly by authors as varied as Lucretius, Cicero, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius,
and later various church fathers.71
Whether Cicero points to the need to enrich the Latin language (augere linguam Latinam)72 or Quintilian fantasizes about the attractiveness of the Greek
sounds of ypsilon and zeta and deplores some of the sad and horrid sounds
of Latin that Greek avoids,73 the poverty of the Latin language (egestas, paupertas,
inopia) was a given that most Latin authors simply took for granted. Cicero, probably the strongest supporter of the virtues of the Latin language, tries at times
to argue forcefully against the common prejudice that surrounded Latin. At one
moment in On the Ends of Good and Evil he goes as far as stating stubbornly that
Latin is richer (locupletior) than Greek.74 But even he has to admit that the default
assumption is the opposite and he acknowledges elsewhere that Latin lacks technical vocabulary in many disciplines, a gap that throughout his life he tried to
mend with his own translations of Greek into Latin and the introduction of Greek
technical vocabulary into the Latin language. Cicero believed that a text gains in
71
Joseph Farrell puts it forcefully:Again and again, when Latin culture confronts itself and
inquires into its nature, it sees Greek. The conclusion that often follows is that Latin is derivative
and inferiorthat in trying to be Greek Latin dooms itself to epigonal status. For the Latin speaker
an authentic and unmediated connection between nature and culture is unattainable. But such
a relationship is imagined to exist for Greek, and this belief becomes a source of envy, perceived
inferiority, and self-deprecation. . . . The theme under discussion runs through Latin literature and
through the reception of Latin literature in all periods. So common a theme deserves a name:call it
the poverty topos. Joseph Farrell 2001, 28. Farrells second chapter The poverty of our ancestral
speech discusses this language complex in more detail. For a monograph treating this important
topic see Thorsten Fgen2000
72
Cicero De fato1.
73
Quintilian. Institutio oratoria XII.10.27.
74
Cicero De nibus bonorum et malorum1.10.
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translation, as we would put it today, and his condence in the Latin language
seemed partly motivated by a vision of its future and his own role in creating the
technical preciseness it still lacked in contrast to the Greek scholarly vocabulary.
Though the connection between translation and linguistic self-esteem is a complex one, a passage from Aulus Gellius about his reading experiences of Latin comedies and their Greek originals shows strikingly how the prominence of translation
from the Greek in Roman literary culture and the very existence of two textsan
original and a translationcould make Latin suddenly, inexplicably lookbad:
I often read the comedies of our Latin poets, in which they used and translated
Greek . . . comedy writers. And each time Iread them nothing in the least actually displeases me, they seem indeed to be elegantly and beautifully written, so
that you think there could not possibly be anything better. But if then you put
the Greek text, from which they are taken, next to it and you compare them, and
you subject single passages to careful and meticulous juxtaposed and alternating
reading, then the Latin starts to look suddenly weak and poor. Thus the Latin passages lack the wit and sparkle of the Greek original, which they fail to emulate.
Comoedias lectitamus nostrorum poetarum sumptas ac versas de Graecis . . . comicis.
Neque, cum legimus eas, nimium sane displicent, quin lepide quoque et venuste scriptae
videantur, prorsus ut melius posse eri nihil censeas. Sed enim si conferas et componas
Graeca ipsa, unde illa venerunt, ac singular considerate atque apte iunctis etalternis
lectionibus commitas, oppido quam iacere atque sordere incipiunt, quae Latina sunt;
ita Graecarum, quas aemulari nequiverunt, facetiis atque luminibus obsolescunt.75
Even if considered poor, Latin became the principal literary language in the Roman
world used by non-Greek authors. Libyac, Phrygian, or Gaulish, to name but a few
of the languages of the Roman empire, were only local in-group languages for
which we have more or less of an epigraphic record, but no substantial literary
tradition. People might have called Latin barbarian in the early period, based on
the model of Greek dialects that were contrasted with the non-Greek outside world
of barbarian languages, but Plautuss joke about his translation of a Greek play
into barbaric Latin is evidence for Greek prejudice against Latin rather than of the
way Romans saw their mother tongue. By the rst century ce even Greek authors
moved to a tripartite model of the languages in the world, consisting of Greeks,
Romans, and Barbarians. Declaring Latin into a version of an Aeolic Greek dialect
as Greek grammarians such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Latin grammarians
such as Philoxenos did was of advantage for both Greeks and Romans:Greek subjects of Rome could be proud to have given one of their dialect to their conqueror,
while the Roman conquerors could feel civilized about their Hellenic language.76
75
Noctes Atticae II.23.13. In chapter11.16 Aulus Gellius treats the problem that it is often impossible
to translate an elegant Greek expression into a single Latin word. Here again, it is the process of
word-by-word translation, the search for equivalence, that lets Latin appear in unfavorable light. On
this chapter see Foegen 2000, 21011.
76
Foegen 2000,4750.
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We can now sum up the dierences in the linguistic constellations between

Japan and China and Greece and Rome in the following approximated paradoxes: Latin literary culture was bilingual, monoliterate, and bicanonical; it
began with translation and existed with the consciousness of a double textuality, a Greek original and a Latin adaptation. Early Japanese literary culture
was monolingual, biliterate, and built on a triple literary canon. The continuity
between Chinese and Japanese literary production was assumed, there was no
drama of translation, and the literate elite was trained to naturally read Chinese
texts in Japanese word order. Thus there was a continuous spectrum of more sinitic and more vernacular stylistic registers instead of a clear-cut contrast between
two languages. Although the distinction between Chinese and Sino-Japanese
was particularly blurred and at times imperceptible, it could be exploited for
aesthetic eect as in the case of the eleventh century anthology Collections of
Japanese and Chinese Poems for Recitation (Wakan reish

). The
anthology arranged short excerpts from Chinese, Sino-Japanese, and Japanese
poems or prose texts under thematic categories, featuring rst Chinese, then
Sino-Japanese, verse and prose excerpts, and lastly, vernacular Japanese poems
illustrative of the theme. The aesthetic of juxtaposition of this format dramatized
dierence and gave the audience the pleasure of experiencing how summer,
gibbons, or singing girls could look so dierent when clothed in the Chinese,
Sino-Japanese, or Japanese poetic logic. But the pleasure lay in the experience
of a dierent poetics, not in the assumption that the excerpts arranged under
a topic heading would be reducible to each other through a notion of original
and adaptation. Thus, what Icall the drama of translation played an important role in the relationship Latin authors had to Greek literary precedents,77
while the pretense of continuity and the pleasure of variation and juxtaposition allowed Japanese authors to creatively play with Chinese, Sinicized, and
vernacular registers as they pleased.
Genres
Japanese and Latin literature developed such dierent genres and genre hierarchies that in particular their early stages seem to lack easy points of meaningful
comparison. Epic and drama, the genres that had the highest standing in the hierarchy of genres in Greece and Rome, had no even vaguely related counterpart in
early Japan. Much has been made of the question of Chinas lack of epic poetry;
as China, Japan had no epic; and dramatic literature such as Noh developed only
much later, in the fourteenth century. Instead, Chinese-style poetry, kanshi, and,
since the mid-Heian Period, Japanese waka poetry commanded the genre hierarchy of Japans double literary canon. Comparing kanshi and waka with Greek and
77
Hinds 1998, Chapter3Diachrony:literary history and its narratives discusses the pervasive
phenomenon of Latin authors claim to rst translation or transposition of certain Greek practices or
genres.
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Roman poetic genres is a complex enterprise in its own right.78 But suce it to
say here that brief genres such as the elegy, satire, or the epigram, although they
became popular and respected by the Late Republic in Rome, were construed as
the lesser genres against the backdrop of the authority of epic and drama established in Aristotles Poetics. In Japanese literary culture, in turn, the brief genres
of mostly four- to eight-line kanshi and the short thirty-one-syllable waka was the
pivot of authority that shaped the patterns of the genre hierarchy.
If we look at the hierarchy of prose genres in Rome, we can nd a bit of common ground with Japan in the genre of historiography. Works on history and
rhetoric, genres of didactic literature, Fachprosa, were the domain of aristocratic
writers of the Roman ruling class who used the genres as a platform to formulate and arm political and moral values of the Roman state. Although writing
in Greek was at odds with the tradition of pontical annals written in Latin on
which early Roman writers of history relied, the high-brow nature of historiography can be seen from the fact that Roman historiography before Cato was written
in Greek. Fabius Pictor (. 200 bce), of the patrician family of the Fabii, presumably introduced the custom of writing Roman history in Greek. As Romes inuence in the Eastern Mediterranean increased, Roman nobles apparently wanted to
reach the Greek-speaking world with a favorable picture of Rome and its history.
Cato (234149 bce) created the tradition of historiography in the Latin language,
which set the stage for the Roman historiographical tradition and the works of
Caesar, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. Historiography had a comparable high standing
in early Japan, as the Japanese court adopted for some time the Chinese practice of
entrusting state-employed scholars with the production of ocial histories.
The earliest longer Japanese texts date to the eighth century and include two
large historical annals, the Record of Ancient Matters (712) and the Chronicles of
Japan (720), both covering the legendary history from the age of the gods up to
the seventh century. The high standing of historiography in Japan is also evident
from the fact that these two histories were written in dierent linguistic idioms,
one in a form of vernacular Japanese and the other in Sino-Japanese, closer to the
language of Chinese ocial histories.
The discipline of rhetoric is more dicult to relate to Japans literary culture
and its genres. The social practices that produced reections on and handbooks
of rhetoric in Rome had no correlate in Japan: the various civic assemblies and
legal practices, andincreasingly since the empire that put an end to the political
functions of those assembliespublic declamation of epideictic speeches. Some
case could be made, however, that lyrical poetry in China and Japan served some of
the functions rhetoric had in the Greco-Roman world. Poetry, like rhetoric, was a
crucial genre in educating members of the elites in the highest registers of literacy,
which would be needed in service to the state; that is the reason why poetry during
the Tang Dynasty was an assignment in the civil service examinations. Also, poetry
in Japan, like rhetoric in Rome, was performance. There was hardly a court event
78
For an approach from the perspective of poetic form, language, and social occasion see the two
roundtable discussions between Japanese scholars of Japanese and Greco-Roman poetry in Bungaku
2010. For an approach from the perspective of genre hierarchies see Denecke2012.
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in Nara and Heian Japan that would not have included the composition and recitation of poetry, since the mid-Heian period composed increasingly on set topics.
Although there was little semblance in content, form, and recitation styles, poetry
functioned a bit like epideictic rhetoric in imperial Rome, certainly a more comparable setting to early Japan than political oratory during the Roman Republic.
There is also a slight similarity between the two in that they catalyzed foundational meta-discourses:poetry in East Asia, like rhetoric in the Greco-Roman
world, became the locus for reection on the political role of literary expression
and for strong beliefs in its capacity for moral education. Thus, in some way poetics in China and Japan was to poetrys role in Chinese and Japanese societies what
the rhetorical treatise was to rhetorical practice in the Greco-Romanworld.
Without stretching the comparison between poetry in East Asia and rhetoric in
Japan, which will be the basis for exploring Japanese and Roman accounts of their
own literary history in Chapter2, let us now move to the more dicult terrain, epic
and drama. With the medieval Tales of the Heike, the accounts of the bloody wars
between two aristocratic clans at the end of the Heian Period, and the genre of War
Tales (gunki monogatari

), we do get epic songs of weapons and heroes
and a comparably complex vocabulary of warfare and honor, and of wars tools and
casualties. Versions of the Tales of the Heike were passed down orally and performed
by itinerant minstrels (biwa hshi

) on the biwa, a pear-shaped lute. But
this is where the similarity to the Homeric epics ends. The genre of war tales only
took o in the medieval period, it was a prose genre, and it never stood at the top of
the genre hierarchy and informed the entire literary eld as the Homeric epicsdid.
Although we like them for their protagonists, for Achilles and Hector, Ulysses
and Circe, Greek epic was not just epic for telling heroic tales in hexameter. It
was poetry of divine, musical inspiration, prefaced by the mandatory invocation to
the Muse; and together with tragedy, it came to command the hierarchy of classical Greek literary genres. The competition among early Roman writers about the
introduction of the Greek Muse to Rome and its literature is the best indication
of the supreme standing of the genre of epic and its Muse. Who could lay claim
to having rst brought the Greek Muse to Rome? Livius Andronicus? But, well, as
we saw above, he said Camena, not Muse. Ennius? His credentials are hard
to beat, because in his Annals Ennius has Homer appear to him in a dream and
declare the Roman poet into his own reincarnation. Or actually, as Stephen Hinds
has slyly asked, Fulvius Nobilior, Enniuss patron, who pillaged Greek statues of the
Muses from the Greek city of Ambracia and brought them as war spoils to Rome
for a new shrine and cult of Hercules of the Muses?79 Although the competition
was particularly erce for the genre of epic because of its overwhelming authority,
smaller versions of it unfolded for other Greek genres:the inventor gure, which
Greek scholars ascribed to their genres and arts, had as equivalent a new inventor gure in Rome, the rst translator and transmitter of a given Greek genre or
discipline. The inventor trope was at the center of the drama of translation that
occurred between Greek texts and Roman authors and unfolded both on the level
of linguistic translation and on the level of the cultural and literary translatio of
79
Hinds 1998, Chapter3.
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genres to Rome. Neither the drama of linguistic translation nor the drama of genre
translation played any role in the Japanese reception of Chinese literature (or, obviously, in Japanese vernacular literature that lacked Chinese precedents).
Thus, it is important to note that epic was not just one genre among others to
be missing from Chinese and Japanese literatures. It was the ultimate centerpiece
of the Greco-Roman literary world and implied a notion of dramatized transmission that profoundly shaped the entire literary eld: transmission from divine
beings to humans, from humans of one to humans of another language, or even,
as perhaps with Livius Andronicuss Camena, from divine beings directly to those
humans of another language.
The trope of recusatio is another example of how epic (and tragedy) aligned
the entire literary eld: for Hellenistic and Roman poets it became fashionable
to recusate, to ostentatiously refuse to write in the higher genres of epic and
tragedy and armatively indulge lower genres in the genre spectrum such as
pastoral poetry, love elegy, and erotic lyric poetry. This recusatio was not a word gure, or a gure of thought, but was nothing less than a gure of cultural reception
designed by Hellenistic authors to relate to their Greek classical past and Roman
authors to relate to another culture (and, yet more complicated, both its reference cultures classical past, and its own past). There are interesting resonances
between Greco-Roman recusatio and gestures of empowering self-deprecation
that one can nd in vernacular genres vis--vis Sino-Japanese literature; we will
see an example of this with the Genji Poems in the chapter on satire. But it has
nothing of the subtle enervation with which it plays out in Latin authors, nothing
of the centrality it had in Latin literary culture.
Although authors claimed to keep genres strictly apart through recusatio by
refusing to write in one genre and ostentatiously switching to a lower genre,
Roman literature is pervaded with the mixing of genres, the play with their
genres imaginary limits and their readers expectations. How, to which degree,
and to which eects Latin authors mixed genres has been the topic of extensive
debates.80 But the complex genres of signatures Latin authors put on their
works, including the play with marking genre boundaries and with breaking them
in word or practice, is distinctive of Latin literary culture. Although genre hybridization plays an important role in Japanese literature, authors seemed much less
interested in making the discourse about the mixing of genres into a mouthpiece
of their aesthetic program.
Like the absence of epic, the absence of dramatic literature in early Japan constitutes a fundamental dierence in Japanese and Latin literary culture. And like
epic, theater was not just a literary genre. It was a popular spectacle open to all
social classes, a public display mounted to express the prestige of the patron or
nancier of the particular event. Theater plays or ludi scenici were part of the ocial
state cult, which included annual sacrices, processions, and other ceremonies. It
was for the Roman Games, Ludi Romani, celebrated in honor of Jupiter Optimus
80
Fundamental for the debate on the mixing of genres is Kroll 1924, 202. See also Conte 1994a,
120. Conte is a particularly ne thinker on genre issues in Latin literature.
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Maximus that Livius Andronicus wrote his plays in 240 bce. Other prominent
games that included theater performances were games devoted to Flora, Roman
goddess of fecundity, and to Apollo, Ceres, and Cybele. Although by Augustuss
time Latin tragedy had lost popularity and had gradually been replaced by mimes,
theater played a crucial role in Roman society and early Latin literature, as we can
see from the fact that only the comedies by Plautus and Terence survived as a
genre corpus from the early period. That the only documented genre of early Latin
literature did not have a functional correlate in early Japan is particularly unfortunate and adds a temporal asymmetry to our comparisons in some chapters of this
book. When the scarcity of the early Latin literary record forces me to compare the
earliest Japanese texts from the eighth century to Late Republican authors, Iwill
embrace this asymmetry for additional insight rather than considering it only as a
disadvantage. However, the accessibility of theater for all classes of Roman society,
its institutional presence in Rome in the form of a guild of authors and actors (collegium scribarum histrionumque) since 207, and the close relation of Roman scripts
to the plays of Greek New Comedy make theater, next to epic, into the most vital
part of early Roman literary culture that cannot be reduced or approximated to
any part of the early Japanese literary world. For the illiterate lower classes, theater
was possibly the only entertainment that gave them access to a literary learning of
sorts. Plautuss and Terences palliatae or comedies in Greek cloak were not just
set in Greece and used Greek protagonists, but were modeled on specic Greek
plays by New Comedy writers like Menander. Thus, for the educated classes, theater was the kind of entertainment that allowed them to enjoy the fruits of their
education. Even if their grammar teacher had to beat Greek tragedies and comedies into their brains with physical force, here they could chuckle over a witty
deviation from the Greek original or ruminate on the charming eects of contaminatio, the popular practice of Roman playwrights to stitch the plot of several
dierent Greek scripts together into oneplay.
Although Iwould hardly ever feel compelled to make strong generalizing statements about two literary cultures that are as rich as the early Japanese and Roman
ones, which never fail to surprise, Iwill make one here:there was simply no phenomenon comparable to Latin comedy in early Japanese society. The broad scope
of theater in early Roman society, the pervasive status of epic, with tropes such
as recusatio that it conditioned are absent from early Japan. In turn, Japan had a
much richer spectrum of genres. We do not need to believe Quintilian, who singles out satire (satura quidem tota nostra est Satire at least is all ours) as the only
truly Roman genre. We will see in Chapter3 that Horace related Roman satire to
Greek Old Comedy and thusat least at a particular moment of his textclaims
a Greek precedent for satire. But it is true that the Roman spectrum of genres
was largely coextensive with the spectrum of Greek literature. Similarly, Japanese
kanbun literature adopted the Chinese spectrum of genres; some genres never
became quite popular in Japan like the eminent Chinese rhapsody genre (fu
);
others developed dierently, like the genre of prefaces (Ch. xu, J.jo
) that went
its own ways in Japan, because it became the companion genre for so-called Topic
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Poetry (kudaishi

), a distinctively Japanese genre of poetry written at social
occasions on set topics based on a highly codied set of poetical rules.81
However, the vernacular half of the Japanese literary canon had no precedent
in Chinese genreswhat a joy it would have been for Quintilian to list vernacular waka poetry, tale literature (monogatari

), diaries (nikki
), and anec
dotal literature (setsuwa
), to name just a few extremely productive vernacular
Japanese genres. The works of classical Japanese literature in translation that have
made it into the canon of todays world literature anthologiesthe Manysh,
the Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry, and, most of all, Murasaki Shikibus
Tale of Genjiare all part of the vernacularcanon.
With this brief overview of the spectrum and hierarchy of genres we have
reached the limits of our comparison of Japanese and Roman literary cultures.
We have explored three fundamental similarities between Japanese and Roman
literary culturestheir late start, their beginning against the backdrop of highly
sophisticated stages of literary developments in their reference culture, and the
adoption and adaptation of their reference cultures textual and educational canon.
And we have explored and qualied three complicating divergences between
themthe geopolitical and linguistic constellations and their spectrum and hierarchies of literary genres.
We have thus set the stage for tackling the comparison of particular issues
and authors in the following chapters. In the next chapter we will showcase how
early Japanese and Roman authors dealt with the historical atness of their literary traditions and devised strategies to acknowledge their debt to their reference culture, while carving out space for their own literature and asserting their
independence.
81
On the history, practice, and signicance of this genre see Sat 2007 and Denecke2007.
Setting theStage
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CHAPTER2
Starting avant la lettre

An Essay on How to Tell the Beginnings of
Literature and Eloquence
beginnings are always a dierent aair from retrospective narratives of beginnings developed to sanction current practice. The gap between beginnings and
narratives of beginnings is particularly blatant in younger cultures that cannot easily lay claim to independent development. This essay highlights how at
four dierent historical moments, four Japanese and Latin authors developed
clever strategies to tell the beginnings of their own literature and eloquence in
a way that allowed the indigenous tradition to compete with Chinese and Greek
precedents.
***
e no Masafusa

(10411111) is arguably the rst Japanese author to have

envisioned a World Republic of Letters. He was a scholar-ocial at the Heian
court with predilections for Chinese literature and scholarship. The title of his
elegant Sino-Japanese prose composition is A Record on the Realm of Poetry
(shikyki

). Masafusa had a bent for the quirky and liminal realmshe

also wrote records on courtesans, itinerant puppeteers, and fox-magicand his
whirly creativity comes to the fore in this unique piece, too. As the emblematic genre of literary composition Masafusa has poetry stand quite simply for
Letters; and although his realm does not cater to our enlightenment associations of a Republic of Letters, Masafusa unmistakably sketches a space distinct
from either the political or the natural world. This space has an enchanted logic
of its own:
As for the Realm of Poetry: it lacks water or soil, mountains or rivers and
has no inhabitants or settlements. Even its whereabouts are unknown. One
gets there in the blink of an eye just to be suddenly gone again. Reaching
this fair realm is one of the most dicult things to achieve. Brush and ink
are its expanse, sentiment and suering its customs. Taxes are collected in
units of blossoms and moon, and salary is exchanged with smoke and mist.
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Peaches and pears eect unspeakable moral transformation, while orchids

and chrysanthemums satiate with their fragrant virtue.1 Never would you hear of
dust-stirring military upheavals or see cold dew and fog attack yourbody.

2
Masafusa probably knew texts like A Record on the Land of Drunkenness (Ch.
Zuixiangji

) by the Chinese poet Wang Ji (590644).3 Grafting his Realm
of Poetry onto a Land of Drunkenness seems perfectly sensible from the perspective of a literary tradition in which composing poetry and getting drunk are
metonymical endeavors and commitments. More importantly, Masafusa sketches
his literary realm along two diametrically opposed vectors: on the one hand it
is spaceless, empty and hard to get to, but then he takes pains to esh out the
imaginary realm with its denite expanse, customs, taxes, ranks and salary, moral
authority and virtuous government. In this way he sparks the readers hope that
one can visit that realm as nimbly as ones mind moves back and forth. Empty
illusion or allegorical incarnation, epitome of inaccessibility or armchair travel
destination, Masafusa builds his realm on highly ambivalent ground.
In a further step Masafusa conrms that his Realm of Poetry is indeed universal and for everybody. Masafusa serves us a digest of poetics that any educated
Heian Japanese would have been familiar with, because it belonged to the exegetical tradition of the canonical Classic of Poetry (ca. 600bce):
As the heart is moved within, words form outside. If singing it out loud is not
enough, then you sigh; and if sighing isnt enough, then you will unknowingly
dance it with your hands and tap it with yourfeet.

4
The Great Preface to the Confucian Classic of Poetry proposes a universal psychology of composition, which posits ever-advancing levels of expressive intensity in case
1
Classic of Poetry, Mao 247:Making us drunk (jizui ). Maoshi zhengyi 17.2, 108997:You make
us drunk on wine and satiate us with virtue. May you enjoy, o our lord, myriads of years! May your
bright happiness be increased forever.
2
Chya gunsai, 64. My translation is based on the Shintei zho Kokushi taikei edition and on Got
198687.
3
Wang Jis Record is preserved in the Parables section of the Wenyuan yinghua, 833 (Li 2006).
See also Zhang 1995, 13435. Although Wang Jis piece dates to the Early Tang Dynasty, the image of
a Land of Drunkenness became very popular in the mid- and late Tang and is also eagerly used by
Japanese kanshi poets such as Sugawara no Michizane, Ki no Haseo, and Masafusas grandfather e
no Masahira. Wang Jis Record was highly popular and also applied to other alternative realms:The
monk Ennin (794864) who wrote a diary of his stay in China from 838 to 847 used Wang Jis
Record as a blueprint for his Record on the Land of Stillness and Enlightenment (Jakdoki
to depict the promised land of Tiantai Buddhism. See Dainihon bukky zensho, Tendai
shbush shaku. (Got 198687, 326,n.6).
4
Chya gunsai,64.
Starting Avant laLettre
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words do not suce. Quite handily for Masafusa, the Preface to the Classic of Poetry
also relies on a spatial metaphor: poetry is the outer manifestation of the poets
inner heart. It translates out of the heart into the world as words, song, ordance.
There is a nice pas de deux between the spatial metaphor of Masafusas Realm
of Poetry and the Classic of Poetrys spatial conceptualization of the process of
poetic composition, for Masafusa undertakes a double translation:natural landscape gets translated into poetic currency in the rst section and, in the process,
the internal landscape of the poet is translated into the outer world taking shape in
words. The universal poetics of the Classic of Poetry is the emblematic beginning of
Masafusas detailed account of Chinese literary history, in which he stays strictly
true to his allegorizing impulse. Poets are the aristocrats and leaders of the realm,
where emperors are led by poets. In one case, poets respond to the execution of
poets by emperorseuphemistically referred to as expulsion from the Realm
by instituting new laws and rulesnamely the tonal rules underlying Chinese
Recent-Style Poetry. So far, so good. The Realm of Poetry is a seemingly universal interior psychological space, but it is also eshed out in the translation of
Chinese literary history into a true Republic of Letters. Yet the loving care with
which Masafusa produces this allegorical translation of Chinese literary history
is choked o once he moves to matters inJapan:
At our Japanese court [poetry] arose between the Knin (810824, Emperor Saga)
and Jwa (83448, Emperor Ninmy) eras, ourished between Jgan (85977,
Emperor Seiwa) and Engi (90123, Emperor Daigo) reached an intermediary
peak in the Jhei (93138, Emperor Suzaku) and Tenryaku (947957, Emperor
Murakami) eras and ourished again during Chh (9991004) and Kank
(10041012, both Emperor Ichij). Broadly speaking three-dozen poets, and if we
limit ourselves to the outstanding ones we hardly get beyond six orseven.

5
It comes as a severe disappointment that the transmitted text breaks abruptly

o after this sobering statement and the reader is left to wonder what Masafusa
would have said further about Japan. Poetry in Japan lacks everything that had
made the Chinese realm so attractive and convincing: whereas in China poets
and their materials rule supreme, Japanese literary history unfolds as a mechanical teleology of imperial eras. The rich Chinese pantheon of poetic geniuses that
Masafusa had just paraded in front of our eyes meets unfavorably with the paucity
of the Japanese record:only three dozen poets and hardly six or seven good ones.
And, most divisive of all, Masafusa literally excludes Japan from the Realm of
Poetry by denying it his allegorical translation. We are dropping out of the allegorical travel account into plain historical narrative.
Since we are dealing with an unnished or fragmentary text there is no
way to know, but there is a slight chance that everything might have ended
Chya gunsai, 65.
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happily after all. At the end of his Record of the Land of Drunkennessthe
above-mentioned blueprint for Masafusas piecethe Chinese poet Wang Ji
declares that he wrote his Record because he was about to visit that land himself. Along these lines we could imagine Masafusa declaring himself the apogee
of a tradition that started admittedly poorly, but by his timeand perhaps even
with himhad become a rightful region of the Realm of Poetry, where he
comes and goes as a regular. In other writings Masafusa often boasts his precocious literary talents and exploits, and he would certainly be capable of ending
his vision of the Realm of Poetry with a telescopic close-up of his own attering literary prole.
***
I have outlined Masafusas vision as a foil to help us appreciate the earliest
Japanese attempts at writing literary history. Masafusas account diers greatly
from earlier attempts. First, because it tells the truthafter all, the Chinese
Classic of Poetry, compiled around 600 bc, predated the Knin Period, Masafusas
supposed rise of poetry in Japan, by 1,400years of prolic literary production.
Second, because he seems to all too willingly accept inequality between China and
Japan in the realm of letters. The twelfth century, the Late Heian Period, is a particularly strange moment for pitiful laments over the absence of a domestic tradition, because by Masafusas time the Japanese could parade a prolic production
in all major Sino-Japanese genres and had developed a sense of historical depth
toward their own literary tradition and an indigenous Sino-Japanese canon that
coexisted with the Heian curriculum of Chinesetexts.
Earlier accounts of literary history did not propagate inequality vis--vis the
Chinese literary tradition. They tended to design highly sophisticated scenarios
that attenuated and diused inequality, or even declared superiority. Most often
such accounts did so ironically by using the rhetorical power of Chinese intertexts. To opt for a narrative of homology rather than for a story of inequality
like Masafusas was not just a manipulative device to assert ones cultural ego,
although my constructivist vocabulary here seems to suggest that. Instead, it was
a learning strategy of a edgling literary tradition:homology served to imagine
practices of writing literary history in the rst place. That is certainly a powerful
reason why the earliest Japanese accounts of literary history tend to be ctions of
similarity, rather than acknowledgments of dierence.
Masafusas piece is a powerful tool to formulate fundamental questions about
the writing of literary history in cultures that grow in symbiosis with a canonical reference culture. How can one write literary history in the face of the historiographical models and prolic literary production of the older, possibly much
older, reference culture? How should one deal with what we might call historical
atness, as one writes from a place in which both literature and reection on
literature are jumpstarted through models of the reference culture? These were
models, which in turn were developed over a much longer time period in the
reference culture and in response to its distinctive logic of cultural development.
Below Iwill show how ingeniously four key texts from the Japanese and Roman
traditions responded to these challenges.
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1. Making Sense of the Regime of Letters in Eighth-Century

Japan:The Kaifs
The Kaifs

(Florilegium of Cherished Airs), which we already introduced in
the previous chapter, is a collection of 120 Sino-Japanese poems arranged by chronology and rank. Compiled in 751, it is the earliest extant poetry collection of Japan. It has
a preface by an anonymous compiler that recounts the development of civilization,
learning, and literature from the beginnings up to the times of the compilation. The
Kaifs is a product of the explosion of textual production and literacy that gripped
Japan in the seventh and eighth centuries:a centralized state based on Chinese precedent was being built, and as it gradually extended its administrative control over the
provinces, the state needed an ever growing number of scribes adept in the various
genres of bureaucratic correspondence. Besides, the phenomenal expansion of state
power was established and justied through imperially commissioned compilation
projects that bolstered imperial ideology and the budding authority of the centralized
state. Records of Wind and Earth (Fdoki

) of 713 enhanced the states symbolical grip on the provinces by recording their local legends and customs and exploring their potential for exploitation of resources and tribute products. The Record of
Ancient Matters (Kojiki

) of 712 legitimated the imperial lineage by distilling
the gradual and complex emergence of Yamato rule into a straight line reaching back
to one imperial ancestor, the sun goddess Amaterasu. The Chronicles of Japan (Nihon
shoki

) of 720, closer to Chinese traditions of historiography, voraciously
assembled various versions of events into a history of Japan from its beginnings to
the recentpast.
The composition of Sino-Japanese poetry was not just a side eect of this
explosion of literacy and the states instrumentalization of textual production, but
was part and parcel of establishing imperial power. Much of the poetry in the
Kaifs was composed at court banquets and eulogized the splendors of the current regime. Against this background it comes as no surprise that the Kaifs is
preoccupied with making sense of the explosion and diversication of Letters
(Ch. wen, J. bun) in the seventh and eighth centuries. Wen is the pivotal concept at the heart of the collection, and both the preface and the poetry itself show
traces of thinking and playing through wen in all its meanings, connotations, and
implications.
Wena resonant multifaceted key concept of the Chinese traditionreferred
originally to the patterning of animal fur or the tattooing of the human body, and
thus to ornament. By further extension, it came to mean civilization and cultural renement as well as writing and literature. It is also the name of King
Wen, one of the founders of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1045256 bce). Apun
in the Confucian Analects rst equated King Wen with the cultural heritage (Ch.
si wen

) of the Zhou dynasty and, in a next step, Confucius declared himself custodian of this heritage. In this way the regime of wen was also intimately
linked to the Confucian tradition.6
6
For an exploration of the signicance and rich meaning of the concept of bun in Japanese literary
culture from the beginnings into the 20th century see Denecke and Kno2013.
10/12/2013 8:03:10 PM
By choosing wen as the guiding concept, the Kaifs could do several things at
once, namely simultaneously tell the beginning of civilization, the advent of writing, the beginning of Confucian learning in Japan, the beginning of literature,
and, last but not least, Japans homage to King Wen as the ideal Confucian king
and a model of Japanese imperialpower.
The Kaifs Preface gradually projects the multilayered power of wen onto a
historical timeline in precisely this fashion. As a result, literature proper, belles
lettres and poetry, appear in the preface as the rather late outcome of a long process
of civilization (or wen-ization, as we might say). This was certainly a double-edged
strategy:literature or Letters came to encompass all of civilization and its history. Yet, by the same token the preface had to concede a rather late beginning of
literature in Japan, exposing a vulnerable spot that was going to be exploited by
the compilers of the next text we will discuss, the Collection of Ancient and Modern
Poetry (Kokinwakash

).
The compiler of the Kaifs had no qualms about admitting to a late beginning
of Sino-Japanese poetry in Japan, especially because this move enabled a powerful conceptual absorption of the history of civilization into the special history of
Sino-Japanese poetry. As a countermove to a story of late arrival, the preface cleverly downplays the importation of the writing system from China through Korea.
Instead, it posits writing symbolically as a natural presence in Japan from times
immemorial. It taps into the Chinese ideology of writing that declares writing
a natural phenomenon rather than a human invention. True, mythical sages of
Chinese high antiquity were regarded as gures of invention and human creation,
as in the case of Fu Xi, who allegedly devised the symbols of the hexagrams in
the Classic of Change by watching natural patterns, or Cang Jie, who presumably
invented written characters by imitating bird tracks in the sand. Yet their acts of
inventions were described as mimicry of the natural world, not as the creation of
human artice. In China this ideology of writing had enabled forceful claims of
textuality over reality:textuality became a correlative to the cosmos to the extent
that textuality could not just inuence the cosmos, but take precedence overit.7
The Kaifs Preface relies on the ideology of the naturalization of writing in
order to disguise the trauma of the importation of foreign writing into a local oral
culture. Here is how the preface accomplishesthis:

I have heard of sages from the remotepast

and surveyed the written records ofyore.

In the age when the Heavenly Grandchilds8 chariot
descended upon the PeakofSo

and our state was founded in Kashiwara,9

the workings of Heaven had barelybegun
7
On the ideology of writing in early China and various historical gures associated with it see Lewis
1999, 195240.
8
Referring to the descent to earth of the grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu on Mount
Takachiho recorded in the two early chronicles mentionedabove.
9
Palace of the mythical Emperor Jinmu (trad. ca. 600 bc), the rst emperor of the Age of Humans
following the Age of the Gods in the chronicles.
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and human civilization/writing/letters (wen) was not

yet created.

Then, Empress Jing (r. 20169) campaigned in the
direction of the Hole hexagram10 (againstKorea)

and Emperor jin (r. 270310) rode the powers of the
Heaven hexagram11 (and came to the throne).

The Korean state of Paekche did obeisance at ourcourt

unravelling dragon texts in the horse stables.12

And the state of Koguryo submitted memorials to our
throne,

drawing up their crow documents with bird-track

patterns.13

First Wani introduced study and learning to Karushima

and Shinni completed this by spreading the doctrines
in Osada.14

T
hus (our) customs gradually absorbed the inuence of
the Zhu and SiRivers

15

and people tended towards the teachings from Qi
andLu.16
This passage makes two clever moves. First, it claims for Japan what Iwould call a
hexagrammatic literacy, the existence of writing literally avant la lettre. Although
writing is not yet created and the Korean envoys have yet to bring their diplomatic documents and Chinese characters to Japan, Empress Jing and Emperor
jin align their actions with the hexagrams from the Classic of Changes, symbols
consisting of a combination of six strokes that are either continuous (yang strokes)
or broken (yin strokes). According to the Appended Phrases, a commentary to
the Classic of Changes, the mythical hero Fu Xi allegedly invented them as a type
of proto-writing. Hexagrammatic literacy deleted the trauma of the advent of
writing from the outside.
Second, the preface downplays the importation of Chinese writing through
Korea by tapping into the Chinese discourses of the naturalization of writing.
The ocial documents are dragon texts, possibly echoing the story of texts on a
turtles back that appeared from the Yellow River. The bird-track patterns allude
to Cang Jies invention of writing. The novelty the Korean envoys have to oer is
10
29th hexagram of Classic of Changes. Associated with water and the north, thus referring to the
crossing of the ocean northwards, when Empress Jing launched an attack on the Korean state
ofSilla.
11
1st hexagram of the Classic of Changes. Associated with yang forces and imperialpower.
12
Perhaps reference to the legendary appearance of a dragon or tortoise from the Yellow River,
carrying an inscribed tablet on its back. The Korean envoy Akichi is said to have presented horses to
the Japanese court and instructed a Japanese prince in the Chinese Classics.
13
Reference to the legendary invention of writing by the mythical hero CangJie.
14
Wani and Shinni are both Korean envoys who visited Emperor jins (r. 270310) and Emperor
Bidatsus (r. 57285) capital, respectively.
15
Kaifs preface. Kojima 1964,5862.
16
Both states were associated with Confucian learning. Zhu and Si are rivers in the ancient state of
Lu, Confuciuss homestate.
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presented as a diplomatic tribute to an imagined superior Japanese courta court

that already possessed the technology of writing. Instead, the Koreans bring the
teachings contained in the Confucian Classics.
As the rst extant attempt of narrating literary history in Japan, the Kaifs
Preface draws up a powerful history of literature as a history of wen in all its
manifestations and connotations. And by suggesting a hexagrammatic literacy
of early Japanese emperors and tapping into Chinese discourses of the naturalization of writing as mimicry of the cosmos, it also succeeds in downplaying the
advent of a foreign writing system inJapan.
2. Competing with the Sino-Japanese Tradition:the

Universal Way in the Kokinsh
The Kokinsh (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems) is the rst imperially
sponsored anthology of vernacular poetry. Compiled in 905 under the auspices
of Emperor Daigo after a century of imperial support for Sino-Japanese poetry,
the collection was under enormous pressure to make a convincing argument for
Japanese poetry that lacked the public stature of its Sino-Japanese twin and rival.
One sign of the seriousness of this competition is that the Kokinsh has two prefaces: one written in Classical Japanese and a second one, in Sino-Japanese, in
closer dialogue with Sino-Japanese and Chinese precedents. In a landmark article
John Timothy Wixted has shown how the Kokinsh Prefaces tapped into Chinese
poetics to arm the public stature of waka (Wixted 1983). In the next two chapters Icomplement his perspective by also looking at how the Kokinsh Prefaces
positioned themselves vis--vis the Sino-Japanese anthologies produced in Japan
that had preceded the rst imperial waka collection, most notably the Kaifs. This
approach resonates with Thomas LaMarres more recent attempt to argue against
the lingering assumption of an ethnolinguistic dichotomy between Chinese and
Japanese modes in Heian culture and for the idea that many Heian practices juxtaposed Chinese-style and Japanese-style aesthetic sensibilities that mapped
on indigenous distinctions such as the notion of formal (hare) and more informal
(ke) modes with respect to anything from poetry to clothing, architecture, and calligraphy styles.17
Bolstering Japanese waka poetry as public discourse meant to devise a storyline
for its development that outsmarted the narratives used to justify Sino-Japanese
practice. The Kokinsh Prefaces did so, rst, by evoking the psychology from the
Great Preface to the Confucian Classic of Poetry (partly restated by Masafusa
above). The Kokinsh Prefaces constructed a timeless and universal Way (
Ch.
dao, J. michi) of poetic composition that transcended the historical narrative of
wen of the Kaifs Preface.
Second, having polemicized against wen through the universality of the Way,
the authors of the prefaces proceeded to capture cosmogony as literary history.
Although they gave up on the broad semantic spectrum to which the Sino-Japanese
anthologies had laid claim in using wen as civilization, literature, and Confucian
17
See LaMarre 2000 and in particular Chapter7 on the Kokinsh Prefaces.
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governance, they made poetry into an even more powerful entity by implanting it
into a cosmological discourse emerging from the beginning of heaven andearth.
The radical novelty of the Kokinsh Prefaces in comparison to the prefaces of
the previous Sino-Japanese anthologies did not depend on new Chinese texts that
would have reached Japan in the meantime or on a forceful assertion of complete
independence of the indigenous tradition from Chinese precedent. Instead, the
crucial dierence was a clever shift in the choice of canonical Chinese subtexts
in particular the Great Preface to the Classic of Poetry. The most eective step
in this scheme was to capitalize on a niche left by the Sino-Japanese anthologies focus on wen:Wen failed to give a psychological account of poetic creativity.
Wen was a great way to talk about the invention of writing, the establishment
of Confucian-style governance and literary production. But why write in the rst
place? The Kokinsh compilers found their best choice to exploit that blind spot in
the Preface to the Classic of Poetry, with its psychological explanation of the unfolding of poetry from the latency in the heart into words manifest in the world. It
allowed them to sketch a vision of the nature and history of Japanese waka poetry
not only on a par with Sino-Japanese poetry, but psychologically and historically
surpassingit.
The Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinshopens:

Japanese wakapoetry
takes root in the soil of onesheart
and spreads its owers into a Forest ofWords.
While in thisworld
mankind cannot beidle.
Thoughts and concerns easilyshift,
sorrow and pleasure alternate.
As feelings in the intentmind,
. . . song takes shape in words...

It is just like the warbler in spring singing among

blossoms

or the cricket in fall humming in the treetops:

though nothing forces them todoso,

each puts forth itssong.

All creaturesdoit,

18
its a natural principle.
It is signicant that the image of vegetable growth is chosen to convey the process
of how a poem becomes manifest, or grows, because it facilitates a convenient
gural ow between nature and the mind, and enables the interiorization of
nature into psychological processesevery creature has itssong.
The preface describes Japanese poetry as an inborn response to scenes in
nature and a forest of words shared by all living creatures. This naturalistic
18
Kokin wakash, Sino-Japanese Preface. Kojima and Arai 1989, 33841, and Katagiri 1998vol. 1,
27982. For a complete English translation of the Mana Preface see Leonard Grzankas in Rodd
1984, 37985.
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account was a powerful counter-vision to the Sino-Japanese anthologies support

of wen. It replaced culture and history with nature and psychology, wen Letters
with dao theWay.
The last section of the Sino-Japanese preface vividly shows this powerful
replacement of wen with the Way and of the previous hegemony of Sino-Japanese
poetry with a future ourishing of vernacular poetry. After lamenting the decline
of waka poetry and describing the Emperors desire to resurrect the long-deserted
Way the preface closes on this powerful gesture, a majestic leap to secure waka
poetry eternity in the face of Sino-Japanesewen:

19

If Japanese poetry should meet with a new revival

we will delight in the resurrection of OurWay.
Alas, with Hitomaro longdead,
is not [the art of ] Japanese poetry contained in this/here
withus!
This is a brilliant appropriation of a pun in Analects 9.5, in which Confucius, when

surrounded by enemies in Kuang, exclaims, With King Wen long dead, is not this
our cultural heritage (si wen) residing here in me? (

).The
Kokinsh Preface implies the following bold pattern of replacement:Hitomaro,
the unrivalled poet-saint from the mid-eighth century Manysh replaces King
Wen; this Way of waka poetry replaces the Zhou cultural heritage (wen), and
Confucius as the curator of this tradition is replaced with both the contemporary Japanese poets at Emperor Daigos court and the Kokinsh itself. The Way of
waka poetrya notion that was brought to its full consequences only later in the
medieval periodresides both in the collection oered to the throne and in the
poet-compilers who compiledit.20
A second strategy that both prefaces of the Kokinsh use to lay claim to the
higher status of Sino-Japanese poetry is to employ the rhetoric of cosmogony borrowed from the earlier chronicles, in particular the above-mentioned Chronicles of
Japan (Nihon shoki) that tell the beginning of Japanese poetry. The Sino-Japanese
preface goes farther in translating cosmogony into what we might call poetogony. The prefacesays:

But in the Seven Generations of the Age of theGods

the times were unsophisticated and people simple.
Emotions and desires were not distinguished
and Japanese poetry had yet toarise.
19
Kojima and Arai 1989, 34851.

This clever assertion of the Japanese Way of poetry over the Sino-Japanese culture of wen bears
an uncanny relationship to the way the Laozi and early Daoist traditions attempted to dislodge
their Confucian rivalsthe Laozis claims of precedence over the Confucian tradition by asserting
a timeless natural Way against the Confucian historical consciousness of civilization and the
importance of ritual and ethical values. The concept of the Waya term that plays only a minor
role in the Analectswas an attractive niche to exploit and this move was obviously eective enough
to result in a thought school called Daoism. To pursue this issue in the context of early Chinese
Masters Literature see Denecke 2010 Chapter6.
20
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Later when the god Susano-o arrived atIzumo,

21

the thirty-one syllable song (i.e. waka poetry) rst
appeared.
Where the cosmogony of the Nihon shoki states that Yin and Yang forces were
not yet divided, the poetogony of the Sino-Japanese Preface proudly translates
Yin and Yang into poetic currency: Emotions and desires were not yet distinguished. In the same way as Masafusa had translated Chinese literary history
into an allegorical Realm of Poetry, the Kokinsh Preface established a realm of
poetogony that could not fail to be both temporally and psychologically superior
to Sino-Japanese literature.
3. The Assertion of a Natural History of Roman Oratory

in CicerosBrutus
Cicero was certainly not the rst to reect on the development of polished speech
and writing in Rome.22 We have a number of fragments by Accius, Porcius
Licinius, Volcacius Sedigitus, and Valerius Soranus on the development of the
theater, biographies of poets, or lists of comedy writers. Varro Reatinus (11627
bc) was a philologist and librarian who was briey charged with the supervision
of the Roman public library by Caesar, lost his property during the proscriptions of
Mark Antony following Caesars death, and nally gained Augustuss condence
and support. He wrote lost or partially preserved treatises on various topics such
as poetry, theater, famous authors, the Latin language, and libraries among others, but only his treatise on agriculture (Rerum rusticarum libri tres), a successor
treatise to Catos popular On Agriculture survives in full. Cicero had the highest
respect for Varro, crediting him with starting philosophy in Rome, providing poets
with proper Latin diction, and giving a home (domus) to the formerly vagrant
Latin literature.23 In short, Varro is a gure who reected and inspired Ciceros
own aspirations and accomplishments.
The image of home-coming is signicant:Latin literature became a Roman
aair and not only a Greek variant. In Brutus, an account of the history of eloquence and oratory in Greece and Rome, Cicero also attempts a home-coming,
though on quite contradictory levels as we willsee.
The Brutus is a pedagogical dialoguenot by coincidence staged under a statue
of Plato at Ciceros residence in Rome. It takes place between Cicero, in the instructor role, his friend Atticus (11032 bc), and the young Brutus (the later murderer of
Caesar), on whom Cicero pins his hopes for the future of the Republic and of Latin
rhetoric. The dialogue traces the development of Greek and Latin rhetoric by dwelling in more or less detail on the abilities of more than 270 orators, most of whom we
know nothing about. Cicero emphatically uses the term rhetoric (eloquentia) both
in the technical sense of public oratory, the cardinal virtue of Republican spirit, as
well as in a broader sense of proper and rened use of language in general.
21
Kojima and Arai 1989, 34041.

On the ways authors of the Late Republic and early Empire constructed a history for Latin
literature see Goldberg2005.
23
AcademicaI3.9
22
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Ciceros treatment of the relationship between Greek and Roman cultural history in the Brutus is remarkably dierent from the views in his earlier masterpieces, such as On the Orator (De oratore, 55 bce), to which we will turn in the next
chapter, and The Republic (De re publica, 51 bce). In the 50s Cicero looked for similarities across cultures and even assumed that Greek and Roman culture unfolded
almost contemporaneously. By the time of the Brutus, a mere ve years later in
46 bce, Cicero suddenly seems aware of Romes belatedness vis--vis Greek oratory and literature and is struggling to nd a model to account for that dierence.
Denis Feeney has attributed this dramatic change of mind to Ciceros reading
of his friend Atticuss Liber Annalis, an annalistic history that probably included
synoptic tables, which inevitably showed that Greece had a literature from its early
beginnings, while Latin literature only emerged a short couple of centuries before
Ciceros own Brutus.24 Ciceros startling discovery is palpable in the complex and
at times paradoxical set of timelines he devises for the history of Roman oratory.
There are at least three histories of oratory in Brutus. First, there is what we might
call a natural history of oratory:oratory as a characteristically Roman virtue, a
political practice of venerable, independent, and unquestionable domestic standing. Cicero grafts the apogee of this natural history of Roman oratory onto the
gure of Cato (234149 bce), famous for his proverbial, though complex, hostility toward Carthage and Hellenic inuence. Cicero proceeds with utter caution,
according Cato a surprisingly high place, but immediately also acknowledging
that his interlocutorsand indeed his readersmight laugh at his eulogy ofCato:
As for Cato, who of our orators nowadays reads him or is familiar with him at
all? And yet, good gods, what a man! Ipass over him as a citizen, a senator and
commanderhere we only seek out the orator.[ . . . ] Select from [his speeches]
the remarkable and praiseworthy passages: you will nd all oratorical virtues
in them. [ . . . ] The Greeks consider it an embellishment of speech, if they use
substitutions of single words, which they call tropes [] and gures of
sentences and speech to which they give the name of schemata []; it
is hardly believable how versatile and distinguished Cato is in the use of both
devices. Of course, Iam not unaware that he is not yet suciently polished as an
orator and that one has to seek something more perfect; and that is not strange,
since according to the reason of our times he is so antiquated that no older text
before him exists that would be worth reading.25
Catos eloquence is intuitive and unschooled in Greek precedent; he is an exception to the principle emphasized by Cicero earlier in the dialogue that every art
needs time to mature and reach perfection. It is ironic that Cato, untouched by
24
Feeney, 2007,2628.
Brutus 6569. Catonem vero quis nostrorum oratorum, qui quidem nunc sunt, legit? aut quis novit
omnino? At quem virum, di boni! mitto civem aut senatorem aut imperatoremoratorem enim hoc loco
quaerimus [ . . . ] Licet ex his eligant ea quae notatione et laude digna sint; omnes oratoriae virtutes in eis
reperientur. [ . . . ] Ornari orationem Graeci putant, si verborum immutationibus utantur, quos appellant
, et sententiarum orationisque formis, quae vocant ; non veri simile est quam sit in
utroque genere et creber et distinctus Cato. Nec vero ignoro nondum esse satis politum hunc oratorem et
quaerendum esse aliquid perfectius, quippe cum ita sit ad nostrorum temporum rationem vetus, ut nullius
scriptum exstet dignum quidem lectione quod sit antiquius. All translations from Brutus are myown.
25
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rhetorical artice, intuitively applies rhetorical tropes and schemata, words

that Ciceros text spells out in the Greek alphabet and treats with deliberate
navet.26 Ciceros quick concession that Cato is not yet suciently polished tries
to forestall his interlocutors doubts, in particular the protest of his friend Atticus
who was thoroughly Hellenized since he had left Rome during the Sullan proscriptions and had lived several decades in Athens. Atticuss judgment operates
on a second model for the development of Roman oratory. This second model is
a reception history of Roman oratory:the discipline of oratory developed under
Greek inuence and based on Greek precedent. For this storyline, politum, the
rened and sophisticated constitutes the yardstick, which Cicero replaces boldly
with intuitive talent in the case of Cato. Third, there is an autobiographical history of oratory, probably outpacing the other two and installing Cicero in a proud
position of dominance:the discipline in which Cicero considered himself most
adept and which, in the climate of the civil wars of the Late Republic, was at risk
of losing its traditional function.27 From the point of view of the third storyline the
Brutus is Ciceros last will, a testament that entrusts the history of rhetoric on the
verge of its extinction to the hands of his designated successor, Brutus.
The chronotopes of these three storylines are at times inverse and at times
intersecting. The natural history culminates in the gure of Cato and recedes
into decline by Ciceros times. The reception history works slowly from Greek
Hellenistic precedent to a corresponding high level of sophistication in Rome
which only Cicero himself presumes, not without self-congratulatory tones, to
have reached. In this respect it overlaps with the zenith of the autobiographical
history that inevitably focuses on Cicero alone. The clashing chronotopes of these
three storylines give the reader the unsettling impression of reading both a tale of
promising new beginnings (or a rst real home-coming of oratory in Rome) and
a disheartening swansong for a threatened discipline.
Cicero immodestly performs a barely veiled self-enthronement as the champion of both the reception history and the autobiographical history. Even while
parading his nave belief in a natural history of oratory with Cato as its champion,
he self-consciously pulls back to escape Atticuss superior derision. Atticus takes ample
opportunity to chide Cicero for completely overrating earlier Roman orators. He cannot believe that Cicero dares to put Cato on the same level as the Atticist master Lysias
26
On Cato himself as the founder of a nativist ideology of Romanness (latinitas) see Bloomer 1997,
1837. It is important to distinguish Ciceros nativist portrayal of Cato in the Brutus from the actual
historical gure. Erich Gruen has shown that Cato, rather than being the hostile anti-Hellene
he is usually portrayed to be, had deep knowledge of Greek language and culture from early on,
emphasized the historical connections between Greece and the Italic peninsula, and even employed
a Greek tutor in his household, although he tutored his own sons himself. Gruen convincingly
shows how seemingly anti-Greek statements should be seen as an advocacy of Romes superiority
rather than a form of vitriolic anti-Hellenism. Gruen also reminds us that Cicero portrayed Cato
as thoroughly familiar with Greek literature in other works, such as On Old Age (Cato maior de
senectute). Gruen 1992a,5283.
27
Jrgen Paul Schwindt acknowledges this storyline:Cicero sprach, so wissen wir jetzt, von Anfang
an von sich selbst, Roms Rhetorikgeschichte ist seine Geschichte, Roms rednerische Anfnge sind
seine Anfnge, Roms rednerische Entwicklung ist seine Entwicklung, ihr [telos] war er selbst,
doch hat er die Bahn noch nicht einmal ganz durchschritten. See Schwindt 2000,120.
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and he rants that Cicero would call everybody who just opened his mouth in Rome
an orator. Atticus is not just a critical opponent, but the model of the thoroughly
Hellenized Roman aristocratalmost a naturalized Greekwho laughs at Ciceros
Roman fantasizing about the independent roots of a natural oratory inRome.
Here we see a crucial dierence from the strategies of the Kaifs:the Kaifs
compiler could insouciantly claim equality with China, a civilization of primary script
invention, by imaging a hexagrammatic literacy of Japanese emperors before the
introduction of the Chinese writing system that actually enabled the written xation
of Japanese. Only few Chinese could have talked back to him. Cicero, in contrast,
has to deal with a Roman Greek of sorts, his friend and opponent Atticus. Cicero
braves this challenge in the end by vaguely suspending his entire dialogue in a web
of Socratic irony. Of course, Cicero, the author, does not do it himself. He wants to be
credible with his story of a natural history, but also does not want to be too credible.
He has Atticus do it to Cicero, the ctional character, in the dialogue:
Now that your speech seems to look towards its end, Iwill say, if you will, what
I think. By all means, Titus [Atticus] [said I]. I think, said Atticus, that that
irony which Socrates is said to have possessed and which he uses in the dialogues
of Plato, Xenophon, and Aeschines is indeed a witty and elegant thing. It reveals a
man as anything but foolish and at the same time witty if, when discussing wisdom,
he denies it to himself, but attributes it playfully to those who arrogate it to themselves,
like when in Plato Socrates heaps praise to the heavens on Protagoras, Hippias,
Prodicus, Gorgias and all those others, while pretending to know nothing about
anything and playing the fool. Idont know, this somehow ts his style and Idont
agree with Epicurus who reprehends him for it. But in an historical account such
as you have provided throughout in your speech when dwelling on the qualities of
each orator, Iask you whether irony should not be as reprehensible as it would be in
a witness stand in court. Ireplied, What are you getting at with this? Idont really
understand. [Atticus] retorted, Thats why:First, you have praised some orators to
such degree that you possibly mislead people who dont know anything about them.
To tell you the truth, Icould hardly keep myself from laughing out loud, like when
you compared the Athenian Lysias to our good Cato:a greateven unsurpassed and
uniqueman, by Hercules! Nobody would say otherwise. But an orator? And, on
top of it, on par with Lysias, with the latters unsurpassable renement? Nice irony,
if were playing around. But if, however, we give an honest account we should, you
see, be as conscientious as if we were giving testimony on oath.28
Atticus does not spare Cicero his harshest criticism:Socratic irony, the only motivation that in Atticuss eyes could explain Ciceros ludicrous stylization of Cato
into a Roman Lysias, is a sublime art but has no place in a historical account, and
28
Brutus 29293. Nunc quoniam iam ad perorandum spectare videtur sermo tuus, dicam, opinor, quod
sentior. Tu vero, inquam, Tite. Tum ille:Ego, inquit, ironiam illam quam in Socrate dicunt fuisse, qua
ille in Platonis et Xenophontis et Aeschini libris utitur, facetam et elegantem puto. Est enim et minime
inepti hominis et eiusdem etiam faceti, cum de sapientia disceptetur, hanc sibi ipsum detrahere, eis tribuere
illudentem, qui eam sibi arrogant, ut apud Platonem Socrates in caelum eert laudibus Protagoram
Hippiam Prodicum Gorgiam ceteros, se autem omnium rerum inscium ngit et rudem. Decet hoc nescio
quo modo illum, nec Epicuro, qui id reprehendit, assentior. Sed in historia, qua tu es usus in omni sermone,
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particularly not in an account of oratory. Ahistory of oratory should mimic the

norms of the profession; it should abide by the rules of the court and be delivered
like a testimony under oath. As one of the great moments in the whole Brutus,
the ctional Cicero plays dumb, claiming he does not understand what Atticus
is getting at with his invective.29 This allows Cicero the author to embrace both
Atticuss criticism as well as the ctional Ciceros bold argument at the same time.
Cicero the author brilliantly suspends his judgment between his ctional alter
egos bold argument for a natural history of Roman oratory and the voice of
Greek rened reason arguing for a reception history that is channeled through
his friend Atticus.
He also gains from his ctional selfs denial of Socratic irony and Atticuss
ascription of precisely that irony to at least Cicero the author, if not the ctional
character. Ciceros subtle play with irony and the ctionality of the characters of
his dialogue lends him a credibility of sorts:at least, it enables the articulation of
the natural history of Roman oratory in the rst place. It should make us suspicious that Cicero fashions Cato into a hero of a primordial archaic Roman oral
culture in a text that also relied on a reception model and on an autobiographical
narrative to tell the history of early Roman oratory. Although scholars like Thomas
Habinek have recently revived the idea of a vibrant Roman song culture on the
Archaic Greek model, Cicero, a central testimony for archaic Roman literary culture, had clearly his very own, and ever shifting, agendas and can certainly not be
read at face value.30 His Cato in the Brutus allowed him to proudly assert Roman
independence from Greek historical contingency, which he had to otherwise
accept in the very sametext.
4. Velleius Paterculuss Vision of Creativity ThroughEnvy

In 30 ce Paterculus published a two-volume Compendium of Roman History
(Historiae Romanae) from the citys beginnings to the times of Tiberius. For most
of the time Velleius has been considered a minor writer and part of the reason for
his lack of reputation is that he lived in the shadow of the post-Augustan age and
chose to praise the wrong monarch, namely Tiberius, the lusterless successor of
Augustus.31 He did have some fervent admirers in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries: the Prussian classicist Barthold Georg Niebuhr (17761831) deemed his
intellectual subtleness far superior to his contemporaries, and the French literary
historian Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (180469) considered him a true modern
cum qualis quisque orator fuisset exponeres, vide quaeso, inquit, ne tam reprehendenda sit ironia quam in
testimonio. Quorsus, inquam, istuc? Non enim intellego. Quia primum, inquit, ita laudavisti quosdam
oratores ut imperitos posses in errorem inducere. Equidem in quibusdam risum vix tenebam, cum Attico
Lysiae Catonem nostrum comparabas, magnum mehercule hominem vel potius summum et singularem
virum! nemo dicet secus; sed oratorem? sed etiam Lysiae similem, quo nihil potest esse pictius? Bella ironia,
si iocaremur; sin asseveramus, vide ne religio nobis tam adhibenda sit quam si testimonium diceremus.
29
After Cicero arms again that he spoke in good faith without any intention of irony, Atticus
atters him by claiming that Cicero has something in common with great Socrates.
30
For incisive skepticism toward the oral song culture model see Feeney 2005, 23336.
31
Lamenting the neglect and misrecognition of his work is a commonplace in the scholarship
devoted to him. See A.J. Woodman 1975, 1 and footnote 2.See also the rst chapter of Schmitzer
2000, which is defensively entitled Velleius Paterculus:Urteile und Vorurteile der Wissenschaft.
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thinker among the ancients. Last but not least, Johann Wolfgang Goetheprobably in connection with his ideas about Weltliteraturwas enthusiastic about
Velleiuss universal theory of artistic creativity, which is precisely what interests us
in this chapter.32
Velleiuss History is unique and something of an orphan in the tradition of Latin
historiography. First, it is extremely short, covering all of Roman history in two
books. It values brevity over copiousnessa programmatic statement against most
earlier Roman historians, in particular Livy, who had just recently accomplished the
same task in the daunting course of 142 books. Also, Velleius presents an intriguingly
interwoven synoptic history of various Asian empires, Greece, and Rome. And lastly,
despite his historys brevity, Velleius chooses to intersperse his political chronology
with long digressions about literary history, producing something closer to a cultural
history that also gives him the occasion to speculate about the nature of artistic and
literary production.33
In these digressions Velleius is particularly interested in the question of why great
ages produce clusters of great minds. He gives a psychological explanation of the
phenomenon, evoking the key terms of envy (invidia) and competitive imitation
(aemulatio):
I am almost obliged to omit matters of essential importance rather than to embrace
unessential details, yet Icannot keep myself from noting down a subject which has
often occupied my thoughts but has never been clearly reasoned out. For who can
marvel suciently that the most distinguished minds in each branch of human
achievement have happened to adopt the same form of eort, and to have fallen
within the same narrow space of time? Just as animals of dierent species when shut
in the same pen or other enclosure still segregate themselves from those which are
not of their kind, and gather together each in its own group, so the minds that have
the capacity for distinguished achievement of each kind have set themselves apart
from the rest by doing like things in the same period of time. Asingle epoch, and
that only of a few years duration, gave luster to tragedy through three men of divine
inspiration, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. So, with Comedy, a single age
brought to perfection that early form, through the agency of Cratinus, Aristophanes,
and Eupolis; while Menander, and Philemon and Diphilus, his equals in age rather
than in performance, within the space of a very few years invented the New Comedy
and left it to defy imitation.34
32
Not by coincidence does Goethe call Velleius a Weltmann in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert
(1805). The very existence and subtitle of a recent Danish translationa concise Roman world
historyindicates that Velleiuss fortune might be on the rise thanks to the currently expanding
elds of world history/global history and world literature. Persson and Rasmussen2010.
33
Schmitzer acknowledges the uniqueness of Velleiuss literary excursus and believes that they
represent the historians own original ideas and do not simply rely on a Hellenistic precedent.
Schmitzer 2000,100.
34
Historiae Romanae Book I, 16. 13. Translation from Shipley 1979, 4043. paene magis necessaria
praetereunda quam supervacua amplectenda, nequeo tamen temperare mihi, quin rem saepe agitatam
animo meo neque ad liquidum ratione perductam signem stilo. Quis enim abunde mirari potest, quod
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Velleius also lists philosophy and oratory as other examples that support his observation that great minds cluster in small spans of time. Then he goes on to make
the same argument forRome:
This phenomenon occurred among the Romans as well as among the Greeks.
For, unless one goes back to the rough and crude beginnings, and to men whose
sole claim to praise is that they were the pioneers, Roman tragedy centres in and
about Accius; and the sweet pleasantry of Latin humour reached its zenith in
practically the same age under Caecilius, Terentius and Afranius.35
After marshaling some more evidence from historiography, poetry, oratory, grammar, painting, and sculpture, Velleius reects on the reasons for this. Apart from
giving a reason for the accumulation of greatness, he also nds reasons for failure
and imperfection:
Though I frequently search for the reasons why men of similar talents occur
exclusively in certain epochs and not only ock to one pursuit but also attain like
success, Ican never nd any of whose truth Iam certain, though Ido nd some
which perhaps seem likely, and particularly the following. Genius is fostered by
emulation, and it is now envy, now admiration, which enkindles imitation, and,
in the nature of things, that which is cultivated with the highest zeal advances to
the highest perfection; but it is dicult to continue at the point of perfection, and
naturally that which cannot advance will recede. And as in the beginning we are
red with the ambition to overtake those whom we regard as leaders, so when
we have despaired of being able either to surpass or even to equal them, our zeal
wanes with our hope; it ceases to follow what it cannot overtake, and abandoning
the old eld though pre-empted, it seeks a new one. Passing over that in which
we cannot be pre-eminent, we seek for some new object of our eort. It follows
that the greatest obstacle in the way of perfection in any work is our ckle way of
passing on at frequent intervals to something else.36
eminentissima cuiusque professionis ingenia in eandem formam et in idem artati temporis congruere spatium,
et quemadmodum clausa capso aliove saepto diversi generis animalia nihilo minus separata alienis in
umum quodque corpus congregantur, ita cuiusque clari operis capacia ingenia in similitudine et temporum
et profectuum semet ipsa ab aliis separaverunt. Una neque multorum annorum spatio divisa aetas per divini
spiritus viros, Aeschylum Sophoclen Euripiden, inlustravit tragoediam; una priscam illam et veterem sub
Cratino Aristophaneque et Eupolide comoediam; ac novam comicam Menander aequalesque eius aetatis magis
quam operis Philemo ac Diphilus et invenere intra paucissimos annos neque imitandam relinquere.
35
Historiae Romanae Book I, 17.1. Shipley 1979, 4243. Neque hoc in Graecis quam in Romanis evenit
magis. Nam nisi aspera ac rudia repetas et inventi laudanda nomine, in Accio circaque eum, Romana
tragoedia est; dulcesque Latini leporis facetiae per Caecilium Terentiumque et Afranium subpari aetate
nituerunt.
36
Historiae Romanae Book I, 17.57. Huius ergo recedentis in suum quodque saeculum ingeniorum
similitudinies congregantisque se et in stadium par et in emolumentum causas cum saepe requiro,
numquam reperio, quas esse versa condam, sed fortasse veri similes, inter quas has maxime. Alit
aemulatio ingenia, et nunc invidia, nunc admiration imitationem accendit, naturaque quod summo
studio petitum est, ascendit in summum dicilisque in perfecto mora est, naturaliterque quod procedere
non potest, recedit. Et ut primo ad consequendos quos priores ducimus accendimur, ita ubi aut praeteriri
aut aequari eos posse desperavimus, studium cum spe senescit, et quod adsequi non potest, sequi desinit
et velut occupatam relinquens materiam quaerit novam, praeteritoque eo, in quo eminere non possumus,
aliquid, in quo nitamur, conquirimus, sequiturque ut frequens ac mobilis transitus maximum perfecti operis
impedimentumsit.
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Velleius accomplishes several things at once:He puts Roman and Greek literature
on the same footing by universalizing humaneven animalgenius. Also, he
justies this universalization with the concepts of envy and competitive emulation. Jrgen Paul Schwindt has noted that he is unique in Roman literary history
in this transposition of the concept of fruitful competition between the Greek
city-states.37 And third, Velleius explains the decline of excellence not through the
commonsensical logic of decadence, but through the toxic eect of an anxiety of
inuence:if one cannot live up to the greatness of ones predecessors, one turns to
other elds in which challenges seem doable. Velleius shifts here from the intercultural emulation between Greek and Rome to intracultural competition within
the same tradition. Blurring the line between inter- and intracultural emulation
helps once more blur the distinctions between Greek and Roman cultural history.
Velleiuss psychologization of the development of the arts is unprecedented
and erratic in Roman tradition but it makes perfect sense once we understand
it as a strategy to cope with the burden of living not just in Rome, but in the
post-Augustan age. Velleius sets up a complex system of intercultural webs:He
clearly plays various Asian empires against Greeces importance in his synoptic
history. But when focusing on the history of literature and the arts, Asia drops out
completely and the sole focus is on the competition between Greece and Rome.
In the same way as the Kokinsh Prefaces replaced the historical teleology of wen
with the ahistorical circularity of the Way, Velleius gets rid of a teleology of rise
and decline in favor of the synergistic incentive of excellence, ultimately implying
that excellence is always and everywhere possible, if you just have the courage
to face the shadows of your predecessors. The Way of Velleius is a universal
psychology of creativity that should encourage his contemporaries to bring about
a new period of cultural ourishing that resembles the renewal of our Way of
Japanese poetry the Kokinsh Preface callsfor.
***
We analyzed four accounts of the beginnings of literature and eloquence from
dierent periods and places:The Kaifs, the rst Sino-Japanese poetry collection,
tried to come to grips with the explosion of textual production in seventh- and
eighth-century Japan and sketched a history of literature along the multifaceted
paths of the Chinese concept of wen, downplaying the advent of writing in Japan
through the notion of hexagrammatic literacy and relying on Chinese claims to
the naturalization of the human technology of writing. The early tenth-century
Kokinsh, the rst imperially sponsored collection of Japanese vernacular poetry,
pitted vernacular poetry against the rival Sino-Japanese tradition and challenged the
regime of wen through a universal Way, a dao, of poetic composition, empowering the waka tradition in a grand narrative of a poetogony going back to the Age
of the Gods. Third, Ciceros Brutus from the Late Republic brought Socratic irony
into play to make a bold argument for a natural history of Roman oratory with
Cato the Elder as its champion. And, lastly, Velleius Paterculus, during the Early
37
See Schwindt 2000, 13952.
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Empire, imagined ways to overcome a sense of postclassical belatedness in his

vision of a universal psychology of creative competition through productiveenvy.
The Kokinsh Prefaces, positioning themselves against previous Sino-Japanese
poetry anthologies, sketched a universal psychology of poetic composition, a universal Way, to make a case for Japanese poetry. Velleius Paterculus proposed a
universal psychology of artistic production for a post-Augustan age. The similarity
in strategy seems to point to a common teleology of narratives of literary history
in periods of belatedness that could be fruitfully explored within and across many
other traditions.
We also encountered a case of instructive dierence:Cicero, living in a state
that had conquered its reference culture, had to carefully maneuver between
domestic self-assertion and modesty toward the reference culture, whereas the
Kaifs compilers did not have to worry about an ironic backlash from Chinese
readers, the appearance of an imaginary eponymous Sinicus who, like Atticus,
would speak with authority as a sophisticated connoisseur of things Chinese in
general and in Japan in particular. Still, the relative similarity of the strategies
shows that writers in both early Japan and Rome were facing the same challenge
and developed comparable solutions to their desire to relegate their belatedness
out of sight for brief moments.
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CHAPTER3
Latecomers
Of Ornament, Simplicity, and Decline
From the time when Prince tsu rst composed Chinese-style poems and poetic
expositions, poets and talented men admired this custom and followed in his
wake. They imported those Chinese characters and transformed customs in our
Japanese land. All at once the ways of the people were changed, and Japanese
poetry gradually declined. Yet we still had the noble master Kakinomoto [no
Hitomaro] who loftily stirred thoughts of divine marvels and who alone straddled
the past and the present. And there was Yamabe no Akahito; he, too, is an
immortal of Japanese poetry.

1

ki no yoshimochi (-919 ce):sino-japanese preface to the collection of ancient
and modern poems (kokinsh)
I shall speak about those Greek fellows in their proper place, son Marcus,
and point out the result of my enquiries at Athens, and convince you what
benet comes from dipping into their literature, and not making a close study
of it. They are a quite worthless people, and an intractable one, and you must
consider my words prophetic. When that race gives us its literature it will
corrupt all things, and even all the more if it sends hither its physicians. They
have conspired together to murder all foreigners with their physic, but this
very thing they do for a fee, to gain credit and to destroy us easily. They are also
always dubbing us foreigners, and to ing more lth on us than on others they
give us the foul nickname of Opici. Ihave forbidden you to have dealings with
physicians.
Dicam de istis Graecis suo loco, M. li. quid Athenis exquisitum habeam et quod
bonum sit illorum litteras inspicere, non perdiscere, vincam. nequissimum et indocile
Kokin (wa)sh,342f.
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genus illorum, et hoc puta vatem dixisse:quandoque ista gens suas litteras dabit, omnia
conrumpet, tum etiam magis, si medicos suos hoc mittet. iurarunt inter se barbaros
necare omnes medicina, et hoc ipsum mercede faciunt ut des is sit et facile disperdant.
nos quoque dictitant barbaros et spurcius nos quam alios opicon appellatione foedant.
interdixi tibi de medicis.2
cato the elder (234149 bc) as reported by pliny (ca. 2379ce)
once upon a time peoples customs were undisturbed and pristine, simple and
uncorrupted. Native poetry and populations ourished in an age of divine marvels.
Then came intruders who destroyed the paradise of blissful simplicity:Chinese
writing and literature, Greek letters and physicians. They were set on obliterating
local customs, whereupon native poetry declined. They applied names of barbarian Italic tribes like the Opici to humiliate the Roman people, and their doctors
proted from killing them with their evil quackery.
Neither Japan nor Rome ever got rid of this curse of foreign intrusion and
inuence. It was a question of an authors period and character whether this was
seen as blessing, bane, or both. Narratives of decline are certainly not unique to
Japan and Rome, or China and Greece for that matter. They have been a staple
of the writing of literary and other histories from antiquity to the present. In
the most fundamental sense they depict change with the help of natural metaphors of waxing and waning, continuity and disruption, and make narratives
of literary history possible. Only a curve, not a horizontal zero line, can have a
narrative. Platonic imagery of the ages of men was applied to the arch of Latin literary history as rising to Golden Latinity and declining since Silver Latinity.3
Confucian concepts of decline from the age of the Classics (jing
), which
Confucius was believed to have compiled, to the later Age of the Masters (zi
)
after Confuciuss death in 479 bce, when true meaning supposedly waned, was
inscribed into the literary history sketched in the imperial bibliography of the
Han History (rst century ce). Narratives of decline became the weapon for various literary reformers during the Tang Dynasty (618907) in China, who claimed
that overindulgence in literary ornament during the fragmented Six Dynasties
Period (220581) had led to a loss not just of moral substance but also of political
control. These were the earlier returning to antiquity (fugu

) movements
that have rippled up and down the timeline of Chinas cultural history up to
the present.4 The persuasiveness of such reform movements often depended on
how cleverly they designed narratives of decline as launching boards for their
new visions. Narratives of decline have been a powerful means for writers to
Naturalis historia 29.14. Translation from Jones 1968, vol.8, 19093.

Though once the most prominent scheme of decline ever developed for the periodization of
Latinliterature, surprisingly little thought has been given to its origin and implications. Wolfram
Ax traces it back to Renaissance or Early Baroque writers who applied Hesiods and Ovids
modeloffour ages of the worldgolden, silver, bronze, ironto the development of literature.
Ax2006.
4
On return to antiquity movements during the Tang see Bol 1992, Owen 1975, 823, Sun 1984 and
DeBlasi 2002, 11545.
3
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gain support for a revival movement and gesture toward a visionary future, and
also for scholars to capture a graphic narrative of literary history in retrospect.
Because scholars depend on the narratives of the authors they study, there is
always a danger of taking at face value what writers of decline narratives wanted
posterity to believe about them and their visions.
This is the charm and danger of reading narratives of decline. Ancient Rome
and Japan were particular cases in this broader picture, because their writers could
blame decline on the onslaught of foreign inuence more easily than other traditions, such as Greece andChina.
Yet, Ki no Yoshimochi and Cato wrote their narratives of decline from very different vantage points. Cato lived right through the high point of Roman confrontation with Hellenistic states during its conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean;
he died a few years before the decisive 146 bce defeat of the Achaean League at
Corinth, which meant the Roman submission of the Greek motherland. Although
Greek cities had colonized southern Italy since the eighth century bce and the
growing Roman state was increasingly exposed to Greek inuence through its
conquest of southern Italy in the third century bce, it was in Catos later life that
the blessings of Greek culture became ever more acutely felt and feared. This
period saw the beginning of an education system that relied on Greek freedmen
and slaves as Greek and Latin grammar teachers and meant that Romans, unlike
Japanese, learned the canon of their older reference culture from actual natives,
not just from books. In contrast to Cato, Yoshimochi wrote at a time when more
immediate Chinese impact had waned: Waves of immigrants from the Korean
Three Kingdoms of Silla, Paekche, and Koguryo brought Chinese culture such
as written characters, literature, and Buddhism and its material culture to Japan.
This process peaked particularly in the late seventh century, when Silla put an end
to the Three Kingdoms Period and unied the peninsula. By Yoshimochis time,
the early tenth century, it was predominantly books, not people, who transmitted
the knowledge of Chinese culture to and withinJapan.
This fundamental dierence in political and physical proximity is palpable
in the dierent anxiety level of Yoshimochis and Catos respective narratives of
decline. Chinese characters and literature, Yoshimochis intruders, seem less
overtly harmful than the murderous designs of Catos Greek doctors and the
prophecy of wholesale corruption by Greek literature. Yoshimochis intruders are
not real people, but pernicious signs and texts, which are introduced by a Japanese
prince, not an ill-intentioned Chinese doctor. For Romans, Greeks were much
more threatening and ambiguous:Greeks were the people of Homer, science, and
some religious cults, they could hold prestigious positions as tutors and doctors,
but there were many who came to Italy as prisoners of war and lived their lives as
menials or members of slavegangs.
In Chapter 2 I explored how some Japanese and Latin texts, when devising
accounts of their literary beginnings, dealt with the historical atness of their
edgling literary tradition vis--vis their older reference cultures. In this chapter
Iwill investigate the ipside of the coin:the literary density with which early
Japanese and Latin writers saw themselves confronted when they looked back and
up to Chinese and Greek models.
Latecomers:Of Ornament, Simplicity, and Decline
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First, there was the temporal weight of the textual record. Although we do not
exactly know what proportion of the Chinese corpus in circulation had reached
Japan, it is safe to say that when Japanese started to record poetry in the late seventh and eighth centuries they were facing about two millennia of textual tradition
in China. In this time, to put it breathlessly briey, the earliest corpus of historical and poetic writings had received the blessings of Confucius in the fth century bce and were canonized in the Han Dynasty (206 bce-220 ce) as Confucian
Classics, which led to a rise of a culture of commentary and scholarship, alongside with the emergence of more properly literary genres like the rhapsody and
classical poetry in ve- and seven-character lines. Poetry, in turn, developed
highly regulated forms in the Six Dynasties Period and the Tang Dynasty, accompanied by a prolic production of works on literary history, technical poetics, anecdotal biography and shaken since the mid-eighty-century High Tang by calls to
refrain from the ever more ornate court style common until the Early Tang. This
only sketches the broader development of poetic forms and leaves out the vast
corpus of prose genres.
In contrast, the symbolic beginning date of Latin literature came only about half
a millennium after the rst recording of Homeric epic, with Livius Andronicuss
translation of two Greek plays into Latin for performance at the Roman Games in
240 bce and his Latin adaptation of the Odyssey. But this time span was enough
to see the development of epic, elegy, iambic, comedy, and tragedy (all ruled by a
complex system of verse meters) in Asia Minor and mainland Greece, alongside
with philosophical literature, historiography, oratory, and poetics. Greek literary
production reached a highpoint in fth century bce Athens and the rhetorical
culture its democracy nourished, which was followed by the massive expansion
of Greek language and literature thanks to Alexander the Greats empire and its
successor states throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. Centers of
scholarship canonized Greek literary and rhetorical learning and fostered the
development of a sophisticated Hellenistic literature, which was exemplied by
the third-century scholar-writer Callimachus, was marked both by copious erudition and by elliptic brevity, rhetorical, restraint and deliberate pathos, and had a
strong impact on Roman writers.
With the temporal weight of the textual record came stylistic density. That neither the earliest literature in Japan nor what we have of the earliest literature in
Latin has the fresh candor of poems from the Chinese Classic of Poetry (ca. 600
bce) or an archaic Greek poem by Sappho has to do with the radically dierent
growth curve of the younger literary traditions. Many of the writers of early Latin
and Japanese literature were either directly related to the older reference culture
Greeks or Chinese-trained Koreansor thoroughly educated in the Greek and
Chinese curriculum of their times. As discussed in Chapter1, they jumpstarted
Japanese and Latin literature from a highly rened and ornate stage of literary
development, namely the ornate literature of the Six Dynasties and Early Tang in
the Japanese case and the exuberant and erudite Hellenistic literature in the Latin
case. In this sense both Japanese and Latin literary traditions were latecomers. In
writing and reecting on literature they had the exquisite advantage of having at
their disposition a sophisticated repertoire of genres and diction, without going
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through the long literary development that had gradually rened these tools.
Launching on the path of this shortcut cost these latecomers, on the other hand,
the unambiguous entitlement to it. It spurred early writers to eagerly embrace this
sophistication as their own while sensing it was not quite theirs, but also inspired
them to assert their independent identity. The latecomers literary and psychological ambiguity came to play out in notions of ornate sophistication and pristine
simplicity of literary expression, and in curiously self-serving narratives of decline.
What is the relation between ornamentation and simplicity in early Japanese
and Latin literary texts? Why do claims to a supposedly characteristic simplicity
of Japanese and Latin literary beginnings only start a couple of centuries after the
onset of these younger traditions? Why was ornate style sometimes perceived as
an aesthetic, civic, and moral threat in both Japanese and Latin literary cultures?
How do ornate style, and debates on style, play out dierently in Japanese from
Latin literary cultures?
This chapter explores some of these questions on the example of texts that
address these issues in particularly interesting or inuential ways. For Japan, we
will trace them in passages from the earliest extant poetry anthologies already discussed in the previous chapters, the Florilegium of Cherished Airs (Kaifs

,
751)and the Collection of Myriad Leaves (Manysh

) (ca. 759), as well as in
the earliest treatise on waka poetry, the Code of Waka Poetry (Uta no Shiki

)
of 772. We know that neither the Kaifs nor the Manysh were the rst poetry
anthologies of their kinds, although we can be fairly sure that the earliest anthologies belong after the turn of the eighth century. Thus, looking at the rst repository of Sino-Japanese poetry (Kaifs) and vernacular Japanese poetry (Manysh)
does allow us to examine attitudes toward ornateness and simplicity from the very
rst century of the Japanese literary tradition. Ihope to show that the narrative
of a pristine simplicity destroyed by the inux of Chinese literature sketched in
the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh discussed above, is a late construction
and that, quite to the contrary, eighth-century texts revel in the opportunities that
ornate expression based on Chinese precedent aordedthem.
Due to the dearth and fragmentary transmission of early Latin literature, we
are forced to leap to the late Republic to explore notions of simplicity, ornateness,
and related narratives of decline. Because the surviving corpus of Latin literature
in the Late Republican Period represents a later stage in development than what
we see in the subsequent early Japanese texts, we will start in Rome at the moment
in literary history where we left o in Japan. We will see how in his dialogue On
the Orator (De oratore) Cicero boldly proposes a properly Roman philosophy that
mends the intellectual decline brought about by the indisputable Greek master
Socrates and returns to a presumably pristine unity between rhetoric and philosophy. Although we have a villain from the older reference culture rather than a
native like Prince tsu, this vision is arguably something of a Kokinsh moment
in Latin literary culture. In his Dialogue on Orators (Dialogus de oratoribus, ca. 102
ce), a debate with Ciceronian air, Tacitus articulates a grand theory of decline,
which is much better known than Ciceros intervention in On the Orator and has
dominated visions of Latin culture until today:namely, that Roman oratory went
into a steep decline with the advent of the empire and the disappearance of the
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institutional foundations and the political challenges that the volatile climate of
the Late Republic had provided. First, Marcus Aper, a spokesman for the superiority of modern oratory, makes his case, followed by a counterstatement from
Vipstanus Messalla, a member of a venerable Republican family who argues for
the superiority of past oratory. He detects the causes for the decline of oratory
in bad education (for example, by worthless Greek maids rather than Roman
mothers), exposure to vice (on stage and in gladiator games), and the loss of
solid moral, legal, and historical knowledge (replaced with meaningless ctitious
debates staged in the school of rhetoricians). But it is the fulminant statement
of Maternusa retired orator who has turned to writing poetry and playsthat
enshrines the inuential claim that only political strife births brilliant orators,
because they are not needed in a peaceful and well-governed empire. In this book
we will not deal with the much more famous decline narrative from Tacituss
Dialogue. For our purposes, the lesser known decline narrative from Ciceros On
the Orator is more interesting, because it is earlier, which is important for our
attempt to trace the emergence of narratives of decline and arguments for simplicity versus ornateness. Also, because Cicero is undoubtedly the most important
mediator of any concept of Latin literature before 45 bce, it is more consequential
to understand his strategies of construing literary history in the comparative fold
between Greek and Roman precedents.5
After exploring Ciceros use of a narrative of decline to sketch a national Roman
project, we move to his involvement in the complex debates about plain and
ornate styles that unfolded in the context of a new classicism:Atticism. These
debates, which originated possibly in Greece itself but became rst palpable in
Late Republican Rome, looked back to Attic writers of classical Athens as rhetorical models and denigrated Hellenistic exuberance and ornateness as bad Asiatic
taste. We will return to the Brutus, discussed in the previous chapter, and read it
this time as the key text in which Cicero defends himself against accusations that
he indulges in Asiatic bombast.
Harkening back to older Greek literature for rhetorical models, this new classicism encouraged, among other things, a rejection of earlier Latin literature, which
had relied more on the Hellenistic exuberance of then-contemporary Greek writers. We will look at Horaces confusing play in his Satires with the image of the
earlier satire writer Lucilius to show how the historical self-consciousness of Latin
authors led them to a complex engagement with dierent stages of both Greek
and Latin literary developments that did not occur in early Japanese literature.
Combining our insights of early Japanese views leading up to the Kokinsh and
of Late Republican texts leading away from the Ciceronian Kokinsh moment,
we will see that Latin authors were, and had to be, much more aggressive, much
more diplomatic, and more embarrassed about their relation to Greek precedent
and their own earlier tradition. How and why this was so will be this chapters
larger concern.
On this point see Feeney 2005,227.
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1. The Elusiveness of Ornament

Before starting our exploration of actual texts, a few words may be in order on ornament and ornateness. Whereas the concept of a narrative of decline should be
obvious from Yoshimochis and Catos statements above and needs little further clarication, ornateness is too elusive to be clearly denable. How much needs to be
said on the overdetermined concept of ornament for our purpose? This chapter
looks both at critical debates about concepts of ornateness, as well as ornate style as
practiced in literary texts, and so we need both a critical and a functional description
of ornateness.
For our purposes I will conne myself to mentioning one key term for ornament in each tradition that has been particularly central to its development. For
capturing the use of ornateness as a critical concept Iwant to focus on the Chinese
term of wen (J. bun) and on the Latin ornatus. They have dierent locations in
their respective literary cultures. Wen functions in the space of literary cosmology:it
establishes a relation between natural pattern in the cosmos and human writing and
civilization. In contrast, the Latin term ornatus is one of the traditional ve parts
of Greco-Roman rhetoric and functions as mediator between a public speaker or
writer and his audience. As explained in the previous chapter, wen in the Chinese
and East Asian context can mean anything from the pattern of animal fur or tattooing
of the human body, to script, literature, culture, and civilization. Wen is the center
of a complex web of associations and antonyms.6 The antonym most relevant for
its meaning of ornament is substance (zhi
). Wen and zhi were understood as
a polar pair at least since Confuciuss remark that only once ornament (wen) and
substance (zhi) are in balance, do we have a superior person

,

wen zhi binbin, ranhou junzi (Analects 6.18). Although Confuciuss followers prized
renement and ritual over simplicity and raw nature, writers since the Six Dynasties
Period developed a much stronger anxiety over a too-much of ornament, rather than
a too-much of substance, so that some voices by the Tang Dynasty were convinced
that the over-ornamented poetry of the Six Dynasties had led not just to bad taste, but
even to the fall of dynasties.7
6
Texts discussing these concepts are too numerous to list. In the Chinese context Liu Xies The
Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wenxin diaolong ) is a key text to grasp the
vocabularies, inuential arguments, and ambivalences around the issue of ornament and
ornateness. For a bilingual translation see Yang 2003. For a stimulating exploration of the
signicance and notion of wen in Chinese culture and in Western perceptions of it see Saussy 1997.
Cai 2001 contains several articles relating to the notion of wen. See in particular Li Waiyee on the rich
ambiguities of wen in Between Literary Mind and Carving Dragons:Order and Excess in Wenxin
diaolong:In Wenxin diaolong, Liu Xie tries to build a comprehensive system of literary creation,
signication, and communication. In the process, the word wen is used in various contexts to mean
pattern, words, language, writing, literature, renement, aesthetic surface, culture, or civilization, with
the idea of pattern as the apparent common denominator facilitating logical transitions. But even as
patterning can be both sedate balance and arabesque eervescence, wen embodies immanent order as
well as excesses that undermine order in Wenxin diaolong. Li 2001,193.
7
Fusheng Wu has argued against prejudices of decadence toward ornate poetry that pervade
Chinese cultural history. His study of the literary heritage of Palace Style Poetry tries not just to
salvage this genres reputation, but also to throw light on how its rhetoric and denigration informed
poetic production beyond Palace Style Poetry. Wu 1998. To get a taste of Six Dynasties courtly
literature and the literary cultures that produced it see Birrell 2004 and Xiaofei Tians masterful
study Beacon Fire and Shooting Star:the Literary Culture of the Liang (502557).
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The Latin concept of ornatus, a translation of the Greek kosmos or kataskeue,

was a central concept in rhetorical theory and practice. According to the conventional ve parts involved in crafting a persuasive speech, the orator needed good
ideas (invention, inventio), which had to be adroitly arranged (arrangement,
dispositio). But to articulate them in words one needed ornament (style, elocutio) to reach the audience, which needed to be memorized (memory, memoria)
and then, in the nal step, performed before the target audience (delivery, actio).
Though all ve parts of rhetoric received attention in rhetorical treatises into the
early modern period, it is fair to say that part3, the rhetorical colors of elocution, were expanded most drastically as time went on. They included gures of
speech and gures of thought, and the ever-expanding list of such tropes came
to be the part of ancient rhetorical theory that had most eect on the development
of oratory and literature.8 In addition to its place in the style category of the ve
parts involved in the preparation of speeches, ornatus was one of the virtues of
speech (virtutes dicendi) that Aristotles disciple Theophrastus had rst formulated, which also included linguistic correctness (hellenismos/in Rome: latinitas),
clarity (perspicuitas), and appropriateness (aptum). More broadly, ornatus was associated with ornate rather than plain speech, emotional exuberance rather than
cool restraint, and gures of amplication such as copious diction (copia), rather
than ellipsis and brevity.
Wen and ornatus operated in slightly dierent spheres:although in both cultures it belonged to the sphere of education and literary training, it had a stronger
cosmological connection in East Asia. However, debates about wen and ornatus
shared one fundamental concern: namely, the question whether ornament was
simply applied to, or truly constitutive of, substance. Should it be thought of as
mere decoration or integral part of an utterance?
Moving from ornament as critical concept to its operation in actual writing,
it is hard to give anything other than a minimalist working denition. We can
use the helpful linguistic terminology of Roman Jakobson to dene ornate writing as a writing style that has vertical/paradigmatic thickness and horizontal/
syntagmatic pattern. In other words, lexically, ornate style relies heavily on paradigmatic substitution of vocabulary:instead of white the poet says like snow,
like crane feathers, or like the temples of the medieval Chinese poet Pan Yue
who lamented that his hair began to turn gray at the age of thirty-two. There
were poetic encyclopedias, which helped poets to play the game of substitution
with synonyms and search out ever more arcane literary allusions that could function as synonyms. Syntactically, ornate style is patterned and relies heavily on the
use of repetition and repetition with dierence. Parallelism in poetry and prose
was brought to excruciating perfection during the Six Dynasties and Tang Period
and was equally central to literary production in Nara and Heian Japan. Isokola,
8
For a concise introduction to Greco-Roman rhetoric and its historical context see Pernot 2005.
For an extensive treatment of the typology of tropes see Lausberg 1960. Book III of Ciceros On the
Orator and Book VIII of Quintilians The Orators Education are central among the many texts that
treat ornatus.
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parallelism of cadences with equal number of words and syllables, was seen as a
feature of ornate speech in Greco-Roman rhetoric.
Ornateness as critical concept and literary function is a highly ambiguous
and paradoxical phenomenon. First, more so than with other notions, its use as a
critical concept and its operation in actual texts are typically at odds. Liu Xies (ca.
465521) treatise The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons expounds on the
history and power of literature using an ever more dazzling brocade of ornate verbiage, while at the same time forcefully castigating the evil of over-ornamentation.
This is a typical example of the fascinating cognitive disjunction between the critical use of the concept of ornament and the production of ornatetext.
Part of this disjunction can be blamed on cognitive habituation: the more
ornately Six Dynasties poets came to write, the more natural the patterns of this
world of artice appeared to them. On the other hand, and this is the second
paradox of ornateness, the disjunction is rooted in a bias against ornament
that haunted debates about a desirable balance between ornament and substance in East Asia as well as Greece and Rome:Unlike substance, ornament
could more easily be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. If one said of the writings of ones opponent that they were ornate, it most often meant that their
style was unduly ornamented and excessive. Literary reform movements rarely
called for more ornament; ornament and stylistic density increased naturally over
time. Instead, reform movements more often called for a return to substance, an
imagined simplicity that needed to be uncovered from the soil presumably spoiled
by excessive ornament. As we will see in the debates about the virtues of classical
Attic style in Late Republican Rome nobody wanted to look Asiatic and ornate;
those accused of Asiatic excesses defended themselves by showing how very
Attic they believed themselves to be. Thus, ornateness, unlike its antonym of
pristine substance, was more often considered an aesthetic vice with potentially
damaging moral and political consequences.
Let us now take a closer look at the Japanese and Latin texts and see how,
despite the irreconcilable dierences in genre, form, chronology, and cultural context, we can discern a common cluster of aesthetic and moral concerns centered
around the issues of simplicity and ornateness, and trace where and how they
played out dierently in Early Japan andRome.
2. Embracing Ornament:From the Kaifs to the Kokinsh

2a. The Kaifs and Ornateness in Sino-JapanesePoetry
The eighth century saw an explosion of textual production in Japan, resulting in
the compilation of the earliest historical annals, gazetteers, and poetry collections.
Much of the poetry in the Kaifs was composed at court banquets and sang the
praises of the current regime. In the previous chapter Iargued that wen(J.bun)
was the pivotal concept at the heart of this earliest extant poetry collection, and
that both preface and poetry itself strive to think through wen in all its meanings,
connotations, and implications for a nascent culture. Wen as the civil appears
also as contrast to wu , the martial, in the biographies of the rst two princes
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and poets of the anthology, Prince tomo, the son of Emperor Tenji who failed
to succeed him, and Prince tsu, the son of Tenjis brother Tenmu, who was executed on charges of rebellion. It shows that balancing the civil and the martial
is laudable, while leaning toward the martial leads to hubris and ultimate execution. Wen as in literary production becomes also a topic for reection in poetry
by monks, who admit dallying in the petty insect carving that is literary composition, which should not bet their status as monks.9 In the previous chapter
Ifocused on wen as a convenient super-concept in the Kaifs to tell the early cultural and literary history of Japan. In this chapter Ishow how wen also underlies
the Kaifs Preface as a concept for literary ourish and sophistication.
We saw how the preface tells of the beginning of wen, literature proper and
poetry, at Emperor Tenjis court banquets. Following this iconic beginning, the
preface shifts narrative gears and tells the history of poetry after Tenjis death
through two pairs of poets and their poems in the anthology:

Since thosetimes
poets have emerged now andthen:
A crown princea hiddendragon
m
ade cloud-dwelling cranes soar with his elegant
wind-brush (in poem no.6).

An emperora raising phoenix

had the moon boat oat by misty islands (in poem no.15).

C
ounselor miwa [Takechimaro] lamented his white
temples (in poem no.18)

and Chancellor Fujiwara [no Fuhito] sang of mysterious
creation (in poem no.29).10

They elevated the lush fruits of previousreigns

and let their grandiose voices y on to later generations.11
The passage forces very dierent individuals into a parallel structure:Prince tsu,
an overambitious prince dreaming of becoming emperor, is treated favorably
when put on a par with the short-lived but successful Emperor Monmu (r. 697
707), under whose behest the famous Taih legal code of 701 was promulgated;
then there are the two high ocials miwa no Takechimaro and Fujiwara no
Fuhito. The line-up of these two pairs of political gures and their poems reveals
a preference for literary sophistication. Clearly the most ornate rather than the
most morally instructive poems are chosen to represent their authors. This choice
is particularly pertinent in the case of Prince tsu. Out of the four poems by the
prince, it is not the princes famous deathbed quatrain that is selected, although it
would have alluded to his rebellion and forced suicide, and thus added force to a
condemnation of the princes behavior on moral and political grounds suggested
9
For further elaboration on how the Kaifs plays on wen see Denecke 2006, in particular pp.7693.
Fujiwara no Fuhito, the most powerful courtier after Monmus death, was Monmus father-in-law.
Fujiwara no Fuhitos poetry is the least ornate out of the four poets mentioned and one wonders why
he was chosen by the compiler to stand in this double pairing. Fuhitos political and familial relation
with Monmu made a good match between a ruler and a high ocial.
11
Kaifs Preface. Kojima 1964,6061.
10
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in his biography in the Kaifs. Instead, the preface evokes this beautifully crafted
couplet:

12
On heavens paper the elegant wind-brush paints

cloud-dwelling cranes
Mountain loom and frosty shuttle weave leafy brocade.
Nature is made into her own craftsman, painting with an elegant wind brush
(fhitsu
) and weaving a brocade of foliage over the mountain ridges. Nature
adorns herself with artice designed to reveal natural beauty. The couplet is a
decorative reverie, weaving nature and art into one landscape and arming that
the nature of poetry is to have wen, clever ornament.
The choice of the ornate over the instructive is even clearer in Emperor
Monmus case. Out of his three poems included in the anthology, Stating
my Feelings (no. 16) shows the emperors earnest attempts at Confucian
self-cultivation. Yet the author of the Kaifs Preface chooses the most delicate
poem to match Prince tsus elegant couplet:
Composing onMoon

The moon boat advances by misty islands,

cassia oars oat along the hazyshore.

[The moons] liquid luster shines on the terrace

as its departing wheel sinks into the winecup.

Slanting shadows scatter on the owingwater.

Its autumn light shines fresh through sparsetrees.

Alone like a mirror amongstars

13 it once more oats through the Milky Waysford.
Emperor Monmu lives up to the decorum of the genre of poetry on things, as he
unfolds layer upon layer of moonlight when composing on the topic of Moon.
There is the reection of the moon, which is like a boat oating next to the poets
boat; the moons glow on the vast expanse of the terrace, its almost tactile caressing
of the trees, like a mirror among the stars. This multiplication of layers of translucence is played o against multiple layers of concealment:misty islands and hazy
shores, the shrinking reection in the small wine cup, which in turn is particularly
striking in contrast to the vast expanse of the terrace, and the scattering shadows.
The most luminous layer of concealment is the Milky Way, whose own brightness
dims the brightness of the moon, when it oats through its ford. The tension between translucent and concealed brightness is delicately accentuated in the
beautiful closure of the poem:the image of the moon as one and alone contrasts
with the surrounding stars, which it innitely reects as a mirror. The multiplicity
of stars produced by the moon-mirror reminds the reader of the repeated selfmultiplication within the landscape of luminous reective surfaces that the moon
underwent in the poem when traveling through lake waters, wine cups, terraces,
trees, and the Milky Way. Apoem like this would have been unthinkable in an
12
13
Kaifsno.6.
Kaifs no.15.
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early Chinese collection like the Classic of Poetry; it needed many centuries of
Chinese literary developments to become possible.
The Kaifs Preface describes two phases of literary history:the iconic beginning of literature at the banquets of Emperor Tenjis court and a second phase,
from the Jinshin War until the Wad era (708715). The anthology includes a substantial body of poetry from a third phase (715729), which was composed at the
Estate of the great literary patron Prince Nagaya, grandson of Emperor Temmu,
and from a fourth phase (729751), which was partly created under the patronage
of Fujiwara no Muchimaro (680737), who took over Prince Nagayas role as literary patron after the latters forced suicide in 729. While the preface elaborates on
the rst two phases, the third and fourth phases go unaccounted for. And only
for the second phase does the preface discuss poets and their poems. For Prince
tsu and Emperor Monmu it clearly selects the most ornate poems from among
their handful of poems to represent this phase of literary production. This proud
line-up of poets and their sophisticated poems suggest that the compiler of the
Kaifs embraced ornateness, not simplicity and plain-worded moral instruction,
as a key value of the aesthetics of Sino-Japanese poetry in the mid-eighth century.
2b. Elegance and Literary Knowledge in Early Waka Poetics

Although it claims to be a history of Japanese civilization in general and literature in particular, the Kaifs Preface introduces a collection of Sino-Japanese
poetry, kanshi. It is therefore crucial to show that ornate elegance was not just a
value claimed for kanshi, but also for vernacular poetry, waka. The Code of Waka
Poetry (Uta no shiki
) or Model Forms for the Canon of Waka Poetry (Kaky
hyshiki

) of 772 is the earliest extant poetic manual for waka composition. Written at Emperor Knins behest by Fujiwara no Hamanari (724790),
the great-grandson of the Fujiwara-ancestor Nakatomi no Kamatari (614669), it
contains about three dozen poems used to illustrate seven poetic faults (yamai
) and proposes a typology of three poetry types (katai

).14
The text is fascinating because it would make for a wonderful study of how concepts can survive in separation from actual content. Although later waka treatises
would routinely refer to it as a precedent, its poetics remained almost completely
without inuence. In his treatise, Hamanari does nothing less than claim that a
superior feature of waka poetry is that it rhymes (which it actually does not, unlike
Chinese poetry) and that, based on this presumption, certain rules of euphony
need to be observed, prohibiting sound repetition in certain places of the poem.
Chinese poetry rhymes, and during the Six Dynasties Period an elaborate set of
rules for tonal euphony and variation was developed that led to the birth of regulated poetry (lshi

). These Chinese rules of four tones and eight faults
(sisheng babing

) were a staple of Tang technical poetics, and Hamanari
apparently felt he could not do without them in his discussion of waka. Iwill not
14
For a study of the manuals various titles, its author, content, and transmission history see
Rabinovitch 1991. Pages 52460 contain a translation of the manual, which Ihave consulted for my
own translationbelow.
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explore further how Hamanari attempted to accomplish the feat of transposing

the faults of Chinese poetics into faults of waka poetry, but Iwill limit my discussion to what Hamanari says on the place of ornate and plain speech in waka.
Hamanari reveals his partiality to elegance, rst, in his praise of sophisticated diction and gurative speech, and second, in his preference for complex poetic form.
In the opening of his manual he claims that waka diers from common speech by
virtue of its elegant and subtle use ofrhyme:
Since its beginning waka poetry is what stirs the deep feelings of spirits and gods,
and consoles heavenly and human hearts lled with love. Rhyme is what distinguishes (waka) from customary language and makes it suitable to the spirit of pleasure excursions. Thus, the Heavenly Grandchild15 presented a love poem to his wife
the Dragon Princess when she returned to the sea, and the assembled mourners
of Ame-no-waka-hiko composed a poem praising his awesome power.16 These two
poems were the rst to give full play to the elegant and subtle use ofrhyme.

17

Like the Kokinsh Prefaces later on, Hamanari ascribes a numinous force to waka
poetry. It is striking that Hamanari considers poetic language as elegant and
distinct from everyday speech and that he claims that it uses elegant and subtle
rhyme. Obviously, the early divine beings Hamanari adduces from the chronicles
to show the beginning of elegant waka poetry must have had quite some literary
training in poetic rules. Thus, Hamanaris earliest stage of waka poetry boasts
elegance and literary knowledge, not plain speech and innate ability. This is the
tenor of Hamanaris beginning of the history of waka, which prepares us for a very
dierent kind of decline narrative:
Poets of the recent age, though good at producing poetic phrases, know nothing
of the use of rhyme. While they give their readers elation, they still have no understanding of poetic defects. When measured against the poetry of high antiquity,
(recent poetry) lacks the grace of spring owers; when transmitted to future generations, there is no avor of autumn fruits. Without the Six Poetic Modes how
can it stir the feelings and soothe the hearts of gods and humans? Ihave thus
drawn up a volume on the (proper composition) of rhymed verse, supported by
new examples, and titled it Code of Waka Poetry. Surely those who recite it will
avoid giving oense, and those who hear it receive sucient admonishment.
15
Great-grandson of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu and grandfather of Emperor Jinmu, the rst human
emperor of Japan. He tried to appease his wife Lady Toyotama with a love poem, when she was
furious that he had witnessed her change into a crocodile or dragon when giving birth (Kojikino.8).
16
The deity Aji-suki ascended to heaven to mourn the passing of his friend Ame-no-waka-hiko
(Heavenly Young Lad) and ew in a rage when he was mistaken for his corpse. The assembly of
mourners tried to appease him with a poem when they discovered the mistake (Kojiki no.6; Nihon
shokino.2).
17
Okimori 1993, 11314. Punctuation added by author.
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18
Hamanari attributes a recent decline of the art of waka to the ignorance about
poetic defects such as the faulty repetition of sounds within and between lines.19
Only if one knows the Six Modes described in the Great Preface to the Chinese
Classic of Poetry can one write waka. Only if one masters the three rhetorical techniques of fu
enumeration, bi comparison, xing evocative image and
has training in the three parts of the Classic of Poetry the feng Airs, ya
Odes, and song
Hymns, can one hope to miraculously stir the hearts of
Japanese humans and gods with Japanese poetry. If according to the Sino-Japanese
Preface of the Kokinsh recent poets have lost the innocence of their art because of
too much knowledge of Chinese writing and literature, Hamanaris recent poets
have lost the knowledge of their art and have too little knowledge of Chinese writing and literature.
With a diametrically opposed notion of the causes for decline comes a dierent
vision of the good old poetry of high antiquity. It is not innocent and untouched
against the threatening backdrop of the sophistication intruding with Chinese
inuence, but already from its very beginnings does waka poetry balance the
Chinese-style parallelism of the taste of the autumn fruits substance with the
looks of the spring owers ourish. Accordingly, Hamanari is not a prophet
calling for a return to a golden age of innocent simplicity, but a poetic priest calling on his community to follow his holy book of precepts. Although the phrase
those who recite it will avoid giving oense, and those who hear it receive sufcient admonishment is adapted almost literally from the Great Preface to the
Chinese Classic of Poetry, the notion of avoiding oenses/sins (tsumi
) and
receiving admonishment (imashimuru

) had by Hamanaris time gained
Buddhist undertones and came from the mouth of somebody who was an expert
in Yin-Yang Learning (onmyd

). Knowledge of the Faults and Six
Modes contained in his holy book would ensure a proper balance between substance and ourish, as it prevailed in high antiquity.
A second way in which Hamanari espouses the ornate over the plain is his
preference for oblique types of poetry. Poetry using elegant and beautiful diction (garei
) and creating novel literary expression is preferable to poetry
using plain diction (jikigo
) that is faulty, because it is too close to everyday
18
Ibid., 11314. Punctuation added by author.

The seven defects of a thirty-one-syllable waka (5-7-5-7-7) and their fanciful typological labels
are:(1)Head-Tail defect:same sound at the end of the rst two lines; (2)Chest-Tail defect:same
sound at the end of the rst line and the third and/or sixth syllable of the second line; (3)Waist-Tail
defect:same sound at the end of lines 1, 2, or 4 with the basic rhyme syllable at the end of line
3; (4)Mole defect:sound of basic rhyme syllable used in any line of the poem; (5)Roaming
Wind defect:sound of second syllable of any line identical to sound at the end of the same line;
(6)Homophone Rhyme defect:the two rhyme syllables at the end of lines 3 and 5 are identical;
(7)Entire Body defect:more than two identical sounds anywhere in the poem, except for the basic
rhyme syllable. For euphony in early Japanese poetry and Hamanaris relation to Chinese models
see Rabinovitch 1991, 488506.
19
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speech. Hamanaris preference for poetic sophistication reaches its eccentric peak
when he declares that the highest form of poetry is the riddle (kenkei

), in
which the poet expresses feelings through veiled words.20 Our expectations are
set high, given that this is the only extant poem composed by Hamanari and that
it exemplies the type of poetry he praises most. Be prepared for an instructive
disappointment:

21
A mouseshouse:
Sift therice
Cut thewood
Ready theint
Is it the numberfour?
If this does not make a lot of sense at rst reading, here is the recipe that allows us
to savor the puzzle:Reduce each line into one word:a hole for mouses house,
our for sift the rice, re for cut the wood, ready the int and four for is
it the number four. Reassemble the words into Hole-Flour-Fire-Four as anako-hi-shi

. Now transpose the sounds ana-ko-hi-shi into meaningful
characters as

Oh, how Ilove you! With this poem the mountain gives,
literally, birth to a mouse. Ironically, linear meaningfulness is replaced with cumbersome cleverness encoded in three transposition processesfrom phrase to
word, from senseless word to sound, and from sound into, nally, meaningful
phrase. The resulting phrase yields a trivial statement:Ana koishi is certainly
the most blatant plain speech, which Hamanari would elsewhere probably shun
as lacking elegance.
Though highly praised by Hamanari, the riddle type of poetry luckily was
and remained rare in the waka tradition. But even if these thirty-one syllables fail
as a poem, they succeed and convince as a product of an educated eighth-century
Japanese, who revels in the possibilities of play with recherch expression made
possible by the use of Chinese characters in writing Japanese and inspired by a
Chinese poetic tradition of the Six Dynasties that enjoyed puns and double play.22
Hamanaris treatise shows an eccentric veneration for sophistication in
the writing of waka and thus manages to come up with a rather unusual narrative of decline. In contrast to the more common narrative of decline through
a too much of ornament (wen), Hamanari blames decline not on excessive
over-ornamentation, but, quite to the contrary, on the lack of education of recent
waka poets, and thus on the under-ornamentation of their poems. Hamanaris
treatise is a reverie obsessed with the desire for typology rather than a treatise
descriptive of past poetic practice or prescriptive for future poetry. Let us therefore
turn to actual poetry written about a generation before Hamanaris treatise. We
This obscure word is probably a misreading for meiyu hidden comparison, allegory or
meikei hidden alert, riddle.
21
Okimori, Kaky hyshiki:chshaku to kenky,179.
22
Although Iwill not explore this here, a third level on which Hamanari shows his taste for the
complex and recherch is his use of graphs. He tends to use rare and complex characters for
phonographic inscription, which dier clearly from the phonograms used in writing for everyday
purpose.
20
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will not judge this poetry by Hamanaris standards, but his sense that recent
poets were too little educated in Chinese poetics is proven wrong by tomo no
Yakamochis

(ca.717785) poetic exchange with his kinsman tomo no
Ikenushi

. They indulged the expressive possibilities that Chinese characters and literary precedents aorded them in ways dierent from Hamanaris,
yet with equal enthusiasm. Although this exchange is exceptional it does show us
what some eighth century poets were capable of.
2c. The Beginnings of the Wa-Kan Game:Yakamochi and Ikenushi

on the Pleasures of Sickness, Spring, and Simplicity
Half a year after being appointed governor of Etch Province, Yakamochi, prominent poet of his generation and compiler of the Manysh, fell ill in the second
month of 747. The second lunar month was a bad time to be sick, because one
missed out on the beginning of spring and its various celebrations. We can sense
how much Yakamochi missed spring on his sickbed from an extraordinary poetic
exchange between him and his kinsman Ikenushi, who served as provincial secretary at the time. Instead of wasting away on his sickbed, Yakamochi seemed to be
in possession of his full powers when he launched onto an unprecedented poetic
experiment. The resulting correspondence was written in two literary idioms:vernacular Japanese and Sino-Japanese. It was conducted in four literary genres:vernacular tanka, (short poems, later called waka), chka (long poems), and
Chinese-style prose (kanbun) and poetry (kanshi). And it took the form of a poetic
gift exchange with precise matches in kind: For the three rounds of gift giving,
Yakamochis rst two tanka are matched in kind by Ikenushi. Next, Yakamochis
chka with three tanka envois are matched by Ikenushis chka with two envois.
Third, Ikenushi interjects into the correspondence initiated by Yakamochi a kanshi
that he composed at the Winding Stream Banquet on the third day of the third
month, to which Yakamochi responds in kind. As a weak coda to the three rounds of
exchange, the correspondence ends on two tanka by Yakamochi in response to the
two envois of Ikenushis previous chka. All poems are prefaced by Chinese-style
prose letters. The precise gift exchange in poetic genre is followed through in the
careful matching of the compositions in theme, structure, and even single expressions. This poetic exchange, experimenting with the juxtaposition of Japanese vernacular (wa) and Sino-Japanese (kan) words, genres, and themes, is exceptional
in the otherwise vernacular poetry collection of the Manysh; it is even unique
in early Japanese literature and certainly not representative. Still, it can show us
how debates over ornamentation and simplicity could play out when fought at the
intersection of vernacular and Sino-Japanese poetic worlds.
The correspondence dwells only on a few circumscribed key topics that
are paraded with all registers of tone and variety. There is the tension between
Yakamochis illness and the vernal vigor; there are spring splendors suggested by
a few plants, such as cherry blossoms, peach blossoms, willows, and mountain
roses; by a few animals such as warblers, butteries, swallows and departing geese;
and by a few spring pleasures such as wine, music, and young women picking violets in the elds. There is the topos of mutual yearning:Yakamochi and Ikenushi
transpose their feelings from a male realm of companionship in kanshi into the
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heterosexual romantic realm of waka to strange eects. Lastly, there are matters of
most trivial and most weighty concern:we never hear why Yakamochi and Ikenushi
cannot meet up, but obviously they need distance to engage in the thrill of letter
writing. It helps them to pass the time and also aords them the opportunity to discuss weighty questions such as whether poetic talent is inborn or can be learned.23
The precise matching of genre with genre, theme with theme in variation, wording
with synonym or antonym makes the correspondence more reduced in content but
also innitely richer by virtue of form. The functional denition of ornateness
above, which includes vertical/paradigmatic thickness and horizontal/syntactic
pattern, describes perfectly the nature of the correspondence between Yakamochi
and Ikenushi. When holding an imaginary seismograph of ornateness to the
prose of both authors, we will get the most violent amplitude close to Ikenushis
lines. He is without question the Alexandrian at heart, eager to show o his store
of Chinese learning in every way and moment. In riposte, Yakamochi feigns literary ignorance and introduces a self-conscious discourse about sophistication and
simplicity in poetic composition in the second round of exchanges:
Your magnanimous virtue has condescended to give thought to this wormwood
body; your incalculable favor has extended comfort to this petty mind. Iam overwhelmed by your attentions, for which there is no possible comparison. However,
when young Idid not frequent the garden of arts, and consequently the products
of my owing brush are naturally decient in the insect carving that is literary
composition. In my tender years Inever betook myself to the gates of Yama(be
no Akahito or Yamanoue no Okura) or Kaki(nomoto no Hitomaro),24 so that now
when it comes to fashioning a poem Ilose my words amidst thickets of grass and
trees. And in this connection Iam abashed at your reference to joining wisteria
to brocade; rather, Ihave gone on to indite a composition that is tantamount to
mixing stones with gems. It is my old habit, vulgar and stupid, of being unable
to remain silent. And so Ipresent you a few lines, whereby Ishall repay your
kindness with a laugh.25

26
Yakamochi responds to Ikenushis ornate verbiage with a carefully crafted sermon

on his own lack of education. When young he presumably lost out on Confucian
23
For a detailed discussion of the exchange from the perspective of tropes of friendship and love in
Chinese and Japanese poetry see Tatsumi 1997, 10758. For a discussion of the impact of Six Dynasty
poetics on the exchange see Hu Zhiang (J. Ko Shik) 1998, 33354.
24
There is much debate whether the gates of Yama or Kaki refers to Yamabe no Akahito
and Hitomaro or Yamanoue no Okura and Hitomaro. For insight into the debate and related
literature see Knoshi and Sakamoto 1999, vol. 8, 16475. Yet the relevance of the debate for the
interpretation of this passage is rather limited. Yakamochi simply gestures at famous poets on whom
he would have modeled himself in hisyouth.
25
Translation by Edwin Cranston with modications. Cranston 1993, 605606.
26
Manysh XVII. 3969. Kojima etal. 199496,181.
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education, but knows of the Garden of traditional Arts. He laments his poor
performance in the writing of elegant Chinese-style poetry and prose, but eruditely calls this practice by the metaphor of insect carving. In strict parallel, in
his youth he claims not to have studied waka poetry, but knows of the grand old
poets Akahito (or Okura?) and Hitomaro. He pretends to get lost in a forest of
words, but describes his versifying with the unusually voluntary craftsman-like
expression of fashioning poetry (saika

).
Beneath Yakamochis erudite claim to a lack of education in Chinese-style and
Japanese literary matters lurks a playful and liberating renunciation of sophistication with Daoist undertones. Yakamochi seems to tease Ikenushi for his Alexandrian
zeal. This renunciation happens as a result ofnot due toa lack of education,
which is clear from the double negation implied in Yakamochis deciency at
the despicable practice of insect carving. The association of insect carving with
youthfulness calls to mind the confession of the Han scholar-poet Yang Xiong

(ca. 53bce-18 ce) who in adulthood decided to stay away from the writing of rhapsodies (fu
), the most ornate and exuberant of Chinese literary genres:
Somebody asked:When you, Master, were young you liked to compose rhapsodies. [Yang Xiong] replied:Yes, as a child Iengaged in insect carving and
character cutting. After a moment he added, As an adult I didnt do it any
more. Somebody asked:Can you voice criticism with the help of rhapsodies?
He replied:Criticism?! If your criticism puts a stop to it, yes, if not, Im afraid
you will inevitably provide encouragement!

27
Against the backdrop of this famous anecdote, Yakamochi transforms Yang

Xiongs youthful faux pas of rhapsody writing into his own triumph of adult success. If unlike Yang Xiong you fail to acquire an ineective, possibly counterproductive tool for moral instruction in youth, you can securely celebrate your
success of renunciation in adulthood. On Ikenushi, who believes in the transparent power of cultural capital and does not understand Yakamochis wise pose in
support of a secondary simplicity, the counterintuitive gain of Yakamochis game
seems lost. He feels obliged to save Yakamochi from the negative associations of
petty insect carving. He therefore praises Yakamochis intellect beyond the sky
and transforms the ignominious insect carving into grandiose dragon carving:
Yours is a master spirit, a stellar phenomenon. Your outstanding meters surpass
those of other men. Your nature, which being wise loves the water, and being
benevolent loves the mountains, contains within it the shining of a lovely jewel;
your talent, which like Pan Yues is a river, and like Lu Jis is a sea, of itself qualies you for a place in the palace of letters. Your conceptions are extraordinary,
your feelings governed in accordance with reason. You nish a composition in
27
Fayan yishu,45.
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seven paces, and the numerous poems ll your paper to overowing. Skillfully
you drive away the heavy distress of the grieved one; capably you dispel the accumulated longings of the lovesick one. Compared with this, the fountain of poetry
of Yama(be no Akahito or Yamanoue no Okura) and Kaki(nomoto no Hitomaro)
was as nothing. Ihave been aorded a brilliant glimpse of a sea of letters where
genius carves dragons. Your servant is fully aware of his good fortune.

28
Does Ikenushi grasp Yakamochis Daoist game of appearing higher by proclaiming

to be lower and therefore pull all stops to save Yakamochi from the grip of his selfdeprecation? Or does he indulge his friend tongue-in-cheek by waxing rhapsodic
as if he wanted to set himself as a youthful Yang Xiong against Yakamochis conceit
of being a better Yang Xiong who avoids the pitfalls of ornate writing? Though
hard to resolve, the ambiguity adds to the charm of the exchange. What is clear
is that Ikenushi spreads an expansive canvas before our eyes dotted with Chinese
references:Out of the brushwood where Yakamochi got lost, Ikenushi leads him
to the waters and mountains, the love of which Confucius ascribes to the wise and
benevolent in Analects 6.23, and escorts him to his proper place in the palace of
letters along the river that is Pan Yues forceful writing and across the ocean that
is Lu Jis power of composition, both sophisticated Six Dynasties poets of the third
century. Ikenushi says that concepts and feelings, rule and reason are in balance,
and that Yakamochis skill reaches the heights and rapidity of Cao Zhi, who composed a poem in seven paces under the death threat from his invidious brother
Cao Pi, Emperor of the Wei Dynasty (220265). Even more, Ikenushi compliments
Yakamochi on his poetic powers that drive away worry and cure lovesickness, so
that Akahito and Hitomaros source of poetry appear as nothing in comparison.
The vast aquatic dimension with which Ikenushi sweeps aside Yakamochis
confusing brushwood unfolds in all its glory when Ikenushi at last exclaims I
have been aorded a brilliant glimpse of a sea of letters where genius carves
dragons. According to Ikenushi, Yakamochi misnamed as insect carving his
unsurpassed literary skill of dragon carving. Certainly, Ikenushis praise is so
overblown that its message shimmers between therapeutic eulogy and therapeutic satire. In his next response Yakamochi plays along with this ambivalence and
presents us with yet more understatement:
[Y]our lowly servant has a nature dicult to carve, a dark spirit impossible to
burnish. Itake my brush in hand and rot the tip; Iface the inkstone and forget it
is dry; all day Iwatch the water owing, but am unable to compose. Writing is an
innate gift, not something to be learned. By searching for characters and choosing rhymes, how should Ibe able to harmonize with your elegant compositions?
28
Manysh XVII. 3973. Translation by Cranston with modications. Cranston 1993, 61011.
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29
Yakamochi rejects Ikenushis compliment on his craft and applies carving to his
own nature based on Confuciuss lament upon nding his disciple Zai Yu asleep
in broad daylight:Rotten wood is dicult to carve. (Analects 5.10). Yakamochi
says his nature is dicult to carve and his brushs tip rots under his eorts to
write. He seasons his confession of writers block with the bold claim that writing
is an innate gift, heavenly bone (tenkotsu

), that can not be acquired through
practice. Searching out characters and rhyme-words, the usual catalysts that set
well-trained poets like Ikenushi on the path to produce elegant compositions
(gahen

), can not propel Yakamochis humble nature into creating poetry.
Thus ends the exchange between Yakamochi and Ikenushi about poetry,
human nature, and the carving of insects and dragons.30 Their joyful freedom of
moving between sophisticated diction and the sophisticated denial of sophistication is palpable in every phrase, but they take strikingly dierent poses. Ikenushi
indulges in what we could call a primary ornateness. When he loses himself in
allusions and gurative language, we get a sense of the primal excitement about
the repertoire of literary sophistication that was at the disposition of early Japanese
poets in the eighth century, but that took many centuries to develop in the hands
of Chinese poets. Yakamochis introduction of the crafts metaphor of carving is
more subtle and brings into play a notion of secondary simplicity, of an ostentatious renunciation of sophistication.
Yakamochis gain is at least triple. He gets a most enthusiastic compliment
on his poetic craft of dragon carving. He appears humble when he denies both
his education and talent in poetry. And he has the chance to sketch a poetics that
gives the poet much creative freedom, because it accommodates the inspiration
by learned precedent, both Chinese and Japanese, but also carves out space for the
pursuit of untutored novelty.
2d. Reverse View:Looking From the Kokinsh Back to the

Eighth Century
When times shifted towards superciality and people treasured excess and wantonness, superuous words arose like clouds, ashy new currents bubbled forth
like a spring, and the kernel [of poetry] declined completely and only its ower
thrived. It thus happened that those love-hungry courtiers used [poetry] as a
go-between of owers and birds, and those food-begging monks took it as a
ruse to make their living. Therefore it partly became the handmaid of women
and was not suitable to present before noblemen.
29
Manysh XVII. 3975a. Cranston 1993,613.

In addition to Yang Xiongs confession of insect carving and Liu Xies claim for literature to
dragon carving Pei Ziyes Discussion of Insect Carving (Diaochonglun ) was an important text
for the carving discourse. It castigates orid writing by providing a hefty decline narrative that
sees the poetry of ancient sages evaporate into contemporary superciality. If it was part of Pei Ziyes
Essential History of the Song Dynasty (Song le ), completed in the late fth century, so Yakamochi
might have known it. For its place in the Liang literary scene see Tian 2007, 13941. For a translation
see Wu 1998,3032.
30
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31

from the sino-japanese preface by ki no yoshimochi(-919)
This is how the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh bemoans the embarrassing decline of vernacular poetry that presumably came in the wake of Prince
tsus introduction of Chinese writing and literature. Note how loaded this short
passage is with judgmental vocabulary related to surface ourish:superciality,
excess and wantonness, superuous words like clouds, ashy new currents
bubbling force like a spring, and ower versus kernel. Moral decline is also
related to social decline:poetry is abused for vile love aairs and monopolized by
greedy monks and women. Yoshimochi is clearly opposed to anything associated
with surface ourish:he castigates the decline of kernel/substance (mi
), of
which only the shadow of supercial ower/ourish (hana
) survives.
Interestingly, only the Sino-Japanese Preface associates ornament with poetic
and moral decline. Ki no Tsurayukis Japanese Preface to the same collection
was one of the edgling attempts to write prose in the vernacular, which up to the
ninth century used to be written in Sino-Japanese. Therefore, it had less conceptual baggage to handle than the Sino-Japanese Preface that is in closer dialogue
with established Chinese rhetorical patterns and allusions.32 Not only is the evocation of surfaces and ourish as stimuli for poetic composition more common
in the Japanese preface, but Tsurayuki even uses the language of ourish as
a positive quality at the very moment when he laments a penchant toward the
supercial:
Nowadays because people are attracted to appearances and their hearts have
become like owers, only fruitless poems and trivial words appeared. Poetry
has become unknown in public, buried like a wooden log in the houses of
pleasure-lovers, and is not something that could be brought out like buds of owering pampas grass in true public places.

33
Tsurayuki clearly picks up on the resonant Chinese concept of fruit/substance

and ower/ourish: peoples hearts are owers, but only produce poetry
without fruit/substance (adanaru uta

); monopolized for private love
aairs, poetry is hidden like buried wood and too trivial to recite in substantive/
true places (mamenaru tokoro
). Yet he wants a poetry that can assert itself
in public like buds of owering pampas grass (hanasusuki ho

), a beautiful image of substance inserting itself in the form of colorful ourish. In this
31
Kokin wakash, 34245.

See, again, Wixted1983.
33
Kokin wakash,9.
32
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passage Tsurayuki plays masterfully with the Chinese-style conceptual pair of substance versus ourish, at times in agreement with Yoshimochis diatribe against
ourish and at times able to appreciate substance in ourish. Choosing elegant play
with concepts over Yoshimochis clear-cut moralizing, he also has no use for a villain
on whom to blame the decline: Prince tsu does not appear at all in Tsurayukis
Japanese Preface to the anthology, nor is there anybody else who took Prince tsus
dubitable role as the peddler of Ancient Japans cultural innocence. Although there
is no space here to show it through actual poetry from the anthology as Idid with the
Kaifs, suce it to say that the bulk of poetry in the Kokinsh is clever and ornate. It
inspired the praise and canonization by the following generations as well as the bile
of early modern and modern detractors who missed true transparent national spirit
in what they considered to be its too oblique and Sinicizedstyle.
Unlike with the Kaifss overall embracing of ornament, the poetics in particular of the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh is at suggestive odds with the poetry
in the anthology. The detraction of ornament and assertion of a presumably genuine
old simplicity is an early tenth-century vision of Japanese literary beginnings, one
that, as we saw, stands in contrast to eighth-century poetic thought and practice. For
the authors of the Prefaces to the Kokinsh this was an acceptable price to pay for
propelling waka to public importance and have it stand on a par with Sino-Japanese
poetry, which had received strong imperial support in the preceding century.
3. Simplicity and Hellenism in Late RepublicanRome

As discussed in the rst chapter, the dearth of surviving early Latin literature before
the rst century bce is striking in contrast to the wealth of complete compendia of
poetry and history that survive from Japans literary beginnings in the eight century.
From the staging of Livius Andronicuss plays in 240 bce, we have to move into the
rst century bce to get beyond textual fragments to entire texts, with the exception of
Cato, Plautus, and Terence. This radically dierent textual record for early Japanese
and early Latin literature forces our comparison to be asymmetrical, and we will have
to move to the Late Republic to explore how debates about ornateness and simplicity
play out in some of Ciceros and Horaceswork.
Relative temporal symmetry certainly makes for easier comparability. As we
already saw, the earlier absorption of the reference cultures literary sophistication and
the later construction of notions of a lost simplicity by writers of the younger culture
is a very time-sensitive process, and debates about ornament and simplicity will look
fundamentally dierent depending on when they occur in the relative development
of a literary culture. However, the asymmetry is not without advantage methodologically, because it obliges us to develop a more imaginative approach and expand our
repertoire of methodological gures of thought for comparative work. Lacking better sources, Iundertake in the following what Iwill call a mutual virtual history.34
34
Virtual history has been a sentiment rather than a methodology. One appeal of asking what
would have happened if not X has been to use the counterfactual to better grasp the signicance
and broader implications of what actually happened. In that sense virtual history serves as a tool to
lter out the white noise of the limitlessly tumultuous soundscape of history. For such an approach
see Hawthorne 1991. There is also a more sensationalist type of virtual history that appears in many
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Claims of a lost simplicity and corruption by foreign sophistication in the

Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh stood in strong contrast to the enthusiastic embracing of the ornate sophistication based on Chinese precedents during
the eighth and ninth centuries. In turn, in On the Ideal Orator (De oratore) and the
Brutus, which we already discussed in the previous chapter, Cicero uses narratives
of decline to develop a highly original vision of a truly Roman sapientia, wisdom,
that aimed at restoring the lost balance between philosophy and rhetoric,
which Socrates had introduced; and he attacks those who propagated a new vogue
of Greek, Attic classicism with claims that Roman oratory had its own glorious,
independent past that called for emulation. But on the example of Horaces Satires
we will explore what was a more frequent move in Latin literary culture:aggressive satirical attack on earlier, supposedly cruder Roman receptions of Greek culture that an author aimed to replace with a more polished form of Hellenism,
which was preferable to older literature. From Horaces perspective, the good old
and simple looks suddenly crude and embarrassing. Already Ennius claimed that
his predecessor Naevius was old-fashioned and insuciently Hellenized.
What does it mean to construct a mutual virtual history? Put simply, it means
to create a virtual historical timeline with snippets of actual historical processes
in dierent cultures. With a Kokinsh moment in Late Republican Rome and
a Horace moment absent from early Japan we are creating a Sino-Japanese
Greco-Roman timeline with the same virtual brush. With this tool we try to tease
out the implications of the convergences and divergences of early Japanese and
Latin literary cultures. Ideally, we will gain a deeper understanding of each of
them, just as with a painter who can suddenly make a spacious landscape leap out
by inserting as contrasting background a second picture, where we previously only
saw a few scattered strokes on a single at canvas. Let us now insert Cicero and
Horace into our East Asian canvas.
3a. Undoing Socratess Scalpel:Narratives of Decline and

Ciceros New Roman Wisdom (sapientia)
Written in 55 bce when Cicero had been back from exile for a couple of years
but saw his hopes for Republican order wane under the power arrogated by the
triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, the long dialogue On the Orator
has a special place in Ciceros lifelong writing about rhetoric.35 Cicero wrote it
during the nal crisis of the Republic but set its events in 91 bce, another period
of civil war and crisis that peaked in Sullas dictatorship. An ominous glitter of
tragic destruction and exuberant vision hovers over the lengthy discussion about
oratory led by foremost experts of the day, such as the two eminent orators Lucius
articles of the edited volume Ferguson 1997. It dwells on counterfactuals of wishful or apocalyptic
thinking such as what if the Cold War had been avoided? or what if Nazi Germany had defeated
the Soviet Union? This type of virtual history might have a cathartic function for dealing with
historical traumas in the present. Little attention has been paid so far to the use of virtual history in
the comparison of historically unrelated cultures or phenomena, which Iam proposinghere.
35
For a concise introduction and bibliography about De oratore see Wisse 2002b. See also the
excellent introductory matter in May and Wisse 2001. Astimulating reection on the ingeniously
ambivalent relation of Cicero to Greek cultural artifacts, such as oratory, is Zetzel2003.
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Licinius Crassus (14091 bce) and Marcus Antonius (14387 bce), and the legal
expert Quintus Mucius Scaevola (168/160-ca. 87 bce). In the dialogue Cicero gives
voice to important mentors of his youth, who, as every reader would have known,
would all be dead within a few years after the conversation recorded in the dialogue, either through illness or by Sullas purge. Cicero combined a spirited homage and a preemptive requiem with the chance to articulate his own ideas through
the mouths of his mentor gures. Indeed, in no other work does Cicero so forcefully sketch a vision of his oratorical ideal and boldly argue for going beyond the
age-old struggle between rhetoric and philosophy that Plato had ignited so
eectively.36 De oratore is a complex work, and I will not even begin to discuss
Ciceros clever take on the staples of Hellenistic rhetorical theory and practice of
his day and his narrative powers to weave them into the complex dynamic unfolding between the various participants in the dialogue. We also need to keep in
mind that Ciceros thinking about Plato and the relation between philosophy and
rhetoric kept changing throughout his life. In On the Republic, for example, Cicero
seems to worship Plato but also suggest that Plato distorted Socratess ideas in
crucial respects. But Ciceros opinions in his most pioneering work on rhetoric
make for a more productive comparison with the Kokinsh. So for our purposes
Iwill merely focus on the crucial narrative of decline in On the Orator that, put
in the mouth of the charismatic elderly Crassus, is the dialectical basis on which
Ciceros unique imagination of a new Roman sapientia isbuilt:
The people who discussed, practiced, and taught the subjects and activities we
are now examining [namely wisdom in action and wisdom in speech] bore
one and the same name (because knowledge of the most important things as
well as practical involvement in them was, as a whole, called philosophy), but he
[Socrates] robbed them of this shared title. And in his discussions he split apart
the knowledge of forming wise opinions and of speaking with distinction,37 two
things that are, in fact, tightly linked. [ . . . ] This was the source of the rupture, so
to speak, between the tongue and the brain, which is quite absurd, harmful, and
reprehensible, and which has resulted in our having dierent teachers for thinking and for speaking.38
Is eis qui haec quae nos nunc quaerimus tractarent, agerent, docerent, cum nomine
appellarentur uno quod omnis rerum optimarum cognitio atque in eis exercitatio philosophia nominaretur, hoc commune nomen eripuit, sapienterque sentiendi et ornate
36
Current scholarship rarely makes the case for On the Orator as emphatically as James Zetzel:De
Oratore is not only the single greatest surviving work of classical Latin prose but also the most
ambitious attempt of one of Romes most original thinkers to provide a moral justication for
Roman public life and to ground it in establishing a complex balance between Greek philosophy, past
and present, and Roman ethics and history. See Zetzel2005.
37
May and Wisse translate ornatus (and its cognates) as distinction, avoiding the more common
Latinate English renderings as ornament or embellishment. Ido agree that Cicero thinks of
ornatus as constitutive of content, not as an exterior application to it. However, translating Ciceros
argument into a term that, like with the Chinese concept of wen, is highly ambivalent and avoiding
any Latinate resonances obscures the issue at stake and Ciceros contribution to the debate. Iwould
translate ornate dicendi as speaking with sophistication or ornate speaking.
38
De oratore III.6061. Translation from May and Wisse 2001,241.
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dicendi scientiam re cohaerentes disputationibus suis separavit; . . . Hinc discidium

illud exstitit quasi linguae atque cordis, absurdum sane et inutile et reprehendendum,
ut alii nos sapere, alii dicere docerent.
As in the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh we have a pristine age that is

destroyed by the intrusion of a villain equipped with evil tools. In Ciceros dialogue, however, the pristine age was not distinctive because it was blessed by
words of substance, but because it could boast an original union between the
knowledge of forming wise opinions (sapienter sentiendi scientia) and the knowledge of ornate speech (ornate dicendi scientia). This union resembles the balance
between substance and ourish that Hamanaris manual praises as a mark of
ancient waka poetry. It also locates the pristine age in Greece, unlike the Kokinsh
Prefaces, which are little interested in matters Chinese, but evoke the grand past
of Japans Age of the Gods as another country, to use L.P. Hartleys poeticwords.
Second, Ciceros villain Socrates is Greek, not a fellow citizen, as Prince tsu
was for the Japanese writers. We can anticipate that Cicero has to accomplish a
much greater feat with his new Roman sapientia than Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki
with their domestic revival of waka poetry:Whereas Cicero proposes to atone for
a crime committed on the territory of and by a representative of its ancient reference culture, Yoshimochi and Tsurayuki only settle matters on Japanese ground
and with Japanese people. Third, the crime of intrusion is phrased in anatomical, not technological terms: While Socrates dissects tongue from heart/brain
(discidium . . . linguae atque cordis) Prince tsu introduces the destructive technology of writing in the form of Chinese letters. Socrates commits a crime against
human anatomy, against the unity of the human body as much as against what
Cicero sees as the integrity of human wisdom, sapientia. It is far more violent than
Prince tsus transport of Chinese characters (moji o utsushi

) to the
Japanese archipelago. This is an urgent and plastic rephrasing of the old struggle
between rhetoric and philosophy into a criminal surgical procedure committed
by, as Crassus of course points out, one of the greatest Greeks. It shows just how
strongly Cicero feels about the fundamental importance of oratory to philosophy
in Rome and how craftily he stages an anatomical spectacle before our eyes to
prepare us for a triumphant vision of clinical recovery with himself in the role of
the healer and Rome as the intellectual hospital.
After Crassus castigates Socratess destruction of the natural unity between
thought and speech, philosophy and rhetoric, he traces the succession of philosophers, after Socrates in the fashion of Hellenistic scholarship, dwelling on Platos
Academy and Aristotles Peripatos, the Cynics, Stoics, Cyrenaics, and Epicureans.
All these schools were of Hellenistic derivation, not Roman origin, which might
be one of the reasons why Crassus concludes his survey of the contemporary state
of the eld of philosophy with an ambivalent second allegory of division, this time
not anatomical but geological:
So, just as the rivers part at the watershed of the Apennines, the disciplines
parted when owing down from the common ridge of wisdom. The philosophers
owed into the Ionian Sea on the East, as it were, which is Greek and well provided with harbors, while the orators came down into our barbarian Tyrrhenian
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Sea on the West, which is full of reefs and dangers, and where even Odysseus
himself had lost hisway.
Haec autem, ut ex Apennino uminum, sic ex communi sapientium iugo sunt doctrinarum facta divortia, ut philosophi tamquam in superum mare deuerent Graecum
quoddam et portuosum, oratores autem in inferum hoc Tuscum et barbarum, scopulosum atque infestum, laberentur, in quo etiam ipse Ulysses errasset.39
Crassuss proposed geography clearly gives the hegemony over philosophy and
the Ionian Sea to the Greeks. Despite this concession, Crassus boldly declares the
very backbone of the Italic peninsula, the Apennines, to be the common ridge of
wisdom, which in the previous passage was presumably Greek territory. And the
Roman rivers of rhetoric go into the native Tyrrhenian sea, o the Western coast
of Italy, which is stormier, more complex, and even leads the clever Greek Ulysses,
one of those early Italic travelers, astray.
While conquering the ridge of wisdom with its rivers of philosophy and
rhetoric for Rome, Crassus does not neglect to pay homage to undisputed Greek
primacy in philosophical matters. The explosive ambivalence contained in
Ciceros geological metaphor is reinforced in the continuation of the discussion,
when Crassus recommends to aspiring orators who want to become a Pericles or
Demosthenes to also master the power of Carneades, skeptic and leader of Platos
Academy in the second century bce, or that of Aristotle. Socratess destruction of
the miraculous communion between speaking and understanding (dicendi et
intellegendi miricam societatem; De oratore III.73) is contrasted with the exemplary
vision of Carneades (ca.214129 bce) and Aristotle, who like those great men of
the past, all the way down to Socrates, used to link the principles of oratory with
the entire study and knowledge of everything that was relevant to human conduct, to human life, to virtue, and to the state.40 Crassus balances his attack on
Socrates with a praise of Aristotle. Ciceros vision of oratory owes indeed more to
Aristotles appreciation of rhetoric as a respectable form of popular philosophy
and a tool to appeal to human emotions than to Platos suspicion against rhetoric
as that form of demagogy that brought down his teacher Socrates.41
In Crassuss nal verdict about what kind of training is expected of the ideal
orator, Crassus solemnly proposes a solution to the quarrel between rhetoric and
philosophy:
But if we are looking for the one thing that surpasses all others, the palm must
go to the learned orator. If they allow that he is also a philosopher, then the
quarrel is over. If, however, they keep the two distinct, they will be inferior in
that all their knowledge is present in the perfect orator, while the knowledge of
the philosophers does not automatically imply eloquence. And although they
39
Cicero De oratore III.69. May and Wisse 2001, 24546.

De oratore III.72. May and Wisse 2001,246. [V]eteres illi usque ad Socratem omnem omnium rerum
quae ad mores hominum, quae ad vitam, quae ad virtutem, quae ad rempublicam pertinebant cognitionem
et scientiam cum dicendi ratione iungebant.
41
On Ciceros relation to Aristotelian rhetoric in De oratore see Fantham 2004, 16185.
40
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scorn it, yet it is inevitably true that eloquence somehow sets a capstone upon
theirart.
Sin quaerimus quid unum excellat ex omnibus, docto oratori palma danda est. Quem
si patiuntur eundem esse philosophum, sublata controversia est; sin eos diiungent, hoc
erunt inferiores quod in oratore perfecto inest illorum omnis scientia, in philosophorum
autem cognitione non continuo inest eloquentia; quae quamvis contemnatur ab eis,
necesse est tamen aliquem cumulum illorum artibus aerre videatur.42
Crassus is in favor of a learned orator, who combines the skills of rhetoric with
the knowledge of philosophy, in short of an ideal Roman orator, an ideal Roman
philosopher, or for that matter an ideal Roman citizen. In the words of Crassus
Cicero does not solve the famous quarrel, but transcends it, literally, by Hegelian
Aufhebung, sublation:Should the orator also be a philosopher, sublata controversia
est. His Roman orator transcends both petty philosophy and petty rhetoric.
If until recently scholars felt that every argument of a Latin author must have a
Greek precedent, some have claimed that Ciceros proposed synthesis of rhetoric
and philosophy was adopted from Philo of Larissa, head of the Platonic Academy
in the 90s bce, whom the young Cicero heard lecture in Rome in 88 bce. However,
Jakob Wisse has forcefully argued for the originality of Ciceros synthesis.43 It is
not the idea of a synthesis of oratory and philosophy per se that is crucial in Cicero.
His creation of a Greek narrative of decline from which to leverage o his proposition of a Roman solution to a Greek scandal makes his contribution to the quarrel
so original and visionary. Moreover, Ciceros anatomical and geological metaphors
for the interrelation between philosophy and rhetoric and Greece and Rome are
powerful and distinctively Ciceronian tools of persuasion that Cicero puts to stunning use to sidestep and overcome an overdetermined quarrel on Roman grounds.
3b. Best Cato and Perhaps Demosthenes:Roman and Attic

Simplicity in Ciceros Brutus (46bce)
Proposing an oblique Roman solution to a Greek problem is what links Ciceros
De oratore to his Brutus. The introduction of a narrative of decline in the wake of
Socratess destruction of the natural unity of tongue and brain allowed Cicero to propose a highly original vision for a new Roman sapientia. In the Brutus ten years later,
Cicero administers his ironic stabs at a new vogue of Attic styles of oratory, a classicist movement that rejected contemporary Hellenistic rhetoric and looked back to
the great fth and fourth centuries of classical Athens, in a dialogue that parades a
vast ancestor gallery for Roman oratory. It is unclear to which degree the Atticist
fashion of the mid-rst century bc in Rome, of which Calvus seemed to have been
a leading gure, was inuenced or inspired by contemporaneous developments in
42
Cicero De oratore III.143. May and Wisse 2001,266.

Jakob Wisse makes a case for the originality of Ciceros vision, while showing how Cicero might
have been inspired in his vision by debates raging in the three main Greek philosophical schools
of the Academy, the Peripatos, and the Stoa since the latter half of the second century bce. Wisse
2002b, 39697 and also Wisse 2002a, 36164. For previous attempts to show Ciceros indebtedness
to Greek sources see Wisse 2002b, 396, fn.32.
43
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Greece. Also, descriptions of what exactly constituted the Attic and the Asiatic
style were often highly self-serving to the agenda of those who provided them.
Furthermore, the very idea of what counted as ornate and what as plain was
prone to slippage, one of the paradoxes of ornateness mentioned above. But it was
clearly a debate about the virtues and vices of simplicity and ornateness, and for its
Roman participants it was connected with the question of how much and what kind
of Hellenization was permissible and desirable in Late Republican literary culture.44
In the last chapter Ishowed how Cicero in the Brutus fashioned Cato into a
highpoint of a natural history of early Roman oratory in order to claim Roman
independence from Greek oratory. In this chapter we sill see how Ciceros
espousal of Cato was part of a larger scheme of self-defense against accusations
that Ciceros style was too ornate and bombastic, in short too Asiatic.
Cicero tackled this problem, which on the surface played out in the arena of
Greek relative literary chronology and historical self-awareness, in a stunning
fencing act. This unfolds in the course of the long dialogue between the ctional
Cicero, Atticus and the young Brutus, who admired Cicero as much as they
were enticed by the new Atticist vogue that looked to classical Greek models
for emulation. Cicero performs six basic moves of triumphant self-defense:side
with your opponents by demolishing what they hate; show the navet of your
opponents ideal; improve on it by proposing a new Greek one; praise your opponents ideal over the top to make it insignicant; create a straw man who can be
sacriced in your stead, and rst and foremost, replace their Greek ideal with a
Romanone.
Here is how Ciceros fencing with those Atticists, as he calls them, looks on
the ground. First, Cicero indirectly supports the Atticist ideal when he calls the
Asiatic style a travelingpest:
For when once eloquence had sailed forth from Piraeus it traversed all the islands
and visited every part of Asia, but in this process it contracted some stain from
foreign ways and lost that wholesomeness, and what one might call the sound
health, of Attic diction; indeed it almost unlearned the art of natural speech.
From this source came the Asiatic orators, not to be despised whether for their
readiness or their abundance, but redundant and lacking conciseness.
Nam ut semel e Piraeo eloquentia evecta est, omnis peragravit insulas atque ita peregrinata tota Asia est, ut se externis oblineret moribus omnemque illam salubritatem Atticae
dictionis et quasi sanitatem perderet ac loqui paene dedisceret. Hinc Asiatici oratores non
contemnendi quidem nec celeritate nec copia, sed parum pressi et nimis redundantes.45
Ciceros startling metaphor of the cankerous spread of an infected Attic oratory

in the Eastern Mediterranean leaves no doubt that Attic salubritas and sanitas are
44
For a brief overview of the main approaches to the thorny questions of where the Atticist
movement started, where to look for its antecedents in Greece and Rome, and how it related to Late
Republican intellectual culture see Wisse 2002a, 36468, and Wisse 1995, 6582. For a concise
overview and bibliography regarding the Brutus see Narducci 2002. For an introduction to the issue
of Atticism in relation to the Brutus see ibid., 40812 and Narducci 1997, 12433.
45
Cicero Brutus 51. Translation from Hendrickson 1936,53.
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preferable to Asiatic contamination.46 Yet he is careful to defend the quick wit

and readiness (celeritas) and the preference for abundance (copia) in the Asiatic
orators. Copious verbal display was certainly no good t with the Atticist ideals of
Brutus or Calvus, whom the Brutus mentions as a self-proclaimed Atticist. Ciceros
praise of copia puts a sting into a narrative of decline that must have been agreeable to Brutus, even if perhaps couched in too lush gural language for histaste.
In a second move, Cicero attacks more directly and laughs at the navet of the followers of the new Atticist fashion, pointing out that there is no such one thing as Attic:
But because there are in the category of Attic other qualities better than these [i.e.
meagerness, dryness and poverty that Cicero ascribes to the style of Calvus and
his followers], one must beware not to overlook the gradations and dissimilarities, the force and variety of Attic orators. My aim is, you say, to imitate Attic
models. Which, pray? For they are not all of one type. Who, for example, are
more unlike than Demosthenes and Lysias? Than either of them and Hyperides,
than all of these and Aeschines? Whom then are you going to imitate? If one
only, do you mean that all the others did not speak pure Attic? If all, how can you
imitate them when they are so unlike eachother?
Sed quia sunt in Atticis alia meliora, videat ne ignoret et gradus et dissimilitudines
et vim et varietatem Atticorum. Atticos, inquit, volo imitari. Quos? nec enim est
unum genus. Nam quid est tam dissimile quam Demosthenes et Lysias? quam idem et
Hyperides? quam horum omnium Aeschines? quem igitur imitaris? Si aliquem, ceteri
ergo Attice non dicebant? si omnis, qui potes, cum sint ipsi dissimillimi interse?47
Cicero uses satirical diatribe to drive home his reasonable point that the styles
of orators and writers of classical Athens were quite dierent and that they defy
a single label of the Attic. His ctional opponent looks like a pedantic simpleton:My aim is to imitate Attic models (Atticos volo imitari). Not only does he not
understand the wide spectrum of Attic styles, but, more importantly, he foolishly
thinks that old is automaticallygood.
Cicero goes on to compare this Atticist dunce to a person who desires both too
young Falernian winethe latest vogue of Atticist fashionand too old Anicius
winethe imitation of the old historical prose of Thucydides in oratory:
I hold that those friends of yours do well to shun this new oratory still in a state
of ferment, like must from the basin of the wine-press, and conversely that they
ought not to strive for the manner of Thucydides,splendid doubtless, but, like
the vintage of Anicius, too old. Thucydides himself if he had lived at a somewhat
later time would have been mellower and lessharsh.
Sic ego istis censuerim et novam istam quasi de musto ac lacu fervidam orationem
fugiendam nec illam praeclaram Thucydidi nimis veterem tamquam Anicianam
46
Note, however, that he reserves for the school of Rhodes a close connection to Attic models,
despite its geographical location. Given that Cicero studied under Molo of Rhodes, this is not an
entirely disinterestedmove.
47
Cicero Brutus 285. Hendrickson 1936, 24749.
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notam persequendam. Ipse enim Thucydides si posterius fuisset, multo maturior fuisset
et mitior.48
Viniculture and literary composition compare in their aging and fermentation,

and in the sophisticated typology of appraisal that wine and word lovers develop
to assess the style of their expert product. Ancient literature, like old wine, lacks
the mellowness that makes moderately old literature more attractive for imitation
and consumption.
Despite his debunking of the notion of a uniform Attic style Cicero, in a third
move, unabashedly promotes Demosthenes as his Attic model against the Atticist
pedants:
Should we then make Demosthenes our model? There, by heavens, you have
it! And what better Iask, do we seek, what better can we wish for? But we do not
it is true succeed in our eort; these fellows however, our self-styled Atticists,
quite obviously it would seem do succeed in what they have set themselves. They
dont even see, not only that history records it, but it must have been so, that
when Demosthenes was to speak all Greece ocked to hear him. But when these
Atticists of ours speak they are deserted not only by the curious crowd, which is
humiliating enough, but even by the friends and supporters of their client. So
then if to speak in a pinched and meager way is Attic, why let them enjoy their
title of Atticists.
Demosthenem igitur imitemur. O di boni; quid, quaeso, nos aliud agimus aut quid
aliud optamus? At non assequimur; isti enim videlicet Attici nostri quod volunt assequuntur. Ne illud quidem intellegunt, non modo ita memoriae proditum esse sed ita
necesse fuisse, cum Demosthenes dicturus esset, ut concursus audiendi causa ex tota
Graecia erent. At cum isti Attici dicunt, non modo a corona, quod est ipsum miserabile, sed etiam ab advocatis relinquuntur. Qua re si anguste et exiliter dicere est
Atticorum, sint sane Attici.49
Without question, Cicero is also an Atticist in the sense that he does not want to
let go of the label, even if he lls it with dierent content and shows how the new
Roman Atticists fail in the face of a Demosthenes.
This prepares Cicero, in a fourth move, to so fully embrace the Attic as an ideal
that it becomes devoid of content. He claims that any good oratory will be Attic
anyway, when he imagines how his ideal orator wields his power over the emotions and reactions of the crowd, moving them to laughter and tears as he wishes:
If this is what happens be assured that he is speaking like an Attic orator, that
he is faring as we read of Pericles, of Hyperides, of Aeschines, of Demosthenes
most of all. But if they prefer rather a style of speaking that is acute and judicious,
while at the same time pure, sound, and matter-of-fact, which does not make use
of any bolder oratorical embellishment, and if moreover they will have it that this
48
49
Cicero Brutus 288. Hendrickson 1936,251.

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style is peculiarly and properly Attic, they are quite right in their approbation.
For in an art so comprehensive and so varied there is a place even for such small
renements of workmanship. Our conclusion then will be, not that all who speak
in an Attic style speak well, but that all who speak well deserve the title ofAttic.
Haec cui contingant, eum scito Attice dicere, ut de Pericle audimus, ut de Hyperide, ut
de Aeschine, de ipso quidem Demosthene maxime. Sin autem acutum prudens et idem
sincerum et solidum et exsiccatum genus orationis probant nec illo graviore ornatu
oratorio utuntur et hoc proprium esse Atticorum volunt, recte laudant. Est enim in
arte tanta tamque varia etiam huic minutae subtilitati locus. Ita et ut non omnes, qui
Attice, idem bene, sed ut omnes qui bene, idem etiam Attice dicant.50
Note that Cicero does not mention Brutuss and Calvuss most beloved model, the
plain and prosaic Lysias; that his ideal orator looks a bit too emotional and Asiatic;
that his support of the pure, sound, and dried out (exsiccatum) style his opponents would praise sounds ironic; and that his wholesale adoption of the Attic as
the good diminishes rather than increases the value of the concept of the Attic.
Fifth, once a self-declared Atticist himself, Cicero introduces a gure
designed to replace him as the target of his opponents attack on Asiatic
excesses: Hortensius (11450 bc), a consul and prominent orator whom Cicero
had defeated in his famous case against Verres, the extortionary governor of Sicily.
No fragments remain that would allow us to assess Ciceros claim that Hortensius
was or saw himself as an Asiaticus in stylistic matters. (Brutus 95.325).51 But that
Cicero rids himself rhetorically of accusations of the Asiatic, while imposing the
term on Hortensius is of particular importance, because the gure of Hortensius
frames the entire Brutus. It opens on the message of Hortensiuss death and
Ciceros grief and mourning of his loss; and he reemerges in Ciceros account of
his own life toward the end of the dialogue, which shows how ambivalently their
lives as rivals and peers were intertwined. The young Atticist reformers spoke
out against the Hellenistic oratory of Ciceros generation and, though there is no
evidence to judge, it is not implausible that in the Brutus Cicero wanted to pay
homage to Hortensiuss memory but also to construe him as the Asiatic in his
generation in order to distract attention from himself.
The sixth and foremost move in Ciceros riposte to attacks by Atticists was his
vision of what we would have to call a Roman Atticism. Iuse the term here not
in the usual sense that the participants in the debates about Atticism did at home
in Rome. But Cicero proposes nothing less than an argument that true classicists
should look to older Roman, not Greek, models.52 He equates Cato with Lysias and
laments that they are similar in oratorical achievement, although only Lysias is
50

On our poor evidence for Roman orators independent from Cicero see Steel 2007, 23749.
52
The rst Greek proponent of Atticism was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who worked in Rome from
30 bce onward, and this fact has fueled the debate about whether Atticism in Rome descended from
a Greek version of the phenomenon, whether Greeks working in Rome pioneered it, or whether it
was initiated by Romans and in turn inspired a Greek movement through gures like Dionysius.
Wisses hypothesis that Calvus himself was the originator of Atticism is controversial, but very
attractive. Wisse 2002a, 36667.
51
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famous (Brutus 16.63). He despairs that Romes Atticists are blind to what would
be a true, desirable Roman Atticism:
But observe the ignorance of our Romans! The very men who nd such pleasure
in the early period of Greek letters, and in that simplicity which they call Attic,
have no knowledge of the same quality in Cato. Their aim is to be like Hyperides
and Lysias; laudable certainly, but why not likeCato?
Sed ea in nostris inscitia est, quod hi ipsi, qui in Graecis antiquitate delectantur eaque
subtilitate, quam Atticam appellant, hanc in Catone ne noverunt quidem. Hyperidae
volunt esse et Lysiae; laudo, sed cur nolunt Catones?53
The ctional Cicero urges Brutus and Atticus to read ancient Roman orators and
take them as their models rather than to blindly imitate Greek classical models.
Although Atticus later laughs at him and considers his praise of Cato a joke (Brutus
85.293), Cicero holds on to his elevation of Cato to the highpoint of the natural
history of Roman oratory and to the Roman Atticist equivalent of the Attic Lysias
and adds that his speeches lacked only some pigments of rhetorical colors that
were not yet invented. (Brutus 87.298). But he holds on to his central claim to
Cato as a cardinal gure of the dialogue.
To my knowledge nobody has so far taken seriously Ciceros rhetorical claim
to a Roman homology for Atticism, letalone proposed the concept of a Roman
Atticism to describe one of Ciceros central projects in the Brutus. However,
the Brutus is rst and foremost an exquisitely long lineup that features names
and appraisals of several hundred Roman orators, weaving them into a history
of Roman oratory that is presented not just for antiquarian purposes. Is Cicero
desperately trying to expand the repertoire of materials and models for a potential
future of a Roman Atticism, as bold or ironic as this idea mightsound?
Ciceros vision for a new Roman sapientia that would transcend the Platonic
quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy, and his plea for a new Roman classicism
that would counter Roman fashions of Greek Atticism, share with the Prefaces to
the Kokinsh the imagination of a national literary culture that is aware and proud of
its historywhether of the Republican or Divine age. Yet the self-condent audacity
with which Cicero plays with notions of Greek and Roman identity and sensibility in
On the Orator and the Brutus is foreign to the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh,
whose villain was Japanese and a domestic problem, unlike Ciceros Socrates. Also,
Ciceros historical self-awareness with which he shifts between an absolute subordinating chronology of the Greco-Roman constellation, where a postclassical Greece
coexists with a edgling Rome, and a relative equalizing chronology of this constellation, where both Greeces and Romes cultural histories unfold according to similar patterns in similar time spans, is not thematized in the Prefaces to the Kokinsh.
There, Chinese-style poetry written by Japanese does not exist, let alone Chinese
literature (except for the generic mention of its pernicious use by Princetsu).
Despite signicant discrepancies, it is still meaningful to speak of Cicero as
achieving a Kokinsh moment of sorts in On the Orator and the Brutus. However,
53
Cicero Brutus 67. Hendrickson 1936,65.
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with Horace we move away from a comparability of early Japanese and Latin
notions of simplicity and ornateness. Horaces Satires 1.4 and 1.10 lead us onto territory of self-reection and self-aggression within a literary tradition that has hardly
any equal in extant early Japanesetexts.
3c. The Horace Moment That Never Was:Self-Reexive

Hellenism in the Satires
Despite thorough Hellenization since the earliest centuries of literary production it
was common in Latin literary culture to phrase claims to innovation as claims of an
epiphany of Hellenic inuence, to use Stephen Hindss words and astute thinking
on the topic.54 Already Ennius (239169 bc) in the proem to his epic history of Rome,
the Annals, had Homer say that he, the Greek poet par excellence, had become reincarnated in Ennius. Subsequent Roman writers dramatized the epiphany of Hellenic
inuence by portraying themselves as the Roman inventors of certain Greek genres,
applying a well-worn Hellenistic trope to the translation of genres from Greek into
Roman literary culture. Ennius was the Roman Homer; Virgil was another Roman
Homer with the Aeneid, but in his Eclogues also a Roman Theocritus. Propertius saw
himself as the Roman Callimachus. And Horace claimed to be the Roman Archilochus
in his iambic Epodes and a Roman Alcaeus or Sappho in hisOdes.
The logic of what Iwould like to call the inventor trope had far-reaching implications. First, it drew a deceptively sharp line between an old Roman and a new
Hellenized period, suggesting that before the iconic moment of invention there
was a time when Romeat least for a particular genrewas not yet Hellenized.
Second, in stark contrast to the strangely amorphous linguistic and cultural continuity of an imagined Sino-Japanese space in early Japan, the inventor trope dramatized
the act of translation from Greek precedent into Roman variant. It showed that translation of literary genres from Greek to Latin literary culture was an active act, not an
automatic event. Third, it created a competition over entitlement to invention and
enhanced the search for intellectual and generic lineages.
The dynamic of the inventor trope, which played no signicant role for early
Japanese writers appropriation of Chinese precedents, underlies Horaces bizarre
relation to his satirist colleague Lucilius in Satires 1.4 and 1.10. The relation of Horace
to Lucilius has long puzzled scholars, because Horaces satires seem simply not
funny enough to explain away a number of contradictions, such as the verbosity
with which Horace himself tries to denigrate the copiousness of Luciliuss verbiage;
Horaces overemphasis but also complete disavowal of Luciliuss particular form of
Hellenism; Horaces veneration of Lucilius as the inventor of Roman satire, but
also his downplaying of Luciliuss contribution as a satire writer by suggesting multiple lineages for the genre; and, of course, his dealing with Lucilius in a satirical text
that was not just subject to the subversive rules of satire but also part of one of the
most promiscuous and ill-dened genres of Latin literature.55
54
Hinds 1998,52.
For a concise introduction to Horaces Satires with bibliography see Gowers 2005, 4861. Aclassic
study of the relation between Lucilius and Horace is Fiske 1920. His assumption of an imitative
relationship between Lucilius and Horace was an important step away from dominant Romantic
ideals of original genius in literary studies of his time. More recently, Kirk Freudenburgs exciting
The Walking Muse. Horace on the Theory of Satire has contextualized Horaces Satires from as dierent
55
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Lucilius (ca. 180/148102 bc) was of aristocratic birth and had close links to
the most avant-garde Hellenophile circles of his time. Not only had he studied in
Athens and developed close ties to the leaders of the Platonic Academy. He was
also part of the coterie around Scipio Aemilianus, which included the historian
Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius. He must have had access to the rst-rate
Hellenistic library of the Macedonian kings that Scipios father, L. Aemilius
Paullus, had brought to Rome as booty from his victory at Pydna in 168 bce.
His Hellenic education could not have been more thorough or more up to date.
Horace knew this all too well. If he wanted to criticize Luciliuss appropriation of
things Greek in his works, his Hellenism so to speak, he could only do so by
saying that Luciliuss was an outdated type of Hellenism. From what survives of
his satires we can see that Lucilius was very receptive to the Hellenistic aesthetics
of Callimachus.56 But Horace turns the values of restraint, formal polish, and balance, key to the interpretation of Callimachus of his generation, against Lucilius:
Herein lay his fault:often in an hour, as though a great exploit, he would dictate
two hundred lines while standing, as they say, on one foot. In his muddy stream
there was much that you would like to remove. He was wordy, and too lazy to put
up with the trouble of writingof writing correctly Imean; for as to quantity,
Ilet that pass.57
These are Horaces complaints about Luciliuss writing:too wordy like a muddy
stream, too lazy to bear the labor of Horatian word polishing, and too unbalanced, because just on one foot. In Satire 1.10, under the mask of a satirist,
Horace further ponticates about how wrong and vain Luciliuss Hellenism was,
intertwining the issue with the inventor discourse. Because not just Lucilius,
but before him Ennius, had written satires, Horace could not possibly claim an
inventor title for the genre of satire, the origins of which in Rome were anyway
so varied and murky that Quintilian could claim it as the only genre in Latin literature of independent Roman origin.
However, the Horatian satirist could move in contradictory circles around
Luciliuss satires often enough to make his merit as the most prominent early
writer of the genre disappear in the ensuing mle. At the beginning of Satire I.4
Horaces satirist says that Lucilius depended completely on the free and funny spirit
of Old Comedy writers like Aristophanes, changing only meter and rhythm.58
In the beginning of Satire I.10, the satirist corrects this after all complimentary
angles as popular drama, the Greek iambographic tradition, Late Republican stylistic theory, and
Callimachean ethics. Niall Rudd reads Horaces interplay of homage and invective vis--vis Lucilius
on a largely literal level and adduces evidence for Horaces criticisms of Lucilius. He reduces their
dierences to a dierence in theory and temperament and does not consider the radically
dierent stages of Hellenization that Roman literary culture experienced during the lifetime of both
authors. Rudd 1966, 86124.
56
For an analysis of Horaces play with both anti-Callimachean and Callimachean moves in the
context of Late Republican and Early Imperial poetry see Zetzel 2002,3852.
57
Satires 1.4.9-13. Translation from Fairclough 1929, 49. nam fuit hoc vitiosus:in hora saepe ducentos, /
ut magnum, versus dictabat stans pede in uno; / cum ueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere velles; / garrulus
atque piger scribendi ferre laborem, / scribendi recte:nam ut multum, nilmoror.
58
On what Horace might known of Old Comedy and of Luciliuss own historical context see
Goldberg 2005, 16271.
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association: Luciliuss satires make people grin with laughter, sure, which puts
them on the level of plebeian popular mime, robbing Lucilius not just of more
respectable literary status, but also of Greek precedent. Within a few dozen lines
Horace spitefully proclaims Lucilius the inventor of satire. In the same breath
he compliments himself on his success as the writer of satires:
This satire, which Varro of the Atax and some others had vainly tried, was what
Icould write with more success, though falling short of the inventor [Lucilius];
nor would Idare to wrest from him the crown that clings to his brow with so
much glory.59
Is Horaces satirist generously making fun of the inventor discourse and of people
like Horace who proudly laid claim to the inventor label in his Epodes and Odes?
Or is he spitefully disinheriting Lucilius despite theatrical investiture with the
inventor crown? The satirist quickly adds that if scholars criticize Homer, and
Lucilius criticized Accius (which we know he did) and laughed at Ennius, there is
no reason not to criticize Lucilius. This could be a sign that much of the bile was
indeed directed against Lucilius and not a subtle act of self-irony directed either
at claimants of invention in general or Horace in particular. That Ennius is mentioned only in this context in Horaces Satires about Lucilius makes our satirists
failure to mention the older Ennius as a writer of satire preceding Lucilius and
potential claimant to the inventor title all the more conspicuous.
The gap between the satirists playful mask and Horaces serious face almost
disappears toward the end of this satire, which concludes Horaces rst book
of satires, when Horace elicits the favor of a dozen gures of the literary scene,
including Virgil and the three patrons Maecenas, Messala, and Pollio. For them he
voices his classicist manifesto that only careful polishing and moderation makes
sophisticated literature.
Grant, say I, that Lucilius was genial and witty: grant that he was also more
polished than you would expect one to be who was creating a new style quite
untouched by the Greeks, and more polished than the crowd of older poets:yet,
had he fallen by fate upon this our day, he would smooth away much of his work,
would prune o all that trialed beyond the proper limit, and as he wrought his
verse he would oft scratch his head and gnaw his nails to the quick.60
Horace is adamant in his aesthetic values of a very classicized, polished, and controlled new Hellenism that is characteristic of the Augustan Period:less is more
and therefore one need to prune words, scratch ones hair and gnaw ones nails.
And as much as this intolerance caused the satirist to decry the crude, visceral
59
Horace Satires 1.10.46-49. Fairclough 1929, 119. Hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino / atque
quibusdam aliis, melius quod scribere possem, / inventore minor; neque ego illi detrahere ausim / haerentem
capiti cum multa laude coronam.
60
Horace Satires 1.10.64-71. Fairclough 1929, 121. . . . Fuerit Lucilius, inquam / comis et urbanus, fuerit
limatior idem / quam rudis et Graecis intacti carminis auctor, / quamque poetarum seniorum turba:sed
ille, / si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in aevum, / detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod ultra /
perfectum traheretur, et in versu faciendo / saepe caput scaberet, vivos et roderet unguis.
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and copious Hellenism of Lucilius, there is much envy of Luciliuss freedom to

spiteful attack, which had become rather restrained in early ImperialRome.
That Lucilius was quite untouched by the Greeks is a hearty joke, especially
because a few pages earlier the satirist is appalled at Luciliuss mixing of Greek
and Latin words and his seeming attempts to write in Greek. But it makes perfect sense if we take into account the logic that underlies the inventor discourse,
which drew a deceptively sharp line between a supposedly old Roman and a new
Hellenized period. Horace shaped a new Augustan decorum of Hellenism that
strongly rejected earlier forms of Hellenism by declaring them as wrong or even
void forms of Hellenism (style untouched by Greeks). The second characteristic of the inventor logic, the dramatization of the act of translation from Greek
precedent into Roman variant becomes apparent in the Satires constant wavering
when it comes to the status of Lucilius and the satire genre in literary history. This
is also a farcical rumination on the inventor logic and its coronation rites, which
become all the more grotesque if, as a third characteristic of that logic, they rest
on as divergent generic lineages as Greek Old Comedy or Roman popularmime.
But there is another, more important message in Horaces nal pounding on
pruning and polishing:Horaces satirist says that if Lucilius had lived in Horaces
time he would have embodied Horaces aesthetic values. It is by this token of
virtual history that Horaces Satires not just invent a gure of Lucilius:Horace,
as reincarnated Lucilius, can claim the inventor label without tearing that crown
from Luciliusshead.
In Satires 1.4 and 1.10, old Roman writers like Lucilius were depicted not as
laudably simple, but had become simply crude. An ideology of restrained polish,
which did not look ornate, but was highly formalized and sophisticated, made
Horace intolerant, but also a bit envious toward the times, when Lucilius could
liberally fool around with all those novel Greek words and concepts and draw
sparks from them in his exuberant word games. In Horaces time the options for
being a sophisticated Hellenized Roman were much more complex and restrictive; it is hard to imagine how an unbridled wordsmith and criticaster such as
Lucilius would have t in. That Horace briey imagined Lucilius as a contemporary was yet another sign of the strange mix of admiring intimacy and derisory distance with which he treats his predecessor. From the vantage point of the
obsessively self-historicizing and self-conscious literary culture of Late Republican
and Augustan Rome such a complex set of gestures were highly attractive.
4. Outlook
This chapter has explored questions raised by the distinctive growth curve of the
literature of latecomers, younger literary cultures that develop in dialogue with
highly sophisticated literary precedents of older reference cultures. In such cultures narratives of decline, and concepts of ornateness and simplicity, helped
writers to formulate their ambivalent stance toward the older reference cultures
and, in the process, to shape a sense of their own historical and cultural identity. We have studied these issues through a small number of texts from Nara to
mid-Heian Japan and Republican Rome, which oered particularly interesting or
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inuential insights. We saw that some eighth century Japanese texts enthusiastically embraced ornament in the broadest sense and reveled in the expressive
possibilities that highly ornate Chinese poetry of the Six Dynasties and early Tang
Dynasty oered. Although the question was not discussed, we can hypothesize
based on the surviving fragments of Luciliuss satires and the revulsion of the
Horatian satirist against what he saw as Luciliuss verbose bombast and illicit mixing of Greek and Latin, that an old poet like Lucilius was apparently inspired in
similar fashion by the expressive possibilities of Hellenistic literature.
Next, we saw how constructions of a presumed simplicity of beginnings in
the Prefaces to the Kokinsh and Ciceros dialogues on oratory occurred only a few
centuries after the onset of the younger literary cultures. By then they had gained
enough historical depth that gave them the condence to claim a more independent identity and the chance to envision a national tradition in the past and for the
future:a new public stance of waka poetry at court, the successful union of Greek
rhetoric and philosophy in a new Roman sapientia; or a truly Roman classicism
that could brave the new fashion of Greek Atticism, at least as a thought experiment. True, in the rst vernacular poetry anthology of the mid-eighth century,
Yakamochi had already assumed a pose of simplicity that made him look both
humbler and wiser (even wiser than his Chinese model Yang Xiong). But his mask
of a literary simpleton was coached in too sophisticated terms to sound genuinely simple. Also, it did not entail a grand historical scheme of decline related to
the balance of ornateness and simplicity, which both Hamanaris treatise and the
Prefaces to the Kokinsh had articulated for their purposes.
We have also seen that narratives of decline were powerful platforms from
which writers of the younger literary cultures could launch their call for a renewal
or vision of their choosing:the promotion of vernacular poetry at court in the case
of the Kokinsh that could stand on a par with the previously dominant formal
genre of Sino-Japanese poetry; or the vision of a highly original Roman sapientia
in Ciceros On the Orator that tailored Hellenistic rhetoric and philosophy into a
Roman discipline of oratory designed to function as the central practice of Roman
public life. In contrast, Ciceros narrative of the decline of Attic oratory through a
contamination with Asiatic stain served as one move in the fencing game with
those who criticized Ciceros style as too Asiatic. Though colorful and highly eective, this narrative of decline had a more local relevance then the narratives of
decline discussed from the Prefaces to the Kokinsh and Ciceros On the Orator.
In this it resembles the local importance of Yakamochis pose of simplicity, which
lacked connection to a historical scheme of decline with broader implications.
While discovering a surprising number of similarities in the ways issues of
ornateness, simplicity, and narratives of decline preoccupied our Japanese and
Latin authors, our close readings have also allowed us to discern fundamental
dierences between them. The lack of early Latin texts has forced us to match
early Japanese texts up until the Kokinsh with Latin texts from Cicero, a sort of
Kokinsh moment, to Horace. Ihad called the chimera of a historical timeline
with Japanese feet and Latin arms a suggestive example for a mutual virtual history. Virtual history relies on counterfactuals to imagine radically dierent outcomes that did not actually happen, but that help us grasp the impact of inection
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points in actual history. Such an approach mobilizes our imagination of historical

events so that we can more clearly discern their true historical importance.
I would argue that the methodology of virtual history could be signicantly
enriched by including the practice of a mutual virtual history. Asking what
would have happened if X (or not X)? naturally yields answers that will be heavily
informed, even if indirectly, by our knowledge of what actually happened:going
by the simplest laws of logic it might be answered by imagining an increased,
decreased, or antithetical result for a given phenomenon. In contrast, a mutual
virtual history would esh out and complicate the simplistic logical patterns of a
virtual history of alternatives by inserting the complexity and richness of another
cultures historical narrative.
This approach has allowed us to discern the dierence of Ciceros arguments
from those of the Prefaces to the Kokinsh. Cicero plays ingeniously with polar
opposites:Greek versus Roman, Attic versus Asiatic, rhetoric versus philosophy.
He transcends them rather than choosing between them, although he always
sounds like someone with strong opinions. The challenging entanglement and
closeness of these polar opposites is foreign to the Japanese texts discussed above.
The Kaifs Preface does not even mention that vernacular poetry exists, although
vernacular poetry was everywhere and was being anthologized into the voluminous Manysh right around that time. And Yakamochi and Ikenushi, though
writing in two idioms and four genres, do not thematize these dierences or reect
on them as Chinese, Sino-Japanese, or vernacular Japanese practices. Equally, neither Hamanaris treatise nor Tsurayukis preface acknowledges the existence of
Sino-Japanese poetry alongside with waka. That Ciceros villain was Greek, while
the villain in the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh was Japanese, conrms
that Greece appeared closer and more threatening, while China could be as close
or as far as a Japanese author wished it to be. Japanese writers settled early into a
pattern of wa-kan polarity, collecting waka and kanshi in separate anthologies and
treating them in separate treatises. The consequence of the early compartmentalization of Japanese literature into vernacular and Sino-Japanese strands and the
minimal physical contact between Chinese and Japanese people in early Japan
was that the internal development of Japanese literature was more continuous and
less disrupted by avant-garde fashion changes in China than the development of
Latin literature, whose authors in the classical period were often trained in Greece
or at least educated by Greeks and thus in close physical and intellectual contact
with Greek intellectual trends.
This might be one of the reasons why a Horace moment did not happen
in early Japan. Nara and Heian writers did not have the historical awareness
that Latin writers had not just of their own old and contemporary literature, but,
more importantly, of the radical dierences between types of Archaic, Classical
Athenian, and Hellenistic Greek literature. It would probably have been incomprehensible to an early Japanese author why Horaces satirist should go to such
pains to play around with the Greco-Roman inventor discourse and make such
a sophisticated fool of himself by both validating and devaluating Luciliuss status
as inventor of the satire genre. Why bother debating to which degree an earlier
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compatriot had made proper use of Chinese precedents and their historical status?
Emphasizing ones active, proud transposition and introduction of Greek precedents into Roman literary culture gained a Latin writer cultural capital. Roman
writers enjoyed claiming to be the rst to do something that someone before them
had already claimed to have done for the very rst time, and they developed ways
to parse their rstness in ever more subtle and particular ways. Quite to the contrary, blurring the boundaries between the Japanese and the Chinese traditions
constituted cultural capital for Japanese writers.
From our experiment with mutual virtual history we can say that Latin
authors who wrote on ornament, simplicity, and decline were more conicted
in their relation to their reference culture Greece than their Japanese peers in
relation to China. Paradoxically, they had to be both more aggressive and more
diplomatic in their claims, because of the close political, physical, and intellectual
symbiosis with Greece and Greeks.
This intimacy also meant that Late Republican and Early Imperial Latin writers probably felt more embarrassed about the humble beginnings of their literary
art on Italic soil, which played some role in Horaces ambivalent railing against
Lucilius. That even those Latin authors who pushed their praises of their old
Roman predecessors to the limits of credibility contributed to the disparagement
and oblivion of early Roman literature is one of the tragedies of this chapter. In
the Brutus, a dialogue fraught with various tragedies and somber foreshadowing,
Cicero admits to Brutus his hope for the future of Roman oratory:
I have, Iam sure, contributed some benet to the rising generation in showing
them a more elevated and more elaborated style, and perhaps too some harm, in
that the older orations in comparison with mine have ceased to be read by the
majority; not by me however, since Iprefer them to myown.
[C]erte enim et boni aliquid attulimus iuventuti, magnicentius quam fuerat genus
dicendi et ornatius; et nocuimus fortasse, quod veteres orationes post nostras, non a me
quidemmeis enim illas anteponosed a plerisque legi sunt desitae.61
Cicero was to remain quite alone with his reading preferences. Much of early
Latin literature was lost over the next few centuries, and another dozen centuries
later we are forced to come up with methodological devices that allow us nevertheless to pursue a radically asymmetrical comparison between early Japanese and
Latin writers and the ways in which ornateness, decline, and simplicity mattered
tothem.
61
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CHAPTER4
City-Building or Writing?
How Aeneas and Prince Shtoku Made
Rome andJapan
nation states often have a repertoire of founding gures who embody dierent aspects of collective memory and can be mobilized depending on occasion.
Japans nationalist government celebrated the 2,600th anniversary of the foundation of the Japanese empire in 1940 and emphasized the mythical longevity of
the Japanese imperial institution by harking back to the legendary rst emperor
Jinmu, who is shrouded in the mist of prehistory, which lasted for more than
another millennium after his debatable existence. Years later, in 2006, when no
male successor to the Japanese throne was in sight, those who agreed with Prime
Minister Koizumi about the introduction of a bill allowing women to succeed to
the throne could point to the comparably legendary Queen Himiko, mentioned in
Chinese chronicles of the third century, and the six female emperors of seventhand eighth-centuryJapan.
For Rome, Romulus had an undisputed authority as founder of the city that
embodied the power of the empire. Augustus harked back to the ambivalent gure of Romulus, and Mussolini, in turn, restored Augustuss Altar of Peace, the
Ara pacis, and included it into the pompous display of Augustan art arranged
for the bimillenial celebration of Augustuss birth in the late 1930s, leaving no
doubt that the Duce saw himself as a New Augustus. But those throughout history
who cherished Romes Republican traditions would evoke Lucius Junius Brutus,
who in 509 bce expelled the last king, Tarquinius Superbus, founded the Roman
Republic, and became one of its rst consuls.
When looking over the candidates from the repertoire of Japanese and Roman
national heroes, Prince Shtoku and Aeneas make a particularly compelling pair,
as they have a comparably exceptional prole as founding gures of the Japanese
and Roman state, respectively. First, they have complex connections with China
and Greece and are thus national gures with a strategic foreign edge. Prince
Shtoku was considered the reincarnation of the Chinese Buddhist patriarch
Huisi
(515577), while the Trojan prince Aeneas escaped the burning Troy
when the Greeks took the city after a decade of warfare; he originated as a creature
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of the world of the Homeric epic. Second, they both played a crucial role in the
cultural transfer and introduction of religious practices:Prince Shtoku is revered
as the founder of Buddhism in Japan and he built the rst temples to house
Buddha images, while Aeneas carried not only his old father and infant son, but
also the Penates, the Trojan households gods, out of the burning city and installed
their statues in his newly founded city of Lavinium, about 30 km south of the
later Rome. Third, despite great variations in the numerous legends that accrued
around Shtoku and Aeneas, both gures are not just much larger than life,
but much larger than history. They are considered emblematic for Japanese and
Roman civilization, respectively. Prince Shtoku was an intuitive moral exemplar
associated with various forms of literacy and writing, whereas Aeneass prominent
qualities included, most notably, his pietas, his sense of duty, righteousness
and trustworthiness, or devotion, but also his ability to build cities, give laws,
and support agriculture.
This chapter compares the image of two respective national founding gures
of Japan and Rome as presented in two particularly inuential texts:the Abridged
Biography of Prince Shtoku (Shtoku taishi denryaku

) and Virgils
Aeneid. The two texts are radically dierent in scope, intended audience, andstyle.
The Abridged Biography is a sprawling work of hagiography, a treasure trove of
legends about the princes life and the lively religious cult that formed around him
after his death. It was written some time during the tenth centuryat least three
hundred years after the princes deathpossibly by somebody from the Taira lineage who had close connections to the Shtoku cult at Shitennji temple, one
of the temples founded by the prince near present-day Osaka. As such, it pays
homage to Prince Shtoku, the Buddhist saint, whose cult was by then well established and who looked quite dierent from Prince Kamitsumiya or Umayado, as
Shtoku was called during his lifetime. Just to point to one signicant cosmetic
correction of the image of the historical prince: in texts preceding the Abridged
Biography we see a prince in often violent action, even killing his enemies. But the
Abridged Biography, which celebrates the prince as the founder of Buddhism who
introduced laws against taking the life of sentient beings into Japanese culture,
sanitized this image considerably and presented a more saintly, pacic prince.1 The
biography uses the sober format of Chinese-style annalistic biographies, treating
events in chronological order from the beginning of Emperor Bidatsus reign (r.
572585) to the beginning of Empress Ktokus reign (r. 645654). Though there
is no dearth of engaging anecdotal material, the text consists of simple, straightforward Buddhist prose, a far cry from the ornamental literary kanbun prose
that contemporary courtier-poets of the mid-Heian Period such as Sugawara no
Fumitoki or, later, e no Masahira would have produced (and which would, from
a stylistic perspective, be far more comparable to Virgils Aeneid). The Abridged
Biography is not a text of particular aesthetic purpose or value, but is a central text
for the Shtoku cult and the early history of Buddhism inJapan.
1
On the formation of Shtokus image as a pious Buddhist avoiding bloodshed see Matsumoto
2007, 2366. On the various legends about Shtoku that precede the Abridged Biography see Iida
2000,136.
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In striking contrast, the Aeneid is a masterpiece of Augustan high literary culture and, as is sometimes argued, the most inuential classic in Western literary
history.2 Into the twentieth century it has shaped the moral and aesthetic education, visions of valor and empire, notions of destiny and piety for generations; it
has also been a thematic treasure trove for painters and composers; and it has
inscribed itself into the English language through its rich translation history starting from the Renaissance translation by the Scottish bishop Gavin Douglas and
Drydens well-known 1697 translation, to Robert Fitzgeralds and, most recently
Stanley Lombardos, Robert Fagless, and Sarah Rudens rendering of theepic.
The Aeneid is one particular and obviously the most famous version of the many
legends that accrued around Aeneas, who was destined to escape the destruction
of Troy and nd and defend a new home in Italy around the site of future Rome.
After challenges by the Greek-loving and thus hostile goddess Juno, taxing travels, and amorous temptations by Carthages Queen Dido, he manages to reach
Latium, settles there and founds the Roman race. Around 30 bce Virgil started
working on the grand epic, which, as one of his early commentators claimed,
served the purpose of imitating Homer and praising Emperor Augustus, beginning with his ancestors. He continued working on it until his death in 19 bce
in the Apulian city of Brundisium (modern-day Brindisi) on his way back from
Greece toRome.3
Just how unnished the Aeneid actually is has been subject to extensive debates,
but the epic ends suggestively unnished on several levels: in terms of plot it
breaks o in the middle of battle, when readers hold their breath while Aeneas
thrusts his sword into the breast of Turnus, the king of a local tribe in Latium
who ghts the arrival of the unwelcome strangers from Troy. In terms of Aeneass
destiny, the epic ends in the middle of the wars Aeneas has to endure in Latium
to ensure his descendants claim to rule; it does not reach the decisive moment
of his foundation of the city of Lavinium and his marriage to Lavinia, daughter of
the local king Latinus. Many legends struggle precisely with connecting the two
unrelated threads of Aeneas the Homeric herowho by Poseidons prophecy in
Iliad 20.307 . is destined to become king of Troy, the second Troy of Rome after
the extinction of Priams lineand the Italic Aeneas, the ancestor of a hybrid local
lineage in his new home of Latium that eventually leads to Romulus and the actual
founding of the city ofRome.
In What is a Classic? T.S. Eliot claimed the Aeneid as the classic of all Europe, pointing to its
comprehensive sweep, its maturity and universal appeal in religious, political, and moral matters.
Eliot 1957, 5371. S.J. Harrison has extended this argument intriguingly to the ways Virgil integrated
resonances of other genres into his epic:The generic comprehensiveness . . . constitutes an equally
powerful explanation of the endurance of the Aeneid over two millennia as an object of study and
reading. The diversity of literary forms appropriated into Vergils epic through generic enrichment
ensures a complex and subtle poetic texture, which leads not only to the poems own extraordinary
afterlife but also to substantial evolution within its genre. After the intergeneric pyrotechnics of the
Aeneid, Roman epic was both inspired and challenged by its example. Harrison 2007, 240. On the
Aeneid as a classic in European cultural history over the past few centuries see Haynes2010.
3
For a concise and compelling introduction to Virgil and his works see Hardie 1998. This is closer
to the Augustan interpretation of the Aeneid that has been so dominant and ensconced in public
school education and against which Richard Thomas argues in Thomas2001.
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Aeneas was already popular in the Greek world by the sixth century bce, when
vase painters liked to depict Aeneas carrying his father Anchises to safety from the
ruins of Troy.4 He took on many dierent faces in the Greek and Latin legends that
preceded Virgils large-scale epic, but Virgil created his own version of the legend
in the Aeneid in a very distinctive form:The reader of the Aeneid is faced with a
double text, the Virgilian story of Aeneas and the subtext of Homers Iliad, the
epic story of the Trojan War projected onto the wars Aeneas has to ght in his new
home, and Homers Odyssey, the travels and tribulations of another survivor of the
Trojan War, Odysseus. The highly sophisticated echoing, imitating, or overwriting of Homeric parallels and precedents is probably the most striking dierence
between Virgils Aeneid and the anonymous biography of Prince Shtoku. The
authors of the Abridged Biography could pick and choose from dierent variants
of the princes legend, but they were not faced with a canonical subtext as Virgil
who stepped up to the overawing stature of Homeric epic. Philip Hardie reminds
us what an enormous audacity Virgils comprehensive reimagination of the entire
Homeric corpus was, because Homer was not only the earliest poet writing in the
most authoritative genre of epic, but he was a universal poet, the source of all
later literature and wisdom, of almost god-like stature, and the one who saw into
the deepest mysteries of the universe. It is a mark of the success of the Aeneids
ambition that later centuries saw Virgil himself as a universal and almost divine
poet.5 Already Virgils contemporaries understood the enormity of the poets
ambition, as is attested by Propertiuss well-known exclamation that something
greater than the Iliad is being born (nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade).6
Also, the Aeneid combines several subgenres in unique fashion, unlike the
rather standard format of hagiographical biographies that the Abridged Biography
follows:it is an epic of war, like the Iliad, as well as an epic of homecoming (Gr.
nostos), like the Odyssey; but it is also an etiological poem in the Hellenistic tradition on the origins of a place and a people and thus imbued with antiquarian
scholarship of sorts, even if Virgil chose from his sources what t the vision of
hissujet.
The Aeneid is a double text in yet another sense, in that it superimposes two
planes of time: it is a national epic recounting the mythological origins of the
Roman state, but also a personal imperial history pointing, however ambiguously at times, toward Augustus and his age. Julius Caesar and then his adopted
son Octavian, the later Augustus, claimed that the Julian gens descended from
Aeneass son Iulus (Ascanius).7 Virgil gave literary esh to this claim of dynastic
origins and used the Aeneas legend as a complex experimentation ground to thematize the fundamental problem of the relationship between the mythical and
the historical, literature and ideology, Roman dependence and the surpassing of
Greek history and its literary models.
4
Anderson 1997,63.
Hardie 1998,57.
6
Propertius. Elegies 2.34.66.
7
The identication of Ascanius with Iulus probably occurred late and was not universally accepted
even during Virgils time. On this and the dierent character proles associated with the two names
see Paschalis 1997,6163.
5
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As should be clear by now, our heroes and texts are quite unalike. Aeneas is
a founding gure before the actual founding of Rome who also referenced the
genealogical claims of Augustus. The Aeneid made him into a complex synecdoche of Roman destiny and history and told his story through moments of proleptic
narrativeas when he visits the site of future Rome in a vision of Virgils contemporary Augustan city. Prince Shtoku is a founding gure after the founding of the
Japanese state, where the earliest chronicles trace back to the legendary Emperor
Jinmu in the seventh century bce, more than 1,200years before Shtokus time.
Also, rather than being in an explicit leadership position, the prince served his
aunt, Empress Suiko (r. 593628), as regent and never became the states ultimate
leader as emperor. The texts are yet more unalike:Virgils is a highly self-conscious
polished literary masterpiece in its inception (and of course reception), written in
the most hallowed genre of epic (and infused with an inset-piece of the similarly authoritative genre of drama:the tragic love aair of Aeneas and Dido); the
Abridged Biography, in contrast, is an aggregation of legends streamlined into a
plain hagiographic biography.
Still, this does not render our comparison less valid. Even if Shtoku postdated the mythical beginnings of the Japanese state, his role in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan made him into a comparable foundational gure and
Shtokus veneration as a dharma king who protects the nation and helps it ourish gave him a central role on a metaphysical level.8 Given that it is even hard to
nd another Latin text that matches Virgils complex epic designs in the Aeneid,
the discrepancy between the Virgilian epic and the Buddhist biography are hardly
damaging to our comparison. What interests us here is a comparison of Aeneass
and Prince Shtokus portrayals as national founding gures in two texts that
presented particularly inuential versions of their stories. What are the character
traits that make them attractive as founding gures in their respective cultures?
How do the two texts under consideration present and illustrate these representative personality traits? And is the dierence in their character traits a signicant indicator of broader dierences in the fundamental orientations of Latin and
Japanese cultures?
1. The Foreign Edge of National Founding Figures

Prince Shtoku and Aeneas share a common fate as national founding gures
with a foreign edge that allowed them to show both independence of their own,
younger culture, but also had them benet from the authority that came with connections to the older reference culture. Prince Shtoku (574622) was considered
to be the reincarnation of the Chinese patriarch Huisi
(J. Eshi) (515677) of
the Tiantai (J. Tendai) school of Buddhism. One of the earliest appearances of this
belief occurs in a poem by the eight-century scholar and poet mi no Mifune, who
also wrote a biography of the Chinese monk Jianzhen
(J. Ganjin), where he
8
Michael Como also emphasizes that Shtoku is the earliest gure onto whom national signicance
has been projected. To this day, Shtoku has retained this position in Japanese public and academic
culture and is sometimes instrumentalized by people with nationalist agendas. Como 2008,6.
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claims that Jianzhen was inspired to go to Japan and support edgling Buddhism
because he had heard that patriarch Huisi had reincarnated in that country. In his
biography of Jianzhen, Account of the Eastern Expedition of the Great Tang Priest (T
daiwaj tseiden

, 779), he has Japanese envoys seek out Jianzhen
in China and address him as follows:
The Buddhist Law has spread east and arrived in Japan. However, although the
Law exists now, there are no people to transmit it. In our country Prince Shtoku
once said, In two hundred years the sacred teaching will ourish in Japan. Since
this destiny has now been accumulated, we would like you to come east with us
and bring the teaching to ourish. The Master (Jianzhen) replied, I have heard
long ago, that after the Master Huisi of Nanyue Peak passed on, he reincarnated
as a prince in the land of Yamato, Japan, made the Buddhist Law greatly ourish
and helped all sentient beings towards enlightenment.

9
Connecting Prince Shtoku to the Chinese patriarch represented a formative

moment in the making of his legend, as his prole now reached beyond Japan
to China.10 In earlier Chinese sources Huisi was known for his expertise in the
Lotus Sutra, the central scripture of Tiantai (J. Tendai) Buddhism, for his retreat to
Nanyue Peak in Southeastern China in quest for longevity, and for his superhuman abilities. Some sources claimed that Huisi had knowledge of his previous
incarnations and also predicted that in his next life he wished to be reborn in a
far-away land to help spread Buddhism.11 The early ninth century saw further signicant elaborations of the Shtoku legend, when the founding gure of Japanese
Tendai Buddhism, Saich (767822), called Shtoku a teacher of the nation and
positioned the Tendai School as a continuation of Shtokus work, arguing that it
could therefore claim a privileged position among the various Buddhist schools.
Saich also further expanded Huisis identity, suggesting that Huisi was the reincarnation of one of the innumerable people in the audience at Vulture Peak when
the historical Buddha delivered the sermon that was recorded in the Lotus Sutra.
Now Shtokus identity was traceable all the way back to India, the country of
Buddhisms origin.12 Shtoku had now accumulated considerable historical and
cultural karma, which gave him signicant legitimacy beyond his historical existence as a Japanese prince living around the turn of the seventh century.
There is another sense in which Shtokus prole beneted from older Asian
connections. As Michael Como, building on Tamura Enchs work from the
1980s, has recently argued, Korean immigrant lineages in Japan played a major
role in shaping and promoting the Shtoku legends. This goes against frequent
9
Takeuchi 194344, vol. 2,896.

On the development of the legend of Huisis reincarnation as Shtoku see Wang1994.
11
Como 2008,144.
12
Como 2008, 15051.
10
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assumptions that the Shtoku cult was mainly product of imperial ideology. In
seventh-century Japan kinship groups from the rival Korean kingdoms of Paekche
and Silla were not just on the forefront of the propagation of Buddhism, but were
also the dominant professional groups in control of literacy, which makes their
involvement in the production of the Shtoku legends all the more probable. Como
argues that the erce conicts between the Three Kingdoms of Silla, Paekche,
and Koguryo that ravaged Korea before the unication under Sillas rule in 668
were echoed in the conicts between the Korean lineage groups living in Japan
and that the early Shtoku cult may have been bifurcated from its beginnings
along ethnic lines:Paekche and Silla kinship groups would have used their temple
building activities to highlight their distinctive identities and that the cult was in
part created and sustained by the inter-regional and inter-ethnic conicts that convulsed Yamato in the middle years of the seventh century.13 The narrative in the
Chronicles of Japan of 720 emphasizes Prince Shtokus role and thus the importance of the royal court in the establishment of Buddhism, but it bears clear traces
of the inuence of immigrant groups. The Chronicles of Japan date the introduction
of Buddhism to 552, when Paekche sent a Buddhist statue to Japan. It came to be
worshipped by the head of the Soga kinship group, themselves probably of Paekche
descent. The Mononobe and Nakatomi, powerful conservative native kinship
groups in competition with the Sogas inuence at court, resisted the introduction
of the foreign religion and claimed that it would make the gods of the Japanese
Islands angry. When tensions between the Soga and Mononobe escalated into military conict in 587, Shtoku fought with the Soga on the pro-Buddhist side, vowing
to build a temple in case of victory. Shtokus narrative in the Chronicles of Japan
ends with the foundation of the Temple of the Four Heavenly Kings (Shitennji
) in Naniwa, present-day Osaka. Although the prince gets the main credit
for the successful battle, the account of Shtokus foundation of the Temple of the
Four Heavenly Kings is closely modeled on the foundation legend of the largest
temple of Silla bearing the same name, another indication of the contribution of
immigrant lineages to the making of Shtokus legends.14
The temples founded or promoted by Prince Shtoku, which belong to the
oldest Buddhist temples in Japan, had clear ethnic aliations:The Silla immigrant clans of the Kishi, Hata, and Abe seem to have played a large role in the
early development of Shitennji, while Paekche groups such as the Soga were
inuential at the temples of Horyji and Asukadera. Thus, Shtoku seems to
have been a contested cultural hero to whom dierent groups tried to lay claim.
These rivaling Korean immigrant groups brought Buddhism and the accompanying crafts of temple architecture and sacred sculpture to Japan; with their high
prociency in literacy and textual knowledge they contributed to Shtokus image
inJapan.
Just as Chinese legends about Huisi facilitated the shaping of Shtoku into
a Japanese national hero and Korean immigrant lineages used the gure of
13
Ibid.,23.
For an account of the role of the immigrant lineages in the founding legend of Japanese Buddhism
see Como 2008,1331.
14
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Shtoku to promote Buddhism and defend their distinctive identities, Greek legends of Aeneas were the point of departure for Roman elaborations of Aeneass
image.15 In Iliad 20 Poseidon rescues Aeneas, presumably because the Trojan
prince is destined to rule over Troy and needs to survive. This canonical prophecy preoccupied later writers, as they tried to connect Aeneas with the foundation of Rome. In the world of myth and Homeric epic Italy was associated
with the travails of Heracles and Odysseus, who make their appearance in the
Aeneid. For Aeneas Greek writers elaborated various scenarios: Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, who wrote as a Greek in Augustan Rome, claimed Aeneas as a
Greek, descended from Dardanus, whom he traced back to the ruling house of
Arcadia. He revels about the Trojans:One will not nd a people more ancient or
more Greek!16 But some people, like the geographer Strabo, Dionysiuss rough
contemporary, insisted on Homers authority and were convinced that Aeneas
had actually never left Troy.17
The Greeks of Magna Graecia, descendants of the Greeks who had colonized
southern Italy since the eighth century bce, were obviously particularly interested
in insisting on a Hellenic connection of the foundation of Rome. In his work
on the antiquities of Sicily and Italy a certain Alkimos from Sicily (ca. late 4th
century bce) connected the Greek legends around Aeneas to the foundation of
Rome:Alcimus says that Romulus was a son of Thyrrenia and Aeneas and that
Alba, granddaughter of Aeneas, was born from him; her son Rhomus founded
the city of Rome (Alcimus ait Tyrrhenia Aeneae natum lium Romulum fuisse
atque eo ortam Albam Aeneae neptem, cuius lius nomine Rhomus condiderit urbem
Romam).18 This is one of the earliest texts that connect Aeneas to Rome. Without
overstretching what would have to be a complex comparison, the Greeks of Sicily
and Southern Italy had a mediating role between Greek culture and the Roman
state that was in some aspects comparable to the role of the immigrants from the
Korean peninsula in Japans appropriation of Chinese culture.
Roman historians and poets picked up on the connection their Greek colleagues had established between Aeneas and Rome and in the third century bce it
was still common to assume a close family relation between the Trojan prince and
the founder of Rome proper:both Ennius and Naevius still made Romulus the
grandson of Aeneas. But Fabius Pictor, the rst Roman to write a history of his city
(published around 210 bce) lled the obvious gap between the fall of Troy, dated
by Greek writers to the twelfth century bce, and the foundation of Rome in the
eighth century bce with a long dynasty of Alban kings originating with Aeneass
son Ascanius and his foundation of Alba longa.19 This was to become the customary version of Aeneass relation to Romulus andRome.
15
For an introduction to the various Greek and Latin sources about Aeneas and the early history of
Rome see Hillen2003.
16
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities I.89.2.
17
In the following Irely on Gruen 1992b and Casali 2010. On the development of Aeneass image
particularly in Greek sources see Moreno 2007, 16785.
18
Jacoby 192358, 560F4.
19
Feeney 2009,143.
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In his Aeneid Virgil added a few crucial twists to the wealth of variant Aeneas
myths that featured in earlier historiography and epic.20 He emphasized Aeneass
prospective lineage, claiming that Augustuss clan, the gens Iulia, derived from
Aeneass son Ascanius/ Iulus. Equally importantly, he retrospectively redirected
the genealogical thrust of the Trojan princes ancestor Dardanus, whom his contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus made Greek:Virgils Dardanus is Italic. In
Greek sources Dardanus was associated with Samothrace, Arcadia, and, in Homer,
Troy, whose royal lineage he founded; but Virgil has him born in Corythus, an
Etruscan city.21 In Virgils scheme Aeneas ventures not to foreign shores with his
household gods but returns back home to his Italic roots, just as we expect in a
typical nostos-narrative such as the Odyssey.22
While Virgil highlights Aeneass Roman identity with a temporal vectorthe
Italic origins of his ancestor Dardanushe puts the space of the future Rome
into Greek limelight:Aeneas does not nd virgin soil, but nds the humble Greek
settlement of Pallanteum on the site of the future Palatine. Its ruler, the Arcadian
Evander, welcomes Aeneas to his destined soil and introduces him to Romes
future history. Intriguingly, Evander is the protagonist in the epic who speaks the
most after Aeneas, even more than Anchises, and he appears as the prototype
of an erudite Greek historian who teaches the Trojan Romans-to-be about their
future and past.23 Evander must have been all the more appealing to Virgils educated readers, as various Greek and Latin sources claimed that he civilized the
Latins by introducing laws, music, and, most importantly, writing, to Italy.24 Virgil
maximized Aeneass attraction as a Roman national founding gure by having his
clan, literally, build on the cultural resources of the reference culturethe Greek
Pallanteum, proto-Romewhile rechanneling genealogy in a way that designated
Italy as the true home of the Trojanhero.
Whereas the foreign edge that Aeneas and Prince Shtoku gained from their
cultural, religious, and genealogical connection with Greece and China (and Sicily
and Korea) legitimized them from the perspective of their older reference cultures
in comparable fashion, two rather dierent devices propelled our heroes into their
new national habitat of Rome and Japan:prophecy and reincarnation.
2. Prophecy
Prophecy and reincarnation are obviously fundamental, deep-seated cultural orientations rooted in religious beliefs and manifested in religious practices, whose
20
On Virgils possible use of mythographic manuals see Cameron 2004, 25560.

Aeneid 3.16771.
22
As J.D. Reed points out, an Etruscan Dardanus from Corythus might still in the end be Greek.
Herodotus claims that the Etruscans were Lydian, and thus stemmed from Asia Minor like the
Trojans, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus makes the Italian city of Cortona, with which Corythus
has traditionally been identied, a Pelasgian, Greek city. Reed 2007, 11. This makes Virgils choice
of Dardanuss origin more complex and intriguing, but it does not put into question Virgils clear
intention to make the Aeneid into a nostos narrative:Aeneas and his gods return home to Italy and,
by extension, Rome is both Aeneass point of origin and his destination.
23
Casali 2010,39.
24
Moreno 2007, 175. On the Latin side see Livy 1.1819.
21
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comparison would require multiple studies in their own right. For the purposes
of this chapter we will focus very narrowly on how they work as narrative devices
in the Aeneid and the Abridged Biography. What do these devices, as part not just
of the cultural and religious matrix, but also as part of the narrative repertoire of
Latin and Japanese literary cultures, allow and propel our protagonists to do, or
discourage them fromdoing?
In the Aeneid prophecies come in many forms and through many mouths:gods
exchange prophecies on Romes future grandeur, or disclose future events to chosen humans; ominous dream visions or encounters with the dead point mortals
toward what is to come; or professional prophecies are dispensed in wild oracular performances like that of the Sibyl at Cumae in Campania, a divinely inspired
medium communicating the will of the gods similarly to the Greek Pythia at the
temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Prophecies often function as narrative pivots:although they have the power to
point toward the telos, the protagonists ultimate destiny, they have equal power to
distract him from it, most often because they are elliptic and underdetermined;
the protagonist needs to grapple with their oblique meaning and can only gradually arrive at true understanding. In fact, as James OHara has argued, most of the
predictions and prophecies in the Aeneid are deceptive, because they often suppress darker realities under a surface of optimism.25 Agood part of the pleasure of
prophecies as narrative devices derives from the unequal access the protagonist,
narrator, and reader has to their meaning. While Aeneas navigates through much
suering between clairvoyance and error in search of his prophesized destiny, the
narrator initiates the reader of the Aeneid from the very rst famous lines of the
long epic into the protagoniststelos:
Arms and a man Ising, the rst fromTroy,
A fated exile to Lavinianshores
In Italy. On land and sea, divinewill
And Junos unforgetting rageharassedhim.
War racked him too, until he set hiscity
And gods in Latium. There his Latin racerose,
With Alban patriarchs, and Romes high walls.26
Virgil nails down every part of his mans telos with predictive, not even prophetic,
precision:that his fate is to reach Italian soil, found a city, introduce his gods to
Latium and lay the foundations for the Latin race and the rise of Rome. That Virgil
summarily gives it all away in a few lines shortcuts any expectation of linear narration or easy pleasures of suspense. Instead, the reader is asked to tally three different vectors of plot development against each other:there is the ultimate telos, of
which she can be sure, unlike the protagonist; then there are the more mysterious
prophecies, which captivate and guide her along like the protagonist; and, last,
25
OHara1990.
Aeneid 1.17. Translation from Ruden 2008,1. Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris /
Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit / litoramultum ille et terris iactatus etalto / vi superum, saevae
memorem Iunonis ob iram / multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem / inferretque deos Latio;
genus unde Latinum / Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.
26
129
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there are the actual actions of the protagonist, which repeatedly make the reader
wonder just how aware the hero is of his destiny.27
The shifting pattern of tension between these three vectors, which at times run
parallel or counter to each other, or intersect, makes for a kind of three-fold linear
plot development brimming with suspense despite the initial statement of the
ultimate telos at the beginning of the epic. Yet more importantly, the reader not
only knows what should and will happen to Aeneas in the futureunderstands
the telos in a strictly historical, temporal sensebut she grasps that Aeneass historical telos stands as pars-pro-toto for the eventual triumph of Augustan Rome
she has a synecdochal understanding of the plot. The readers synecdochal
understanding of the telos virtually always exceeds Aeneass understanding of his
destiny and heightens the readers elation as she partakes in yet another, ultimate layer of the narrative privy to the protagonists awareness. Most details of the
prophecies in the Aeneas appear in previous historical or rhetorical works, but the
focus on the synecdochal telos, the rise of Augustan Rome, is Virgils invention.
Aeneas is easily taken o-course and the moments when we have the impression that he does know his destination can be treacherous. For example, already
in Book 1, when he encourages his comrades after the huge storm whipped up
against the Trojans by Junos anger, he clairvoyantly promises Latium specically
as a second Troy and nal destination:
Friends, we are all at home with suering
Some worse than thisbut god will end thistoo.
...
We ght through perils and catastrophes
To Latium, where divine fate promises
A peaceful homeland, a new Trojan kingdom.
Endure and live until our fortunes change.
Sick with colossal burdens, he shammedhope
On his face, and buried grief deep in his heart.28
Aeneas shams (simulat) hope on his face, suppressing his anguish and lack of
condence in the gods promise. This moment is particularly paradoxical, because
Aeneass mention of Latium specically seems to conrm the readers condence in Aeneass foresight but his pose of condence puts this rst impression
into doubt. Aeneass ambivalence and human limitations become all the more
27
Repetition (or repetition with dierence) rather than linearity is a major plot pattern in epic. As
Philip Hardie has astutely remarked:The epic strives for totality and completion, yet is at the same
time driven obsessively to repetition and reworking. Hardie 1993, 1.David Quint divides the Aeneid
into two cycles of repetition patterns:the regressive repetition of the Odyssean wanderings in the
rst half of the epic, where the Trojans try obsessively to recreate their lost city and the successful
repetition-as-reversal of the Iliadic war, when the Trojans lead wars in Latium and, this time, come
out as victors. Quint 1993, 5051. In contrast, here Iam drawing attention to patterns of linearity
in the epic that have less to do with plot (although, most obviously they relate to the telos of the
narrative) than with a readers expectation and reading experience.
28
Aeneid 1.19899 and 204209. Ruden 2008,7. O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum), /
o passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque nem. / . . . per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum / tendimus in
Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas / ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae. / durate, et vosmet rebus servate
secundis. / Talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger / spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem.
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apparent, when shortly later the reader is initiated into the full-edged divine plan
with Joves prophecy to Venus. Jove, accused by Aeneass mother Venus of failing to support the quest of her son for his destiny in Italy, appeases the goddess
(incidentally his daughter) and assures her that nothing has changed in the divine
plans for her son. This time Jove not only predicts Aeneas founding of the city of
Lavinium and the Julian lineage leading up to Augustus, but he promises empire
without end (imperium sine ne) for the Romans, lords of the world, the race
arrayed in Togas (rerum dominos, gentemque togatam).29
Virgil keeps tantalizing his readers about the scope and nature of Aeneass foresight in the yet more detailed prophecies of Romes future in Book 6 and 8.After
Aeneas visits Anchises in the Underworld, who discloses important milestones
of Romes history to his son, Virgil has Aeneas leave through a door of delusive
dreams:
There are two gates of sleep. The one, theysay,
Is horn:true shades go out there easily;
The othershining, white, well-craftedivory
Lets spirits send false dreams up toward thesky.
His speeches done, Anchises brought his sonhere,
And the Sibyl too, and sent them through the ivory.30
Although Aeneas had followed attentively what the future has in store for Rome,
Virgil potentially dims Aeneass memory of the prophecy by sending him out the
door of deceptive dreams.
In the Aeneids second grand procession of future Roman history, eshed out
in reliefs on Aeneass battle shield in Book 8, Virgil uses a dierent strategy to
blind the hero to divine knowledge and tickle his readers speculations about
Aeneass awareness. Aeneas enjoys the scenes of Roman history depicted on the
shield with which he will gain a rst crucial victory in his new home country,
launching not-yet-Rome on the path toward world domination. But he does not
understandthem:
Aeneas loved these scenes on Vulcans shield,
His mothers giftbut didnt know the stories.
He shouldered his descendants glorious fate.31
Aeneas gazes at and shoulders the shield, the enormous weight of Romes future,
but his mind cannot grasp the signicance of the scenes depicted on it. The joy he
feels over the images matches his visceral premonition of destiny fullled. Aeneas
has similar feelings when he visits the site of the future Rome with Evander:he is
entranced by the site, happily asking, learning, one by one, the legendary tales of
29
Aeneid 1.279 and282.

Aeneid 6.89398. Ruden 2008,143. Sunt geminae Somni portae, quarum altera fertur / cornea, qua
veris facilis datur exitus umbris, / altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, / sed falsa ad caelum mittunt
insomnia Manes. / his ibi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam / prosequitur dictis portaque emittit
eburna.
31
Aeneid 8.72931. Ruden 2008,189. Talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis, / miratur rerumque
ignarus imagine gaudet / attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.
30
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the men of old (capiturque locis et singula laetus/ exquiritque auditque virum monumenta priorum).32
While the reader wonders throughout the Aeneid about Aeneass grasp of his
destiny, she sees him more often than not go astray. One of the biggest challenges
for Aeneas in reaching his telos is a string of misunderstandings about its geographical location. The connection between geography, people, and place names
is anything but obvious, because Aeneas travels on multiple mapsgeographical,
linguistic, mythical, genealogicalwhich do not always match. In the Aeneid a
variety of resonant place names are associated with Aeneass telos. On the map
of Greek ethnography and myth he travels toward Hesperia, an ancient Greek
name for southern Italy; this name, land in the west, already appears in the 6th
century bce in the poetry of Stesichoros, a Greek poet from southern Italy. Or he
travels toward Ausonia, a later Greek name for southern Italy associated with
the Homeric world: Virgils early 5th century commentator Servius relates it to
Auson, son of Odysseus and Circe or Calypso.33 The Greek toponyms are familiar
to Aeneas the Trojan:his rst wife Creusa, who dies in the ames of conquered
Troy and thus never leaves the Greco-Trojan world promises Rome in her own,
Greek terms:the vast plains of the sea are yours to plow, until you will come to
Hesperia, where Lydian Tiber ows smoothly through rich elds of warriors ( . . . et
vastum maris aequor arandum; / et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva / inter
opima virum leni uit agmine Thybris).34 When Creusa appears to him Aeneas has
not yet left Troy and the Greek names of Hesperia and the Lydian Thybris
(so-called because the Tiber passed along the borders of Etruria, which Herodotus
considered a colony of the Lydians from Asia Minor) mean more to him than
Italia and Tiberis would have at thatpoint.
The place names on the Italic map lack resonance and are empty signiers waiting for future fulllment:The region of Latium is related to King Latinus, whom
Aeneas only encounters at his nal destination; as we saw above, Aeneas does use
that name when he encourages his comrades in the big storm, but his confusion
over his nal destination in the following books suggest that Latium is still an
unknown quantity to him. The city of Lavinium, named after Aeneass future
wife Lavinia, the daughter of King Latinus, is a yet more unfullled geographic
signier, as the foundation of this city lies beyond the narrative of the Aeneid,
which ends with Aeneass victory over his rival in war and marriage, Turnus.
Most intriguing are the moments when Greek and Roman maps of Aeneass
telos overlap, as he gradually makes his way to his destined soil: in her prophecy the Sibyl of Cumae in southwest Italy promises the Trojans Lavinium
but she also clothes her prophecy into an ambivalently Homeric cloak: a new
Achilles is already born in Latium and again a foreign bride will be the cause
of a vicious war. That the foreign bride points to Lavinia, a second Helen, is quite
clear. But whether the new Achilles points to Aeneas or Turnus is left open.
32
Aeneid 8.311-12. For several passages where Aeneass marveling and joyfulness convey a
premonition of fullled destiny see Binder 1971,7980.
33
Aeneid 8.328 and3.171.
34
Aeneid 2.780-82.
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Virgils program of Homeric intertextuality insists that Turnuss allies become the
Trojans and the Trojans Greek while Turnus becomes Hector and Aeneas Achilles.
But throughout the later books Turnus persists in regarding his allies as Greek,
himself as Achilles, and the Trojans as still Trojan. Obviously, he wanted to imagine himself on the winning side. Less confusingly, the Sibyl also promises that
against all odds, Aeneass man will receive help from a Greek cityPallanteum,
Evanders settlement on the site of the future Rome.35
The most fateful and resonant, but ultimately emptiest, geographical signier
of Aeneass telos is undoubtedly Troy. The rhetoric of Aeneass destiny to found
a second Troy originated with Poseidons prophecy in the Iliad that Aeneas will
once become king over Troy and is pregnant with Homeric plot expectations, but
it is literally tautological or simply metaphorical and does little to help Aeneas to
navigate his way to his destined land.36
Because the Greek maps of Aeneass telos are imprecise and overpopulated (or
populated with unwelcome associations) and the Roman maps are a tabula rasa
pregnant with promise but of little navigational value, Aeneas is at times thrown
back onto genealogical maps. The oracle of Apollo on the island of Delos tells him
to seek out the Ancient Mother (antiquam exquirite matrem, Aeneid. 3.96), the
land Dardanus, founder of the Trojan lineage. But genealogy can be treacherous.
Where was Dardanuss homeland? Was it Arcadia, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus
believed? Or Crete, as Anchises vaguely recalls in the Aeneid? Anchisess misunderstanding of the oracle prompts the party to go o on a tangent to Crete,
where an ominous plague makes it clear that something went wrong. Finally, the
Household Gods appear to Aeneas and set the party on the right track with a powerful cluster of place names in the short span of eight lines that point unmistakably to Italy:Hesperia, Ausonia, Italia, and the land of the Oenotrians.37
(Aeneid 3.16371).
When Aeneas nally does reach Latium after repeated false starts, Virgil makes
sure to paint the fulllment of the prophecy with great pathos:in a rare moment
in the Aeneid, Ascanius makes a joke, comic relief from the sheer endless hardship they endured along the way; Aeneas hails his destined land, then introduces
the Household Gods to their new home (Aeneid 7.12022); bystanders realize with
amazement that the day has come to found the promised city; and without even
awaiting word from the local Latins who inhabit the land, Aeneas proceeds right
away to the business of city-building: . . . Where walls would rise, Aeneas dug a
low ditch / On the shore and started their rst settlement / With battlements and
ramparts, like a camp. ( . . . ipse humili designat moenia fossa / moliturque locum,
primasque in litore sedes / castrorum in morem pinnis atque aggere cingit. Aeneid
7.15759. Ruden 2008,149).
To make the fulllment of the prophecies come full circle, also the local powers
of Latium conrm that this time Aeneas has indeed reached his destination:King
35
Aeneid 6.83-97.
On Rome as second Troy see Henry 1989, 4365 and Edwards 1996, Chapter2.
37
Oenotria was named after a Sabine or Arcadian king and for its good wine (Gr. oinos). OHara
1996,127.
36
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Latinus knows that Dardanus was born in Latium (Aeneid 7.2057) and suddenly
realizes the meaning of an earlier prophecy that had urged him to wed his daughter to a newcomer bound to arrive in Latium. Then, the River god Tiberinus gives
him an unexpected welcome in a dream vision. He introduces himself as a local
god and promises Ascaniuss foundation of Alba, assuring Aeneas that his prophecy is correct (Aeneid 8.49)he is well aware that they meet for the rst time
and Aeneas might harbor doubts about the predictions of an unknown god in a
foreignland.
Had Aeneas had an Alexandrian etiologist in his company, versed in the rich
geographical and ethnographical lore and the philological methods to interpret it,
he would have been able to avoid a number of detours. But Aeneas must prove
himself, slowly completing his path between human misunderstanding and
divine prophecy, which keeps him moving even if he does not always comprehend
it. But not just Aeneas faces challenges; even if we often know more than the protagonist, readers must navigate a complex set of plot planes, as Gian Biagio Conte
has elegantly stated: Virgil makes a heavy demand on his readers. They must
appreciate the fated necessity of victory, and at the same time must not forget the
reasoning of the defeated; they must view the world from a superior perspective
(Jupiter, Fate, the omniscient narrator) and at the same time witness and participate in the suerings of individuals; they must accept epic objectivity, which
beholds from on high the great providential cycle of history, and at the same time
accept tragic subjectivity, which reects and matches against each other personal
motives and relative truths.38
3. Reincarnation
In the East Asian context reincarnation became a basic cultural assumption with
the advent of Buddhism. Although hinted at in pre-Buddhist early Chinese texts,
such as the Masters Text Zhuangzi
(4th through 2nd century bce), it rst
became a central concept with the arrival of Buddhism in China during the rst
centuries of the Common Era. Reincarnation eventually advanced to a favorite narrative device in story telling and ction. By the early modern period the great classical Chinese novels, such as Journey to the West and Story of the Stone (also known
as Dream of the Red Chamber), are unthinkableboth in macroscopic frame plot,
and in miscroscopic shaping of the narrativewithout the trope of reincarnation.
In terms of the relation between the author, his protagonists, and the reader,
prophecy and reincarnation work remarkably similarly: the reader knows that
Aeneas is destined to lay the foundation for Rome and her view resembles that
of the omniscient gods, while Aeneas himself often loses sight of his destiny or
fails to interpret prophecies correctly. Similarly, the reader of the Dream of the Red
Chamber knows that the main protagonists Jia Baoyu, a scion of a wealthy family, is the reincarnation of a cosmic stone that many eons ago used to nourish a
crimson pearl ower with the dew it accumulated on its surface. When the ower
reincarnates as Baoyus beautiful and frail cousin Lin Daiyu the protagonists are
38
Conte 2007,46.
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mystied by her constant crying, but the reader, blessed with a broader vision
granted by the narrator, knows that Daiyu is simply paying back the karmic debt
of refreshing dew she received eons ago with voluminous tears in thislife.
The central importance of prophecy in the narrative unfolding of the Aeneid is
comparable to the role of reincarnation in Prince Shtokus biography. Like prophecy, reincarnation binds the protagonists to a higher purpose, a divine destiny; like
prophecy, it allows them to straddle the cultural and physical gap between the
world of the reference culture and the national task in the new context; and like
prophecy, reincarnation is a splendid narrative ploy that spins out the respective
stories in circles of repetitions with variations. How does reincarnation as a narrative strategy shape the image of our protagonist? What does it allow him to do,
what image does it allow him to project?
First of all, reincarnation allows Shtoku to be the most competent transmitter
of Buddhism possible. Patriarch Huisi, himself a reincarnation of several people
who had practiced Buddhism at Mt. Heng of the Nanyue mountain range, guarantees the most competent introduction of a completely foreign religion. Unlike
Aeneas, who was raised in Troy and arrives in Latium with the statues of his gods
and a mature knowledge of religious practice, Shtoku is born in Japan before the
advent of Buddhism. His recommendation to show reverence to a Buddha statue
sent by the Korean state of Silla and his deep understanding of Buddhism appear
plausible because we know he can access the memory of his former life when he
was a Chinese patriarch.
This dierent constellation of Aeneass and Shtokus roles as transmitters of
religion is also reected in the native resistance in Japan to the Buddhist statues:the native clans of the Mononobe and Nakatomi threaten that Japans gods
would become angry and jealous. There is no comparable resistance after Aeneass
arrival; quite to the contrary, Aeneas seamlessly participates in the Greek world of
worship, mixed with local cults, when he meets Evander and the Arcadian people
of Pallanteum. Also, unlike Aeneas, Shtoku is not suspended between an omniscient narrator, the gods, the reader, and his own human limitations. He does not
need to laboriously realize his destiny step by step (or step by misstep); he embodies manifest destiny from the moment of his birth. The linear unfolding of his
destiny ts well with the straightforward annalistic format of his biography that
takes the reader from his birth to after his death. Shtoku is born under miraculous circumstances, a sage authenticated already by immaculate conception:
The consort dreamt of a golden monk with utterly attractive features. He stood
before her and said, I wish to save the world. My wish will take temporary abode
in Your abdomen. The consort asked, Who are you? to which the monk replied,
I am the world-saving Bodhisattva [Kannon]. My home is in the West. The consort responded, My abdomen is lthyhow could it serve as abode to a precious
person? The monk said, I dont mind the lthI only hope to somehow get in
close touch with the human world. The consort replied, I dare not refuse. Your
attendant follows your orders. The monks face took on a joyful expression and
leapt into her mouth. When the consort woke up with a start, it seemed as if her
throat had swallowed something. The consort thought this extremely strange and
135
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when she told the prince about it he remarked, What you nurture inside must be
a sage. Thereafter she realized she was withchild.
39

?

40
Prince Shtokus human father is Emperor Ymei, but his spiritual lineage, the lump
in the consorts throat, connects him to the Bodhisattva Kannon. Divine, immaculate conception is just one among many signs of Shtokus sagehood:his body emits
light and even after a fresh bath he exudes a miraculous fragrance that for months
perfumes the clothing of people who get close to him.41 The strongest signs of the
princes sagehood are his sensational precocity and his supernatural self-awareness.
At eight months of pregnancy words can be heard from his mothers womb; he speaks
in his rst year instead of blindly crying like all babies would, bows and pays obeisance
to the Buddha in his second without being taught, and behaves like an adult with his
fth year. In his sixth year, when a certain Lord wake, who had been sent to Paekche,
returns with sutras and treatises along with a meditation master and a nun, the prince
reveals the truth about his identity to the dumbfounded Emperor Bidatsu:
I desire to see the sutras and treatises that he brought. The Emperor asked him,
Why? The Prince addressed the throne and said, In the past Iwas in China
and lived on the top of Mt. Heng. Iwent through several dozen lives, practicing
Buddhism. As for the teaching of the Buddha, it is non-being and non-nothingness.
Always strive to perform good deeds, and do not commit evil ones. Thats why
now Iwish to see the Buddhist sutras and Bodhisattva treatises oered up by (the
Korean kingdom of) Paekche. The Emperor thought this extremely strange and
asked him, You are not even six years old, and have exclusively been around me.
When could you have been in China? Why do you tell such nonsense? The Prince
addressed the throne, saying, My mind has awareness of my previous lives. The
Sovereign applauded in great amazement. The various ocials who heard this
also voiced their admiration, applauded and thought this miraculous.

42
Later we learn that Prince Shtoku has a very precise memory of a number of
his previous lives, all somehow connected to Mt. Heng, the home of Huisi, the
Using instead of the variant.
Shtoku taishi denryaku, 126. Igenerally follow the text in Dai Nihon Bukky zensho, vol. 71. Ihave
also consulted Yoshida and Okuda1995.
41
Shtoku taishi denryaku,127.
42
Ibid.,126.]
39
40
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most important of his incarnations before becoming the Japanese prince:that

he once was a person from a humble Chinese family, met a master of the Lotus
sutra and decided to shave his hair and became a monk on Mt. Heng; that during the Jin Dynasty (265420) he lodged his soul again into the womb of a
woman from the Han clan and practiced Buddhism for more than fty years
on Mt. Heng; that during the times of Emperor Wen of the Song (420479)
he incarnated into a Liu clan, then moved on to a Gao clan, and again lived for
many decades on Mt. Heng during the Qi Dynasty (479502), the Liang (502
557), Chen (557589), and the Zhou Dynasty of Empress Wu, which briey
interrupted the Tang (618907).43 After that particular life he wished to be
born in a country of the Eastern Ocean and disseminate the Buddhist Law (

).44
The little prince does not simply show o his supernatural identities and
memory skills to impress. He takes advantage of the incredulous gasps of his
bystanders and the authority his precocious performances endow him with to
eect change and introduce Buddhism to the marginal, edgling state of Japan.
Thus, in his seventh year, he convinces the emperor to introduce the crucial Six
Precept-Observing Days, during which the taking of life is forbidden:
Several hundred volumes of sutras and treatises were brought from Kudara
and submitted to the throne. In the second month of spring the Prince burned
incense and began to read them. At one or two volumes a day, he had nished
to read them all by the winter. Again he addressed the throne, saying, The 8th,
14th, 15th, 23rd, 29th, and 30th day of each month are the Six Precept-Observing
Days. On these days, Brahma and Indra descend to inspect the countrys administration, so you should therefore forbid the taking of life. This is the basis of
benevolence. Benevolence and sageliness are close in essence. The sovereign
was greatly delighted, and handed down a proclamation to the realm, ordering to
forbid the taking of life on thesedays.

45
The princes deep familiarity with current Buddhist practice, gained during his
many lives on Mt. Heng in China and apparently nourished by his own continued
study of sutras in Japan, gives him a dierent view of reality:he is more omniscient than the narrator or anybodyelse.
He uses his supernatural knowledge to decry human acts of ignorance: for
example, he claims that the Mononobe and Nakatomi clans, who strongly opposed
the introduction of Buddhism and whom the prince fought in a war together with
the Paekche-descendant Soga clan, do not understand the cosmic law of retribution.
43
Ibid.,136.
Ibid.,136.
45
Ibid.,126.
44
137
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He repeatedly treats strangers with unusual intimacy, just to declare that they are
former friends from one or the other life on Mt. Heng who, likehim,havemoved
on to other existences. And he has full command over his previous and current life:he
carefully stages his death, the path toward his next transmigration, with his consort:
The prince was in Ikaruga Palace. He ordered his consort to take a bath, and
he himself took a bath. He put on a clean set of robes and said to his consort:Tonight Iwill transmigrate. You can come along. The consort also put on
a clean set of dress and went to sleep on the bed next to the prince. Next morning
the prince and his consort did not get up for a long time. When the attendants
opened the doors of the chamber they understood that he had transmigrated.
:

46

That he carefully times and celebrates his own and his consorts death with a ceremonious purication is just another sign of Shtokus supernatural sagehood. He
leaves the world as miraculously as he had entered it:his body is surrounded by
an overpowering fragrance, and his corpse is virtually weightless and looksalive.
The prophecies that guide Aeneass action and the law of reincarnation that
underlies Prince Shtokus existence are comparable narrative devices in that they
articulate our protagonists fate and guide their divine destiny. But their inverse
time vectors, among other things, make the Aeneid and the Abridged Biography into
very dierent narratives. Prophecies point Aeneas toward the future, the promised
telos that motivates him to nd his path toward their fulllment. Reincarnation,
in contrast, points Shtoku toward a past existence that informs his current life
as a root cause and predetermines its pattern. The most prominent dierence
between the providence of the Greco-Roman gods (and Roman history) and the
Buddhist Law is that reincarnation is based on an impersonal cosmic law, not on
the personal caprices and prejudices of an all-too-human and emotionally often
immature pantheon. Although the Greco-Roman gods are cosmic forces, they also
represent historical law:their sympathy for or antipathy against Aeneas depend
on their previous experiences with each other and with their human heroes in
the Trojan War; and, from a Virgilian standpoint, the gods give Aeneas a destiny
that stands in for the historical realization of the Roman empire under Augustus.
The Buddhist Law, however, is timeless, universal, and impersonal. In short:cosmic. True, Shtokus incarnations as a Buddhist practitioner and even patriarch
in China are historically bound and so is the cultural karma that he gains from
his previous life when he reincarnates as a Japanese prince. But his cosmic omniscience and awless sagehood puts him not just above Aeneass human limitations, but even beyond the omniscient, biased, and capricious Greco-Romangods.
The Abridged Biography is infallible manifestation of the predictable circles of
reincarnation, whereas the Aeneid gives us the excitingly fallible, often misleading
and only gradual realization of prophecy. This makes the narrative of the Abridged
46
Ibid.,137.
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Biography look simplicistic when read side by side with the complex discursive
maneuvers of the Aeneid. But narrative complexity and literary artice was hardly
important to the authors of Shtokus biography. Rather, they looked for strategies
that would explain the reception of Buddhism from the continent to Japan and
that would at the same time create a cultural and religious founding gure who
could strategically reverse the very cultural hierarchies that made the reception of
Buddhism in Japan possible.
To better understand the signicance and potential of the narrative device of
reincarnation in Japanese literary culture it might help to look beyond solemn
hagiographies to entertainment literature: vernacular tales and ction. In the
eleventh-century Tale of Middle Councilor Hamamatsu (Hamamatsu Chnagon
monogatari

) a Japanese ocial pays his late father a lial visit in
his newly reincarnated form as a young Chinese prince. Age and cultural hierarchies are reversed as Japan is shown as civilized, elaborate, complex and China as
unsophisticated, rough, and simple; and distinctions between China and Japan
are leveled out as Chinese women recite not just Sino-Japanese kanshi, but even
Japanese wakaa wonderful wishful reversal of the mainstream cultural ow
from China to Japan.47
Dierent as they might be, prophecy and reincarnation launch our protagonists on the paths to their national destiny in equal fashion. Now, what are the core
qualities that Aeneas and Shtoku bring to their respectivetasks?
4. City-Building
One of Aeneass most prominent character traits is his pietas, his sense of duty
and devotion. Although already ancient authors pointed out impious aspects of
Aeneass behavior, his sense of duty has become proverbial and has received abundant critical attention.48 Another prominent aspect of Aeneass prole is his skill
and obsessive desireto found and build cities. As we saw above, his achievement
as a city-builder is mentioned in the opening lines of the epic, although the Aeneid
ends before he gets the chance to found Lavinium. Scholars have connected the
motif of city-founding to legends surrounding the Great Greek colonization of the
Mediterranean from the eighth century bce onward, which, via the Homeric epic,
made it into the world of the Aeneid.
The anity between the genre of epic and cities is well knownalready
the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, which arguably belongs to a broader
Mediterranean epic tradition, focuses on one heroKing Gilgamesh of Uruk
and his city. And a number of heroes of the Trojan War are associated with the
foundation of cities in Italy:Diomedes from Argos later founded Arpi, Sipontum,
Canusium, Benevent, Venusia, Venagrum, and Aequum Tuticum; Philoctetes,
who had been abandoned on the island of Lemnos when his snake bite became
47
For a more detailed discussion of this tale see Chapter1 of Atsuko Sakakis groundbreaking book
Sakaki2006.
48
For classical sources critical of Aeneass piety see Chiappinelli 2007. On the signicance and
reception of Aeneass pietas see Garrison1992.
139
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pungent, but is rescued in the tenth year of the Trojan War and ultimately kills Paris,
supposedly founded Petelia, Krimisa, and Chone in southern Italy; Idomeneus,
leader of the Cretan contingent against Troy, settled Uria and Castrum Minervae
on the east coast of southern Italy, and Epeios, the architect of the wooden horse,
is associated with the foundation of Pisae in northern Etruria.49
The motif of the building and destruction of cities is prominent already in the
Homeric world, but it is particularly poignant in the Aeneid because it resonates so
obviously with Augustuss feverish building program that resulted in the emperors reported bragging that he found a city of bricks and left a city of marble. James
Morwood has listed parallels between descriptions of buildings in the Aeneid and
Augustuss building and restoration activities not just in Rome, but also in Cumae
and Actium.50 Reecting on the signicance of this motif, he argues that Virgil
intended to draw attention to three founders of Romes grandeur:Aeneas, founder
of the Roman race; Romulus, founder of Rome proper; and Augustus, founder
of imperial Rome. This is certainly indisputable, but we might want to press our
quest for understanding the signicance of the city-building motif in the Aeneid
even further and ask:What does it mean that the Augustan hero Aeneas in Virgils
epic is obsessed with city-building? That he marks out city walls, gives laws, and
founds institutions at any possible occasion and is not a poet or philosopher
Greek models of entitlement to social or political leadership? That he does not feature as a hero of writing, though perhaps not illiterate? That for the sophisticated
and highly literate Virgil and his audience the relative absence of references to
Aeneas as a reader or writer was unproblematic and acceptable?
Let us examine a few high points of Aeneass obsession with city-building
and see how the motif unfolds in the Aeneid before returning to these suggestive questions. Hardly has Aeneas left Troy and headed along the Asian coast
straight up north to Thrace with his household gods, father, son, and companions that he attempts to found his rst city. This area, formerly ruled by a
certain Lycurgus, was one of Troys allies, with allied household gods (socii
Penates): . . . Ilanded, set my rst walls / On the curving shore, and shaped a
name from mine, / Aeneas Townbut fate was hostile here.51 Here Aeneas
is not shy to tell Queen Dido, to whom he recounts his trials between the ight
from Troy to the arrival in Carthage, of his rst failed attempt at city-building,
although he knows at this point that fate had other things in store. Building the
walls, naming the cityalmost pretentiouslyafter himself all seems deceptively easy, but a terrifying omen soon presses Aeneas on to new shores:when
he tries to collect boughs to decorate the sacricial altar, dark blood oozes from
the roots of the brush and the ghost of a fellow Trojan, Polydorus, who was raised
in Thrace but murdered by the Thracians when the victorious Greek eet passed
by after the fall of Troy, appears from his grave mound and tells of his gruesome
49
Hillen 2003, 4649. In Fasti 4.6480 Ovid lists famous examples of various Greek foundations of
cities on Italian soil, to show that Italy was nothing but Greater Greece.
50
Morwood 1991, 21821.
51
Aeneid 3.1618. Ruden 2008,4849. . . . feror huc et litore curuo / moenia prima loco fatis ingressus
iniquis / Aeneadasque meo nomen de nomine ngo.
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fate. Terried, Aeneas convenes the rst symbolic meeting of a senate-like council of elders to take a collective decision in Roman Republican fashion:
. . . When Id stopped quaking,
I told our leadersrst of all my father
About the omen here and sought advice.
They said that we must sail with the southwind
And leave this evil land where guests were outraged.52
The rst attempt at founding a city is ill-fated, because the Thracian soil is cursed
with the bloody aftermath of the Trojan War, not ready to become the site of a
new foundation. The party continues its ight, nds temporary shelter in Delos,
and receives the ambiguous prophecy to seek out their ancient mother, which,
as we saw, sends the company erroneously o to Crete, which Anchises wrongly
identies as the homeland of the Trojan ancestor. They arrive swiftly in Crete and
Aeneas goes to work with great enthusiasm:
Greedy for work on yearned-for Pergama
A welcome nameI urged my race tolove
The homes and ll the citadel with rooftops.
The ships were on the shore and almostdry,
Marriage and farming occupied theyoung,
Laws and allotments me; when suddenly
That sky rained wretched, rotting sicknessonus.
The trees and elds grew only death that year.53
The second city founding is equally unsuccessful and partly complementary to
the rst. Aeneas has learnt that hastily drawing up city walls and naming a city
after himself (nomen de nomine) is too simple; he now chooses the cognomen of
his home city Troy:Pergamum, the name of the Trojan citadel. Also, Virgil makes
this not a city of the elitethe proto-senate featuring in his rst city-building
adventurebut of the people. Aeneas encourages agriculture and the building
of homes and hearths, and he promotes weddings, perhaps a hint at Augustuss
reforms of agriculture and marital laws. This time Aeneass attempt to build a
city is not haunted by historythe dark blood and ghost of Polydorusbut by
providencethe curse of a plague striking down from the sky. Aeneas understands this sign from the gods and the party hastily moveson.
As Aeneass ships get closer to Italy and he gradually understands the will of
the gods from further prophecies, his attempts at founding cities stop. Instead, we
see him observe and evaluate recently founded cities he encounters along the way
in preparation for his own future community.
52
Aeneid 3.13239. Ruden 2008,52. . . . postquam pavor ossa reliquit, / delectos populi ad proceres
primumque parentem / monstra deum refero et, quae sit sententia, posco. / omnibus idem animus, scelerata
excedere terra, / linqui pollutum hospitium et dare classibus Austros.
53
Aeneid 3.13239. Ruden 2008,52. ergo avidus muros optatae molior urbis / Pergameamque voco, et
laetam cognomine gentem / hortor amare focos arcemque attollere tectis. / iamque fere sicco subductae litore
puppes; / conubiis arvisque novis operata iuventus, / iura domosque dabam:subito cum tabida membris, /
corrupto caeli tractu, miserandaque venit / arboribusque satisque lues et letifer annus.
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Buthrotum of Epirus, on the northwestern coast of Greece, leaves Aeneas to wonder whether an imitation of Troybe it in name or realityis ultimately desirable.
He meets face to face with the tragic Trojan past, since the city is ruled by nobody
other than Andromache, wife of Hector, and Helenus, another of Priams sons and
thus her brother-in-law. Andromache is lucky to be married to a Trojan again, after
being forced into marriage with the Greek Neoptolemus (or Pyrrhus), the son of the
very Achilles who killed her husband. The visit at Buthrotum is lled with sweet
nostalgia, but also the bitter realization that this is in many ways a wrongTroy.
Now Iapproached a little Troy, atower
Shaped like the great one, and a dry stream, Xanthus.
I kissed the threshold of a ScaeanGate.
My Trojans too enjoyed their kindred city.54
The sight of scenic elements of Troy and the welcome by fellow survivors of the
Trojan War is deeply moving, but its queen has been raped by war and forcibly
married to the son of the very Greek hero who killed her husband. The city is
small, a simulated, fake miniature (simulata), a desperate attempt to mimic
what has been irretrievably lost: the mighty towers, the impressive Xanthus,
reduced here to an arid brook, the Scaean Gate. The second Troy that Aeneas is
seeking and Augustus will realize to its fullest will be the opposite:monumental
and unprecedented, not a nostalgic copy of a lost homeland built by war victims,
but a uniquely imposing new creation of victors.55
Although Buthrotum is a violated, reduced remnant of Troys former splendor,
it is here that Aeneas receives one of the longest and most explicitly reassuring
prophecies of his path ahead. Helenuss prophecy charts the crucial transition
from Greece and Epirus to Italy and Latium. Unlike previous prophecies that
had mystied Aeneass party with enigmatic innuendos, it is an explicit travel
description, spelling out the dangers along the way, such as hostile Greeks or the
monsters Scylla and Charybdis, and sending the hero o to the next checkpoint,
Cumaes Sibyl, for more detailed prophecies on the wars Aeneas will have to face
in Latium.
The departure from Epirus is a last, dramatic moment of sharing in his
Trojan past, before Aeneas moves on to become a more distinctly Italic hero.
Andromache and Aeneas part with direct comparisons of their fates and cities.
Andromache sees her dead son in Ascanius:You are the only image of Astyanax
/ Left to mewith his hands and his expressions / And eyes; hed be at boyhoods
end, like you.56 Just as the city is a simulated Troy, Ascanius is a living trace,
an imago, of Hectors son. In response, Aeneas points to their common fate and
54
Aeneid 3.34952. Ruden 2008,58. procedo et parvam Troiam simulataque magnis / Pergama et
arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum / adgnosco, Scaeaeque amplector limina portae. /nec non et Teucri socia
simul urbe fruuntur.
55
With the Aeneid Virgil linked the image of Buthrotum rmly to Troy, to the foundation history of
Rome, but also to Augustan Rome, as it featured as a counterpart to Augustuss city of Nicopolis near
Actium, the site of Octavians nal decisive victory. See Hansen2011.
56
Aeneid 3.48991. Ruden 2008,62. o mihi sola mei super Astyanactis imago. / sic oculos, sic ille manus,
sic ora ferebat; / et nunc aequali tecum pubesceret aevo.
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promises to unite his purpose of a second Troy and their purpose of a little Troy
intoone:
Be happy, since your destiny is nished.
We are called on to one and then another.
You have your peace:no ocean eld toplow,
No land to seek that falls away fromyou
Forever. Youve made images of Xanthus
And Troy with your own handswith betteromens,
I hope, than Troy, and out of reach of Greeks.
And if Iever come to Tibers country
And see the ramparts granted to my people,
Well make Epirus and its neighborItaly,
Which share a history and a foundertoo
Dardanusbrothers in their souls:wellmake
A single Troy. Our heirs must see to this.57
If Little Troy looked reduced upon arrival, it lls Aeneas with some envy upon
his departure. Fortuna peracta! Their destiny is already nished, they have their
images and replica (egies) of Troy in a more sheltered place than the original
Troy, while Aeneas has yet to realize his. The promised pact between little and
future second Troy will yield a single Troy joined by the same ancestor, by common fate, and pragmatic political alliance. Aeneas proves himself here as a builder
of city alliances; and the pact he seals with Andromache and his Trojan past allows
him to move on more swiftly to his Italic future.
This becomes clear with the next city-building project he encounters along
the way to Italy (and almost joins for good):Didos Carthage. Dido had ed the
Phoenician city of Tyrus and founded the city of Carthage after her oppressive
brother, king Pygmalion, killed her husband Sychaeus. When Aeneas and Achates
climb a steep hill to take a rst look at the city, Venus shrouds them in mist so that
nobody will become aware of the strangers presence. They see an enterprising
people devoted to building their city and its institutions:
Aeneas was amazed at those great structures
Where huts had been:the gates, paved roadsthe hubbub!
Some Tyrians feverishly laid out longwalls
Or rolled rocks in to raise the citadel;
Others chose sites and bordered them with trenches.
Laws, oces, a sacred senate formed.
A port was being dug, the high foundations
57
Aeneid 3.493505. Ruden 2008,6263. vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta / iam sua; nos alia ex
aliis in fata vocamur. / vobis parta quies; nullum maris aequor arandum, / arva neque Ausoniae semper
cedentia retro / quaerenda. egiem Xanthi Troiamque videtis, / quam vestrae fecere manus, melioribus,
opto, / auspiciis, et quae fuerit minus obvia Grais. / si quando Thybrim vicinaque Thybridis arva / intraro
gentique meae data moenia cernam, / cognatas urbes olim populosque propinquos, / Epiro Hesperiam,
quibus idem Dardanus auctor / atque idem casus, unam faciemus utramque / Troiam animis; maneat
nostros ea cura nepotes.
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Of a theater laid, great columns carved fromclis

To ornament the stage that would be built there...
What luck they havetheir walls grow high already!
Aeneas cried, his eyes on those great roofs.58
Again, Aeneas envies those who are further ahead in their destiny as city builders. Although this is a Phoenician city, its description sounds distinctively
Roman: Romes political institutions are in place and the great stone columns
for the theater remind us that the rst stone theaters in Rome were built during Virgils lifetime.59 Didos Carthage looks civilized and imperial compared to
Evanders rustic Pallanteum that Aeneas will encounter on the site of the future
Rome. Rather than only being counter-images of each other as is often pointed
out,60 Evanders huts on the Palatine and Didos city of stone and renement incidentally also represent two faces of Rome: the pristine simplicity and frugality
of old Rome with its values of restraint and the spectacular splendor that Rome
gained during the early empire.
Carthages imperial touch moves Aeneas clearly toward his Roman future.
True, the reliefs in the Juno temple located in the grove above the city, where
he meets Dido for the rst time, take Aeneas back to the Trojan War, but note
that unlike with Buthrotum, where Aeneas met some of the actual players of
the Trojan War, by the time he arrives in Carthage the Trojan War has become
a monument in stone and Andromaches husband Hector an epic hero in a
frieze. In this way the friezes depicting the Trojan War can also be read as a
step away from Aeneass past and a further, liberating step toward his Roman
destiny.
While in Carthage Aeneas is not just confused, as is so well-known, by his love
for the queen, but also by their contiguous fate as city-builders. (see Figure 4.1)
This common enterprise almost has him stay in Carthage for good. When
Aeneas sees Dido for the first time she is seated in front of the temple and
is busy with typical activities associated with city-building, giving decrees
and laws to her people (iura dabat legesque viris) (Aeneid 1.507); and the first
words the Trojans address to the queen describe her city-founding mission
in suggestively close terms to the prophecies guiding Aeneass destiny:Your
highness, we poor Trojans plead with you:/ Jove let you found a city and bring
justice / To lawless tribes . . . 61 Encouraged by this congeniality in fate, the
queen makes an intriguing oer. She will either help the Trojans reach their
58
Aeneid 1.42129 and 43738. Ruden 2008,1314. Miratur molem Aeneas, magalia quondam, / miratur
portas strepitumque et strata viarum. / Instant ardentes Tyrii, pars ducere muros, / molirique arcem
et manibus subvolvere saxa, / pars optare locum tecto et concludere sulco; / iura magistratusque legunt
sanctumque senatum; / hic portus alii eodiunt, hic alta theatri / fundamenta locant alii, immanisque
columnas / rupibus excidunt, scaenis decora apta futuris/ . . . / o fortunati, quorum iam moenia surgunt!
Aeneas ait et fastigia suspicit urbis.
59
Morwood points out that Hannibals Carthage was also governed by a senate and had articial
harbors, but he also emphasizes that Didos Carthage belongs very much to the Roman world of
Virgils day. Morwood 1991,213.
60
See for example Gransden 1976,123.
61
Aeneid 1.52224. Ruden 2008,16. o regina, novam cui condere Iuppiter urbem / iustitiaque dedit gentes
frenare superbas, / Troes te miseri. . ./ oramus.
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fi g ur e 4 . 1 Aeneas and the Building of Carthage

Vergilius Vaticanus, early 5th century. Vat.lat.3225.F 13recto Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana,Rome.
promised Hesperia and found their own city or she wants them to share in the
building of Carthage:
To Saturns elds, the great lands of theWest,
Or the kingdom of Acestes next to Eryx62,
Ill send you o secure and well-supplied.
Or would you settle here and share my kingdom?
This town Ifound is yours too. Land yourships.
To me, you will be equal to myown.63
For quite some time Aeneas seems to settle for joint city-building rather than
for his own destiny and the reader begins to worry how he will reach his telos after
62
The Sicilian Eryx, where the fellow Trojan Acestes rules, is the next port of call after Aeneas leaves
Carthage. This is where Aeneas founds a city to accommodate the frail and elderly Trojans and
celebrates the funeral games for Anchises.
63
Aeneid 1.56974. Ruden 2008,17. Seu vos Hesperiam magnam Saturniaque arva, / sive Erycis
nis regemque optatis Acesten, / auxilio tutos dimittam opibusque iuvabo. / voltis et his mecum
pariter considereregnis? / urbem quam statuo vestra est; subducite navis; / Tros Tyriusque mihi
nullodiscrimineagetur.
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all. Finally Mercury, sent by worrying Jove, nds Aeneas engaged in building towers and new houses. The divine messenger lashes out athim:
. . . You, so now youlay
foundation stones for the soaring walls of Carthage!
Building her gorgeous city, doting on yourwife.
Blind to your own realm, oblivious to yourfate!
The King of the Gods, whose power sways earth andsky
he is the one who sends me down from brilliant Olympus,
bearing commands for you through the racingwinds.
What are you plottingnow?
Wasting time in Libyawhat hope misleads youso?64
The most damning verbs Mercury hurls at Aeneass feet are cognates of struere, to
build, to plot. Why does he build up (exstruis) a beautiful city for his wife, and
what is he plotting (struis) now, wasting his time? The very quality of Aeneas,
city- and community-building, becomes a weakness if applied to the wrong place
and people.
The only city Aeneas is allowed to found with the blessings of the gods before
reaching Latium is Acesta (Segesta) in Sicily. There are practical reasons:While the
men celebrate the funeral games for Anchises Juno instigates the Trojan women
to burn the ships so that they can nally settle down and found a Trojan city.
Encouraged by the aged Nautes and an apparition of Anchises, Aeneas decides to
found a city of mercy where the elderly Trojans can nd peace, while he moves
on with the young and strong in his party to face the challenging wars that await
the Trojans in Latium. There are also religious reasons:since Anchises dies before
they reach Latium, Aeneas must leave his fathers tomb behind. In addition to
founding Acesta and entrusting it to Acestes, a fellow Trojan who had previously
settled in the area and hosts Aeneass party when they pass by, Aeneas establishes
a temple for his mother Venus and a sacred precinct next to his fathers tomb. He
assigns a priest to the tomb, so that Anchisess gravesite is not left by the wayside
but tended for by a community consisting of compatriots.
City-building is the most prominent activity Aeneas engages in wherever he
goes. At rst, he is eager to found his city on every occasion. Even as Aeneass
city-building instinct diminishes, as he understands better where exactly Jove
wants him to found his city, city-building stays the guiding thread that leads him
from one place to another, from his old home to his new home: whether he is
touched by Little Troy, contributes to Didos city building, or authorizes a city for
the elderly Trojans near the gravesite of his father, city-building stays a consistent
motif that allows the reader to see Aeneas change from a defeated Trojan prince
caught in a Greek world of traumatic memory into a victorious Roman hero who
comes to gradually understand, reach, and inhabit his newhome.
64
Aeneid 4.26571. . . . tu nunc Karthaginis altae / fundamenta locas pulchramque uxorius urbem /
exstruis? heu, regni rerumque oblite tuarum! / ipse deum tibi me claro demittit Olympo / regnator, caelum
et terras qui numine torquet; / ipse haec ferre iubet celeris mandata per auras. / quid struis? aut qua spe
Libycis teris otia terris? To better highlight my argument here Iuse Robert Fagless translation. Fagles
2006, 13637.
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5. Literacy
Aeneass tireless attempts at city-building constitute a central leitmotif of the Aeneid,
just as the theme of literacy dominates Prince Shtokus image.65 The prince is a
supreme reader and creator of signs, a master of literacy in the broadest sense.
Central to the understanding of signs in premodern East Asia was the concept
of pattern (Ch. wen, J. bun ), whose development in early Japan we explored
through key texts in Chapters2 and 3.Shtoku is expert in interpreting the patterns of heaven, earth, and mankind (Ch. tian di ren

), an all-encompassing
cosmic triad that ultimately went back to the Classic of Changes and cosmological
debates in Masters Texts of Chinas Warring States Period (403221 bce). As a
young boy he explains astronomical phenomena to the dumfounded emperor,
revealing his expertise in heavenly patterns (Shtoku taishi denryaku, 127). Later
he analyzes the occurrence of an earthquake based on Yin-Yang cosmology, evidence of his understanding of earthly patterns (131). He also shows himself an
expert physiognomist, reading the emperors body patterns.(129).
Shtokus most brilliant expertise, which is particularly highlighted in the
Abridged Biography but also characterizes him in almost all other sources, is in
the area of human pattern. This includes his precocious command of proper
ritual behavior:he amazes the court when he performs ritual postures with the
maturity of an adult at age four (126). It also encompasses his building of political
institutions:he reputedly was the rst to set up the system of twelve court ranks,
which became the backbone of the imperial court administration. But the heart
piece of his expertise lies in a narrower, most distinguished type of human pattern:textual expertise. Episodes showcasing various forms of his literacy dot the
biography. His career as a master of calligraphy starts at agefour:
In Autumn in the ninth month the prince said to his nurses, I should practice writing. Why dont you bring me brush and ink? The nurses consulted
the crown prince [Shtokus father, the later Emperor Ymei], who gave him
an ornate brush and a calligraphy manual. Every day he would practice a thousand characters. Three years later he studied the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi (ca.
303361) and had already attained its boniness and full body. He made his
brush ow like lightning, and people at the time found it truly extraordinary.

66

This time the princes age is fairly close to when Heian boys would have started
with basic calligraphy training and is not set at a supernaturally precocious age.
What is, however, supernatural is that the little prince requests calligraphy training, that there is no teacher beside him, and that within three years he masters
the style of Wang Xizhi, one of the most revered Chinese models for calligraphy
65
66
For further treatment of this theme see Lurie [Unpublished paper].

147
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fi g ur e 4 . 2 Prince Shtoku Lecturing on the Lions RoarSutra

Kamakura Period, thirteenth century. Hankyji, Hygo Prefecture, Japan Nara
National Museum.
in East Asia. The little prince knows what he needs to learn and merely requests
the resources necessary for his self-educationink, brush, and a calligraphy textbook with models for imitation. Here, as throughout the biography, there is a
conscious erasure of authority gures from whom Shtoku would have learnt,
further emphasizing his self-contained sagehood and the layers of Chinese karma
and superior learning the young prince has under his Japaneseskin.
Traditional wisdom regards Shtoku as the rst author in Japanese history.
He allegedly wrote a foundational text of statecraft, the so-called Seventeen Article
Code of Conduct (Jshichij kenp

), while serving as regent to his aunt,
Empress Suiko (r. 592628). It outlines rules for virtuous government ocials,
freely mixing concepts and phrases mainly from Confucian, Legalist, and Buddhist
texts. He is an expert interpreter of Buddhist sutraswe saw him above requesting
to examine the sutras a Japanese envoy brought from Paekche and deploying the
knowledge he derives from their systematic study to introduce new policies, such as
rules against killing. Even more importantly, he became famous as a sutra commentator and author of The Three Sutra Commentaries (Sangygisho

):one
on the Lotus sutra, most famous since it is a central text of Tendai Buddhism, one on
148
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fi g ur e 4 . 3 Commentary on the Lotus Sutra attributed to Prince Shtoku

Asuka Period, early seventh century. Imperial Household Agency,Tokyo.
the Lions Roar Sutra and one on the VimalakirtiSutra.67 In the Abridged Biography
Shtoku features repeatedly as careful reader of sutras, as lecturer about them at
court, and as author of these sutra commentaries.
The episode about the Lotus Sutra commentary in the Abridged Biography enables
the authors to show Shtoku as a facilitator of East Asian diplomacy, and to tell a
bold tale of cultural reversal of the customary ow from China to the cultural periphery, Japan. To briey sum up the chain of events:When collating a copy of the Lotus
Sutra the prince proclaims he needs the sutra copy he used in China when he was
Huisi, because all copies outside China are missing one particular character of the
text. Shtoku therefore sends a certain Ono no Imoko, whom we know as historical
gure and ambassador to China from other sourcesand instructs him to collect
the copy from his former life. Shtoku helps draft the diplomatic letter for the Sui
Emperoryet another specialized type of literacyand Imoko leaves. The following year, 608, Shtoku goes into a week-long trance in the Dream Hall (yumedono

) of his residence. He reemerges with a sutra copy that contains the missing
67
For an introduction to the issues surrounding the sutra commentaries see Nakamura 1992,
15792.
149
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character. Although Imoko had collected a sutra and other objects the prince owned
when he was Huisi from monks who still knew him on Mt. Heng, Shtoku knows
that the sutra he brought was the wrong one. After a second trip to China Imoko
reports that the monks at Mt. Heng saw the prince ying down from the sky in a
blue dragon chariot, anked by ve hundred servants, retrieving Huisis sutra copy
and leaving his own Lotus Sutra commentary in its stead. Shtoku revises his commentary based on Huisis copy and sends it o to Korea with a priest from Koguryo.
The princes text has now reached both China andKorea.
This fantastic tale of the ow of people and texts between Japan and the continent does not appear in previous accounts of Shtokus life and can be read as
an attempt to assert the independence of Japans religious authority from China.
By the time the Abridged Biography was written in the tenth century a Japanese
monk, Ensai
(d. 877), had indeed brought a manuscript of the Lotus Sutra

Commentary to a monastery on Mt. Tiantai.68 Whether Ensais act inspired the episode in the Abridged Biography or not is unclear, but Shtokus biography shares
with Ensai the desire to proudly oer the Chinese something that could testify to
Japans indigenous religious sophistication.
Considering that Shtoku was famous rst and foremost as the founder of
Buddhism in Japan it is no surprise that the central episode of literacy in the
Abridged Biography throws limelight on his activities as an exegete and commentator of Buddhist sutras. But there is yet another form of Shtokus expertise in
human pattern, and writing in particular, that the Abridged Biography highlights
in unusual ways:Shtoku as sponsor of court poetry banquets.
On the rst day of the snake, third month, the Prince addressed the throne, saying, Today is the day when the Tang emperor sponsors a drinking event. He
then summoned the court from the great ministers on down, and sponsored a
winding stream banquet. Inviting virtuous monks from vassal states and literati
from China and Paekche, he had them compose Chinese-style poems. He asked
the throne to bestow rewards based on distinction. In the fall, the ninth month,
he again set out a great banquet at the Princes palace. The emperor graced the
event with his presence. All the ministers presented poems of thisland.

69
Shtoku appears here as the founder of two cardinal annual festivals in spring
and autumn that included poetry banquets: the third day of the third month,
the so-called Winding Stream Banquet when courtiers oated cups with wine
down little articial stream sceneries, and the ninth day of the ninth month, the
Double Ninth Festival. Eighth-century portrayals of the prince did not mention
the princes interest in poetry and belles lettres: The Chronicles of Japan of 720
lacks any reference to it and the Preface to the Florilegium of Cherished Airs (Kaifs
68
69
Groner 2007,23.
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) of 751 even denied Shtoku the role of a supporter of belles lettres, claiming that he was busy promoting Buddhism and had no time for such trivial pursuits. But by the early tenth century, poetry events under imperial auspices had
become so central to the vision of the court and the emperors role in it that it was
certainly desirable to give the prince just one more, probably the most contemporary, edge of literacy that was added in the Heian Period.
5. Conclusion
In the end we are left with the fundamental question:Why was literacy and textual expertise so important for a Japanese national hero, but not as crucial for a
Roman one? Apparently there was little advantage in emphasizing Aeneass literacy and textual expertise, even for an Augustan author who inhabited and came
to dene the standards of highest literary culture, whereas it was highly protable
to make a Japanese gure of state foundation into a brilliant writing specialist.
From a Chinese perspective the technology of writing was not just a human skill
that enabled the beginning of history and civilization, but a cosmic manifestation
of nature as expressed through human pattern. Since the Han Dynasty (206
bce-220 ce), legends became popular that credited the legendary sage Fu Xi or
Cang Jiein some accounts the scribe of the Yellow Emperor who stands at the
beginning of Chinese history in Sima Qians Historical Recordswith the invention of writing. They emphasized that writing was actually not invented, but simply discovered in natural patterns such as the tracks of birds, and their imitation
adapted to human usage. As we saw in Chapter2, the earliest Japanese accounts
of the development of literature downplayed the importation of the technology of
writing from China by relying on Chinese arguments that naturalized writing
and claimed for Japan a literacy avant la lettre, or, as Icalled it, a hexagrammatic
literacy. In this view writing was cosmic and universal, not historically and culturally conditioned. It was thus a highly attractive attribute for anyone in East Asia
who wanted to claim universal politicalrule.
Beyond its appeal for state ideology, writing had a crucial practical function in
the Sinographic sphere that dened East Asian interstate politics. The use of
Chinese characters and protocol of Chinese administrative, religious, and literary
genres allowed the Japanese access to the continuous world of East Asian literacy
and culture. Oral communication between the elites of China, Japan, the various
Korean states, and Vietnam was typically impossible except for rather rare individuals who were multilingual and knew several vernaculars. Usually, people communicated through brush talk, writing their messages up in literary Chinese
and passing sheets of paper back and forth in the fashion of an oral conversation.
Lastly, literacy had intimate connections to the most important venues of social
and political success in early Japan. Literacy here does not mean the basic mastery
of a certain number of Chinese characters, which modern alphabetization campaigns have aimed for. In premodern East Asian elite culture it referred to the
mastery of a great variety of literacies, each dened by genre and social context.
Shtoku embodies the most central forms of literacy:the mastery of diplomatic
and administrative genres, philological expertise and Buddhist exegesis, composition
of poetry at court events, and, not to forget, expert calligraphy.
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In contrast, the writing system and its skillful manipulation was probably not
as dening a cultural concept for Greco-Roman elite culture. Unlike with China,
one of the few civilizations that invented script, Greek writing was borrowed from
the Phoenician script and was derivative. Partly for that reason, the Greeks were
self-conscious vis--vis their writing system, because they were acutely aware
of the radically dierent logographic writing systems of the older Egyptian and
Mesopotamian civilizations. This led to two contradictory perceptions of writing:on
the one hand authors such as Plato and Herodotus acknowledged that the most powerful type of writing was not to be found in alphabetic writing but in signs that were
mysteriously potent and sacred, in short:hieroglyphs. Deborah Steiner has even
argued that this ambivalent form of admiration helped the Greeks associate potent
writing and textuality with Oriental despotic regimesthus ultimately devaluing
logographic writingand asserting their own, phonographic literacy and an emphasis on the oral.70 Parallel to this ambivalent admiration there developed a critique of
writing, most famously articulated in Platos Phaedrus, which saw writing as the poor
trace of the fullness of the human voice and mind and celebrated the living word
over textuality, phonocentrism over graphocentrism. Denis Feeney wittily detects this
lingering Platonic prejudice in modern scholarship:
Much modern theory is saturated with nostalgia for some lost plenitude, a time
of grace and wholeness before the invasion of all kinds of serpents (language,
gender, class, culture, self-consciousness). Among Hellenists who are inclined
this way, the favoured candidate for serpent is writing, held to mark the fall from
fullness of presence, shared community and immediacy of communication, as an
oral-performance culture inexorably gives way to the dusty culture of the book.71
Without touching upon the vast theoretical debates around orality and phonocentrism that Platos legacy has triggered all the way up to postmodern theory-making, it is safe to say for our purposes here that a scribe and master of literacy would
have made for a less eective national hero in the Greco-Roman context. More
specically for the Aeneid, writing was no central attribute of our hero, because it
had little importance in its model text, the Homeric epic. Barry Powell reminds
us how strange, in fact, the absence of writing from Homers really is, although
we tend to take it for granted in both Homer and Virgil. As he points out, writing
and written documents play a key role in the literatures of Egypt and the Near East
and scribes and writers are often central protagonists. Unlike Feeneys Hellenists
who revel in the prelapsarian world of oral community before writing, Powell
sees the virtual absence of writing in the Homeric epic as a testimony to Hellenic
provincialismthe Greek epic poets almost as primitive in comparison to their
Near Eastern and Egyptian sophisticated, literate colleagues.72 Powells views on
Homer and literacy do certainly not represent mainstream opinion, but they are
worth considering, especially because they come from someone belonging to the
70
Steiner1994.
Feeney 2000,9.
Powell 2002, 810. It is interesting to note that, while Virgil respects this Homeric convention,
Naevius (ca. 270-201 bce) in his Punic War (Bellum Punicum) violates it by having Venus give books
of prophecy to Anchises. Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum,fr.4.
71
72
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small minority of classicists who read contemporary nonalphabetic languages and

literatures such as Egyptian and are able to place the Greek tradition in a broader
Mediterranean and Middle Eastern context.
Virgil inherited the oral framework of Greek epic and the aesthetics of presence, as Michle Lowrie has called it, which came with it. It starts already with
the rst verb in the Aeneid, Wars and a man Ising (cano). As Lowrie notes, this
might be the most famous speech act in Roman literature and yet, we know that
it is literally wrong and that Virgil wrote or dictated, but certainly did not sing.73
But Homer and early Greek epic poets did; and the archaic topic of Virgils epic
made song obviously into the preferred medium. Lowrie tries to rescue the very
few clues to writing in the Aeneid: prophecies uttered by the Parcae and Jove about
Aeneass and Romes fate are read from book rolls.74 Also, at Actium Aeneas has
a shield taken from the Greek warrior Abas nailed to the gates with an inscription
on it (Aeneid 3.28688). Thus, we know that he and his fellow men to whom the
inscription was addressed were probably not illiterate. Also, interestingly, Virgil
oralizes the one explicitly literate human gure that appears in the Aeneid:the
Sibyl of Cumae. When Helenus sends Aeneas o from Buthrotum to the Sibyl he
advises Aeneas to ask the Sibyl to sing (the epic canere) herself and not write her
oracle on leaves, as she usually does, because the wind might disturb the order
of the leaves and make the oracle illegible. Although this is for a practical reason
and the Sibyl usually gives her oracles in writing, which hints at a fairly literate
clientele, Virgil still has Helenus vote for the oral over the written word in this
particular situation. Note that, possibly in resonance with the Greeks ambivalent
admiration of oriental, sacred graphs, the Sibyl usually does not write, but commits her vision to words, to signs on leaves (foliisque notas et nomina mandat.
Aeneid 3.444). When Aeneas reaches Cumae he does as advised. Aeneas asks her
not to commit her songs to leaves but to chant them herself (foliis tantum ne
carmina manda . . . ipsa canas oro Aeneid 6.7476). Though Aeneas is not illiterate,
there lingers here nostalgia for some bygone preliterate world that gives power
to song, not text. These are the few eeting incidents in the Aeneid that relate to
literacy. When we compare them to the biography of the full-edged hero of literacy, Prince Shtoku, they are of minor relevance. It is no exaggeration to say that
Virgils epic has fundamentally an a-literatethough not illiterateframework.
Regardless of the salient dierences that helped Aeneas and Prince Shtoku
make Rome and early Japan, they are in the end both superhumans with their
own share of humanity:Dutiful Aeneas is humane in caring for his companions
and for the fate that awaits him in Latium. He is human in forsaking his home,
wife, lover, and his old identity for the sake of his new home, a new imperial,
Augustan Rome for which he vouches. His city-builder identity was a perfect allegory for Augustuss ideological and physical rebuilding of Rome after the destructive period of the civil wars and allows him to gradually transform himself from
a Trojan into a Roman hero. Brush-wielding Prince Shotoku, in turn, is humanist:his acquisition and display of ever new forms of textual mastery endowed him
with the most coveted ornaments of civilizing power in ancient EastAsia.
73
74
Lowrie 2009,18.
Ibid.,45.
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CHAPTER5
Rome and Kyoto

Capitals, Genres,Gender
Rome, smile on me! For you rises my opus! Citizens, grant me a fair omen, and
let a bird on the right augur success for my undertaking.
Roma, fave, tibi surgit opus; date candida, cives, omina; et inceptis dextera
cantetavis!
propertius elegies iv.1a. 6768
Topics for poetry:The Capital. Kudzu Vines. Water burr. Horses.Hail.

sei shnagon. the pillow book67
after looking at depictions of Prince Shtoku and Aeneas as icons of national

identication, for whom close ties to the Chinese and Greek world were claimed,
respectively, we turn now to the capital cities, Kyoto and Rome, where Shtokus
and Aeneass legacy were preserved and shaped. During Prince Shtokus time,
the Asuka Period (592710), the center of power on the Japanese archipelago
was in the vicinity of Asuka, about forty miles South of Kyoto, and Kyoto had to
wait another two centuries for its foundation; similarly, Aeneas only founded
Lavinium, a small city in Latium named after his second wife Lavinia, and the
foundation of Rome was left to his descendants. But without Kyoto and Rome,
Prince Shtoku and Aeneas would hardly have gained their characteristic historical signicance.
Kyoto and Rome can undoubtedly lay claim to belonging to the most successful
capital cities in Japanese and European history. Kyoto, founded as Heian-ky, the
Capital of Peace by Emperor Kanmu in 794, was the seat of the imperial court
from 794 to 1868, when the Meiji Emperor moved the capital to Tokyo. Japanese
history after the Heian Period (7941185) consisted of complex power arrangements between warrior families, who lay claim to political power, and the imperial court, which was respected as the nations ceremonial center. Political power
shifted back and forth between the eastern region of Kant and Kyoto in the West.
The Kamakura shoguns (11851333) ruled from Kamakura, south of todays Tokyo,
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the shoguns of the Muromachi Period (13331568) established themselves in Kyoto

and graced the city with lavish buildings and temples that continue to give the
city its historic face, and from 1600 to 1868 the Tokugawa shoguns chose Edo,
the later Tokyo, as their power base. Yet Kyoto remained the ceremonial center
throughout and, with the Meiji Emperor making a point of moving into the castle
of the former Tokugawa shoguns in Tokyo, thus marking the unication of political and ceremonial power in the gure of the emperor after centuries of dual rule,
Kyoto is still a symbolic capital of sorts. Political power has once again shifted to
Tokyo, where even the emperor resides now, but the Imperial Household Agency
administers Kyotos Imperial Palace, Villas, and Mausoleums, which are regularly
visited by the imperial family; and coronation ceremonies are to be held in Kyoto,
rather than Tokyo.1
Rome, by some accounts believed to have been founded in 753 bce, is still the
capital of two empires, a signicantly shrunken and a still expanding one:the successor state to the Roman Empire is now a state within the European Union, most
of whose territory it conquered at some point in antiquity; the Vatican City State
presides over the Roman Catholic souls of the world, whose numbers, though
decreasing back in Europe, are increasing in other parts of the world, such as
todays China. In antiquity Rome was the undisputed capital until the foundation of Constantinople in 330 ce and the division of the empire into Eastern and
Western parts following the death of Theodosius in 395 ce. From a rustic village
under Romulus in the eighth century, if we believe the record, it became the ruler
of the region of Latium and Central Italy by the fourth century bce, of all of Italy
by the third century bce, and gradually the overlord of the entire Mediterranean
after the second century bce. Despite the end of the Western Roman Empire in
476, when the last Roman Emperor with the ominous name Romulus Augustulus
was deposed by the northern tribesman Odoacer, Rome retained a great symbolic
signicance as the papal residence for the medieval emperors of the Holy Roman
Empire of the German Nation, until it reemerged after centuries of limited political importance as the national capital of a new reunited Italy in 1870. Unlike with
Kyoto, which has been reduced to a ceremonial and cultural capital of sorts, Rome
is again the capital and as the seat of the government of the state of Italy, condently puts on display the complex layers of her various splendid pasts.2
If we escape the vigilant eyes of the guardians of national cultural heritage, we
can touch the fragrant Japanese cypress pillars of the Phoenix Hall of the Bydin

, a Buddhist temple south of Kyoto and one of the very few buildings in
the former capital area that actually dates to the Heian Period (7941185) and has
not gone through cycles of destruction and complete rebuilding. We can run our
ngers over what is left of the Temple of Vesta on the Forum Romanum with even
1
The most multifaceted and lavish treatment of Kyoto in any Western language to date is Fiv 2008.
For a survey of Kyotos political and cultural history see Yoshikawa 2002 and Hall 1974, 338. For an
urban anthropology of Heian Kyoto see Nishiyama 2004. For concepts of the capital in early modern
and modern Japan see Smith 1978,4580.
2
A particularly vivid and perspicacious introduction to the history of Rome is Hibbert 1985. On the
development of ancient Rome see Stambaugh1988.
Rome and Kyoto:Capitals, Genres,Gender
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fi g ur e 5 . 1 The Cherry Tree in the Inner ImperialPalace

Woodblock print by Utagawa Yoshiiku (18331904) depicting the shoguns visit at the
imperial palace in 1863. Privateowner.
more impunity. Italian guards are by nature more insouciant in their protection
of the past. They can aord to do so, because the times have treated more kindly
Greco-Roman stone architecture than the wooden structures in China and Japan,
which burnt down at regular intervals due to re, warfare, or even arson, as it happened with one of the touristic highlights of Kyoto, the Golden Pavilion. Despite
this furtive attempt to be in touch with the past, old Kyoto and Ancient Rome
will always elude us. Not only because they have obviously lost any resemblance
with their faces in antiquity, but because they have so selectively preserved certain
aspects of the past, often through centuries of reimagination and reconstruction.
Cities, especially capital cities, the miniatures of the realms they preside over, are
sites of great value amplitude. Among worthless urban rubble of huts and stores,
shady streets and entertainment establishments that came and went with the
times, there were buildings and sites endowed with symbolic value that demanded
preservation and reconstruction at all costs, at least as long as the regimes and
ideologies that propagated their value lasted. These included obviously palaces of
rulers and buildings of political administration as well as temples and religious
sites, but also more curious elements of the cityscape.
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Quite possibly, no trees on the Japanese archipelago during the Heian Period
received as much veneration and care as the famous Tachibana Orange Tree (ukon
no tachibana

) and Cherry Tree (sakon no sakura

) right and left to
the entrance of the Shishinden

,the main ceremonial building of the Inner
Imperial Palace, where the emperor conducted government aairs. (see Figure 5.1)
In the early chronicles and in the Manysh, the Tachibana orange appears as
a miraculous golden fruit brought from the fabled Land of Everworld (tokoyo
no kuni

), realm of the immortals, at the behest of an early emperor
and it was possibly associated with Korea.3 Emperor Kanmu, the founder of
Heian-ky, had rst planted a Chinese plum tree, which half a century later
was replaced with a cherry tree, indicating an aesthetic shift away from Chinese
precedent to a tree that during the Heian Period became the most popular and
poetically most productive tree of Japan until this day.4 The trees were reverentially cared for by the Bodyguards of the Right and the Bodyguards of the Left,
respectively. They were subject to ocial imperial inspections, which would be
followed by a banquet that included the composition of poetry at imperial command.5 And they would be faithfully replanted each time the palace buildings
burnt down, like during the reigns of Emperors Murakami (r. 946967) and
Horikawa (r. 10861107).
In Rome, no hut was more precious than the Hut of Romulus (casa Romuli),
a structure on the Palatine, which according to Varro was revered by Romans at
least by the third century bce, and was located in the proximity of the Lupercal at
the foot of the Palatine, where the twins Romulus and Remus were presumed to
have beenfound. (see Figure 5.2)
It was close to the equally venerated cus ruminalis, the g tree where the basket carrying the baby boys Romulus and Remus came to rest, and where the wolf
suckled the twins and prepared Romulus for his fate of founding Rome. It gained
particular signicance when Augustus built his palace on the Palatine and reinforced the connection between Romulus and the emperor, the mythic past and the
political present. The hut was cared for by the pontices, the eminent high priests
in Rome, whose ancestor was nobody other than King Numa Pompilius, the successor of Romulus on the throne. Because its building material was closer to that
of Japanese palaces and not to the brick and marble of Augustan Rome, the hut
was repeatedly destroyed by res, as in 12 bce when it went up in ames because
crows had dropped burning meat from some altar re on its vulnerable straw
roong.6 Yet as a physical symbol of the mos maiorum, the uncorrupted ancient
Roman customs and values, it was faithfully rebuilt and was still carefully tended
to until at least the fourth century ce.7 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writing
3
For a panegyric poem on the Tachibana tree see tomo no Yakamochis Long Poem on the
Tachibana Tree; Manysh 18.411112. Cranston 1993, 46466.
4
For a now rather old treatment of the history of the cherry tree in Japan see Yamada 1942. Pages
2737 deal with the palace cherry tree in the Heian Period.
5
For a glimpse of such an event see chapter8Under the Cherry Blossoms (Hana no en ) of
the Tale ofGenji.
6
Cassius Dio Roman History 54.29.8.
7
For discussion of Romuluss hut in literary sources see Edwards 1996,3242.
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fi g ur e 5 . 2 Remains of the casa Romuli?

Excavations revealing eighth-century bce foundations of hut-like structures. Palatine,
Rome. Giovanni Lattanzi/ArchArt.
in Augustan Rome, informs us that the preservation of a consciously archaic simplicity and the faithfulness to its previous form was the goal of these repeated
restoration eorts:
it is preserved holy by those who have charge of these matters; they add nothing
to it to render it more stately, but if any part of it is injured, either by storms or by
the lapse of time, they repair the damage and restore the hut as nearly as possible
to its former condition.8

,
.
As an articial icon of programmatic immutability in the urban sea of change,

the hut obviously served the thirst for origins and necessary connections between
the coincidence of a city and the absoluteness of a state and the ideologies that
support it. Would Romuluss hut ever have been preserved if some menial Rufus
had lived there? Certainly not. But it probably looked just like the humble shack
of such a Rufus, even if its symbolic value was higher than almost all of the
marble and gold the city amassed during centuries of military expansion and
colonization.
Had the Roman Empire and the imperial cult continued until this day, the
hut might indeed have survived intact and there would have been no need for
8
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities 1.79.11. Cary 1937-50, vol. 1, 27071.
158
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rediscovering it. Modern excavations on the Palatine have produced a series of

hut-like structures datable to the eighth century and recently archeologists even
claimed to have located the Lupercal Cave, but scholarly opinion is divided on
how to relate the archeological artifacts to literary sources about the early mythical history of Rome and its foundation.9 Since the Japanese imperial institution
did survive, both the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the ocial residence of Emperor
Akihito, and the Imperial Palace in Kyoto still have their Tachibana and Cherry
Tree, although neither of them stands at the original site of the Heian Imperial
Palace.
The palace trees and Romuluss hut are just two pointed examples of the
exceptional value scale intrinsic to capitals, where huts and trees can simply
be huts and trees and disappear in a generation, or be the Hut and the Tree,
which need to be tended, restored, rebuilt, or replanted at all costs for centuries.
Kyoto and Rome are thus not just elusive for what has disappeared, but for what
has been preserved and how and why it has come down to us. Archeologists
of the past can help us imagine urban structures that have disappeared, but as
observers of the present we need to constantly remind ourselves that what we
cherish as old is just another face of the present, yet more complicated than an
outright modern structure, because it has accrued over time through the needs
of many presents in constant change that we might have no or little detailed
recordabout.
***
If we move from the physical cityscapes of capitals to their representation in literary texts, a whole new type of elusiveness comes into play. Cities are never really
represented in literary texts, but strangely refracted through the literary patterns
of the textual genres in which they appear. They have dierent faces depending
on whether they feature in historical annals or epic poetry, praise paeans or biting
satires, whether they are evil incarnate to the bucolic poet or the cosmopolitan
playground for the poet of love elegies.10
The goal of this chapter is to, rst, remind us how very unlike Kyoto and
Ancient Rome were as capital cities of the Heian Court and Augustan Empire,
respectively, and then to explore how these dierences informed the writing of a few authors during two high-points of their respective literary history:eleventh-century Japan and Augustan Rome. Kyoto and Rome were both
capitals of an empire, but of radically dierent sorts. They were both at the
center of their empires, surrounded by territories and a countryside, whose
image their writers shaped as a contrast to their capital experience, but the
link between capital and periphery was of dierent nature. They were both
at the center of the ideology and teleology that their political elites endowed
their states with, in the grander scheme of the legitimization of rule, but this
For an overview of archaeological traces of the origins of Rome see Cornell 1995,4880.
On images of Rome in literature see Edwards 1996 and Lowenstein 1965, 11023. On Rome as a
literary space see Woolf 2003, 20321. Nishimura Satomi discusses various aspects of Kyoto as a
literary space in Nishimura2005.
10
159
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teleology was at times, as I would like to show, inverse. And they were both
the center of an empire of letters, a magnet and subject for writers who were
born there or otherwise ocked to live there, but the genres through which
they refracted the capital, and even the gender of the authors who wrote most
extensively about it, diered.
This chapter aims to showcase those dierences along two vectors:the vector of time and the vector of romance. How did Heian authors and how did
Augustan authors locate the capitals they inhabited in time? With what kind
of teleologies, vectors of destiny, did they endow their cities and how did the
genres they chose inect their capital visions? Out of the many possible perspectives on this question Ichoose two cases of particularly strong contrast:We
will juxtapose visions of Rome in Virgils Aeneid with visions of the capital in
the Wakan reish

(Collection of Japanese and Chinese-style Poems
for Recitation), an eleventh-century anthology of Chinese, Sino-Japanese, and
Japanese poetry arranged by encyclopedic topics. In contrast to the powerful prospective teleology of Virgils Aeneid, which anticipates the splendor of Augustan
Rome during Virgils lifetime, the Wakan reish is suspended in a retrospective
aesthetic of abandoned earlier capitals and a oatingly timeless vision of the
Heian court painted with contrastive Chinese or Japanese brushstrokes where
deemed tting.
While the capital could be depicted with inverse time vectors, one prospective
and the other retrospective or atemporal, both mid-Heian Kyoto and rst-century
bce Rome were the sites of literary revolutions that were intricately connected
with the urban fabric and capital culture:a new culture of romance. In tenthand eleventh-century Kyoto the rise of vernacular prose literature culminated
in masterworks of amorous psychography such as Murasaki Shikibus Tale of
Genji. These new tales (monogatari

) and vernacular diaries (kana nikki

) were often written by women and expanded the vocabularies and
registers of romance far beyond what had ever been written in Sino-Japanese
genres, the so-far dominant modes of prose writing. Comparably, the rise of
Latin love elegy in rst-century bce Rome made passion and romance into a
proud way of life, which ew in the face of traditional Roman values of civic
duty and, though having roots in Greek elegiac poetry, resulted in a distinctively
Roman discourse of love. What were the rules and assumptions of this new,
vernacular we might say in both cases, game of love? Who were the players
and how do the capital sides collude in the love aairs of our writers? Again, to
show range rather than equitability, we will explore romance in the respective
capitals through two unlikely bedfellows:the stormy Propertius (ca. 4916 bce),
ever hopelessly in love and tormented by his Cynthia while later in his life also
singing the praises of the splendors of Rome, and Sei Shnagon (ca. 9661017),
the subdued yet saucy lady-in-waiting of an imperial consort and author of the
Pillow Book (Makura no sshi

). No topic in this book is more accessible to
our senses today than Kyoto and Rome. Let us hope that our authors can alleviate the sense of elusiveness of old Kyoto and Ancient Rome and bring us closer
to their ancient incarnations.
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1. Unequal Capitals
Both Japan and Augustan Rome were divinely legitimated empires that traced
their lineages to the sun goddess Amaterasu and Venus, respectively. But apart
from the divine sanctication of the imperial gure, which in Rome was preceded
by the early kings and the Roman Republic (50927 bce), little was similar in
these two empires of sorts. The portrayals of the early Roman kings in Livys
(5917 bce) history with their pioneering exploits of mythical proportions are not
unlike the larger-than-life images of the earliest Japanese emperors in the rst
Japanese court chronicles, the Record of Ancient Matters (Kojiki

, 712)and
the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki

, 720). But the Republic, which in
Livys history was the telos of Romes early development, the triumphant moment
when tyrannical kings were replaced with Republican institutions, had of course
no equivalent in Japan, where the eighth-century annalists, quite to the contrary,
were keen on constructing a continuous imperial line reaching back to the fabled
emperor Jinmu
(traditionally dated to 660585 bce), the rst human ruler, in
order to sanction the current emperors. Livy clearly idealized the early and middle
Republic, which despite its Republican institutionsthe magistrates such as the
consuls, praetors, aediles, and quaestors, the popular assemblies, and the most
powerful assembly, the Senatehad a strongly aristocratic character.
Yet the notion of a meritocratic bureaucracy, in which ocials qualify for
oce both through a prescribed cursus honorum, or rigid system of ranks, as well
as through their nancial and aristocratic ties, made the earlier Roman Republic
not completely unlike Nara and Heian Japan. The Japanese emperor was not an
absolutist ruler, but during the seventh century became the apex of the so-called
ritsury
system, or statutory law system. This was an intricate government form based on Chinese legal precedents, which was built on a hierarchical
rank system and an extensive imperial bureaucracy designed to apply and regulate the extensive civil and criminal law codes and the complex land allotment
and taxation system. Although originally introduced as a forceful measure for
political centralization during the seventh century, it also signicantly limited
the arbitrary power of the emperors. The architecture of the Imperial Palace
complex was a living testimony to this: actually only a small part of the complex, the Inner Palace (dairi

), was reserved for the emperor. The greater
part housed the ritsury bureaucracy: the Council of State (daijkan

),
the supreme organ of government comparable to the Senate, with its executive
organs, the Controllers Oce of the Right, the Lesser Counselors Oce, and
the Controllers Oce of the Left, and other subordinate organs of government
such as the Eight Ministries, which included the Central Aairs Ministry, the
Ministry of Ceremonial, the Civil Aairs Ministry, the Popular Aairs Ministry,
the War Ministry, the Punishments Ministry, the Treasury Ministry, and the
Imperial Household Ministry.
Right outside the main gate of the Imperial Palace was the State Academy
(daigakury

), the university that was established as part of the ritsury system and where the male elites were trained in the Confucian canonical texts on
161
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which the system was predicated. The power of the emperor declined considerably
since the tenth century, when one aristocratic family, the Fujiwara, managed to
overrule the ritsury system and forced the emperors to accept them as regents.
This position did not exist in the legal codes and it gave those Fujiwara who held it
de facto more power than the emperor; they enhanced their authority even more
by seeing that their daughters married into the imperial family and produced the
next generation of emperors.11
The Japanese government system of the Nara and Heian Periods was neither
that of the Roman Republic, nor that of the Roman Empire, but had something
of both.12 Yet the most signicant dierence between the two states, which gave
an incommensurate face to early Japan and Rome, was not their political system,
but Romes military expansion and the changes it brought to the economic networks and social fabric. Through centuries of its conquest of, rst, Latium, then
the Italic Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and good parts of Northern and Eastern
Europe, the Roman state became highly militarized and designed to conquer
and govern new territories. The military expansion had far-reaching eects on
the everyday life of the inhabitants of Rome and its surroundings.13 Peasants who
were drafted into the army for long wars returned home to nd their farms in
dereliction; many migrated to the city and became part of the rapidly growing
proletariat. In turn, urban elites grew rich from the conquests, appropriated the
public land (ager publicus), and founded large-scale estates for whose operation
they imported a large amount of slaves. The conquests changed the cityscape:gorgeous statues looted from the conquest of Hellenistic territories were inserted
into Romes proud faades,14 lavish building programs altered the face of the city
and supplied it with large-scale theaters for gladiatorial games and popular performances, and luxury goods came across continents to Rome and were sold to its
wealthy citizens. The huge social disparities that resulted from the conquests led
to bloody clashes:rst in social wars, then slave revolts, and, by the rst century
bce, civilwars.
Against the backdrop of the vertiginous scale of territorial, economic, and social
changes that Rome underwent during its centuries of rapid military expansion,
early Japan appears remarkably stable. It experienced a process of consolidation
rather than expansion:until the twentieth century Japan did not reach beyond its
archipelago and already by the fth century ce chieftains in the Yamato region,
in todays Nara Prefecture, had expanded their rule to northern Kyushu in the
southwest and the Kanto plain in the northeast. By the early eighth century the
11
For a portrayal of the geographical, social, and economic structure of Heian-Period Kyoto see
McCullough 1999 and Hrail 1995. For a concise sketch of the rank system and the bureaucracy of
Heian Japan see McCullough and McCullough 1980, 789831. Morris 1969 is a vivid portrayal of the
Heian world and its capital.
12
As a multiethnic empire China makes obviously for a better comparison with Rome. See the
pioneering comparative volume Scheidel2009.
13
For a systematic overview of Roman economic history see Scheidel, Morris and Saller 2008. For
a compilation of primary sources relating to nature, motivations, and consequences of Roman
imperialism see Champion 2004. For a new view of urbanization and Roman expansion that
emphasizes the importance of urban, not rural, slavery see Jongman2003.
14
Edwards2003b.
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archipelago was under the imperial rule through a divine ruler who acted within
the statutory government system and stable capital cities based on Chinese precedent were founded, replacing the previous custom to move the court upon the
death of an emperor. There were a number of rebellions, internal challenges to
power, and still, during the Heian Period, the Northern Frontier against the Emishi
tribes
(also called Ezo or Ebisu
) was occasionally unruly and the target of
expensive military campaigns.15 But in comparison to Rome, it is fair to say that the
Heian capital was literally a Capital of Peace:all of the War Ministrys subordinate
bureaus, which in Tang China had signicant importance, were gradually abolished through the course of the Heian Period and were left to perform decorative
tasks such as choosing the contestants for archery competitions at court.16 If belligerence continued in Heian Japan, it was embodied in the erce struggle over the
imperial lineage, enhanced by polygyny, which had the empress, various consorts,
and intimates of the emperor compete in the promotion of their sons to the role of
Crown Prince. But there were few social upheavals, and city growth due to migration processes were nothing to speak of in comparison to Rome. In fact, between
the ninth and the eleventh centuries Japans population was actually shrinking due
to famine and epidemics.17 Economically, although the city planners of Kyoto had
reserved large spaces in the southern part of the city east and west of the central
city axis, Suzaku Avenue, for the Eastern and Western Market, Kyotos markets
were modest and never played a signicant role in the states economy, in contrast
to the thriving markets of the same name in the Tang capital of Changan where
exotic goods poured in from the Eurasian continent via the Silk Road. Japan was
part of an overseas commercial network and traded for spices, medicines, cosmetics, gold, iron, fur, and other goods with the Korean state of Silla and with the state
of Parhae in modern Manchuria, in addition to the strictly regimented tribute trade
with the Chinese Empire. But overseas trade must be called insignicant compared
to the overseas economy of the Roman Empire.
In addition to the political, economic, and social dierences between the
stable insular state of Japan and the conquest empire of Rome, the origin,
topography, and ideological signicance of their respective capitals diered
considerably. First, while Kyoto was at its foundation just one of many previous capitals, Rome was the sole capital until the division of the empire in
late Antiquity. Livy reports that Servius Tullius (578534 bce), the sixth king of
Rome, persuaded the leaders of surrounding Latin city-states to jointly build a
temple to Diana of Ephesus in Rome, and he interprets this joint devotional act
of polities with which Rome had for long been at war as a sign that they nally
recognized Rome as a capital of sorts (ea erat confessio caput rerum Romam esse,
Livy I.45.3). But this time was buried in Romes mythic past, preceding Fabius
Pictor, the earliest historian of Rome and its right to rule, by more than three
centuries. Thus, for as long as Romans could think, or at least write about
15
For a timeline of military events on the northern frontier see Takahashi 1963, 300314.
McCullough and McCullough 1980,810.
17
For the social and economic history of Heian Japan see Farris 2009; on overseas trade see Batten
2006 and von Verschuer2006.
16
163
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themselves, Rome was simply the one and only capital. Even if its role as capital was at times disputedsuch as when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 and
triggered a debate over abandoning the city and relocating to Veii or when
Augustus contemplated moving the capital to the eastRome remained capital
and it had a halo of destiny on itsside.
At its founding Kyoto had no trappings of sacred fate, rst of all, because there
had been many capitals preceding it. Richard A.Ponsonby-Fane (18781937), private secretary to the British Crown in various colonies of the Empire and the rst
Western scholar to write with extensive devotion on the city of Kyoto and previous
Japanese capitals, counts forty-three changes of capitals before the foundation of
Nara in 710 recorded in the early chronicles.18 Most of them were in the Yamato
region, the power base of the Kinai rulers, and were probably not much more than
a modest residence of the ruling sovereign. Early Japanese capitals shifted with each
new court after the death of the sovereign, probably as an act of avoiding pollution,
until the foundation of the rst stable capital at Heij, Nara, in 710. Practices rooted
in similar ideas still survive in the regular rebuilding and ritual moving of major
Shinto sanctuaries, such as the Ise Shrines, devoted to the sun goddess Amaterasu
and the imperial line, whose twenty-year turn to move has come again in2013.
The second reason for Kyotos lack of charismatic destiny at its foundation
was that it was not just one of many preceding capital cities, but was the sixth
capital built on Chinese precedent. Just during the century leading up to Kyotos
foundation, six new capitals were built:Fujiwara (694710), Nara (710740 and
745784), Kuni (74044), Naniwa (74445), Nagaoka (78494), and, nally
Kyoto (7941868).19 It was just one more of those Japanese capitals that imitated
the basic pattern of Chinese capitals:a large rectangle with the imperial palace
complex looming over the city from the north, a central avenue leading up to it,
anked by four large avenues that cut across the city from north to south, which
produced a generic grid by intersecting with nine large streets running from east
to west, complete with the Eastern and Western Market areas in the South of
the city.20 (see Figure 5.3) Fujiwara was probably based on the Luoyang of the Wei
Dynasty (220265), where the palace complex was located right at the heart of
the city, but the generic checkerboard structure of the cityscape was the same.21
In contrast, Rome was topographically one of its kind. It was not modeled
on Hellenic precedents of urban planningif we accept Romes traditional
date of foundation during the eighth century, Greece itself was on the threshold
of history and had hardly any urban centers that could have served as such a
model, letalone urban centers with seven hills. Although later many features
18
Ponsonby-Fane 1979, 9.Although dated due to the wealth of archeological discoveries over the last
decades Wheatley and See 1978 is still valuable as an account of the early court-capitals.
19
For the political context of the moves to Fujiwara and to the short-lived Kuni and Nagaoka see
Piggott 1997, chapters5 and 7, respectively.
20
For a basic plan of a Chinese-style capital city see van Goethem 2008, 140. For early Chinese cities
see Lewis 2006, Chapter3Cities and Capitals. For the Chinese imperial tradition of city building
see Steinhardt1990.
21
For maps of the Chinese-style capitals and their relation to Chinese precedent see Fiv 2008,
4051. See also Sat 1974 and, for Nara, the images and maps in Tsuboi and Tanaka1991.
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fi g ur e 5 . 3 Map of Heian-periodKyoto
of Hellenistic cities, such as public colonnades and temples, theaters, libraries,

gymnasia, and baths became part of the Roman cityscape, serving the needs of
an increasingly Hellenized Roman population, they were tted into the Roman
landscape of the Seven Hills, rather than reproducing any part of a model
Hellenistic city. Romes Seven Hills on the Tiber made it unique and already
in its earliest period of existence embodied her ethnic and social diversity:Livy
reports that in the latter half of the seventh century bce the Palatine was the
quarter of the original Romans, the Capitol and Citadel were inhabited by the
Sabines, while the Albans occupied the Caelian Hill. Since the Aventine was
apparently still available, Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome, settled there
the remainders of the population of the Latin cities of Politorium, Tellenae, and
Ficana, after inicting a crushing defeat, thereby following the custom of the
early kings, who enlarged the Roman state by making her enemies to citizens
(secutusque morem regum priorum, qui rem Romanam auxerant hostibus in civitatem accipiendis, Livy I.33.1).
165
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At that point in history there was apparently still ample free space and, even
though conquered, one could be graced with some private ethnic space of ones
own in the unique cityscape of emerging Rome.22 As the proverb goes, Rome was
not built in one day, nor by the at of one particular sovereign as was Kyoto, but
her gradual growth and construction was a layered mirror of Roman imperial
building. (see Figure 5.4)
From Livys description of the early settlings of Romes Seven Hills, it was
ideologically not far to Ovids famous dictum, which he wrote in his Fasti, a ritual
calendar of the city and declaration of love to the home he was about to lose when
sent into exile shortly after:The extent of the City of Rome and the world is one
(Romanae spatium est urbis et orbis idem). (Fasti, II.684)
This would have been the most striking dierence had somebody from Heian
Kyoto visited Augustan Rome:the overwhelming presence of foreigners, the prominence of public spaces, and the wealth of mass public events. Rome was a miniature of its empire; each of its conquered people was represented in the capital. And
for them, as for Romans, spectacles that put in scene the mightiness of Romes
empire shaped daily life. There was the Forum, place of grand speeches, court
litigations, state sacrices, and site where generals, dictators, and emperors celebrated their victories over distant territories in magnicent triumphs, and paraded
their war spoils, along with foreign chieftains, strange animals, and other booty.
Then there were the theaters and the game arenas, the public baths, and public
lectures. Women were moving freely and parading their new fashionsincluding
Asian silkon the street instead of hiding in carriages or behind screens and sliding doors as in Kyoto. Life in Heian Japan was lived with much less public visibility.
The highly ocial annual festivals and regular court events were mostly limited to
courtiers. And there was nothing comparable to the great number of publicly sponsored theater performances and sumptuous games for people of all classes. We
do have a vivid description of a popular festival in Fujiwara no Akihiras

(9891066) New Monkey Music (Shin sarugaku ki

), which parades pantomimes, exorcists, magicians, dancing midgets, and acrobats in front of the readers
eye. But the text is unique and idiosyncratic, and ironically the real sight of the popular festival are not even the performers, but the spectators, namely the outrageous
family of an Outer Palace Guard with his three wives and numerous descendants,
who are described in sometimes bawdy detail. Noh Theater only developed much
later in the fourteenth century. Thus Kyoto remained something of an aristocratic
palace city in contrast to the cosmopolitan public stage that wasRome.
Third, and most importantly, Kyoto could not have had a halo of destiny
because it was founded in the broad daylight of history at the end of the century
that saw the rst explosion of literacy and the compilation of two large chronicles,
poetry anthologies, local gazetteers, and other sophisticated literary works. It was
not just founded in a literate era, but its very foundation was eected through
writing, namely par ordre de Kanmu. After nding a tting construction site, he
22
For surveys of the development of the city of Rome see Cornell 1995, and John E.Stambaugh
1988,185.
23
Nihon kiryaku:Enryaku 13/10/28. Kuroita 1965b,268.
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fi g ur e 5 . 4 Imaginary Plan ofRome

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (17201778). From Le antichit romane. Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge.
announced the moving of the capital from Nagaoka to Kyoto on the twenty-eighth
day of the tenth month of794:
The location of the Grand Palace of Kadono has beautiful mountains and rivers and is convenient in terms of trac for people from all four directions of
Ourrealm.

23
We have detailed descriptions of two years of moving preparations following

the selection of the new construction site in the Kadono district of Yamashiro
Province. Agreat amount of laborers and lumber had to be secured, ancestors and
deities had to be informed of the move, and peasants were compensated for giving
up their land for the construction of the new capital. It was an enormous nancial
feat, especially because a mere decade before the foundation of Heian-ky Kanmu
had moved from Nara to the new capital of Nagaoka. One can fathom the struggles
from the fact that Kanmu repeatedly issued edicts to ensure tax payments, which
were crucial to the nancing of the expensive new capital project. He forbade, for
example, people changing their names as an attempt to evade taxes.24
Despite the wealth of detail about the construction of the new capital and
Emperor Kanmus keen interest in the process, the sources are close to silent
about the reasons for the move.25 The Kyoto basin certainly provided an excellent
plane on which to project a Chinese-style capital layout and was favorable from the
perspective of geomancy. Other motives might have included that the Hata family,
a powerful immigrant clan from the Korean Peninsula with its home base in the
northwest of modern Kyoto, cut funds for the Nagaoka capital construction and
tried, successfully, to draw Kanmu to their own power base, the future Heian-ky.
There was also the assassination of Fujiwara no Tanetsugu, the mastermind of the
move to Nagaoka, and a series of natural disasters, which were associated with the
vengeful ghost of Kanmus brother Prince Sawara, who had died in exile, making
Nagaoka into an inauspicious capitalsite.
Moreover, Nagaoka was by nature an inconvenient site, because it was prone to
ooding. The main question remains why Kanmu left Nara in the rst place, and
among the various geographical, economical, political, and religious reasons that
have been advanced over the years a particularly convincing reason was Kanmus
family background and his vision of his imperial mission. Kanmu came from the
imperial line of Emperor Tenji, which was pushed aside by his brother Tenmu
in 672. Tenmus lineage remained in power for a century until the inthronization of Kanmus father, and Kanmu carefully positioned his reign as a new beginning. Appealing to Chinese calendrical numerology, he chose the year 784 as the
moment to leave the Nara area, power base of the Tenmu lineage, for sites that
were close to his forefather Tenjis short-lived capital of mi (67072) on the Biwa
Lake:Nagaoka and then Heianky.
24
van Goethem 2008,253.

On the building process and theories about reasons behind the capital move see van Goethem
2008, 21358 and Toby1985.
26
Nihon kiryaku:Enryaku 13/11/8, Kuroita 1965b,268.
25
10/12/2013 8:03:28 PM
Kyoto was founded in the daylight of history and therefore brought into being
by physical as well as textual manipulations. On the eighth day of the eleventh
month of 794 Kanmu baptized his new city in anedict:
This province, enclosed by mountains and streams like with collar and sash,
makes a natural citadel. Because of this fortunate conguration, we should
devise a new name for it:let Yamashiro Province (Province Behind the
Mountains) become Yamashiro Province (Province of the Mountain
Citadel). Moreover, ocks of people and singers of praise songs raise their different voices in identical words, naming this the Capital of Peace (Heianky).

26
As in other edicts, Kanmu praises the new capital for its natural blessings and
calls on his subjects to spread word of the auspicious new name. More subtly, he
changes the spelling of the province into which he inserted his new capital:the
name Yamashiro is unchanged, but the modestly descriptive character behind
(shiro ) the mountains is exchanged with the politically pregnant character citadel (shiro ) in the mountains. With the words of Kanmus edict, the provincial
countryside was now ready to take control and make history.
Although Kyoto did not start out with a halo of destiny, it quickly acquired one as
the indispensable stage on which the rened Heian court culture unfolded. When
at the end of the Heian Period in 1180 Kiyomori of the powerful warrior clan of the
Taira forced the emperor to leave Kyoto and set up a new capital at his own power
base in Fukuhara, the eminent courtier Fujiwara no Kanezane warned that Emperor
Kanmu had founded this capital after careful consideration of its strategic location
and with the divine protection from deities on its East and West borders. He emphasized that this went beyond the fathoming of men and that a move of the capital
would endanger the survival of the state because Kyoto was an area that heaven
had made such (

).27 Due to unrest and protests from various fronts,
Kiyomori had to give up Fukuhara and return the court to Kyoto after six months.
Kyotos cityscape had become symbolic for the aristocracy and could not easily have
been done without. One of the reasons given for the move back to Kyoto was that
there was apparently no building at Fukuhara that could possibly have accommodated the intricate imperial New Years ceremony.28 Afew years later, Minamoto no
Yoritomo and his warriors vanquished the Taira clan and set up Japans rst shogunal government in Kamakura, but the imperial court and capital remained inKyoto.
2. Unequal Time Vectors

Given the dierent nature of the Roman and Japanese Empires and their respective capitals, how did writers of the two traditions relate to their capitals and to
their capitals place in the empire? Historians and poets of the Augustan Period
27
Nishimura 2005,23.
Hall 1974,23.
29
Polybius. Histories I.5-6. Translation from Paton 19221927,35.
28
169
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had the fantastic challenge to narrate and explain the meteoric rise of Rome from
Romuluss hut to Augustuss marble city, gleaming of gold and imperial pride. The
citys extraordinary success in conquering a world is the starting point for the great
histories of Rome. Already Polybius (ca. 199120 bce), himself a Greek who, captured in the process of Roman conquests, passed much of his life in Rome, took the
Roman miracle as the point of departure for his Histories. He thought that understanding its origins and causes was one of the most exciting goals of his enterprise:
For who is so worthless or indolent as not to wish to know by what means and
under what system of polity the Romans in less than fty-three years have succeeded in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government
a thing unique in history? Or who again is there so passionately devoted to other
spectacles or studies as to regard anything as of greater moment than the acquisition of this knowledge?

, ,

.29
About a century later Livy, the major Latin historian of Rome, writes his monumental history of the city from its foundation to Livys own time in 142 books,
because he feels the need to record the Roman miracle in detail. He shudders at
the greatness of this task in the preface to his monumental work, on which he
worked for over forty years, on this awe-inspiringnote:
I am not quite sure whether I will create anything worthy of the labor, when
Iwrite up the aairs of the Roman people since the beginnings of the city . . . Yet,
it will bring satisfaction to commemorate the deeds of the worlds foremost people with all my might; and if among such a crowd of writers my fame should
remain obscure, Iwill console myself with the excellence and greatness of those
whose renown will overshadowmine.
Facturnusne operae pretium sim, si a primordio urbis res populi Romani perscriperim,
nec satis scio [ . . . ] iuvabit tamen rerum gestarum memoriae principis terrarum populi
pro virili parte et ipsum consuluisse; et si in tanta scriptorum turba mea fama in
obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine eorum me qui nomini ocient meo consoler.30
Romes splendor is such that it threatens to obscure those who ock to write about
it and compete in fame when expounding the citys prominence. Historians
explanations of the Roman miracle varied, but two concepts seemed particularly
attractive to make sense of it:did Rome succeed because of some divine destiny or
because of its military and political worth? Plutarch (ca. 45125), who as a Greek
30
31
Livy, praef. 13. The translation ismine.

On this point see Swain1989.
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under Roman imperial rule was particularly sensitized to the question of Romes
imperial success, discusses the two poles of divine fortune (tych) or virtue (aret) in
his On the Fortune of the Romans (Peri ts Rhmain tychs) as explanatory options.
Although the essay clearly bears traces of a well-formed exercise in epideictic rhetoric, it is not a half-hearted product of rhetorical pedagogy designed to teach the art
of praise speeches, but discusses issues that deeply preoccupied Plutarch throughout his life.31 Plutarch gives credit both to divine destiny as well as to Roman genius,
but seems at times more strongly attracted to destiny. Regardless of where, exactly,
we would pin him down if we could, his essay exemplies that the Roman miracle
demanded an explanation and that writing Romes history was always caught up in
the question of how to explain Romes meteoric rise to greatness.
Romes greatness allowed its writers a degree of bold imagination and sweeping adventurousness that no Heian Japanese, speaking from the Heian capital out
to the world, would ever have had cause to dream of. The expanses of the Roman
realm guaranteed its writers a globe-spanning audience of most various couleurs:
The Colchian will know me, and the Dacian who pretends not to fear a cohort
of Marians, the Geloni at the ends of the earth, the learned Iberian, the
Rhne-swigger.
me Colchus et qui dissimulate metum / Marsae cohortis Dacus et ultimi / noscent
Geloni, me peritus / discet Hiber Rhodanique potor.32
Horace cannot complain about a lack of audience and uses this publicity map of
future readership to explain why he does not want a tomb or elaborate funeral
dirges. The circulation of his books will grant him the immortality that funeral
rites cannot bestow. The imperial gesture with which Horace sings the praise of
his own poetry is made tolerable, even delightfully comic, thanks to the image he
uses to describe the spread of his fame:he himself, as a tuneful bird (canorus
ales), carries his song into the world. He foresees his imminent transformation into
the bird because of the wrinkly skin at his feet, his swan-white snowy hair, and the
soft plumage that slowly takes the better of his arms and shoulders. His physical
demise allows his fame to y out into the world and his name to become immortal.
The greatness of the Roman Empire allowed Roman authors not just to imagine
the spread of their works through the world. It gave them the opportunity to radically
change their lifestyle and develop imperial tastes themselves. Horace chides a certain Iccius for marching out into the empire for new exploits, which are, deplorably
enough, nanced by the pawning of his precious copies of philosophical literature:
Iccius, are you now envying the rich treasures of Arabia, preparing a ruthless
campaign against kings of Sheba never before subdued, and weaving chains
for the fearsome Mede? What barbarian virgin will be your slave, mourning her
bridegroom killed in battle? What boy of the court brought up to stretch Chinese
arrows on the bow of his fathers will take his place by your cup with rich oils on
32
33
Horace, Odes II.20.1720. Translation from West 1997,74.

Horace, Ode I.29. West 1997,49.
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his hair? Who would deny that down-rushing rivers can ow up steep mountains
and Tiber reverse his course when you are in such haste to exchange for Spanish
breastplates the Socratic school and the works of great Panaetius collected from
all over the worldyou promised better things.
Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides / gazis, et acrem militiam paras / non ante devictis
Sabaeae / regibus, horribilique Medo / nectis catenas? quae tibi virginum / sponso
necato barbara serviet? / puer quis ex aula capillis / ad cyathum statuetur unctis, /
doctus sagittas tendere Sericas / arcu paterno? quis neget arduis / pronos relabi posse
rivos / montibus et Tiberim reverti, / cum tu coemptos undique nobilis / libros Panaeti
Socraticam et domum / mutare loricis Hiberis, / pollicitus meliora, tendis?33
Horace does seem scandalized by Icciuss decision to change his life from that of
a scholar to that of an Oriental conqueror. He had promise of better things. It is
particularly outrageous that he bought Spanish corselets at the price of his hardearned collection of the works of Panaetius (185109 bce), head of the Stoa in
Athens and, more importantly, crucial transmitter of Greek philosophy to Rome
through his connection with the Scipionic circle and his life spent in Rome. Yet
Horace does not refrain from imagining the pleasures awaiting Iccius in his new
life:Arabian treasures, conquered Sabaean kings, young cup-bearers of Oriental
royal blood, or barbarian maidens. Horace, who throughout his Odes is a master
in handling hyperbolic imperial praise with an elegant iridescence of grandeur
and irony, both scolds and relishes Icciuss thirst for private imperial exploits;
and in this ode both Rome and Iccius have supernatural powers:wholl deny
that in the city on the Tiber simply anything is possible, including the reversal of
the Tibers ow? That Horace clamorously shatters the commonsensical adynaton, rhetorical trope of the impossible, expresses not just Horaces exasperation
at Icciuss change of lifestyle. Rather, it makes Iccius into a grand and scandalous
example of the power of Romes imperialism and the imperial fantasies that it
allowed its subjects, to the point of bending the laws of nature.
It is this grandeur, Romes splendid pretentiousness, which underlies in particular Augustan literature in all its elevating, satirical, or scandalizing modes.
This grandeur became destiny, an inescapable telos. Virgils Aeneid shows that the
eects of this telos could become all the more miraculous the further back in time
one applied it. The thrust of the telos allowed for inversions of most fundamental
categories of common sense, such as temporal succession. In the Homeric epic
Achilles received his famous shield with scenes of the cosmos and societies in
peace and war, and Ulysses visited the underworld, receiving a prophecy about his
personal further destiny and meeting the mythical heroes of the past, including
his dead companions from the Trojan war; but when Aeneas receives his shield
and visits the realm of the dead in the Aeneid, the Homeric tropes become lled
with majestic sketches of Romes rise and the contemporary Augustan empire. As
we discussed in the previous chapter from a dierent angle, the Aeneid lives o
the moments of prophecy and proleptic imagination. When Aeneas goes to the
34
Virgil. Aeneid VI.756759. Ruden 2008,139.
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underworld, he witnesses the historical procession of Romes future, announced

by the shadow of his late father Anchises:
Come, hear your destiny, and the futureglory
Of the stock of Dardanus, all the descendants
That we will have from the Italianrace
Great souls who will be born into our family.
Nunc age, Dardaniam prolem quae deinde sequatur / gloria, qui maneant Itala
de gente nepotes, / inlustris animas nostrumque in nomen ituras, / expediam
dictis, et te tua fata docebo.34
As if learning a teachable skill or craft, Anchises teaches his son the art of destiny (tua fata docebo) or, to translate it more soberly, informs him of his destiny. Starting with Aeneass Italic son Silvius, by his new wife Lavinia, Aeneass
male descendants down to Romulus pass before his eyes. With Romulus, capital and the world, urbs and orbis, join fates, as they do with Augustus, to whom
Anchises jumps directly before even telling of the kings succeeding Romulus,
who will appear later in the procession. At last Anchises entrusts his son with the
ultimate lesson about the duties resulting from Romesfate:
Others, Iknow, will beat out softer-breathing
Bronze shapes, or draw from marble livingfaces,
Excel in pleading cases, chart the skyspaths,
Predict the rising of the constellations.
But Romans, dont forget that world dominion
Is your great craft:peace, and then peaceful customs;
Sparing the conquered, striking down the haughty.
Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera / (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore
voltus, / orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus / describent radio et surgentia
sidera dicent:/ tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (hae tibi erunt
artes), pacique imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.35
Not the Greek art of sculpture or of rhetoric, and not the Chaldean art of astronomy is Roman destiny, but Romes is the art of destiny, of the destiny to rule and
to dispense peace and war justly. For plot purposes, Aeneas exits the underworld
through a gate of sleep that ensures that he forgets the great destiny laid out for
Rome summoned up by his late father. Thus he has not to either worry over the
challenges that await him on the shores of Latium or grow lazy, because he knows
that destiny to spectacular fame is self-fullling anyway. As discussed in the preceding chapter, when he examines the depictions of Roman history on the shield
that his mother Venus has made for him he has a sense of prescient pleasure, but
no foreknowledge. Just as he had carried his hearth gods, the Penates, and his
father Anchises on his arms out of the burning Troy, he now carries, unknowingly,
35
36
Virgil. Aeneid VI. 847853. Ruden 2008,141.

Morris 1994,21.
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the load of Romes future on the shield. It is these clever gestures of prescience
and proleptic history that run through Augustan literature, even though in different modes and moods, and if we have grown up with the Aeneid, the temporal
adynata, impossibilities, which are the springs for Aeneass launching of Roman
destiny, do not even appear distorted or hyperbolic.
In remarkable contrast, Kyoto had no such spectacular historical legacy calling for philosophical reection or historical explanation. Not that the Heian elite
lacked pride in Kyoto. The city became the incarnation of all things rened and
was at the center of virtually all literary activity. By the tenth century it became the
splendid stage for the new vernacular tale literature (monogatari

) such as the
Tale of Genji, written by the court lady Murasaki no Shikibu in the early eleventh
century. As Ivan Morris has aptly observed:
In the Tale of Genji, then, the nature of Heian Kyo and its environs is no mere
static background which the author introduces for decorative eect. It is a vital
force, exerting a constant inuence on the characters; and it is in terms of this
nature that Prince Genji and the others perceive and express their emotions.36
The city and its locales do weave themselves subtly into the fabric of all Heian literature, but in less ostentatious and triumphant ways.37 There are no histories like
Polybiuss or Livys, which proclaim and try to understand the Roman miracle, nor
is there a Virgilian epic, which gives us Aeneass story as the Augustan synecdoche
for that miracle.
More signicantly, there are also no signs of grandiose rhapsodies (fu
) that
would have lavished their hyperbolic praises on the Japanese capital as we know
from the Chinese tradition. Not coincidentally, the genre of rhapsodies originally
thrived during Chinas rst grand empire during the Han Dynasty, when parts of
Korea, Vietnam, and Central Asia were conquered by Chinese armies. The imperial expansion triggered disputes over the ethics of empire:should one indulge
the pleasures of exotic luxury goods and grandiose displays of imperial violence
in war or hunt, or should one, to the contrary, practice the virtues of restraint,
civil decorum, and intellectual sublimation? These questions cut right through
the narrative nerves of the subgenre of rhapsodies on capital cities. Because the
capital rhapsodies made up the opening books of the Wenxuan
(Selections

of Rened Literature), a sixth-century Chinese anthology that was a central text
in Heian elite education, Heian writers were thoroughly familiar with this subgenre. They could have had every reason to write capital rhapsodies on their capital, precisely because they knew well that rhapsodies stood at the top of the genre
hierarchy in Chinese canonical anthologies such as the Wenxuan. Yet no capital
rhapsodies survive from Japan and the rhapsody genre, in particular in its long
and exuberant Han Dynasty style, never quite took o inJapan.
There are, however, powerful praise poems of emperors, their palaces, and
short-lived capitals in the vernacular anthology Manysh, compiled about 150years
before the foundation of Kyoto and thus containing poems from a period with
37
38
On Kyoto as backdrop in Heian literature see Shinma 2009, 31734.

On the praise poems on Yoshino Palace see Denecke 2005, 16589.
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frequent capital changes between the mid-seventh to the mid-eighth centuries.

There are famous praise poems by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

(ca.-708),
composed when he followed in the retinue Empress Jit on her excursions to the
Detached Palace at Yoshino outside the capital. Although Hitomaro and other
court poets who praise Yoshino after him evoke the imposing mountains and clear
waters of Yoshino and its palace, these praises serve to set o the towering imperial
gure and are thus praises of imperial power rather than of the palace, which was
anyway only a place to accommodate the emperors during occasional visits.38 The
series of poems composed on Kuni, capital between 740 and 744,39 and Naniwa,
capital between 74445,40 are tragic traces of capitals that had but the shortest fate
in Japanese history. Because of the frequent change of capitals and the abandonment of previous capital sites, capital lamentsa genre that had precedents in
China, but, more importantly, was highly relevant to the early Japanese history of
shifting capitalsbecame almost more frequent than capital praises. In Manysh
VI.105961 Kuni is lamented again as soon as its founding had been praised, and
Manysh VI.104450 laments the abandonment ofNara.
But the most poignant capital lament poem is arguably Hitomaros dirge on
the capital of mi, the site on the shores of the Biwa Lake far away from the previous capital in Asuka that Emperor Tenji, the forefather of Kanmu, the founder
of Kyoto, had chosen as his capital from 667 to 671. When Hitomaro passed the
ruins of mi perhaps sometime in the early eighth century, mi was a political problem, because it symbolized the war of 672 during which the brother of
Emperor Tenji seized the throne for his lineage and his wife, Empress Jit, during
whose reign Hitomaro was writing. mi was therefore a doubly sadplace.

A poem composed by Kakinomoto no Hitomaro on passing the ruined
capitalofmi

From that hallowedage

When the monarch Suzerain of theSun
Reigned at Kashihara
By Unebi, called the Jewel-sashMount
Each and everygod
Made manifest in the world ofmen,
One by one in evergreen
Succession like a line of hemlocktrees,
Ruled underheaven
All this realm with uncontestedsway:
Yet from sky-seen
Yamato did one depart
Whatever may havebeen
The secret of his sage intent
39
Manysh VI.105058.
Manysh VI.1062-64. The date of the poems is unclear.
41
Manyshu I:2931. Translation from Cranston 1993, 19092.
40
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And passedacross
The slopes of blue-earth Nara Mountain
To a land,remote
Beyond the distant heaven,
The landofmi
Where water dashes on therocks,
To the palace oftsu
In Sasanami of the gently lappingwaves;
And there, as it issaid,
He ruled this realm beneath thesky:
That sovereigngod,
August ancestraldeity
His great palacestood
Upon this spot, as Ihaveheard;
Its mightyhalls
Rose here, so all mensay;
Where now spring grasses
Choke the earth in their rife growth,
And mists riseup
To hide the dazzling springtimesun;
Now Iview thissite
Where once the mighty palacestood,
And it is sad tosee.
Envoypoems:

Still Cape Karastands

In Shiga of the gently lappingwaves,
Changeless from ofold;
But it will wait in vaintosee
The courtiers boats rowback.
***

Broad the watersstand

By Shiga of the gently lappingwaves:
The lake isstill;
But how can it ever meetagain
The men of longago.41
The drama in this poem unfolds along the axes of continuity and change:there
is the continuity of the imperial lineage spanning from the rst human emperor
Jinmu and his palace in Kashiwara, to Emperor Tenji. Beautiful pillow words,
poetic epithets, spell out that continuity:there is sacred Mount Unebi, the Jewelsash Mount and the many generations that have ruled the empire (the realm
beneath the sky) from the area of sky-seen Yamato. Yet Tenji breaks this heavenly
42
On this term and the distinctive features couplet culture took in Japan see Denecke2007.
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harmony on earth and decides to leave for a barbarous place:mi. It is inaccessiblebeyond the green hills of Naraand unruly; it sports racing rocks and lapping waves and is, most unfortunately, beyond the distant heaven. Hitomaro
seeks continuity: he gazes sadly at the palace ruins and is puzzled over Tenjis
motives for breaking heavenly harmony. In fresh contrast to the dereliction of the
place, which after all had only served as capital for a few years, it is spring grass
and spring haze that makes it delicately rustic, infuses it with a touch of temporary
reawakening. The two envoys play a yet more paradoxical game with continuity
and change:Hitomaro clings to constant elements in the landscape:Shiga and
the rm Kara Cape. The still waters of the lake serve as pivot for our perception
of time. On the one hand their stillness suggests serene constancy; on the other
hand the lack of movement in the water proves that those courtiers boats of the
mi court are long gone and that the ow of time has stopped. After Hitomaros
empathy with Emperor Tenjis decision to move away from heaven-close Yamato,
in the last envoy stanza he bemoans that he cannot meet people of thepast.
By the early eleventh century Kyoto and the concept of a stable capital were
more than two centuries old. Kyoto ourished under the regency of Fujiwara no
Michinaga, whose glorious era was immortalized in the Tale of Flowering Fortunes
(Eiga monogatari

), a memoir written by a woman who had been in the
service of his principal wife. The cultural condence in the artistic, aesthetic, and
literary renement that Heian court society had produced radiates from works
of that period. If in Rome the new cultural condence of the Augustan Period
inspired writers to take on the language of legends and engage historical subjects of mythic proportions, Japanese writers of the eleventh century convey their
pride in more subdued colors. They resort to complex schemes of balancing
Chinese-style and indigenous artistic repertoires, public and private registers, and
female and male domains.
One of the most dazzling and inuential literary balancing acts of the eleventh
century is the Collection of Japanese and Chinese Texts for Recitation (Wakan reish

, hereafter Collection), an anthology of literary excerpts culled from
texts by Chinese and Japanese authors compiled by Fujiwara no Kint (9661041)
around 1013. The very form of this text makes it incomparable to any Greek or
Latin text that has come down to us. It consists of some 800 short excerpts from
poems and various prose genres organized by 125 topics in two books. The topics in the rst book go through the various phases of the four seasons and the
relevant seasonal changes such as festivals, customs, plants, or animals related
to them. The second book treats topics selected from nature and human society,
ranging from meteorology, botany, and zoology, to phenomena of human society
such as letters and wine, houses and temples, emperors and ministers, friends
and courtesans, to more abstract themes such as the impermanence of all things
or the ultimate closure to the collection, the topic of whiteness. Although many
topical categories are borrowed from Chinese encyclopedias, Kint added some of
his own and arranged them in unique fashion.
Producing anthologies of beautiful couplets culled from poems was a practice
that Heian Japanese took over from China and enthusiastically applied to their
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own literary culture. It was part of what Ihave elsewhere called couplet culture,
an aesthetic vision that prized the appreciation of poetic fragments.42 But it was
completely unprecedented to cull passages from texts written between the Western
Han Dynasty (206 bce to 20 ce) and Kints own time, systematically juxtaposing
snippets from Chinese, Chinese-style, and Japanese texts, and unleashing resonances, which were not intended by their original authors.43
The eect was stunning: Within a century of its publication commentaries
started to be written on the Collection and it quickly became a schoolbook that
could teach the array of skills necessary for courtiers all at once:it became a primer
for poetry chanting and calligraphy practice, and was committed to memory as a
sort of dictionary for literary references, anecdotes and elegant diction. In this way
it became an internalized poetic mind-map of common topics and examples of
their most successful treatment and also served as a schoolbook to learn writing
Topic Poetry (kudaishi

), the mainstream genre male courtiers used in
Heian Japan when composing poetry at ocial occasions.44
Although abandoned capitals were a thing of the past for Kint and his contemporaries living during the highpoint of Kyotos court culture, Kint includes
the topic Old Capitals rather than introducing a topic category for the current
capital. The retrospective teleology of appreciating things ruinous and abandoned
instead of boasting the splendors of the present is elevated in Kints anthology
from historical necessity of Hitomaros time in the seventh century (and certainly
a literary topos well know from China) to aesthetic principle three centuries later.
The topic Old Capitals is embedded in a sequence of related topics. It is prefaced
by eleven passages selected for the topic Water; with Fishermen appended, and
seven passages on Forbidden City/Imperial Palace, and is followed by ten passages on Old Palaces; with Derelict Residences appended as well as fourteen
excerpts on the topic Immortals, with Daoists and Hermits appended.
What at rst look seems like an absurdist list straight out of Borgess Chinese
encyclopedia has nevertheless a clear architecture of contrasts and superpositions:the Palace, the seat of the court in the Forbidden City is at the center
of the realm, and overlaps with other realms such as the world of humble shermen and clear streams, the quietist double of the court, where already Chinese
sage rulers of high antiquity found wisdom and discovered brilliant advisors of
uncorrupted simplicity. Another metaphoric double of the court was the world
of Immortals, which furnished fancy metaphors for the hyperbolic description of
the court in this world. That both the realm of the Fishermen near the water and
the world of the Immortals in the mountains were farthest away froma far cry
indeedand identical with the court made them attractive as powerful metaphorical spaces, where their tensions could have full play. In between the court and the
immortals two topics are set in the past:Old Capitals, and Old Palaces. They
give the current palaces and its two alternative incarnations temporaldepth.
43
On Kints creation of new meanings through juxtaposition of excerpts from dierent literary
traditions see Tanaka 2006,126.
44
Sat 2006,3548.
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The Collection is unique and idiosyncratic, but it is worthwhile looking carefully

at the sequence related to Old Capitals for various reasons. First, because it is
certainly the most complex poetic geography of the capital in any Heian text; second, because the mind-map it provided of the capital as a poetic topic was highly
inuential and inscribed itself into the memory and imagination of generations of
readers from the Late Heian Period through the Meiji Period; and third, because it
is a literary experiment with such a unique structure that it is interesting to think
about it as an experiment in cognitive poetics. Certainly, choosing a poetry anthology that, like a kaleidoscope of glass pieces, shakes up excerpts from three dierent literary canons and arranges them in ultimately subtle and overdetermined
topical order, is likely to produce an image of the Japanese capital that will be
blinded by its own iridescence and indeterminacy of meaning. Yet an exploration
of the image of the capital in the Collection allows us to analyze the workings of an
aesthetic device that was not used in the Greco-Roman literary tradition.45
To my knowledge there are no poetic anthologies that juxtapose Greek and
Latin poetry and rearrange them in a topical framework into a larger narrative:in
the Collection the base text are the raw poetic excerpts, whose juxtaposition creates a supernarrative, which, in turn, is topped by the hypernarrative of the topic
headings. Literary anthologies with sophisticated topical arrangements, one of the
master formats of Chinese and especially Japanese literary traditions, were not
a prominent medium of Hellenistic and Roman literary cultures and there are
no indications that there was a multiliterate anthology including various genres
of Greek and Latin poetry.46 The closest literary phenomenon to the Collection is
perhaps the Cento, patchwork poems made of literal allusions mostly to Homer
and later Virgil that became popular in Hellenistic and Latin literature since the
second century ce. But, unlike the Collection, they are most often parodical, only
focus on the most canonical texts, are not inserted into yet another framing layer
of topical headings, and are monolingual, that is, either in Greek or inLatin.
Let us now start to sketch the outlines of the capital location in the Collection by
diving into the Water; with Fishermen Appended chapter, a companion chapter
both to the preceding Mountain and Water and the actual Forbidden City that
follows it. Within the short span of a dozen poetic excerpts it moves the reader
45
Despite its great importance, there is little scholarship in Western languages on the Collection. The
front matter of Chavess and Rimers translation (see below) gives insight into the Chinese poets
included in the anthology, about the chanting practices and the Collections connection to the art of
calligraphy. See also Smits 2000a and Smits 2000b and reections on the Collection in part2 of
LaMarre2000.
46
There is of course the Anthology, the Anthologia Palatina, a codex containing ca. 3,700 epigrams,
compiled around 930. But it is, as the denite article indicates, an exceptional collection; and it
only contains Greek poems, is limited to the brief genre of epigrams (comparable in that aspect to
the brief genres of Chinese and Japanese poetry), and is arranged by functional subgenres, such as
dedicatory, funerary, protreptic, sympotic, and pederastic epigrams, an arrangement designed to
satisfy practical purposes rather than to produce a complex hypernarrative that is equally text as the
literal text itself. We know of a number of Hellenistic anthologies of epigrams and epigrammatists,
but the closest analogy to the carefully constructed Japanese poetry anthologies is Meleagers Garland
(Stephanos), compiled around the rst century bce, which arranged epigrams from the entire
Greek tradition under topical headings and juxtaposed originals and imitations. Anthologization
has received accordingly little scholarly attention in Classics. For a book-length study of Hellenistic
epigram anthologies, including Meleagers, see Gutzwiller1998.
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from the limits of the known world to the imperial palace in Kyoto. This telescopic sweep opens in the farthest spot of the imagination with a couplet from
a Rhapsody on daybreak by the Chinese poet Xie Guan

, which evokes a
river near a fortied town somewhere on Chinas unruly northern frontier. From
this generic vignette of Chinese frontier lore the readers eye is led through the
highlights of Chinese lake landscapes in the next three couplets, all from dierent poems by the Chinese poet Bo Juyi (772846):dozing mandarin ducks at the
Kunming lake in Yunnan (no. 511), the rainy season at the Qingcao Lake at the
southern tip of the much-sung Dongting Lake in Hunan (no.512), and travel spots
near a lake associated with the legendary ancient southern state of Yue in the
vicinity of Suzhou (no.513). So far the reader has traveled from Chinas bleak and
belligerent Northern frontier to its Southeastern cultural centers pregnant with
poetic imagination. The next couplet, a sort of watershed between the rst four
Chinese and the following four Sino-Japanese excerpts of the chapter, enables the
transition from China to Japan and from the Chinese periphery to the Japanese
capital. The pivotal couplet is extracted from a poem by the Chinese poet Du
Xunhe

(846907), and eects the transition thanks to the intervention of
the generic sherman, a venerable topic of the Chinese tradition and an attractive
gure of a life led with simple wisdom in undisturbed serenity:

With your gourd ladle, you pour yourself some
spring-ripenedwine

And with your tiny ski you oat along with the
night-swellingtides.
wakan reish no.51447
Du Xunhes vision of the insouciant shermans life in this couplet seems to

go along with the typical sherman clich: a life with good wine in free oat.
However, for those who know the entire poem, it is actually a double reversal of
the sherman clich and is for good reason entitled Sent to a sherman in jest
(zeng xi yujia

). In the closing couplet he laughs at the sherman, who
has apparently complained about his hard life, and claims that his own life as an
ocial in the capital of Changan in the midst of political strive is much harder.
Du Xunhe has apparently met a real-life sherman, who looks strikingly dierent from the serene sherman ideal in the imagination of urban poets. Thus Du
Xunhe reverses expectations on both sides:his poem tells the urbanized poets that
the sherman believes his life is much tougher than they ever imagined, and he
lectures the sherman and his family that they have no idea how hard capital city
life really is. Du Xunhes ironic couplet joins the fate of the periphery to the world
of the capital, so that the reader glides plausibly into the next excerpt, a glimpse of
autumn at the residence of the retired Emperor Uda (r. 887897) inKyoto:
47
My translations rely on Sugano Hiroyuki 1999, Wakan reish SNKBZ 19. Ihave also consulted
sone Shsukes Shinch Nihon koten shsei edition and Kawaguchi Hisaos NKBT edition. For a
basic complete English translation see J. Thomas Rimer, and Jonathan Chaves, Japanese and Chinese
Poems to Sing:the Wakan reish (NewYork:Columbia University Press,1997).
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This abode for retirementto whom
does it belong? To the former Lord of the
Purple ImperialHall.

The autumn waterswhere can we
see them? In his new residence, the
Vermilion Bird Courtyard.
wakan reishno.515
The eminent scholar-ocial and poet Sugawara no Michizane, to whose exile

poetry the next chapter of this book is devoted, wrote these lines for the annual
autumn festival on the ninth day of the ninth month in 897 in praise of the retired
emperors new residence to which his majesty had recently moved. The following
three Sino-Japanese excerpts do not explicitly refer to locations in the Japanese
capital, and no.517, by the Japanese poet e no Asatsuna (886957), describes
a beach scene with gulls and geese from a poem written about the Chinese
Dongting Lake. This couplet returns us to the southern Chinese lake highlights
of the opening passages, though we look through the eyes of a Japanese poet who
never visited China, but gazed poetically at Dongting Lake across the far ocean.
Nevertheless, Michizanes four lines had brought the topic Water; with Fishermen
appended rmly into the heart of the Japanese capital. Kints emphatic placement of Michizanes excerpt on the imperial residence in the middle of the chapter is echoed in the closing poem, a waka by Sone no Yoshitada

(.980s)

that evokes another emperors residence:

The headwaters
are clearly determined:
in your augustera
it is the secondtime
that you reside near the clear waters of the HorikawaRiver.
wakan reishno.520
The Imperial Palace burnt down twice during the reign of Emperor Eny (959
991; r.969984), and as a make-shift solution the emperor moved twice into the
Horikawa Residence of the powerful regent Fujiwara no Kanemichi

(925977) near the Horikawa River in the middle of the city. This plain waka
celebrates the second move of the emperor. With this closing poem, the chapter,
which had started on the Chinese Northern Frontier, is brought to conclusion
back home on the imperial stage of the Japanese capital. And it adds another polar
element, by ending the chapter on Water with two palace res, balancing it
with the Chinese-style cosmology of the Five Elements.
Yoshitadas waka leads us from a makeshift palace right into the next chapter
on the actual Forbidden City/Imperial Palace. As if wanting to add splendor
to the Japanese Imperial Palace, which was signicantly more modest than its
Chinese models, Kint borrows the imposing scenery of the Tang capital from
Chinese poems in the opening excerpts of the chapter: In a couplet by Bo Juyi
there is Phoenix Pond close to his oce building in the Central Secretariat,
in charge among other things of drafting the emperors edicts, and the Dragon
Tower-Terrace anking the gate of the majestic Weiyang Palace from the Han
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Dynasty (no.521), and excerpt no.523 evokes Han-yuan Hall, the state ceremonial
hall in the most important of the various Tang Palaces, the Daming Palace. With
a perimeter of 7, 7 kilometers the Daming Palace alone occupied a space that was
about a third of the entire city of Kyoto. Kints opening selections evoke imperial
grandeur through the image of Chinas majestic palaces.
Yet the remainder of the chapter does not follow up on this invitation to imperial praise clad in Chinese-style grandeur. The Japanese emperor does not once
gure in the chapter until the very last poem, and there he appears only indirectly. Instead, the Forbidden City chapter shows the Imperial Palace as the
everyday workplace of the ocial bureaucracy. The excerpt sequence of nos. 523,
524, and 525 is associated with the painful rite de passage of the later Chinese
bureaucracy, the civil service examination. Although Japans State Academy
(daigakury

) was founded in the late seventh century on the model of
medieval Chinese educational institutions, the exam system never developed
into an important tool of career advancement as it did since the Tang or particularly the Song Dynasty (9601279) in China. Birth into the powerful family lineages was the major factor in ones social standing in Heian Japan, yet the exams
remained important for the hereditary scholarly families such as the Sugawara,
the e, and a branch of the Fujiwara clans; and scholarly success did ensure a
good reputation and opportunities to be invited to high-prole court events to
compose poetry on the occasion.
The exam-related sequence combines a hodge-podge of genres, juxtaposing a
couplet from a Chinese poem with four lines from an actual examination essay
written by a Japanese scholar and a slightly satirical, anonymous Japanese linked
poem (renku
). The Chinese couplet (no.523)shows successful exam candidates in the palace and with no.524 we see from a Japanese candidate what kind
of procedure the Chinese candidates might just have gone through:the examination essay by Miyako no Yoshika
, a prominent scholar-ocial and older

contemporary of Michizanes, is devoted to the topic of time measurement and
water clocks:

The rooster man cries out at dawn:its sound
startles the enlightened ruler from hissleep.

M
aster Fus bell rings in the evening: its echo
penetrates all hearing beneath the darksky.
wakan reishno.524
Miyako no Yoshika eagerly shows o his bookish knowledge: both the rooster
man and Master Fus bell appear in the Rituals of the Zhou (Zhou li

), one
of the Chinese Confucian Classics. The rooster man was a time-keeping ocial
in the Heian Palace, who ensured in particular on days of important ceremonial
functions that the court would be on its feet in time. Master Fus bell, however,
was the stu for antiquarians:the Rituals mention that a certain person named Fu
invented this particular type of time-keeping bell, but it does not seem to have been
part of the Heian Palace accessories. Kint interrupts Miyakos erudite lecture on
the chronometric soundscape of the Heian Palace with a light linked verse, a
popular poetic game where people would take turns writing lines or couplets:
182
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T

he ocials, o to morning court when the sun is
already high up in the sky, have their caps pulling from
their foreheads!

The night patrol, on the heavy sand, busily scu theirclogs.

wakan reishno.525
This vignette satirizes the busybody ocials scurrying about on the palace
grounds and adds comic touches to the palace scenery: apparently the rooster
man has not done his job, since the gentlemen are late on their feet for morning court. The awkwardness of their caps pulling from the heads in haste in the
morning matches their clumsy clogs at night, certainly not an image that would
inspire condence in these ocials at any other time during the day, either. At
this moment of comic relief Kint abruptly turns away from the serious business
of the civil servants and inserts a seething vernacular love poem, with little more
than a metaphorical excuse:

48
Although itisnot
like the re of theguards
protecting the imperial precincts
in my innermostheart
burns my longing.
wakan reishno.526
The metaphor that justies and dramatizes the sudden thematic break is the
torches of the imperial guards, held up as a kenning of the burning love that this
poem declares. Does Kint proceed from social satire of the Chinese-style bureaucracy to an emotional satire of that satire, gliding into the vernacular voice of love
coached in a waka poem on the imsy bridge of the guards metaphorical re?
Does the vernacular waka look more ridiculous than the satirized bureaucrats? Or
do the satirized bureaucrats look yet more out of place because of the waka poem?
Ironically, this ambiguous coupling of excerpts provides leeway into the most venerable subject of the Forbidden City, which the Chinese and Sino-Japanese poems
had left unmentioned:the Emperor.
The second and concluding waka of the chapter continues the theme of longing, but transfers it from a couple of lovers to a courtier yearning for his nearby
emperor.

Even righthere

its light shines bright:

the autumnmoon,

I keep thinking,

must be yet brighter above the clouds.
wakan reishno.527
The waka is by Fujiwara no Nobuomu

(. ca. 900?), who watched the
moon at the chamberlains oce on the night of the fteenth day of the eighth
month, when the moon was at its brightest and the customary Moon Festival
48
Following sone Shsukes Shinch Nihon koten shsei edition.
183
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was held. As a chamberlain he worked in an agency that functioned as a private

secretariat to the emperor and allowed unusually close interaction with the sovereign, but his low, fth, rank meant that he was mostly carrying around imperial
messages and was not allowed into the Seiryden

(Hall of Clarity and
Coolness), the emperors private residence, where Emperor Daigo (885930;
r. 897930) was celebrating the moon festival at the moment when Nobuomu
composed his waka. Although the chamberlains oce was immediately south
of the Seiryden and the physical distance between the emperor and the poet was
minimal, the social and poetic distance between the emperors presence above
the clouds and the poets right here is insurmountable.
Although the moon in the poem was rst and foremost the autumn moon
celebrated on the night of the festival, the moon could also function as an image
for the emperor, making the poem both into a praise of the moon and of the
emperor, who bestows his radiant grace on his subjects. At the same time, watching the moon had erotic associations:it was something one did with a lover, or
one lamented not doing if one was separated from ones lover on a beautiful moon
night. The iridescence of the poems moonlight gives this simple poem more
depth than expected:the rays on the night of the festival blend with the splendor
of imperial grace in an ambiance of amorous yearning, which is not an unusual
image in the political erotics between ruler and subject.
It is masterful how in this chapter Kint creates a vignette of the Imperial
Palace that plays through such varied majestic, solemn, comic, and eulogistic
modes to capture the Heian Palace as a physical and social space. But Kint defers
the appearance of the emperor, the sovereign of the palace and the symbolic center of Heian political culture, until the closing poem, where he appears only as a
distant presence in absence.
The chapter on the Imperial Palace makes a diptych with the following chapter on Ancient Capitals. This chapter, only two excerpts short, is one of the few
chapters in the Collection that start with a Japanese rather than Chinese author.
If in the Imperial Palace chapter Kint brought the narrative from the borderlands of China to the imperial palace in Kyoto thanks to a passage by the eminent
scholar-ocial Sugawara no Michizane, it is his talented grandson Sugawara no
Fumitoki (899981) whose couplet opens Old Capitals:

Green grassesnow like a garden for largedeer.

Red blossomsin the old days certainly houses lled

with the music of pipes and strings.
wakan reishno.528
Fumitoki apparently wrote these lines when passing the former capital Nara and
it is a typical treatment of the abandoned capital topos. Weeds have grown over
the former palaces and deer, still today part of Naras cityscape, have settled in.
The red blossoms, an afterglow of former aristocratic residences and their extravagant feasts, connect Fumitokis couplet to the second poem in the chapter, an
anonymouswaka:

184
When Icome to gazeat
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the capital, of times immemorial

like Isonokami
I nd those owers, with which they decorated [theirhair]
blooming afresh.
wakan reishno.529
Both Fumitokis couplet and the waka gaze with nostalgia over the former capital
site and zoom in on the blooming owers, symptoms of painful change and vigorous continuity at once. The waka gets some inches closer to the former capital,
seeing the owers before the eyes of the poet in the hair of the former capital
inhabitants during their festive celebrations. But the most signicant distinction
between the kanshi couplet and the waka poem is the contrast between the particular and the generic that is rooted in the dierent rhetorical repertoire of kanshi and
waka, respectively. Fumitoki wrote his capital lament specically on Nara, though
tapping into the generic resources of Chinese and Chinese-style capital laments.
The waka poet, in contrast, creates a vignette of the literary topos of the abandoned
capital thanks to a rhetorical device specic to waka, the so-called pillow word,
makura kotoba
. Pillow words served as amplifying epithets to expressions that

deserved particular decoration, such as venerable landmarks or objects related to
the gods or emperors. Most often consisting of ve syllables, and thus a short line
in the 5-7-5-7-7-syllabic scheme of waka, these pillow words were set phrases that
gave the poems solemnity, but also inspired playfulness and literary sophistication.
Isonokami, the pillow word in the waka at hand and a place nowadays in the
area of Furu
in Tenri City of Nara Prefecture, had indeed been the location of

the palace capitals of Emperors Ank and Ninken, two fth-century emperors of
hoary antiquity by Kints standards. Mentioning this place name allowed the poet
to insert a clever pun:when he writes about the furuki miyako, the old capital,
his mind wanders along with his tongue and he ends up writing about that Furu
miyako, Isonokami in the area of Furu. Thus, Isonokami is not so much a place
name, but a pillow word that serves as a generic cushion for just about any old
capital. Through the power of this rhetorical device the waka distills the literary
topos of the abandoned capital into an aesthetic phenomenon, shedding its historical specicity. This retrospective aesthetic of the destroyed past continues in the
next chapter, which follows the mood of the Old Capitals chapter and is devoted
to old palaces and dilapidated residences.
Without doubt, there is no limit to the meaning one can insert into the spaces
between the juxtaposed poetic excerpts of Kints Collection. Not doing so reduces
Kints ingenious work to a heap of fragments (which it technically is). If we can
talk about a literary epistemology behind the unique format of the text, it probes
the limits of what literary fragments quoted-out-of-context can be brought to say
when placed under the terse control of a lineup of topic headings. Despite the fact
that Kints collection is such a play with unleashed and controlled indeterminacy, the contrast between Kints mind-map of the Heian court and capital in the
Collection and Virgils road-map toward Augustan Rome in the Aeneid is clear. In
curious parallel to the structure of Kints Collection, my discussion of the image
of Kyoto in the Collection and the image of Rome in the proleptic moments of the
Aeneid seem to make a suggestive juxtaposition rather than a good comparison.
185
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Yet the opposite direction of the time vectors, which these extremely inuential
images of the respective capitals engraved into the minds of generations of their
readers who knew them by heart, is signicant and should be taken seriously.
The breathtaking proleptic foresights of Augustan Rome in the Aeneid were
only meaningful as dramatizations of the Roman miracle, the spectacular success at world domination. In contrast, the Heian capital is subtly suspended in
a retrospective aesthetic of dereliction and a web of metaphorical parallel realms
such as the uncorrupted realm of shermen and immortals, exam candidates or
funny ocials. This mind-map of the capital, refracted as it is through excerpts in
dierent literary languages, responded to a dierent preoccupation, not with the
vertical timeline of political success, but with the horizontal coexistence of multiple aesthetic and literary traditions and linguistic and rhetorical choices inJapan.
3. Unequal Romance
What else was comparably unequal in Kyoto and Rome? In tenth-century Kyoto
and in rst-century bce Rome literary revolutions took place. One of them, in
both places, concerned the relation between literature, the capital, and romance.
In Japan, the newly developed kana syllabary, based on simplications of Chinese
characters, enabled the rise of new genres, in particular tales (monogatari) and
vernacular diaries (nikki), written predominantly by women. These genres were
closely related to the social rise of waka poetry in the late ninth century. At the
beginning of the tenth century the rst imperially commissioned waka anthology, the Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry (Kokinsh), had elevated love to
a major topic of the poetic production at court. And in the new tales and diaries
we can see waka in social action, functioning as an elegant go-between of lovers
who spent most of their time apart from each other due to the prevalent segregation of sexes. Waka poetry became a fundamental social practice in Heian society,
both as opportunity to excel at courtly banquets, where waka and kanshi were
composed, and as means of communication in amorous aairs. Written mostly
by ladies-in-waiting at the imperial court, the new forms of prose ction and
confessional accounts allowed women to record, lament, or creatively reimagine
the romantic on-goings and the erce marriage politics between members of the
Heian elite. These women served in the lavishly equipped entourage of the daughters of the leading Fujiwara families, who competed for the emperors attention.
Because they were often the daughters of mid-level aristocrats, who had not succeeded in making a career at court and thus served as governors in the provinces,
they had both a duty to praise their powerful patrons and a desire to criticize
the power games of court culture and the vulnerable position of women in it.
This dilemma makes for some of the most memorable moments in Murasaki
Shikibus Tale of Genji and Sei Shnagons PillowBook.
In turn, late rst-century-bce Rome saw the fulminant ourishing of Roman
love elegy, a programmatically subjective genre of love exaltation written mostly by
men who had lived through the bloody civil wars and vowed to replace the now questionable life of civil service with a new type of service, the servitium amoris to their
puella or domina. Elegy, one of the most disputed and complex genres in Greek and
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Latin literature, was written in elegiac couplets, alternating a dactylic hexameter

with a pentameter. It was metrically close to epic poetry and its Greek origins went
back to the seventh century bce. Greek elegists treated a large variety of themes and
wrote elegies for festive or funerary occasions and on erotic, political, mythical, and
etiological themes. The surviving Roman elegists of the rst century bce, Tibullus,
Propertius, and later, Ovid, shared much with Catullus and neoteric poetry of the
late Republic. In particular, Propertius and Ovid elevated their gusto for moral rebellion, their retreat from political engagement and the mythological elevation of love,
with its ecstasies, disenchantments, and volatile capriciousness, into a way of life.49
Roman love elegy was a short-lived phenomenon and produced incomparably less literature than the new vernacular genres in Japan:although vernacular tales and diaries
were considered a popular literature of sorts in their own time, in contrast to the high
status of Sino-Japanese writings, these genres produced a vast body of literature, and
starting in the thirteenth century the two principal tales, the Tale of Genji and the Tales
of Ise, were canonized and moved up in the genre hierarchy.50
Japanese vernacular tales and diaries and Roman love elegy share signicant common features that are worth juxtaposing. First, they were new or unfolded in ways
independent of their reference culture. Japanese tale and diary literature was written
in the vernacular and had no direct genre correlate on the Chinese side. Although
Chinese poems and stories of passionate love had a deep impact in terms of plot
elements and the logic of tragic love aairs on Japanese tales such as the Tale of
Genji, there was no long prose genre in Chinese literature at the time. It took a few
more centuries in China before novels of the length and complexity comparable to
Murasaki Shikibus Tale of Genji came to be written.51 The independence of Roman
love elegy from Greek elegy is a more complex question that has been much debated,
but the hypothesis that it might derive either from Hellenistic subjective-erotic elegy
or from the Hellenistic epigram tradition is generally rejected today, although they
share many traits.52 Already by the end of the rst century ce the magisterial teacher
of oratory Quintilian had declared proudly that Also in elegy can we challenge the
Greeks (elegia quoque Graecos provocamus).53 What seems to make Roman love elegy
distinctively Roman is the unique combination of a rather carnal autobiographical
pose, with the projection of ones love into the elevated realm of myth, and the proud
literary celebration of a life lived in absolute devotion to the cause of love, which most
often humiliates the poet in the eyes of civic morality.
Second, Japanese tales and diaries and Roman love elegy allowed the experimentation with emotional intensity and transcendental passion that previously had hardly
any extensive, letalone distinctive venues of expression.54 Also, in both cases the pose
49
For a quick introduction to the genre of Roman love elegy see Gibson 2005 and Conte 1994b,
32139.
50
On the modern canon formation of classical Japanese literature see Shirane and Suzuki2000a.
51
On the Tale of Genji in the context of previous tale literature see Shirane 1987. On the relation of the
Tale of Genji to Chinese literature see the studies of Shinma 2003 and Shinma2009.
52
On recent debates regarding the origin of Latin love elegy in relation to Propertiuss work see
Cairns 2006 and Hollis2006.
53
Institutio oratoria 10.1.93.
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of the autobiographicalwhether true or retouched, authenticated or consciously

overdramatizedwas crucial to the authors voice and to the genres attraction and
credibility.
This relates to a third resonance: because the Japanese vernacular tales and
diaries did not dwell on grand themes of Confucian governance and public morals that were de rigueur in Sino-Japanese genres of the time, and because Roman
love elegy and its authors renounced a life and literature elevated by epic grandeur
and displays of virtuous Romanness, these genres developed their own versions
of recusatio, or tropes of literary refusal. Their authors eloquently conceded the
inferiority of their amorous subject matter to the grand literary themes treated in
the genres at the top of the respective genre hierarchy, namely Chinese-style literature in the Japanese, and epic poetry in the Roman case. Yet the trope of refusal
allowed at the same time to celebrate the immediacy of passion, which required a
lighter muse, and to practice the sophisticated art of ostentatious understatement.
Fourth, Heian vernacular literature and Roman love elegy had an intimate
urban connection. Although in both cases literary production centered on the
capitals, where authors were either born or came to receive their education, make
a living, and spend their lives, Japanese tales and diaries and Roman elegy spoke
about and through the capital. Most often, this was where lovers lived, met, made
love, or pined away in neglect, and this was where readers and literary fame intersected with the opportunities for sophisticated romance. In short, the new literature of romance was unthinkable without the urban fabric of the capital. True,
stories about love adventures in the countryside abound in the Tales of Ise (ca.
947), but if anything, they often serve to underscore the elegance of urban life
in the capital and to show that living in the provinces was to be considered an
exile of sorts. Similarly, Tibullus (ca. 5019 bce), the elegist who likes to express
his yearning for serene rural life, does so because of his experience of city life,
and his sweetheart Delia appears as a lady of worldly tastes, fond of luxury and
full of capricious surprises, to be expected from a city dweller, not a country girl.
Clearly, both Heian tales and diaries, and Roman love elegy, sported a got for
urban renement and aesthetic sophistication.
Needless to say, there are signicant dierences between the Japanese genres
and Roman love elegy and the conditions of their respective rise in Kyoto and
Rome. Most importantly, the authors gender and their social contexts diered
radically:in the case of Japan the main proponents of this new world of romance
were women writers. True, the earliest tales were probably written by men, and
54
Love discourse had only very limited space in Sino-Japanese literature. In Japanese tales and
diaries the absoluteness of love is often expressed more obliquely than in Roman love elegy, but
there are also moments of spirited assertiveness, like in Sei Shonagons Pillow Book:There was a
large and distinguished gathering at Her Majestys, of various family members, nobles and senior
courtiers. Iwas sitting leaning against an aisle pillar talking to some of the ladies, when Her Majesty
tossed me a note. Opening it, Iread, Should Ilove you, or should Inot? How would it be if you were
not loved above others? This was a reference to something Ihad said in passing in Her Majestys
hearing. I absolutely must be rst in someones heart, Id declared. If not, Id prefer to be loathed
and treated like dirt. Id rather die than be second or third in a persons aections. Its rst or
nothing, for me. Hearing me, some of the ladies had joked, Shes Lady Lotus Sutrathere can be no
other Law. (section 96; McKinney 2006,104.)
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the rst diary, the Tosa Diary (Tosa nikki

,ca. 935)was written by a man,
though in the voice of a woman, which reveals the general assumption at the time
that such texts would be written by women. There is also evidence that a lineage
of poem collections, tales and diaries that inuenced the Gossamer Diary (Kager
nikki

, 974), which is seen as the fountainhead of womens confessional
diaries, were written or commissioned by men of the powerful Regent branch of
the Fujiwara family to glorify the poet and amorous exploits of their clan.55 This
shows the strong grip that men did have on womens writing. Yet, even if the
author, whom we only know by the name of Mother of Michitsuna, had perhaps
been asked to compile a attering poetry collection of her husband Fujiwara no
Kaneie (929990), the diary she produced instead detailed her unhappiness and
reproached him for his neglect of her. And most of mid-Heian vernacular literature was written by women. They worked as ladies-in-waiting for the courts of
the Fujiwara imperial consorts and were usually handpicked for their beauty and
skills in poetry, music, and witty conversation; their writing was an integral result
of their participation in courtlife.
Meanwhile in Rome, the love elegists were almost exclusively men (the elegist
Sulpicia being the exception that conrms the rule). They acquired fame for themselves and for their Delias, Cynthias, or Lycorises. But the women behind these
gures did not write or leave anything that would give us the female perspective
on their romantic aairs. Also, the Roman love elegists rejected a public career
and portrayed themselves as rebellious bohemians and their lovers as either free
women or courtesans. In contrast, the Japanese tale and diary writers served at the
heart of the Heian political establishment, were part of court society, and were left
to criticize it indirectly and from within.56
A second dierence is that the boundary between the new genre of romance
and the genres of higher canonical standing in the Japanese and Roman genre
hierarchy had a dierent edge. There is a much more pronounced permeability
between epic and love elegy, in meter, diction and its recourse to the plot resources
of myth. On the Japanese side, it was after all women who were writing a new
type of literature, not men who wrote a dierent type of literature and the social
and linguistic gulf between the new vernacular genres and the canonical status of
Chinese-style literature was much wider. We do of course nd many references to
Chinese and Chinese-style literature and hilarious parodies of the scholarly world
of Chinese-style writing, as we shall see in Chapter7 of this book, but they do not
become a carrying force of articulation in the vernacular tales and diaries, as the
play with epic conventions becomes in Roman loveelegy.
As a third divergence, Roman love elegy depicts their protagonists and their
amorous adventures in text. Japanese tales and diaries go beyond that by including
55
For a translation of the Tosa Diary see McCullough 1990, 73102. For the Gossamer Diary see
Arntzen 1997. For translations of early diaries written between the Tosa Diary and the Gossamer
Diary and a discussion of the gender dynamics and political purposes behind their production see
Mostow2004.
56
On marriage customs and the social status of elite women in Heian Japan see McCullough 1999,
13442.
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the actual corpora delicti of the aairs in the text. In the case of autobiographical
diaries, men were not just described by female authors, but the actual poetry with
which they courted their ladies was usually included, thus preserving the male
voice in a text, which is otherwise told from the female perspective. Propertiuss
Cynthia might love her manso the voice of Propertius tells usbecause he
writes about her and is immortalized as his muse. In contrast, those males who
might have been Sei Shnagons lovers are not just described through the pen of a
woman in her Pillow Book but speak through their poems. As the social practice of
poetry was the linchpin of romantic aairs, the inclusion of the lovers poems was an
essential element of the romantic plot:a romance of, not just in writing.
Propertiuss Elegies and Sei Shnagons Pillow Book are worth juxtaposing to get
a more palpable sense of the dierence between the romance of writing and the
romance in writing and, more broadly, of the intersections and gaps between romance
in Heian vernacular diaries and Roman love elegy. Propertius and Sei Shnagon seem
to make an apt pair, because they both enjoy parading their literary wit and surprising
their readers with unexpected turns of events or phrases. Propertiuss four books of
elegies, published separately between 28 and 16 bce, start out with the name of his
muse, Cynthia, who dominates the rst book. She is still at the center of the second
and third books, often in her unpleasant and capricious moods, and fades out in the
fourth book, which is mostly devoted to elegies on the myths and religious ceremonies
of the Roman and Italic tradition. This overall narrative arch has been seen both as a
reection of the rise and fall of Propertiuss aair with Cynthia and as an increasing
integration of Propertius into the Augustan establishment that went along with his
participation in the famous circle of Maecenas, where he met Virgil, and Horace.
While Propertiuss books were immediately recognized as centerpieces of the
genre of Roman love elegy and already mentioned by his immediate successor Ovid,
Sei Shnagons Pillow Book is unusual among the diaries of Heian court women.57
It was probably nished around 1005, after the death of her patron Empress Teishi
and the demise of the literary salon of the Empress in the face of the rival Empress
Sshi, who outshone Empress Teishi at court and had writers such as Murasaki
Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu, and Akazome Emon in her service. It consists of three
types of entries, namely catalogues of objects and moods, essayistic reections,
and diary entries. In the Nin and Sankan variants of the text, which have become
canonical, these dierent materials are mixed and not presented in chronological
order. This unusual format makes it impossible to categorize it as belonging to one
single genre, but it shares much with tale literature, the diary tradition, and later
medieval essay writing (zuihitsu

). In contrast to Propertius, whose rst book of
elegies, the monobiblos, caught Maecenass attention and led to his introduction into
the most powerful literary salon of the time, Sei Shnagon wrote the Pillow Book in
memory of her late patron Empress Teishi and focused on those happy years when
Teishis standing at court was at its height, in ominously silent awareness of the
tragic demise that was to follow.
57
For an overview of research trends in the scholarship on the Pillow Book and a reading of the Pillow
Books headstrong portrayal of Empress Teishis court in the diary type entries against the backdrop
of historical sources see Naomi Fukumori 1997,144.
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Let us try to capture a bit of the romantic games that Propertius and Sei
Shnagon play in their writing.58 Propertiuss passions are profoundly connected
to Rome. In elegy II.6 he exclaims, after explaining that the vices of love and jealousy led to wars such as the one atTroy:
Why seek Iprecedents from Greece? You, Romulus, nursed on the harsh milk
of a she-wolf, were the instigator of the crime:you taught us to rape the Sabine
virgins with impunity:through your fault Cupid dares any outrage atRome.
Cur exampla petam Graim? tu criminis auctor, / nutritus duro, Romule, lacte lupae:/
tu rapere intactas docuisti impune Sabinas:per te nunc Romae quidlibet audit Amor?59
Thanks be to divine Romulus that not just Cupid but also Propertius can aord to
engage in extravagant love aairs in his Rome. It isnt just Propertius who benets
from Romes history, which gives him much sexual license thanks to the precedent of Romulus and the rape of the Sabines. Note that in elegy I.8 it is actually
Rome, too, who prots in her reputation from his love aairs:
She (i.e. Cynthia) loves me and because of me loves Rome of cities best, and says
that without me even a kingdom would not please her. She has preferred to lie
with me, though narrow is my bed, and to be mine, whatever our style of life,
than to possess the ancient kingdom that was Hippodamias dowry and all the
wealth horse-pasturing Elis had amassed.
illi carus ego et per me carissima Roma / dicitur, et sine me dulcia regna negat. / illa
vel angusto mecum requiescere lecto / et quocumque modo maluit esse mea, quam sibi
dotatae regnum vetus Hippodamiae, / et quas Elis opes apta pararat equis.60
Cynthia loves Rome because she loves Propertius. Without him, Propertius claims,
Rome would be nothing to her. Not just Rome, but even more fabled kingdoms
such as the ones of the Homeric heroes of the House of Atreus, Agamemnon
and Menelaos, the descendants of Hippodamia, would be nothing to her. Thus,
according to Propertiuss Cynthia, Propertiuss worth exceeds all fabulous kingdoms, past and present, Greek and Roman. If in this elegy Propertius has his
Cynthia set the price of his love far beyond that of the Roman Empire, Propertius
repays the hyperbolic compliment in Elegy II.1, where she is a goddess, his muse,
his puella and wrestling partner inbed:
58
On Propertius elegies Hubbard 1974 is still important. For recent scholarship, Johnson 2009 is
a vivid and thoughtful discussion of Propertiuss work in the ideological and literary context of the
late Republic and the Early Empire. James 2003 explores Roman love elegy from the perspective
of female readership and opens compelling ways to look beyond what she calls the sincerity
requirement of elegy, thus moving from the autobiographical fallacy to the rhetorical and literary
workings of the genre. Asimilar fallacy can sometimes also be detected in too literal readings of
Heian women diaries and the PillowBook.
59
Propertius II. 6.1922. All translations from Propertius are from Goold 1990,137.
60
Propertius I.8B. 3136. Goold 1990,69.
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You ask how it is that Icompose love poems so often, how it is that my book sounds
so soft upon the lips. It is not Calliope, not Apollo that puts these songs in my
mind:my sweetheart herself creates the inspiration. If Ihave seen her step forth
dazzling in Coan silks, a whole book will emerge from the Coan garment; if Ihave
seen the locks straying scattered on her brow, Ipraise her locks and for joy she walks
with head held high; if with ivory ngers she strikes the melody of the lyre, Imarvel
how skillfully she applies her easy touch; or if she lowers eyelids that ght against
sleep, the poet in me nds a thousand new conceits; or if, her dress torn o, she
struggles naked with me, then, be sure of it, Icompose long Iliads:whatever she
has done61, whatever she has said, from absolutely nothing is born a grand legend.
Quaeritis, unde mihi totiens scribantur amores / unde meus veniat mollis in ora liber.
/ non haec Calliope, non haec mihi cantat Apollo:/ ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit. /
sive illam Cois fulgentem incedere vidi / totum de Coa veste volumen erit; / seu vidi ad
frontem sparsos errare capillos / gaudet laudatis ire superba comis; / sive lyrae carmen
digitis percussit eburnis / miramur, facilis ut premat arte manus; / seu compescentis
somnum declinat ocellos, invenio causas mille poeta novas; / seu nuda erepto mecum
luctatur amictu / tum vero longas condimus Iliadas:/ seu quidquid fecit sivest quodcumque locuta / maxima de nihilo nascitur historia.62
Propertius paints his sweetheart with the colors of an alternative Calliope, muse of
epic poetry and warfare. Each part of her portrait creates writing:the famous silk
from the island of Cosa book; her locksa panegyric on her pride; her ngers
on the lyrean ode to her skillfulness; her eyelidsa thousand new conceits; best
of all, once all covers (except for natural ones like her drowsy eyelids) fall and she
is naked, Iliads emerge, in the rare plural. Whatever she does, the poet will extract
a historia. Propertius and the other elegists clearly fashioned their literary loves
to serve their own purposes.63 This attering portrayal would certainly appeal to
female vanity, too, but it also serves the poets own literary vanity, because it allows
him to launch on a grand gesture of recusatio, the ostentatious refusal to compose
in grandiose epic fashion on grand legendary themes.
There is a complex zigzag pattern of recusatio and re-recusatio in this elegy.
Let us follow the moves of this play with romance and recusatio. First, as we saw,
Propertius dresses Cynthia up as the new Calliope, inspiring the poet to write
much and in many modes. Second, enter a new character, Maecenas, Propertiuss
patron and Augustuss intimate friend. Propertius promises Maecenas that he
would use his new muse to tell of Augustuss and Maecenass policies and exploits
(Propertius II.1.1726). He promises to produce an epic on the patron and the
patrons patron. In a list of quick references to Octavians victories from the 40s to
the 20s bce, Propertius highlights Maecenass role in the military exploits and his
loyalty, des, to Augustus. This pivot word, which connects war and love discourse,
61
The Loeb edition has erroneously said.

Propertius II.1.1-16. Goold 1990,117.
Maria Wyke has debunked the common assumption of autobiographical realism and has
convincingly traced hints at the ctional nature of Propertiuss lover throughout his corpus.
Wyke1987.
62
63
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is, third, the right moment for Propertius to jump from promises to epic to his
light Muse and return to outrageous recusatio:I for my part wage wars within
the narrow connes of a bed:let everyone spend his life in the trade he practices
best (nos contra angusto versamus proelia lecto:/ qua pote quisque, in ea conterat arte
diem, Propertius II.1.4546). His des goes to his puella, but also to his trade as an
elegiac poet. And ultimately his loyalty goes to death:To die in love is glory:and
glory yet again to enjoy a single love . . . (laus in amore mori:laus altera, si datur uno
/ posse frui . . .; Propertius II.1.4748).
What looks like an audacious recusatio is actually none at all, because Propertius
claims the realm of war for love, and the realm of epic for love elegy. In a fourth
move, to give death epic dignity, Propertius projects the prophecy of his death
into the choicest examples from myth:he wouldnt mind to die by the poisonous
potions of the likes of Phaedra, Circe, and Medea, who killed because of love and
jealousy. Medicine, able to cure all human pains, would not cure Propertius. He
can only be healed by that physician who could heal poor Tantalus, whom the
gods in all eternity tortured with thirst and hunger, who could wash away the sins
of the Danaids, from whom the gods in all eternity withheld water vessels, and
who could protect Prometheus from the vulture, whom the gods had sent for all
eternity to peck out his liver. Only the impossible reversal of divine fate by myths
sanction could save Propertius, in short, nothing.
When, therefore, fate claims back from me my life, and Ibecome a brief name on
a tiny marble slab, then, Maecenas, hope and envy of Roman youth, my rightful
pride in life and in death, should your travels chance to bring you close to my tomb,
halt your British chariot with its gured harness, and, shedding a tear, pay this
tribute to my silent embers:An unrelenting girl was the death of this poorman!
Quandocumque igitur vitam me fata reposcent, / et breve in exiguo marmore nomen
ero, / Maecenas, nostrae spes invidiosa iuventae, / et vitae et morti gloria iusta meae, /
si te forte meo ducet via proxima busto, / esseda caelatis siste Britanna iugis, / taliaque
illacrimans mutae iace verba favillae:/ huic misero fatum dura puella fuit.64
Propertius seems to have waited all along to paint this nal scene and indulge a
vision of his posthumous self:like a soldier, he has met his fate and died in battle.
Death is not so bad after all, since his name is immortalized on a marble slab
and a tomb close enough to a grand avenue where Maecenas could ride by on a
triumph to pay his warrior tribute in a British chariot. Maecenas is the executor of Propertiuss last will, his desire for a public lament. Maecenas should shed
tears in his chariot, Propertius will be nothing but silent ashes, and the incriminating nger will point at Cynthia. The poets unepic death is dignied by an epic
hero coming home from battle. And even if Propertiuss playfulness should keep
us from taking his pompous self-lament all too seriously, he looks nobler for it.
Because he had dressed up his puella as the epic muse in the opening lines of the
elegy, his death is both due to a hard-hearted lover and the hard-heartedmuse.
64
Propertius II.1. 7178. Goold 1990,123.
193
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Let us quickly sum up some decisive elements of the dynamics of romance in this
elegy, before plunging into the love world of eleventh-century Japan. First, romance
unfolds here in a triangle: rather than addressing his lover directly, the poem is
addressed to Propertiuss patron Maecenas. Yet Propertius certainly wanted Cynthia
to hear his accusations against her harshness through Maecenass mouth and his
public lament. That the verdict is delivered from a war chariot relates to the second
point:romance in this elegy lives o the language of war and the epic literature that
depicts it. War and epic are the things that Propertius claims not to be able to do,
but at the same time precisely claims to be much abler to do than the real warriors
and epic poets. There is a more clamorous and exhibitionist deployment of recusatio in Propertiuss elegies than in the poetry of Horace, who, like Propertius, spent
his life writing anything but epic. Cynthia is a much complimented and necessary
element of the romantic game, but Propertius seems more occupied with his own
immortality, luckily enabled by the cruel death in love, and his playful relationship to
the grand tones and themes of epic. This means, moreover, that his recusatio is not
simply a way to justify his indulgence in love elegy; rather, he designs himself a life
where his passion has a degree of primacy and absoluteness that only uncompromising genres like the epic and the language of myth are able to express. He builds
up a strong ground for epic love in his elegies that enables him, with more or less
irony at times, to live an absolute life, a life of love of epic proportions.
Entering the world of Sei Shnagons Pillow Book from Propertiuss Elegies is
not just a long stretch; it is a jump, which is worth exploring because the rise
of new discourses of love connected to the urban cultures of the capitals of
tenth-century Japan and rst-century bce Rome provides enough of a frame to
appreciate the juxtaposition.
The instructive dissimilitude starts with the simple fact that in the scene from the
Pillow Book to which we turn now there is no Cynthia, no gure beguilingly praised,
undressed, cursed, and divinely adored. Sei Shnagons love life remains a mystery.
The center of romantic attention in this scene is Fujiwara no Tadanobu (9671035),
a senior courtier well known for his literary wit and poetic skill. From the way he
appears in the Pillow Book it seems likely that he and Sei Shnagon were lovers at
some point:they like to tantalize each other with private jokes and she tells of being
hopelessly enraptured with a particular incense he was wearing that day.65 But the
man she might have been married to for a short while and who probably was the
father of her child was an undistinguished man named Tachibana no Norimitsu,
whom Sei Shnagon repeatedly mocks for his lack of poetic sensibility.66 From the
way Sei Shnagon conveys wisdom about aairs of the heart, we should infer that
she had quite a few lovers. But compared to the adventures described by Catullus or
Propertius, romantic aairs in Japanese diaries and tales, whether autobiographical
or ctional, are painted in pastel colors. They often withhold identities, and hardly
ever expose any esh. Even in the case of the stormy lover Prince Genji, the reader
65
See sections 128, 154, and 189, respectively. Kamens 2007 very compellingly uses Tadanobus
multifaceted writings as a way to explore the complexities of Japans biliterate literary culture on the
example of the eleventh century.
66
See sections 79 and126.
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has to be able to read the subtle code of passions to understand whether Genji only
exchanged irtatious remarks, shared a bed, or even coincidentally impregnated his
lover, so subdued and indirect is the language of love attimes.
The following scene, probably from the autumn of 994, shows the subtlety of
the culture of romance in the Heian capital.67 Sei Shnagon had for a while been
agonizing over rumors about her character that had presumably led Tadanobu to
make disdainful remarks about her in public. Then, on a dreary autumn night
in the midst of rain and boredom, a soaking-wet messenger with a letter from
Tadanobu bursts into the chatty round of ladies-in-waiting cuddled around the
brazier after her Majesty, Empress Teishi, had retired to bed. Although the messenger urges Shnagon to quickly reply to Tadanobus letter, she tucks it away,
afraid that it will contain nothing friendly. Only when the messenger appears a
second time and announces that Tadanobu expects either to get an answer or to
receive his letter back does she open the letter:
This is just like something out of one of the old tales, Ithought wryly. Ilooked
at the letter, and found it to be written very beautifully, on thin blue paper.
There was nothing in it to justify my nervousness. He had written the line
from BoJuyi,
You are there in the owering capital, beneath the Council Chambers brocade curtains, and added, How should it end, tellme?
What on earth shall Ido? Iwondered. If Her Majesty were here Id most
certainly show this to her. It would look bad to parade the fact that Iknow the next
line by writing it in my poor Chinese characters. Ibarely had time to turn the
problem over in my mind before the messenger was distracting me again with
his urgings to be quick, so Iseized a piece of dead charcoal from the brazier and
simply wrote at the end of his letter, in Japanese script, Who will come visiting
this grass-thatchedhut?
The messenger duly carried it o, but there was no response.

68
Shnagon reads Tadanobus letter with the mind of a protagonist in a romantic tale, a monogatari. Before reading the content of the letter, she examines
Tadanobus taste and nds the quality and color of the paper and the style of his
written characters to her satisfaction. Only then does she notice with relief that
its content is irtatious rather than reproachful. As a senior ocial, Tadanobu
67
For Japanese discussions of this famous passage see Inaga 2008, 24548; and the bibliography
included in Amagai 2001, 31922.
68
Makura no sshi, p.136. Translation from McKinney 2006, section77.
195
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is secluded in the emperors private residence in order to avoid evil inuences

predicted by Yin and Yang divination, and sends a message to Shnagon, who
is on service at the residence of Empress Teishi. Tadanobu pitches his romantic
inquiry through the words of the Chinese poet Bo Juyi (772846), at the time the
most popular Chinese poet in Japan. The line is taken from a poem Bo Juyi sent
to a friend in the capital from far-away Jiangzhou (modern-day Jiangxi Province),
where he had been exiled. Shnagon immediately recalls the next line to the
famous poem:After Tadanobus You are there in the owering capital, beneath
the Council Chambers brocade curtains the poem continues I sit on a rainy
night in my grass-thatched hut beneath Lu Shan Mountain. It plots Tadanobu,
who is with the emperor in the heart of the palace complex, inversely in the role of
the exiled Bo Juyi in his famous hut on Lu Mountain and Shnagon in the role of
Bo Juyis male friend who serves as an ocial in the capital at the Department of
State Aairs. Tadanobu projects Bo Juyis double longingfor the capital and for
his friendonto Shnagon, and his question of where it all should end concerns
both the Chinese poem and his romantic aair.
Shnagon has several challenges to tackle at once:Most immediately, how does
she want Tadanobu to feel about their aair? It is easy for Tadanobu to ask where
things should go, but the burden is now on her to suggest a new direction after
the longer period of smoldering dismay and mutual suspicion. More trickily, since
Tadanobu has pitched his question through a line in Chinese that implies the
friendship between two male ocials, how should she adapt Bo Juyis poem to
her role as female, conned to the womens hand of the vernacular language?
Although Heian elite women like Sei Shnagon and Murasaki Shikibu were often
highly educated in Chinese literature, they did not produce Chinese-style literature, but wrote in vernacular Japanese genres such as waka, diaries and tales. Elite
men, in contrast, were normally educated and productive in both. Sei Shnagon
knows that it bets her to keep to the vernacular kana letters and avoid writing in
her poor Chinese characters. But quite apart from that, simply supplying the
second line of the poem would be a dull solution.
Lacking the opportunity to confer with her patron about the matter and under
pressure from Tadanobus impatient messenger, she comes up with a brilliant
conceit. That she uses a piece of dead charcoal from the brazier is in tone with
the message of her reply: she reproaches Tadanobu for not having visited her
recently and having let the ames of the aair die. The piece of charcoal is also
an elegant solution to another challenge she is facing:it gives her kana letters the
rustic sheen that justies her switch of roles:now she is suddenly Bo Juyi, exiled
and abandoned in his grass hut on Lu Mountain. She tackles the challenge on
various levels. First, she writes in kana letters, as expected, while showing with her
mention of the grass-thatched hut that she knows Bo Juyis poem all too well.
Second, she reproaches Tadanobu for his distance by changing her role to that of
Bo Juyithose away from the capital are always more pitiable and can more easily lay claim to feeling abandoned. Third, she challenges Tadanobu to acontest of
poetic knowledge and wit. Her answer of twice seven syllables is the second half
of a waka poem. Having answered his Chinese line with one half of a vernacular
poem, she now expects Tadanobu to respond with the next lines of Bo Juyispoem.
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As Sei Shnagon learns the next morning, the challenge proved too great for
Tadanobu and his colleagues, which explains why she failed to receive an immediate answer.
We all went to bed, and the rst thing next morning Iwent back to my room. Not
long after Iarrived, the Minamoto Captain was heard crying in grandiose tones,
Is Grass-thatched Hut present? How extraordinary, Isaid. Why should you
think anyone with such a depressing name might be here? Now if youd asked for
Jewelled Palace, you might have got an answer.

69
That Sei Shnagons extempore answer to Tadanobu has been spectacularly successful is clear from the fact that Minamoto no Nobukata (d. 998), another senior
courtier who might have had some interest in Shnagon, has transformed her
answer into a decorative epithet for the winner of the poetic game.70 Now in stronger spirits, Shnagon sheds her rustic pose from the night before and, with urban
condence, styles herself Jewelled Palace. This is again a witty solution, because
the name breathes Chinese-style poetic elegance, but also picks up on waka poems
that play on both epithets under discussion such as thispoem:
Today when Ilook / Ind no jeweled palace / but see here only / this lowly hut
/ thatched with iris leaves.

71
By now it has become totally clear that the game is about names, and that Sei
Shnagon has gained for herself an admiring epithet. Shnagon receives two
excited visitors in a rowthe Minamoto Captain and the Assistant to Palace
Repairs Tachibana no Norimitsu, supposedly Shnagons husbandwho tell her
about the smashing success her letter has achieved. She learns that Tadanobu had
wanted to put her to a test once more before deciding whether to give up on her.
The Minamoto Captain emphasizes that Tadanobus colleagues made it clear to
him that she is worth pursuing:
Everyone gathered round to look, and made a great fuss. What a clever rogue she
is! we said. No, you really cant give her up....

. . . 72
69
Makura no sshi, p.136. McKinney 2006, section77.

In section 154, at least, he is jealous of Tadanobus and Shnagons exchange ofjokes.
71
Poem no.110 from the third imperial waka anthology, the Collection of Gleanings (Shiwakash
), compiled between 10051007.
70
197
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But then it turns out that nobody of those present passes Sei Shnagons
test:nobody remembers the remaining lines of Bo Juyis poem. They turn their
shame into veneration of her wit, and although she feels very attered, fear of
potential failure grips her belatedly:
When Icontemplated how innocent Id been of this full-scale involvement in the
plot, it made me nervous all over again to think how easily Icould have disgraced
myself. And I hadnt realized that this sister-brother relationship73 was known
to even the Emperor, and that the senior courtiers would call him this rather than
refer to him by his post! While we were talking, a message came from Her Majesty
summoning me immediately, so Iwent and presented myself. She too wanted to
talk about the incident. It seems His Majesty had laughed about it and told her the
story. All the gentlemen have written your reply on their fans, she informed me.
Iwas amazed, and could only wonder what had possessed me to make me produce
such a brilliant response. Anyway, after that Tadanobu no longer raised that shielding sleeve when we met, and seems to have quite changed his mind aboutme.

74
The romantic irritation between Tadanobu and Shnagon has vanished and
Shnagon is proud of her success:the courtiers display her reply on their fans,
her patron is well pleased, and the aair has even reached the Emperor.
How can we relate these so dissimilar scenes of romance, a poem by a male
elegist of rst-century bce Rome, and a diary entry by a female court lady in
eleventh-century Kyoto? Arst point of comparison is the collusion of romantic
and literary ambition and the role of the writers respective societies in it. It is fair
to say that both Sei Shnagon and Propertius are as much in love with their clever
writing as they are with the objects of their romantic interests. Yet that pride takes
dierent shapes. Propertius dreams of a marble slab inscribed with his name,
announcing his physical mortality and literary immortality. In turn, the fans of the
Heian courtiers, inscribed with Shnagons challenge both to Tadanobu and Bo
Juyi, signal her brilliant escape from embarrassment and an imperial celebration
of her poetic acumen, although in an entirely social, and not monumental, mode
of fame (the inscribed fans will presumably be thrown away soon, overwritten
with next months most wittypoem).
72
Makura no sshi, p.137 and McKinney 2006, Section77.

Emperor Ichij had apparently heard that Norimitsu and Shnagon were calling each other
endearingly brother and sister.
74
Makura no sshi, 13940 and McKinney 2006, Section77.
73
10/12/2013 8:03:31 PM
Thus, both Propertius and Shnagon are very concerned with their name and
literary famethe scene from the Pillow Book turns in fact around the play with
epithets. But the degree to which the surrounding societies of the Roman and
Japanese author participate in their love games diers vastly. Maecenas is the only
other person partaking in the romantic game with Cynthia, while all the other
protagonists are muses, gods, and heroes living beyond Rome proper. In contrast, Shnagon lives in the palace with a group of gentlewomen and is trapped
in spaces only structured loosely by movable paper sliding doors, thus inhabiting
a world where romantic aairs can hardly be kept secret, but are intercepted by
a host of collateral protagonists who facilitate and obstruct, iname or deate,
approve or disprove of the passions that unfold around them. And there are not
just the other ladies-in-waiting, but servants, messengers, visitors, and of course
the emperor and his empresses and consorts. It is a world of rumors and whispers
that determines ones status in court society.
A second point of comparison is the dierent presence of the physical world in
the texts describing the romantic game. The central role of poetry exchangesin the
dynamic of love aairs makes them a romance of and not just in writing. InJapan
both sexes are writing and material objects other than poetry participate in the love
game. Propertius might drape Cynthia in Coan silk, but the Coan silk is the decoration, not the plot device of the game. By contrast, romantic liaisons in Heian
Japan could be made or broken by the proper ower attached to the right paper
with the proper calligraphy. Had Sei Shnagon not chosen charcoal to write out her
Grass-thatched hut response, it would not have been half as brilliant; had she not
feared that her characters would come out ugly on the physical page, she would perhaps have come up with an erudite Chinese response to tease the men, and again,
she would not have convinced Tadanobu of her worth. This intrusion of the material world into textual space was crucial to vernacular literature, and this was both
a reection of social patterns of courtship, and also the manifestation of a material
aesthetics that makes the Japanese poetic tradition particularly interesting.75
A third point of comparison is Shnagons and Propertiuss recourse to recusatio in their romantic dealings. Both are caught in a situation where they have to
ostentatiously reject certain literary genres and registers. With much saber-rattling
imagery, Propertius rejects (and relies on) a discourse that demanded a way
of lifeone of epic valor and civic devotionthat was not attractive to him.
Shnagon, in turn, cleverly engages a discourse and amaleway of life that
might have been attractive, but that wasnt accessible to her. She engages in a recusatio of sorts, when she responds with half a waka to Tadanobus Chinese line and
elegantly plays rustic innocence to reproach Tadanobu for having neglected her. In
both cases the recusatio produces spectacular results. Shnagons apparent rejection of Chinese-style registers is followed by the embarrassing defeat of the men
75
Edward Kamens discusses the role of the material in waka poetics in his excellent study Kamens
1997. Both Catullus and Martial (in two cycles of epigrams written to accompany gifts, book 13 and
book 14)deal with the materiality of everyday objects and literary texts, but these examples are rather
specic to the author or the occasion and do not represent an entire genre aesthetic, as is the case
with Japanese waka. See Roman2001.
199
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on their own ground:they dont know their Bo Juyi, as they should, but Shnagon
does, although she neednt. Yet Shnagons recusatio is much more conned and
anxious. Luckily, she did come up with a great response, but once she hears the
plot behind the poetic game with Tadanobu she worries about the consequences
a failure would have brought her. Although she luckily passes the test Tadanobu
and his colleagues had put her to, she is still worried that her proud recusatio, her
improvised half-waka, where she posed as a rusticized Bo Juyi and abandoned
lady, might bite back; she shudders at the thought of going down in history with
the awful name of Grass-thatchedhut.
Also, her dependence on the numerous intermediaries witnessing, helping or
obstructing, and gossiping about the romantic couple, make her success more
public and satisfying, but would precisely have produced innitely more embarrassment had she not stood the test. Thus, although both Propertius and Shnagon
engage in a complex battle of the sexes with their pen and brush, respectively,
Shnagon has to ght much more subtly, from the circumscribed social space she
was conned to as a Heian elite woman, in a complex balancing act to make her
talents shine or to keep them back, as circumstances demanded.
4. Outlook
We have now covered quite some ground, starting from the juxtaposition of two
particular capital cities in Ancient East Asia and the Mediterranean, and closing
on the signicance of decorated fans and inscribed marble slabs. What value has
this swift parcours added to our understanding of Sei Shnagon and Propertius,
and Kyoto and Rome?
My confrontation of Sei Shnagons Pillow Book and Propertiuss Elegies has
had several aims at once. First there was of course the thrill of bringing two so
improbable bedfellows into the same chambersome of the more carnal and
perverted twists of Propertiuss love discourse would undoubtedly have scandalized Shnagon. Yet the real interest of the comparison doesnt lie in the blatant
dierences between the works of a well-adjusted Heian court lady and diarist,
and a tempestuous Roman love poet. Instead, Iwanted to tease out the striking
similarities that become visible only when we allow the comparison to penetrate
into the deeper tissue of their respective literary and romantic projects. Only
then do we see that both authors wrote in modes dierent from the literary
repertoire of their respective reference cultures, China and Greece; we saw that
they experimented with a new form of love discourse that developed during
those periods of Japanese and Latin literature, namely mid-Heian Japan and
Augustan Rome, which quickly came to be considered the golden classical mean
of their respective literary traditions. And we saw that they both resorted to complex strategies of recusatio to defend (and aggrandize) their projects, and that
they both wrote as proud inhabitants of their respective empires capitals, Kyoto
andRome.
These points of similarity establish our literary lovers comparability, while not
playing down dierence. Especially the gestures of recusatio have a dierent edge
in Shnagons Pillow Book and Propertiuss Elegies:On the Roman side, there is a
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much more pronounced permeability and interplay between the high registers of
epic and the light Muse of love elegy in meter, diction, and their recourse to the plot
resources of myth. In contrast, Japanese women were writing a new type of literature, not, like Roman men, just a dierent type of literature. There was a much wider
social and linguistic gulf between the new vernacular genres promoted by women
and the canonical status of Chinese-style literature. We do of course nd many references to Chinese and Chinese-style literature in Japanese vernacular prose (and
even hilarious parodies of the world of pued-up Japanese scholars of Chinese) but
they rarely become a carrying force of articulation in the vernacular tales and diaries,
in the way we can see in the Roman love elegys play with epic conventions.
The growing distance in Propertius between the modes of love elegy and patriotic
praise elegy has often been seen as an intellectual and literary contradiction, to be
explained away biographically:presumably, Propertiuss aair with his Cynthia went
downhill and, so goes the argument, his interests shifted to the wellbeing of the
Roman state, as he became increasingly involved with the literary circle of Maecenas
and with Augustan ideology after the publication of his rst book.76 However,
when viewed through Sei Shnagons world, Propertiuss witty shifts between gestures of epic and gestures of love elegy seem much more in tune with each other
than much scholarship wants us to believe. They are shifts on the modest scale of
a back-and-forth, between which the male elegiac poet can smoothly criss-cross.
Shnagon, in contrast, is bound up in the dynamic of an inside-outside, where she
is valued for her knowledge of the outsidethe male world of Chinese scholarship
and literaturebut is expected to stay inside of her female world and voice when
writing. The membrane between the inside and the outside is not equally permeable
to both sexes.77
I would argue that this complex literary physiology makes the Japanese literary tradition interesting from the perspective of the worlds literary traditions, in
ways that scholars have yet to fully realize and explore. The overwhelming majority of Japanese literature scholars study the vernacular literature of the Heian
Period, which for the most part was canonized much later, and only a waning
minority specializes in the most esteemed literature of the Heian Period as it was
76
For examples of how Elegy 2.1 in particular is often read as a signicant break with Propertiuss
rst book and how his love poetry and courtly praise elegies are construed as opposite poles see
Johnson 2009, 102 . Welch 2005 makes the interesting argument that Propertiuss poems on
Roman monuments and institutions that dominate and set apart the last book of his elegies was not
an alignment with Romes ruling power, but an attempt to establish himself as a rival to Augustus
in the creation of the image and identity of Roman urbanism. This opens new ways to see a unity
in Propertiuss work, which has so often been denied. See in particular pp.1012. Propertius
achievement of Book 4its multivalence, its artistry, and its relevance to the self and to societyhad
never been seen before in Latin elegiac poetry and, arguably, would never be seen again. [ . . . ] The
elegies in Book 4 make audible the process of self-expression, individuation, and even defection all
but drowned out by the overwhelmingand persuasively symphoniclegacy of Augustus city of
marble. In this way, Propertius nal book is more than Propertius own triumph:it is the acme of
personal elegiac poetry.12.
77
Too little attention has been paid to the fact that Shnagons play with Chinese texts and
allusions is particularly prominent in the most intimate romantic moments. This is the case in her
interactions with Tadanobu, and also in her irtations with Yukinari, another romantic interest of
hers (see e.g., Section46).
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understood in the Heian Period itselfmostly Chinese-style literature written by

Japanese authors. This situation is beginning to change, but there is still too little
real engagement and conceptual dialogue between the two camps, so that the
physiology of this Sino-Japanese membrane gets far too little scholarly attention.78
Ihope that Propertius has thrown this literary physiology into much crisper view
than it appears when merely seen in the context of Heian Period Japanese literature alone. We will leave Propertius and Shnagon here, with the wish that our
comparison can allow us to see less contradiction in Propertiuss corpus of Elegies
and create more contradiction in Shnagons PillowBook.
I hope to have shown the fruitfulness of moving from a comparative approach
that relies on detecting ellipsisthe absence of something that makes one of the cultures look decientto an approach that prots from catachresisthe temporary
application of an existing name to something that does not have one. It is surprising
how ingrained the rhetoric of ellipsis still is in thinking about East Asia, and in particular China (in the style of China didnt have x,y,z, with x,y,z being epic, science,
transcendence, potatoes?). Ellipsis is a trope of the surface, and it often doesnt get
us very far:had the logic of ellipsis guided my exploration of romance in Kyoto and
Rome, Sei Shnagon and Propertius would not have qualied as a promising couple
for comparison. Wheres the bed-wrestling, the carnal hymns and curses, and the
whole language of the esh that we enjoy in Propertius? Instead of the surface comparisons of ellipsis, catachresis oers us a trope of mutually expanding depth. If we
apply Propertius and Shnagon to each other catachrestically, and feel our way into
gauging their respective textures against each other, they gain depth in the process.
They can suddenly appear with more clarity, thrown into more dramatic relief than
if we view them only through their own literary traditions and the scholarship that
has accrued around the master narratives of Japanese or Latin literatures alone. In
unfolding a literary dynamics of a back-and-forth versus an inside-outside recusatio in Propertius and Sei Shnagon, Ihave tried to venture into a deep comparison
of these writers and their literary cultures.
78
As mentioned above, Edward Kamenss Terrains of Text in Mid-Heian Court Culture can serve
as a ne example for future explorations. The three Anglophone studies that have broken major
ground for the analysis of what has been called the wa-kan (Japanese-Chinese-style) dynamic in
Japanese literature are Pollack 1986, LaMarre 2000 and Sakaki 2007. Smits 2007 proposes a view
of developments on the Chinese-style side of the membrane during the mid-Heian Period. In most
scholarship the wa-kan dynamic is not seen as a dening characteristic of the pillow book, and
Chinese literature mostly comes to the fore in discussions of her educational background, not in its
literary dimensions in her work. When the essence (honshitsu ) of the Pillow Book is discussed
in articles such as the contributions by Akiyama Ken and Tsukahara Tetsuo in Mitamura 1994,
that issue never comes up. How little the subject of her kanbun education is part of a more general
approach to the Pillow Book can be showcased by Kuboki Tetsuos interesting article in the same
volume on Shnagons strategies of self-praise:it does not even raise the issue of her pride in kanbun
learning, although it does play an important role in her self-image.
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CHAPTER6
Poetry in Exile
Sugawara no Michizane andOvid
1. From Capital toExile

Ovid was only relegated, not ocially exiled, and thus did not lose his property.
But he tells us that when he had to leave Rome for Tomis on the Black Sea at the
order of Emperor Augustus, on an early winter night of 8 ce if we are to believe
him, he lost everything, which had meant his life and livelihood. He later compared this last night to a noisy funeral and gave a dramatic portrayal of himself hastily leaving his house and wife:So Imade my exit, dirty, unshaven, hair
anyhowlike a corpse minus the funeral (egredior, sive illud erat sine funere ferri
/ squalidus inmissis hirta per ora comis).1 For Ovid, leaving Rome meant virtual
death and was a catastrophe of epic proportions. Thus, it was no surprise that he
claimed the uproar in his house on the last night was equal to the fall of Troy. He
does apologize for drawing such an immodest parallel between his personal fate
and the archetypal site of Romes legend of origins. But the epic truth, which he
was to repeat again and again in the poems he wrote in exile, was that life as he
had known it and loved to live it, had ended on the night of his forced departure
from Rome. In the next ten years before his death in exile, illness, depression, and
repeated death wishes haunted a man who had already left the world, although in
his poetry he appears a man who kept alive by almost obsessively writing about
himself and his shifting hopes for returning toRome.
When Sugawara no Michizane was sent into exile by imperial edict on the
twenty-fth day of the rst month of 901, his demotion meant rst and foremost
political death. Overnight, he was declared enemy of the state and the former
Minister of the Right, the second highest oce at the imperial court in Kyoto, was
forced to accept a punitively low position as supernumerary governor general of
Dazaifu, an outpost on Japans southernmost island of Kyushu. His pride as a
civil servant was shattered and he, too, compared his exile to painful death:
Tristia I.3.89-90. All translations from Ovid are from Green 2005. The Latin text is based on Goold
and Wheeler1988.
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2
The application of the law was more cruel than usual measure
A
nd my accomplishments will cease to be carved on stone
monuments.
I regret that Imade loyalty my armor andhelmet
And bemoan that my punishment was more painful than a
stabbing dagger.
Michizanes armor of loyaltya metaphor for the ideal Confucian civil servant
from the Chinese ritual classic Record of Rites (Liji
)was useless against the

fatal blow of the imperial edict and he bitterly bemoaned that his enemies at court
had succeeded in slandering him to remove him frompower.
Although exile cut through the lives of these two extraordinary poets with similarly deadening harshness, Ovid and Michizanes paths to exile had been quite
dierent. Ovid was born in 43 bce in Sulmo, an idyllic town a hundred miles from
Rome, and was proud to come from an old equestrian family.3 His parents saw
to his education by leading rhetoricians in Rome, and after educational travels
in Greece, which was a customary part of Roman elite upbringing, he took up
several minor posts in civil law administration. But he soon abandoned a career
in law and politics for poetry and joined the literary circle of Messalla Corvinus,
quickly becoming one of the most celebrated contemporary poets. Ovids precocious pen could dispense phrases of scintillating virtuosity and throughout his life
he wrote in a great number of genres, spanning the spectrum from the rather personalized and conned world of the love elegy and didactic works on love, to the
Metamorphoses, his own version of epic, and the Fasti, a didactic poetic calendar of
Roman beliefs, customs, and monuments, which remained unnished due to his
exile. From the pinnacle of poetic success and conjugal happiness (with his third
wife), he was suddenly banished to Tomis, nowadays a Romanian beach town on
the shores of the BlackSea.
The emperors reason for banishing the adulated poet are unclear, although
Ovid often rehearses the verdict and regrets a poem and an error (carmen et error,
Tristia 2.207). Rather than the alleged immorality of his Art of Love (Ars amatoria,
ca. 1 bc to 1 ce), which could have served as a good excuse to get rid of him, he
might have known too much about a sexual scandal involving Augustuss granddaughter; or he might have been involved in the political plot against the Claudian
succession to Augustus, propagated by Augustuss third wife Livia, who worked,
ultimately successfully, to have Tiberius, her son from a previous marriage and
thus Augustuss stepson, enthroned.4 Although we will never know the cause
for sure, the eect was dire:in Ovids exile poetry, embellished by ethnographies
about the grim Scythians as they appear in Herodotus and Virgil, Tomis came
across largely as a hopelessly outlandish place cursed with eternal cold and winter,
2
Kanke buns, Kanke ksh no.484. All translations from Michizanes poetry in this chapter
aremine.
3
For an introduction to Ovids biography and works see Conte 1994b, 34066 and von Albrecht
2003; for an introduction to Ovids exile work see Peter Greens introduction to his translation and
Williams 2002, 33781.
4
For some of the voluminous scholarship debating the cause for Ovids exile see Williams 2002,337.
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threatened by attacks from various raiding local tribes, and inhabited by a mixture
of indigenous Getes and remote descendants of Greek colonists from Miletus on
the Ionian Coast who had settled at this end of the world as early as 600bce.
In legal terms Ovid was merely relegated, not ocially exiled, which meant
that he was entitled to keeping his citizenship and his possessions. His wife, connected to the patrician clan of the Fabii, stayed behind to look after their house
and work for her husbands amnesty and recall. Even the hope to relocate to a less
harsh place of exile, which Ovid expresses repeatedly in his exile poetry, was not
fullled, and he died around 17 or 18 ce in Tomis after a decade of desperation,
and a painful process of slow and inconsistent realization that he was never going
to see his beloved Rome again. His Tristia (ve books with fty elegies; 812 ce)
and his Black Sea Letters (Epistulae ex Ponto; four books with 46 elegies; between
12 ce and his death) are an extensive canvas on which to trace Ovids tempestuous
psychological trajectory in exile, from leaving his house in Rome as a corpse to
his actual death on the shores of the Black Sea a decadelater.
Sugawara no Michizane (845903) came from a family of remarkable scholars, who had served as professors at the State Academy in Kyoto, which focused
on the study of the Chinese Classics.5 After passing the academy examinations,
he served in minor court positions, helping draft administrative documents,
before being appointed professor at the State Academy in his early thirties in 880.
Although the Sugawara clan was renowned for scholarship and the composition
of Chinese-style poetry, they had only been of middle rank and never held the
highest oces at court. These posts were coveted by members of the powerful
northern branch of the Fujiwara family, who had set themselves up as regents
with de facto power, which often exceeded even that of the emperors, and married
their daughters into the imperial family. The Fujiwara managed to purge some
thirty non-Fujiwara oce holders to create vacancies for their own clan in 886.
This led to the rst banishment of Michizane, who was sent o to serve as the
governor of Sanuki Province on Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan.
This degradation in oce was by no means a harsh punishment:Michizane had a
well-provided ocial post, which was not even so distant from the capital. But his
poetry from the period as governor of Sanuki is lled with plaint and resistance to
this forced absence from the capital and its vibrant court culture. When Michizane
returned after his four years of service in Sanuki, he became a close condant
of the newly enthroned Emperor Uda (r. 88797) and quickly received increasingly high-ranking posts. This led to the beginning of the end in 899, when
Michizane was appointed Minister of the Right, now inferior only to the equally
newly appointed Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Tokihira, the son of the Fujiwara
Regent who had caused Michizanes demotion to Governor of Sanuki in886.
Michizane was aware of the danger of his rise at court and the jealousies it
inspired. He tried to decline the post, but in 901, some two weeks after receiving
For a commanding portrayal of Michizanes life and work see Borgen 1986. To date there is no
complete translation of Michizanes personal poetry collection (of about 680 pieces of poetry and
prose) into any Western language, but Borgen translates a generous amount of Michizanes poetry
and Rabinovitch and Bradstock 2005, 12140 also contains selections.
Poetry in Exile:Sugawara no Michizane andOvid
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yet another promotion in rank along with Tokihira, Michizane was stripped of all
of his titles and ordered to go into exile in Dazaifu in Kyushu. Even the Retired
Emperor Uda, Michizanes staunch supporter, who had abdicated to his young
son Daigo in 897 but remained a strong presence at court, could do nothing:he
was barred from entering the palace when he tried to protest the imperial edict,
and was left waiting on a lawn before the palace for an entire day (and an entire
night a few days later). The proclamation drawn up by Michizanes enemies at
court accused him of plotting against the emperor and of dangerous political
ambition. He was only considered exempt from capital punishment because of
his previous services to thecourt.
This time he was not just demoted and sent away from the capital, but he and
his entourage were considered criminals: four sons and nine of his associates
were exiled to dierent places, Michizane was taken from the capital by a military
escort, post stations along the way to his exile in Kyushu were forbidden from providing food or horses, and he was put under house arrest during his two years in
Dazaifu, where he seemed to have suered from material want and malnutrition.6
The shock of exile that Ovid and Michizane suered was comparable:the sudden fall from grace; the expulsion from the sophisticated cultural milieu of the
capital; the hardships of travel to a distant, unwelcome destination; the predictable
disdain for the more primitive living conditions; anxiety, depression, impulses of
self-reection and self-defense; and, lastly, writing as a familiar practice, which
suddenly took on a new tone and importance as a channel for, variously, expressing outrage, nding consolation and reconguring the glorious poets former persona. Yet as much as the severe punishment of exile triggered universally visceral
reactions in Augustan Rome and Heian Japan, poets were equipped with dierent
coping strategies by their respective literary cultures and personal temperament.
In this chapter Iargue that both Michizane and Ovid experienced a similarly
new challenge when writing in exile. On the one hand, exile was an irreversible
inection point, after which no sentence, no poem, no word could ever quite mean
the same. The new realitythe sense of humiliation and blotted reputation, the
dierent climate, food, life rhythm, commodities (or absence thereof), and the
eects of disease and depressionclouded their formerly radiant life paths and
shook their condence.7 On the other hand, they had to cope with their new situation with the tools they had acquired throughout their lives in the capital:a sense
of their social and poetic selves and the entitlements that came with it, genres and
rhetorical tropes of their literary traditions and from their previous oeuvre that
allowed them, now, to capture the exilic condition and try to mend it, and models from poetic lore or mythology that invited comparison to their own fate and
aordedor withheldconsolation.
Though the two poets faced a similar creative challenge in exile, their reactions in poetry diered greatly, not the least because their literary cultures had
endowed them with a dierent social persona and distinctive rhetorical and genre
6
Borgen 1986, 27879. On Michizanes fall from power and exile see Fujiwara 2002, 23781.
Occasional arguments that Ovid actually never went into exile but only lived it out in literary fantasy
have not been convincing. For related literature see Williams 2002,341.
7
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resources, as well as shaping their temperaments into very dierent poetic personalities. In this chapter Iexplore how Michizane and Ovid coped with a similar
challenge in dierent ways. How did Ovid, the poet-provocateur, deal with exile
dierently from Michizane, the court-employed poet-ocial? How is our reading
of their exile oeuvre tinged by the ways scholars situate their exile oeuvre within
their entire work and within the values of Latin and Japanese literary cultures?
With whom, by which rhetorical means, and to which end do Ovid and Michizane
enter into a dialogue as compensation for their separation and isolation? And how
do they use poetic and mythological lore in the process?
2. The Poet-Provocateur and the Poet-Ocial

When reading Ovids and Michizanes exile poetry face to face their authors seem
grossly incongruous:we have the extravagant Latin poet, darling of rened and
at times risqu audiences and author of piquant works of amatory didactics, confront the rather straight-laced Japanese statesman and scholar, a court poet who
arranged his grandfathers, fathers, and his own poetry into an authoritative family collection, which he presented to the emperor in 900 in his function as a
high-ranking courtier and subject of the emperor. One was banished for corrupting Rome with his sexually audacious writings (at least on the surface; and was it
not a much more romantic reason to be banished for a leading poet of love elegy
and didactics?), the other fell prey to political rivalries with the powerful Fujiwara
regent clan increasingly dominating the imperialcourt.
True, we have here poets of dierent individual temperament, but that explains
only part of the discrepancy. More importantly, poets had dierent positions in
the Heian and Augustan sociopolitical landscape. Whereas Heian court life centered on festivals and events that included ocial poetry composition by ocials
who also served in the courtly bureaucracy, Augustus did not call on poets for
literary banquets. Certainly, some of his successors, such as Nero, did institute
festivals for poets to display their talent, but this is not comparable to the predominantly institutionalized, largely collective poetic production of early Japan. In
contrast, patrons played a central role in Augustan Rome (and much of the history
of Roman literature). They enjoyed the poets company during their leisure hours
(otium). Often the relationship had no economic necessity:many poets could live
o inherited property or invested capital, in particular those poets whose assets
qualied them as knights (equites), as was the case with Horace, Tibullus, and
Ovid during the Augustan age. Roman poets might have received occasional monetary gifts from their patrons, but they usually received no regular stipend or
were engaged in other professional occupations, unlike the Heian poet-ocials.8
As a consequence, while there was a long tradition of exiled poet-ocials
in China and Japan, Rome exiled political gures rather than poets per se.
Michizane could look back to towering models for his exile, beginning with
Qu Yuan (ca. 340278 bce), a virtuous minister who lost favor with his king,
On patronage see White 1993 and Fantham 1996,6784.
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committed suicide after presumably composing his expansive poetic plaint

Encountering Sorrow (Lisao

) for which he came to be considered the
rst lyrical poet of China. More recently, many Tang poets lived and wrote
through phases of exile, for example Bo Juyi, a crucial model for Michizanes
life and work. Exile was certainly a pervasive means of punishment in Greece
and Rome, too. But in the line of prominent political exiles such as the early
Republican patrician statesman Camillus, the legendary general Coriolanus,
Scipio, Cicero, Pompey the Great, Cato the Younger or later Seneca, Ovid was
the exceptionalpoet.
The dierence of the social prole of poets in Heian Japan and Augustan
Rome aected their exile poetry:Although Ovids and Michizanes outrage over
the injustice that had befallen them was probably comparably strong, Michizane
often attributes his misfortune to dark and abstract powers of fate, as if exile was
sent down from heaven and would strike anybody sooner or later. Sadly, it was a
predictable part of the political system and Michizane could console himself by
evoking the remarkable exile poets of the Chinese past. Ovid, in contrast, took his
exile very personally, was not shy to fault Augustus personally for his misery, and
had mythological models to identify with, rather than previous Roman exile poets
in whose company he could feel honored and a bit consoled.
The rst poem in Michizanes exile collection shows poignantly how intensely
Michizane felt wronged but how he turned away from personal accusation to an
overpowering sense of cosmiclaw:
Composed toMyself

9
A
way from home for three, four monthsnow
My tears fall in hundreds, thousands of streams.

T
he ten thousand things that happened are all like adream
Time and again Igaze up to Dark Heaven.
The algebraic crescendo that builds up from the time span in exile, to the number
of streams of tears and the bewildering number of small events adding up to the
sudden reality of life in exile culminates in one thing: Dark Heaven, a somber
power that evokes the poem Yellow Bird (Huang niao

) from the Chinese
Classic of Poetry (compiled ca. 600 bce). In the poem, each time the bird cries, a valiant warrior of the harsh state of Qin (which later founded the rst Chinese empire
in 221 bce) is sacriced to follow his lord into death. The speaker cries out invain:

You Dark Heaven,

You destroy our bestmen.
If this one could be ransomed:
A hundred men just for his life.10
Each time Michizane looks up to the ominous heavens over Dazaifu, he becomes
a political victim chosen by cosmic law, and knows that no human power would
be able to pay the ransoma hundred for one. Amplied by the grisly plot of
9
10
Kanke buns, Kanke ksh no.476.

The translation ismine.
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Yellow Bird, Michizanes parsimonious pentasyllabic quatrain hides a brute

force behind a simple faade of counting and sky-gazing. Yet, the desperate call
for ransom that the poet voices through his allusion to the Classic of Poetry is
not hurled at Emperor Daigo, Michizanes rival Tokihira, or anybody else. The
title Composed to Myself keeps this force internal to Michizane. But where
Michizanes model Bo Juyi used this exact title to write casual poems of entertaining self-reection, Michizane composed a dire poem of heavenly doom to exile, a
death of sorts.11
Ovid looks much closer for culprits responsible for his misfortune:His talent
and Augustus.
Books, my unlucky obsession, why do Istay withyou
when it was my own talent brought medown?
Why go back to those fresh-condemned Muses, my nemesis?Isnt
one well-earned punishment enough?
Poetry made men and women eager to knowme
that was my badluck;
poetry made Caesar condemn me and my life-style
because of my Art [of Love], putout
years before:take away my pursuit, you remove my oences
I credit my guilt to my verses. Heres thereward
Ive had for my care and all my sleepless labour:
A penalty set on talent.12
Book 2 of the Tristiaa single long letter to Augustus, unlike the other books,
which contain several epistolary elegiesopens with a quantum of self-pity
seasoned with self-praise. The letter is a remarkable tour de force that blends
attery of the emperor with Ovids self-compliments, self-defense with outright
accusation, and touches of humility and gratitude with moments of mordant
mockery.13 His pose of supplication is directed at the godly emperor by reminding the gods, the Muses, that they owe him:and the Muse, having stirred that
wrath, may now assuage it: poetry often moves the gods on high. (Musaque,
quam movit, motam quoque leniet iram: / exorant magnos carmina saepe deos).
(Tristia II.2122).
He does admit that he committed an error and deserves Augustuss wrath,
but his seeming concessions come rarely without barbs: As he points out,
Ovids error gives Augustus the splendid chance to live up to his proverbial
mercy; Augustuss military campaigns and glorious political maneuvers leave
him no time to read Ovids frivolous works (what was he thinking, banishing
11
See Hatooka 2005, 38486.

Tristia II.1-12. Green, 25. Quid mihi vobiscum est, infelix cura, libelli / ingenio perii qui miser ipse
meo? / cur modo damnatas repeto, mea crimina, Musas? / an semel est poenam commeruisse parum? /
carmina fecerunt, ut me cognoscere vellet / omine non fausto femina virque meo:/ carmina fecerunt, ut me
moresque notaret / iam demi iussa Caesar ab Arte mea. / deme mihi studium, vitae quoque crimina demes;
/ acceptum refero versibus esse nocens. / hoc pretium curae vigilatorumque laborum / cepimus:ingenio est
poena repertameo.
13
For a close reading of this letter and the question of the ambiguity of Ovids treatment of Augustus
here and in other works see Williams 1994, 154209.
12
209
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Ovid for a book he hasnt read?); and Augustus is a generous sponsor of public games and farces, without apparently realizing they are full of adultery
and the kind of stu for which Ovid was exiled. Ovids main line of defense
is to draw up a list of venerable authors, both Greek and Roman, who treat
adultery and lust without receiving punishment like Ovid. Even Homer does
not go unsullied:Whats the Iliad but an adulteress, battled over by husband
and lover? . . . Whats the Odyssey but the wooing of one woman, in her husbands absence, by a crowd of men and all for love? (Ilias ipsa quid est aliud, nisi
adultera, de qua / inter amatorem pugna virumque fuit?... aut quid Odyssea est,
nisi femina propter amorem, / dum vir abest, multis una petita procis?). (Tristia
II.37177) What in other contexts could be an innocent list of erudite exempla can here be read as a nail-by-nail accusation of the Princeps of either not
knowing or not wanting to know that, if the emperor is right, Tomis should be
a populous colony of culprits akin to Ovid. But Ovid is the only one hit by the
imperial thunderbolt.
There could hardly be a more dissimilar way of coping with exile in these two
poems: Ovids sprawling, mercurial eloquence, spurting forth from a wounded
soul with a most intact double-edged tongue directed at the emperor; and
Michizanes introverted evocation of a heavenly law and fault per force of an ominous brutal allusion to a Chinese Classic.
Not only is Michizane not launching into a querulous persuasion attempt of
Emperor Daigo, whose edict banished him. But one of his most famous exile
poems has traditionally been read as proof of Michizanes unshaken loyalty to the
emperor. On the ninth day of the ninth month of 900, the annual Double-Ninth
Festival, poets gathered in the palace for this major autumn festival, enjoying
chrysanthemum owers and composing poetry on a set topic in tune with the season. The next day the courtiers met again and composed on Autumn Thoughts
and Michizanes poem moved the sixteen-year-old Emperor Daigo so much that
he bestowed on his senior minister Michizane, at the time aged fty-six, a robe as
a token of special favor. Michizane remembers the incident a year later, now from
the beyond ofexile:

Ninth month, tenthday

This night last year Iwas in attendance at the

Hall of Clear Coolness

This is the name of a hall in the Imperial Palace.

and in my poem on Autumn Thoughts Ifelt

alone heartrendinggrief.

We were asked by the emperor to present a poem on
Autumn Thoughts. My humble poem set forth much
resentment.

210
The robe bestowed on me by imperial grace is

here with menow
Each day Iraise it in reverence and pay homage
to its lingering fragrance.
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14
When the festival was over and it was late

[the Emperor] bestowed this robe. Even
now Ihave it at hand in a chest. Thats why
Isaythis.
In the poem composed at the poetry event hosted by Emperor Daigo the previous
year, Michizane had lamented the sadness of the season and his progressive aging,
and tried to console himself with the grace of the Emperora lexical item de
rigueur in this kind of poetryand Bo Juyis three friends of wine, lute playing,
and poetry.15 The poem stays within the boundaries of the conventions of courtly
autumn laments and does not mention anything in specic, but Michizane
though still in favor with the retired emperor Uda, his lifelong generous patron,
and the young reigning Emperor Daigosuered from increasing political isolation due to the erce lobbying of the Fujiwaras and had probably forebodings that
his high rank and accumulation of titles would arouseenvy.
The assigned topic of Autumn Sadness gained an entirely new signicance
when Michizane remembered the splendid Double Ninth Festival at court a year
later in Dazaifu. It would be hard to read into this poem double entendres of
lurking resentment or querulous criticism of the emperor la Ovid. But must we
really understand it as a celebration of Michizanes loyalty to the emperor who
banished him, as has traditionally been done?16 Might Michizane not, again, be
composing to himself? Unlike Ovids Tristia II, Michizane does not turn to the
emperor at all:he seems to be addressing himself, an impression that is further
reinforced by the fact that the poet added a self-commentary. Writing interlinear
comments to ones own poetry was not common practice before Michizanes time.
Michizane adopted it from the mid-Tang poets Yuan Zhen, Liu Yuxi, and, in particular, from Bo Juyi, who introduced this practice into Chinese literary culture.17
What was the point of the self-commentary? Note that the explanatory glosses
to lines one and four explain items that need no explanation:Any of Michizanes
readers would have known that the Hall of Clear Coolness was used for many
ocial eventswhy mention that it was the name of a hall in the palace? The
pedestrian explanation of the halls name does not convey necessary information.
Instead, it allows Michizane to imagine, visualize the hall as a pars pro toto for the
palace, the capital, and all he had lost within the short span of a year. And from
the poems closure the reader must assume that Michizane still has the robe in
his possessionwhy say that he keeps it in a chest close at hand? The gloss to the
second line does provide the helpful information that the previous year courtiers
had composed on Autumn Thoughts, something that only readers who read or
heard Michizanes composition from the previous year could have known. More
importantly, this gloss points to the disjunction between poetic plaint and real-life
14

16
Hatooka Akira also steps away from the traditional interpretation and draws attention to its value
for Michizanes memory of the capital and his identity as a courtier. For his reading of the poem and
the occasion see Hatooka 2005, 91110.
17
See Got 1993b,7594.
15
211
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plaint. Back then, at the height of his power, Michizane expressed much resentment. We can imagine Michizane casting a sarcastic glance back at himself as if
to say:what did Iknow of suering back then? The successful poet of sorrowfulness could not have imagined the exiled man of sorrow. What is the traditional
poetics of mournful autumn in the face of exile during autumn, framed in poetry?
Based on this reading of the self-commentary Michizane is clinging less to
the emperor than to the robe:its incantatory fragrance of better times and better
places and its ability to transport Michizane into the realm of a happy past just
for a brief moment each day when he takes it out. Worshipping the robe had
become a daily routine to make the past present and imagine for a short moment
that exile had not happened. Michizane is in dialogue with his own poetry and
with the imperial token that gives his life in exile a eeting glimpse of his former
self, Michizane the minister and courtier. In Tristia II Ovid lets no opportunity
pass to immediately spend the persuasive capital he has gained on reminding
the emperor of his innocence and asking if not for amnesty, at least for a better
exile. In his juxtaposition of two Double Ninth Festivalscaptured in two poems
at radically opposite poles of his lifeMichizane does not spend his persuasive
capital on anything. There is even a certain satisfaction, a tragic pleasure in a
daily ritual that gives past meaning to present catastrophe, without working for
change. And a ritual continues to this day:in commemoration of Michizane and
his exile, priests at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyotoa major temple of the
worship of Tenjin, the deied Michizane, god of scholarshipcelebrate every year
the Lingering Fragrance Festival (yoksai

), where guests from all over
Japan come and recite waka poems (nowadays not kanshi any more) on the day
Michizane had written his poem on the fragrant robe fromexile.
It is striking that the only poem in Michizanes exile work to use a term of
legal accusation (uttaeru

) is addressed to Heaven (later legends claim that
Michizane wrote a saimon
, a prayer text, claiming his innocence, climbed up
high and brought his case before Heaven18). Note the growing circles of darkness
in thispoem:

Lamplight Gone (second of two quatrains)

In the autumn sky no snow yet and no reies on the

ground19
With lamplight gone Itoss away my book, tears fall in
silent obscurity
For me exiled man sorrows double in the blacknight

Those deep dark principlesI want to bring suit before
deep dark Heaven.

20
This poem drills itself deeper and deeper into darkness:the extinguished lamp
light, the absence of indirect light from snow or reies is still an elegant negation
18
Kawaguchi 1966,739.
Proverbially, the students Sun Kang and Che Yin were too poor to buy lamp oil and used these
natural sources of light to study for theexams.
20
19
212
10/12/2013 8:03:33 PM
of beautiful light imagery. But the tears in darkness, the doubling of sorrows during night bring a somber tone to the scene until nally darkness takes over in the
last line, which repeats four times the same word mei, dark, in the short span
of a seven-syllable line. The deep dark (meimei

) principles of fate, which
are privy to humans, and the deep dark (meimei

) heavens are dierent
entities, but they feature the same characters.21 The four-time repetition of the
same character in one line hammers home both Michizanes conviction of his
innocence and the impenetrable inscrutability of heaven and its principles. In the
end Michizanes gesture of legal accusation is dramatized but also cut short by
the quadruple tautology in the last line, channeling his despair into complaints
against a systemfate and cosmic forces.
3. Realism of ExileFallacy or Felicity?

So far we have explained the dierence between Ovids and Michizanes exile
poetry on the grounds of the dierent sociological position of the poet in Augustan
Rome and Heian Japan and Ovids particular prole as a skillful provocateur, a
role he continued to live up to even in exile. Still, both poets were in their own way
jolted into a new, painful reality. By the time of exile both were in their fties and at
the highpoint of their careers and condence and had to struggle with how to use
their poetic craft under new circumstances and for new purposes. Modern scholars have sometimes captured this sudden shift by detecting a greater realism
in Ovids and Michizanes poetry, presumably a response to the sobering humiliations of exile. Nobody would deny that there are traces of the autobiographical
in Michizanes and Ovids exile poetry, but their poetry, qua exile poetry, has been
more easily read with embarrassing literalism, to intriguingly opposite eect.
For classicists this alleged realism signaled a loss of Ovids creative energies
and poetic virtuosity and has partly led to a low regard for Ovids exile oeuvre.
Peter Green astutely captures this disappointment with Ovid, the exile author:
The fashionable neur whose nearest approach to reality had been a
fantasy-manual of seduction, whose most sustained creation was centred on outr
metamorphoses and the ironic mockery of traditional myth, now found that Life,
in its crudest form, had invaded his library and at one stroke deconstructed his
lovingly fashioned literary persona. He became querulous, repetitive, self-pitying
and self-obsessed, humourless. The egotism that had been a lightweight joy in
Romes enfant terrible of the boudoir became an embarrassing aberration when
exercised, without elegance or proportion, at the expense of his wife. Tomis no
longer let him be funny. The praeceptor amoris with his mask of myth, wit and
literary allusion was now an all-too-human husband in a real-life situation.22
Ovids exile poetry is simply too real, embarrassingly real for a poet whose forte
lay in literary seduction and creative pretension. Most studies of Ovids exile poetry
published over the last few decades have lamented this prejudice against Ovids
21
On resonances with Buddhist and Daoist associations of darkness in this poem see Hatooka
2005, 21718 and 41417.
22
Green 2005,xxxvi.
213
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last two works and have aimed to unmask the assumption of realism as a fallacy.23
They have shown that Ovids literary artistry is on a par with his masterful works
before exile and, in turn, blame scholars for their too literalist acceptance of Ovids
disingenuous laments that his creative powers are waning and his command of
Latin declining under the inuence of the barbarian environment.
What Ovid scholars consider a literalist, realist fallacy in need of redress is welcomed by many Michizane scholars as a felicity. The poetry Michizane composed during his exile in Sanuki Province from 886 to 887 and in Dazaifu from 901 to his death
in 903 is regarded as distinctive and given exceptional importance in Michizanes
poetic oeuvre. Away from court and its numerous occasions for the composition of
formal poetry, Michizane was forced to discover new poetic sujets:common people,
local customs, a new landscape, the sorrows of travel and separation from home, and
worries over advancing age and lack of career success.24 This becomes exacerbated
in the forty-six poems Michizane wrote in Dazaifu, which the poet compiled into
a separate collection entitled Later Collection of the Sugawara Family (Kanke ksh

) and sent o to his friend Ki no Haseo in the capital shortly before his
death. Hatooka Akira has argued that, while the Sanuki Period broadened the scope
of Michizanes poetry and brought him into closer poetic dialogue with Bo Juyi
himself poetically productive when exiled to Jiangzhou in Southern China in 815
the Dazaifu experience pushed Michizane to his limits and beyond Bo Juyi, where
poetry became a tool for distinctive expressions of sorrow and despair.25
In traditional Chinese poetics suering gave a cachet to good writing. One
of the earliest formulations of this inuential view comes from Chinas grand
historian Sima Qian (ca. 14585 bce), who wrote a letter of self-defense when he
himself was harshly punished by castration for a political misstep and chose the
humiliation of castration over execution in order to nish writing his monumental history of China, the Historical Records (Shiji
). Hoping to ultimately gain

immortality through writing, Sima Qian draws up an impressive list of venerable
sages who, like him, produced superlative works in dire straits:
King Wen of Zhou (11th century bce), when Earl of the West, was in captivity
and elaborated the Classic of Changes; Confucius (5th century bce) was in a desperate situation and wrote The Spring and Autumn Annals; Qu Yuan (3rd century bce) was banished, and only then composed Encountering Sorrow . . . The
three-hundred poems of the Classic of Poetry were for the most part written as the
expression of outrage by good men and sages. All of these men had something
eating away at their hearts; they could not carry through their ideas of the Way,
so they gave an account of what had happened before while thinking of posterity.

. . .

26
23
See for example Froesch 1976, Nagle 1980 and Williams1994.

On Michizanes poetry in Sanuki see Hatooka 2005, 292313 and Fujiwara 2002, 11174.
25
Hatooka 2005, 35154.
26
Hanshu 3460.2735. Letter in Response to Ren An, translated by Stephen Owen (with
modications). Owen 1996a,141.
24
214
10/12/2013 8:03:33 PM
This poetics of suering, which linked great writing to hardship and, ultimately,
immortal fame, became a powerful traditional assumption throughout East Asia
and it certainly contributed to singling Michizanes exile poetry and its implied
emotional realism out for distinction. (Incidentally, it also resonates with
modern myths of literature in exile, partly inherited from nineteenth-century
European romanticism, which might incline modern literary critics yet more to
value Michizanes exile poetry).
In short, Ovids image is dominated by the artistic brilliance of the Metamorphoses
and his elegiac and didactic treatments of love, while his exile poetry, with its
grim real-life edge, has proved of least interest to Ovid enthusiasts through the
ages, in turn inspiring modern scholars to try to save its reputation. In contrast,
Michizanes exile poetry is precisely treasured because of the traditional poetics of suering and an assumed emotional realism and because modern critics
long to hear the courtier trained in the panegyrical court style with its protocol of
assigned topics, seasonal events, and prescribed rhyme words speak from closer
to his palpitatingheart.
A favorite example to show Ovids ctionalizing craft in the exile poetry has
been analyses of his portrayal of Tomis. If we take Ovids accounts at face value, we
might well shudder at the barbarity of the place:it appears to be a region of eternal
winter and climatic extremes, at the opposite end of Roman civilization, torn by
warfare between wild tribes, and utterly lacking in any natural harmony or balance. But recent archeology has shown that Tomis had a fair amount of Hellenistic
culture:a gymnasium, elegant civic buildings, and inscriptions in Greek and Latin
that show that its inhabitants were familiar with Euripides, Theocritus, and other
Greek authors.27 Ovids description of Moesia, the area around Tomis, which was
rst brought under Roman control shortly before Ovids arrival in the late rst
century bce, seems far from Tomitan reality and relies instead on ethnographic
and literary lore, such as the vibrantly exotic and barbaric Scythia as imagined in
Virgils Georgics 3 (34983).28 (See Figure 6.1.)
Although Dazaifu had its place in early literary history as a site where a few
prominent poet-ocials served, it was a sober place lacking any sensationalist ethnographic lore. One decisive reason for this was that Dazaifu had been a solid part
of Japan for many centuries. Here Japanese was spoken and the overall culture,
though provincial, was familiar. It even had an advantage for a Sinophile scholar
like Michizane: Despite its peripheral location on the Southernmost island of
the Japanese archipelago, the ourishing government quarters at Dazaifu had at
least since the sixth century been the gateway for embassies going back and forth
among Japan, states on the Korean Peninsula, and China. Dazaifu was therefore
considered a distant capital of sorts. Manysh poets such as tomo no Tabito
and Yamanoue no Okura, who served as ocials in Dazaifu in the eighth century, benetted greatly from their close exposure to newest developments on the
continent and experimented with Chinese-style themes and forms. In this sense
27
For relevant literature see Williams 2002,340.

On Ovids literary crafting of the image of his exile see in particular Williams 1994, Chapter1The
unreality of Ovids exile poetry.
28
215
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fi g ur e 6 . 1 Delacroix had obviously read his Herodotus, who describes how the
Scythians, barbarian pastoralists as he highlights, prepare mares milk cheese. Little
did the painter know that twentieth-century archeology would uncover a fair amount
of Hellenistic urban infrastructure at the site of ancientTomis.
Eugne Delacroix (17981863). Ovid Among the Scythians, 1859. National Gallery,
London/Art Resource,NY.
Dazaifu, though far from the capital, was as close as Japanese could get to the
continent and China, without leaving home, unlike Tomis, which contrary to its
past Greek colonization certainly did not represent the renement of Hellenistic
civilization despite the lingering Hellenistic inuence.
Michizane does express his shock over the vulgarity of his exile location:in an
expansive poem of one hundred couplets describing his banishment up to his rst
fall in exile and modeled on a poem composed by Bo Juyi in exile, Michizane complains about the greedy ocials, his alienation from the locals, bad food, and his
attempts to nd solace in reading, Buddhism, and Daoism. There are also more
subtle oenses to the courtier such as abalone stench and an elegant koto-lute out
of tune.29 These are failures of civil morals and tastes by capital standards:while in
Sanuki Michizane wrote a poem lamenting the botched performance of the annual
ceremony for Confucius, the sekiten
. Ritual and music were considered complementary civilizing arts in the Confucian world. However, Dazaifu also aorded
unexpected surprises and treasures thanks to its closeness to the continent:
29
30

On a bamboo armchair

Sent by the interpreter Li Yanhuan30
Kanke buns, Kanke ksh no.484. For a translation of the poem see Borgen 1986, 296301.
His identity is unclear. He might have been a Chinese merchant and interpreter.
10/12/2013 8:03:33 PM

31
he bamboo chair Yanhuan sentme

T
Is just right to furnish my humbleabode.

Those merchants must have left it behind when they

tooko
So from today on this exiled stranger will haveit.
Its empty heart is old, because it crossed the seas
fromfar
But my staining tears are new, like those on the

bamboo planted next to the Xiang River longago.
Without paying a single coin Igot myself something

Made-in-China
I will entrust my body to it, cling to it in love, and
lament the wind and frost (it has endured).
In a rare moment of (still tearful) pleasure in exile, Michizane celebrates a bamboo armchair he received from a Chinese acquaintance. Such poems on everyday
objects were rarely written before Michizane, who picked up this habit in response
to Bo Juyis infatuation with everyday events and material culture. But here the
bamboo wicker chair is everything from quotidian object to mythical projection
ground and metaphysicalforce.
The physical object might be banal, especially in the rst two couplets:Michizane
explains where he got the chair, and that its simply perfect for his homethe
banality is mirrored in the fresh colloquial twang of the second line. Then there
is a glimmer of bargain instinct:Michizane snatches up an object left behind by
Chinese traders on the move who left him a karamonoa fabulous object from
Cathay, a thing made-in-China. Obviously, made-in-China sounds reverse
to our ears. Whereas today, or at least until recently, this referred to cheaply
mass-produced low-quality products from a Communist country with articially
low wages, to Michizane it was a precious object from the venerable civilization
of China. Like Bo Juyi, who was one of the rst Chinese poets with an interest in
talking about money, possessions, and laments in his poetryfor instance, the
steep prices of peonies at the ower marketMichizane also presents the chair as
an economic token and chuckles with delight that he got it for free.32
But the chair starts taking on mythical, metaphysical, and poetic dimensions
in the last two couplets. Michizane imagines how his tears in exile will inscribe
his pain into the chair, producing dappled bamboo that grows in the Xiang River
area in Southeast China and that became tear-stained when the two wives of the
legendary Emperor Shun of high antiquity bemoaned his death. The temple associated with the two lady-goddesses is also suggestively close to the area where
Qu Yuan, the most poignant identication gure for ocials out of favor in premodern East Asia, committed suicide. Michizanes fresh tears rework the ancient
bamboo from China, which has an empty heart unencumbered by emotional or
31

On the new importance of ownership and economic value in mid-Tang poetry see Owen
1996b,2433.
32
217
10/12/2013 8:03:34 PM
material attachments and is thusas far as chairs can bein a state of Buddhist
enlightenment. The last line produces a climax that merges China and Japan, the
old and the new, the metaphysical and the economic, poet and object: because
bamboo stays green and unperturbed in the face of wind and frost, it embodies
sturdy resistance in poetic lore and allows Michizane to transform the chair into a
cipher for himself. The bamboo chair and the poet who uses and cherishes it are
equals, because they have both endured hardship.
In this innocent poem on an everyday object, Michizane spins out a fantasy
of economic, mythical, spiritual, and poetic connection to China that ennobles,
consoles, and entertains him. Obviously, Ovids and Michizanes location of exile
in relation to the imperial center and its respective reference culture led one to feel
utterly isolated and allowed the other to console himself at least now and then. One
suered and died at what he considered the end of the civilized world, whereas the
other, though suering and dying far from Japans capital down South, ended his
life at least in vicinity toChina.
4. The Address fromExile

One trait that distinguishes the exile poetry of Ovid and Michizane from their previous work and that stands particularly out in comparison between the two poets
is their dierent addressivity, to use Mikhail Bakhtins helpful term:their ways of
inscribing the audience into their lines.33 There are moments in Michizanes exile
poetry where he does address others:a response to a letter from his family in the
capital, laments for colleagues or friends whose news of death reached him in
Dazaifu. But the rst few poems in the Kanke kosh, such as the Poem composed
to myself discussed above, set the tone for the inward gaze of Michizanes exile
work. Michizane rarely addresses his poems to people and does not ask for their
help in improving his exile condition. He sometimes even makes fun of his poor
skills of companionship:when composing a creative response to Bo Juyis poem
on the three friends of a gentleman, namely lute playing, wine, and poetry, he
confesses that he has had little company of lute playing or wine and that only
poetry remains as his friend.34 And Michizane takes this friendship to its ultimate
destination with a sober, somber pun:His friend Poetry (shiy

) is his death
friend (shiy
), perhaps the only one who will stand by him until theend.
In contrast, Ovids entire exile poetry is cast into the genre of epistolary elegy,
a dialogic genre oriented toward the implied addressee, although we only get to
hear Ovids monologues and lack any possible responses.35 Even the rst book of
the Tristia, which takes the reader from Rome on the long exodus to Tomis during
a forbiddingly cold winter, exposed to the whims of the Adriatic and Aegean, is
not an introverted travel diary, but an epic exile drama staged for his readers back
33
Bakhtin 1986,95.
Claassen therefore uses the term secondary epistle for Ovids verse letters, because they are
practically monologues where the addressee has little voice but is more of a literary device. Claassen
1999,23.
34
35
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home. And with the second book, the letter addressed to Augustus to relieve Ovid
of unfair charges and exile, Ovid moves explicitly into the epistolary mode. Except
for Augustus, and a certain Perilla, possibly his stepdaughter and the addressee of
poem 3.7, none of the addressees of the elegies in the Tristia are named, because
Ovid apparently feared that associations with the disgraced poet would harm his
friends in the capital. Several poems are addressed to Ovids wife but, ironically,
we do not know her name. The four books of Black Sea Letters, instead, embrace
the letter form explicitly:composed after three or four years in exile, Ovid mentions the addressees of his letters now byname.
Ovids choice of the letter genre in exile has interesting precedents in the literary tradition and in Ovids own work. Jo-Marie Claassen traces connections
between the letters Cicero wrote when exiled in 5857 bce for his harsh handling
of some members of the Catiline conspiracy, and Ovids epistolary elegies. She
shows how Ovid expands what she calls the myth of exile established by Cicero.36
Ovid shares with the exiled Cicero the literary expression of death wishes, the
panic over the greatness of the fall, remorse, grief, reaching out to his wife and,
last but not least, the image of the exiled man as a living corpse.37
The major form of exile literature before Ovid had been consolatory letters
using philosophical arguments to deal with bereavement and exile, a tradition
that eventually came to include, most famously, Ciceros Tusculan Disputations
written to console himself after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia and
later Senecas Consolations and Boethiuss Consolations of Philosophy. But Tristia
and the Black Sea Letters had little in common with these philosophical consolations and were something new. Intriguingly, they resonate closely with Ovids
youthful love elegies, the Amores, and the Heroides, a collection of ctional verse
letters put in the mouth of famous women and lovers from Greek myth. Ovid
invented the genre of elegiac epistles for the Heroides and, as Nagle puts it, The
behavior patterns of the Heroides, the Amores, and the exilic poems are similar
unfullled erotic desires and the exilic homesickness.38 But what in the Heroides
was still an exciting literary experiment turned to a literary obsession in the exilic
elegies, where Ovid became the excluded and isolated lover asking for the pity of
his beloved. In the Heroides he could play with ne literary portrayals of the distinctive suerings of a Penelope, a Medea, or a Dido, but in Tristia and Black Sea
Letters he changed into the only and his only case of abandoned love. Ovid leaves
out no opportunity to remind his wife, friends, and colleagues in the capital that
they have to work hard on lobbying for his recall to Rome, or at least on a revision
of the verdict and transfer to a better location. In thepossibly spuriouspoem
Ibis he scathingly attacks an unknown enemy for forsaking him and, again and
again, devotes poems to unnamed foes and throws thunderbolts at them for their
betrayal or attack.
36
Claassen 1999, 18390.

See Nagle 1980,3335.
38
Nagle 1980,2122.
37
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The dierent quality of addressivity in Michizanes and Ovids exile poetry is

particularly obvious in the ways the two poets deal with their wives. In response to
a letter from his wife, Michizane writes the followingpoem:
Reading a letter fromhome

Sad, without news for more than three months,

A favorable wind now blew along this letter.
The tree at the west gate was taken away by people
(tosell),
And Ihad a stranger come live in the northern plot of
our garden.
You call the paper-wrapped ginger a medicine ofsorts
And mention that the konbu kelp should serve as my
asceticfare.
The letter doesnt speak of your, my dear wifes, suer
ing ofhunger
Thats why Ifret even moreit makes me miserable
withworry.

39
Michizanes initial relief at receiving a letter from home after many months of
silence gives quickly way to more worries. Apparently his wife had to sell a tree and
rent out parts of their beautiful residence, the Senpb

at the intersection
of Kyotos Fifth Avenue and Nishi no Tin street, to support herself. That she cared
to send him konbu kelp and gingerwhich he seemed to have likedcomes as a
welcome gift for a man in his fties who probably suered from various ailments
during exile. But the sight of the gifts, in conjunction with the alarming news about
his wifes lack of funds, raises a worse suspicion in Michizane: while scrapping
together food and medicine for him, she must be suering hunger and hardship
herself. Michizane appears here as a responsible husband and head of a once thriving household, though probably not as interesting a poet. He might have preferred
composing a poem over responding with a prose letter, because the poem was a
traditionally more urgent form to express personal distress and sorrow.
While this is the only extant poem Michizane addressed to his wife from exile,
Ovid wrote many verse letters from Tomis to his wife. The third elegy of the fourth
book of the Tristia gives a good taste of how Ovid uses his marital relation as an
opportunity for poetic spectacle:
. . . Do your feverish night-hours
stretch out to eternity? Do you toss andturn
till your weary bones are aching? That you suer such symptoms
I have no doubt, that your love betrays sorrowspain,
that your crucixion surely matches Andromache watching
Hector dragged in his blood at Achilles chariot-tail.
Yet what prayer to utter Iknow not, Icannot determine
just what attitude Id wish you totake.
Are you sad? Im angry at being the cause of your heartache.
39
10/12/2013 8:03:34 PM
Not sad? Yet your husbandsloss

should aect you. Ah yes, lament your bereavement, sweetest
of wives, live through a seasonsgrief
for my troubles, bewail my lottheres some pleasure in weeping,
sorrows worked out and relieved by tears.40
In contrast to Michizanes sober, marital concern over his wifes well-being, Ovid
gives his wife a premier role in the spectacle of his exile. There is a hint of voyeuristic sadism in imagining her bones worn out from bad sleep, and a touch of
pathetic masochism in elevating their plight to epic heights, envisioning himself a dead Hector dragged behind Achilles chariot circling around Troy, watched
by his helpless wife Andromache. Ovid does express regret to have to cause her
heartache, but immediately prescribes unrestrained weeping over his sad fate.
Similarly, when Ovid feels ashamed for his exile and the loss of reputation his
wife incurs due to it, he takes that feeling as a welcome opportunity to parade his
talent and malepride:
It cuts me to the quick if being spoken of as an exiles
wife makes you blush and turn your faceaside;
it cuts me to the quick if you feel that to have our marriage
known, now, brings you disgrace, if youre ashamed,
now, of being mine! Gone, gone are the days when you boasted
about your husband, never hiding hisname;
gone are the days when you (do you mind being reminded?)
were glad (I recall) to be, to be known as,mine.
As bets a true wife, you loved my every talent, your partial
love added many to the true ones.I
ranked so high in your eyes that there was no manliving
you set above me, more coveted for yourown.41
...
No:rather rise up in defence of me, make it your business
to be, for me, the model of a dutifulwife,
imbue these unhappy circumstances with your virtues:
high-striving glory climbs the steepestpaths.
...
My misfortune gives you a chance for fame, itoers
40
Tristia 4.3.25-38. Green 2005, 6970. et veniunt aestus, et nox inmensa videtur, / fessaque iactati
corporis ossa dolent?/ non equidem dubito, quin haec et cetera ant, / detque tuus maesti signa doloris
amor, / nec cruciere minus, quam cum Thebana cruentum / Hectora Thessalico vidit ab axe rapi. / quid
tamen ipse precer dubito, nec dicere possum, / aectum quem te mentis habere velim. / tristis es? indignor
quod sim tibi causa doloris:/ non es? at amisso coniuge digna fores / tu vero tua damna dole, mitissima
coniunx, / tempus et a nostris exige triste malis, / eque meos casus:est quaedam ere voluptas; / expletur
lacrimis egeriturquedolor.
41
Tristia 4.3.49-60. Green 2005, 70. me miserum, si tu, cum diceris exulis uxor / avertis vultus et subit
ora rubor! / me miserum, si turpe putas mihi nupta videri! / me miserum, si te iam pudet esse meam! /
tempus ubi est illud, quo te iactare solebas / coniuge, nec nomen dissimulare viri? / tempus ubi est, quo
tenisi non vis illa referri / et dici, memini, iuvit et esse meam? / utque proba dignum est, omni tibi
dote placebam:/ addebat veris multa faventis amor. / nec, quem praeferresita res tibi magna videbar /
quemque tuum malles esse, vir altererat.
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your loyalty room to raise its head, tomake

itself conspicuous. Use this crisisyour gift, your godsend:
How wide a eld lies open for your praise!42
The wife in this poem exists for the sake of her husband and the sake of the poetic
drama of exile. Thanks to him she gets her chance at fame and an opportunity to
live up to the role of a paragon of marital virtue. It is ironic, as has been remarked,
that of all Augustan poets Ovid, the love-inclined enfant terrible of Romes literary
scene, was the only one who tried marriage (even three times); and in this plea
Ovid paints her according to the moralistic Augustan ideals of marriage that the
Princeps had introduced with several marital laws promulgated in 18 and 17 bce,
which encouraged marriage and childbearing, and punished adultery.43 This is
again evidence that the much-debated question of Ovids stance for or against
Augustan ideology is often a matter of pragmatic poetic expediency rather than of
political or moral principle. Who would not want to depict his wife loyally devoted
to the cause of her husband at home when he pines away in exile? The gagging
praise of his wife in this epistolary elegy is the most extreme case of the aggressive
addressivity of Ovids exile poetry:the letters addressee is virtually strangled by
the poets desperate poetic drama of calling on her forhelp.
5. Ovids Pleas:The Poet and Roman Oratory

The urgency of Ovids addressivity is enhanced by a part of Roman literary culture
and public life, which in this form did not exist in Japan:oratory and the practice
of litigation. To work for his recall Ovid pleads with everybody and everything:the
emperor Augustus, great beyond human power and inhuman in his verdict; the
Muses, whose blessing with talent led to his exile due to poetry in the rst place,
but who at times help him through exile, giving him poetry as the only way to
survive the ordeal; Amorinspiration for the Art of Lovewhom he accuses of
causing his exile, when the divine boy visits Ovid in a dream vision; or, nearer to
the ground, people who had close ties to the court, such as Messalinus, the son of
his former patron Messala, Paullus Fabius Maximus, married to a rst cousin of
Augustus, or the inuential consul Sextus Pompeius; Ovids editor in Rome and
literary executor of sorts, Brutus; a varied assortment of friends and fellow poets
such as Cotta Maximus, Macer, or Cornelius Severus; from his family his wife
and his stepdaughter Perilla (whom Ovid encourages to pursue her poetic talent
despite his bad example of where it can lead); and, last but not least, anonymous
enemies, unidentied friends who are too lazy to write to him, and future readers,
posterity toutcourt.
42
Tristia 4.3.71-74 and 8184. Green 2005, 71. sed magis in curam nostri consurge tuendi / exemplumque
mihi coniugis esto bonae / materiamque tuis tristem virtutibus imple:/ ardua per praeceps gloria vadit
iter. . . . dat tibi nostra locum tituli fortuna, caputque / conspicuum pietas qua tua tollat, habet. / utere
temporibus, quorum nunc munere facta est / et patet in laudes area latatuas.
43
For the content and implications of Augustuss marriage laws see Thomas McGinn, Prostitution,
Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford and NewYork:Oxford University Press, 1998),
chapters36.
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Training in judicial rhetoric and public declamation had a formidable role in

the education of the Roman elite and, accordingly, patterned the poets articulation and style and the perception of the reading public. Ovid came from an old
equestrian family and had started on a public career, serving in minor legal jobs
that would have involved him in the repression of crimes such as murder, theft,
and arson. Although he did not plead cases from about age twenty-ve to the time
of his exile, he participated in jury panels settling private suits such as property
disputes and inheritances, and possibly criminal cases. He obviously chose to continue playing an active civic role in the Augustan state even after he abandoned a
senatorial career to devote himself exclusively to writing.44
Let us explore two examples of how Ovid uses the world of oratory in his
addresses from exile. One verse letter is written for Cassius Salanus, the oratory
tutor of the gifted and hapless Germanicus, on whom Ovid pinned his hopes as a
successor to Augustus (which did not help his recall during Augustuss reign and
after his death in 14 ce, because Augustuss wife Livia successfully forced her son
Tiberius from her rst marriage on the throne). During his exile Ovid continued
to work on his Fasti, a didactic calendar of Roman religious festivals in chronological succession, and adopted parts of its calendrical underpinnings and didactic
model from the astronomical calendar Phaenomena (c. 276 bce) by the Hellenistic
poet Aratus. Ovid produced a verse translation of the Phaenomena into Latin and
rededicated his Fasti at some point to the young Germanicus who himself had produced a Latin translation of Aratus.45 So there must have been both an intellectual
and political resonance between the two, and Ovid praises Cassius Salanuss brilliant disciple, who would certainly have been attered by Ovids compliments and
appeals to the commonalities between orators and poets to convince the orator to
continue putting in a good word forhim:
. . . You too, my studious friend,must
study the Muses:being talented yourself
you favour my talent. Our work, though dierent, stillissues
from a common source:we both pursue liberalarts.
My business is with the thyrsus, yours with the laurel,
yet both of us need thatspark,
and just as your eloquence lends my verses muscle,
so Iimpart a lustre to yourwords,
and youre right to think that poetry borders on your studies,
that as brothers-in-arms we should worship the same gods.46
Talent, creative spark, eloquence, connection to the divine:Ovid proposes here a
theory on the synergy between private poetry and public eloquence. If one believed
44
White 2002, 24. White also emphasizes that [i]n range and frequency, Ovids exploitation of
legal imagery far exceeds that of other Augustan poets. Ibid.,4.
45
Gee 2000,34.
46
Ex Ponto II.5.63-72. Green 2005, 142. Tu quoque Pieridum studio, studiose, teneris / ingenioque faves,
ingeniose, meo. / distat opus nostrum, sed fontibus exit ab isdem:/ artis et ingenuae cultor uterque sumus.
/ thyrsus abest a te, gustata est laurea nobis, / sed tamen ambobus debet inesse calor:/ utque meis numeris
tua dat facundia nervos / sic venit a nobis in tua verba nitor. / iure igitur studio connia carmina vestro /
et commilitii sacra tuendaputas.
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that his young disciple would succeed Augustus, approaching Germanicuss tutor
was certainly a strategic move. Ovid had apparently little prior acquaintance with
him, but he addressed him as a professional colleague, a specialist of oratory who
could display his eloquences muscle (nervos) to work for Ovids recall. Ovid,
specialist of literary rhetoric, has lustre (nitor) to oer, but what he really needed
was the physical force of a specialist in legal and juridical rhetoric, hence the
appeal to their fraternal bond as brothers-in-arms (commilitii) who share the one
goal of victory while contributing complementary elds of expertise. Thus, the
world of Roman oratory allowed Ovid here to declare professional comradery with
litigation specialists with attractive ties to the imperial establishment.
But the world of oratory could take on a much larger role than one of political
expediency, providing the frame for a triumphant self-defense, an acquittal from
all charges that was not forthcoming from the emperor but that the poet could
freely administer to himself. This is how Ovid opens the large-scale apologia of his
life and art, merging the roles of defendant and defense lawyer:47
Who was this Iyou read, this trier in tender passions?
You want to know, posterity? Then attend:
Sulmo is my homeland, where ice-cold mountain torrents
make lush our pastures, and Rome is ninety mileso.
Here Iwas born, in the year both consuls perished
at Antonys hands; heir (for what thatsworth)
to an ancient family, no brand-new knight promoted
just yesterday for his wealth.48
Ovid opens with a direct addressan apostropheto the audience in his court
room:his readers and posterity. Although this elegy is usually called an autobiography and justly famous as our most important source for details of Ovids life,
it would be more appropriate to call it an auto-apology and indeed, as we will
see, auto-apotheosis for Ovid the poet.49 Like in a standard prosopopeia in court
speeches, where the orator speaks in the voice of somebody else for greater rhetorical
eect, the exile poet speaks in the voice of an imaginary defendant Ovid of the past
trial and future glorious triumph to an imaginary courtroom in Rome. The defendant proudly dates his birth in relation to the death of two consuls and highlights his
familys ancient patricianroots.
After recounting his path away from a senatorial career to poetry and the Muses
and telling his familys fortunes, Ovids wishful fantasy of a trial that would absolve
47
Fairweather has suggestively argued that this elegy is structured as an apologia that trims the
account of Ovids life to coincide with Augustuss own career as depicted in the fragments preserved
of Augustuss lost autobiography De Vita Sua. Fairweather 1987, 18196. Modeling ones defense on
ones prosecutors defense of his own life in another context is in principle a safe strategy, unless the
prosecutor is the emperor. In that case the pretentiousness alone is probably oense enough.
48
Tristia. IV.10.1-8. Green 2005, 79. Ille ego qui fuerim, tenerorum lusor amorum, / quem legis, ut noris,
accipe posteritas. / Sulmo mihi patria est, gelidis uberrimus undis, / milia qui novies distat ab urbe decem.
/ editus hic ego sum, nec non, ut tempora noris, / cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari:/ si quid id est, usque
a proavis vetus ordinis heres / non modo fortunae munere factuseques.
49
For recent scholarship that corrects reading this elegy as an autobiography at face value see Green
2005,269.
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him from the accusations that caused his exile turns serious:Ovid imagines his judgment at the Stygian court in the Underworld and there assures his dead parents that
he has committed no crime, just anerror:
. . . Yet if there survives from a lifes extinction
something more than a name, if an insubstantialwraith
does escape the pyre, if some word, my parental spirits,
has reached you about me, if charges stand to myname
in the Stygian court, then understand, Iimploreyou
and you Imay not deceivethat my exilescause
was not a crime, but an error. So much for the dead. Ireturnnow
to you, my devoted readers, who wouldknow
the events of my life.50
As in a suasoria, a speech aimed at persuading the audience of the defendants innocence, Ovid tries to convince his dead parents and the audience in the imaginary
courtroom that he committed no crime. He ends his grand auto-apology with nothing less than a poetic auto-apotheosis:
So the fact that Ilive still, to grapple with such grim hardships,
unwearied, yet, of the light and all it brings,
I owe, my Muse, to you:its you who aord me solace,
who come as rest, as medicine to mycares;
you my guide and comrade, who spirit me from theDanube
to an honoured seat on Helicon; whohave
oered me that rare benet, fame while still living,
a title rarely granted till afterdeath.
...
There are many Id rank above me:yet Iam no lessquoted
than they are, and most read throughout theworld.
So if theres any truth in poetic predictions,even
should Idie tomorrow, Ill not be wholly earths.
Which Iwas it [that] triumphed? True poet or fashions pander?
Either way, generous reader, it is you Imust thank.51
Although the underworld court would have ruled over the verdict associated with
the missteps that caused Ovids exile, by the end of the elegy the object of the trial
has changed to a verdict over Ovids immortality as a poet. Acquittal and triumph
are in sight, and so is a transfer to a far better place than exile:Ovid sees himself
50
Tristia IV.10.85-93. Green, 82. si tamen extinctis aliquid nisi nomina restat, / et gracilis structos eugit
umbra rogos, / fama, parentales, si vos mea contigit, umbrae, / et sunt in Stygio crimina nostra foro, / scite,
precor, causam (nec vos mihi fallere fas est) / errorem iussae, non scelus, esse fugae. / Manibus hoc satis
est:ad vos, studiosa, revertor / pectora, qui vitae quaeritis actameae.
51
Tristia IV.10.115-122 and 12732. Green 2005, 8283. ergo quod vivo durisque laboribus obsto, / nec me
sollicitae taedia lucis habent, / gratia, Musa, tibi:nam tu solacia praebes, / tu curae requies, tu medicina
venis. / tu dux et comes es, tu nos abducis ab Histro, / in medioque mihi das Helicone locum; / tu mihi,
quod rarum est, vivo sublime dedisti / nomen, ab exequiis quod dare fama solet. . . . cumque ego praeponam
multos mihi, non minor illis / dicor et in toto plurimus orbe legor. / si quid habent igitur vatum praesagia
veri, / protinus ut moriar, non ero, terra, tuus. / sive favore tuli, sive hanc ego carmine famam, / iure tibi
grates, candide lector,ago.
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whisked away from miserable Tomis to an honoured seat on Helicon, the mountain of the Muses, and is proud to be read throughout the world and to have gained
a name that will stand the test oftimes.
Although Ovid uses the frame of a legal case and during the evocation of the
Stygian court in the Underworld one is tempted to focus on Ovids attempt to
enact poetic justice on the accusations that sent him into exile, the ultimate verdict is a prophecy of immortality, not an absolution from error. His audience is
posterity and the ctional court defense turns into a poetic self-deication. Ovid
does end on a weighty rhetorical question (Which Iwas it [that] triumphed? True
poet or fashions pander?), a question that ironically has indeed had resonance
occasionally in Ovids scholarly reception. But like in a suasoria that passionately
argues the defendants side but woos for the audiences sympathy by at least rhetorically giving them a choice, Ovid is sure of his victory, of the triumphant verdict
that he is a true poet. And he thanks two groups of supporters in his imaginary
courtroom:the Muses and his fans, the generous readers.
6. Michizanes Pleas:Poets andPlants

Against the background of the importance of oratory in Roman education and
Ovids early career, his mobilization of rhetoric in his exile poetry is little surprising, although perhaps distinctively Ovidian. Yet the contrast to Michizane should
make us appreciate more that public oratory is a distinctively Greco-Roman cultural art and that the intersections between public and poetic space could take radically dierent shapes in other literary cultures. Although Michizane, as a scholar
and poet-ocial, was carefully trained in drafting administrative documents, such
as the deliberations (gi
), imperial edicts (shchoku

), or petitions to the
throne (sj

) that are included in the personal collection of his works he
compiled, they belong to the world of the imperial bureaucracy, a predominantly
textual culture unlike oral declamation and popular litigation in the Roman public
sphere. That Heian poets include samples of these bureaucratic genres into their
collected works alongside their poetry shows that these genres, written in ornate
prose, testied to their authors practical political as well as literary skills.
But Michizane does not mobilize the language of the imperial bureaucracy
in his exile poetry for political, dramatic, or ctionalizing eect, as we have
seen in Ovid. These are separate worlds of reection and argument. Michizane
does not even seize the opportunity to defend himself with tropes of ocial discourse under the most tantalizing circumstances, such as when Emperor Daigo
announces a new imperial era, the Engi Era (901923), and proclaims a general
amnesty for all enemies of the state except for Michizane. Michizane does not
defend himself, does not address himself to the emperor or anybody who could
speak for him; he does not make this moment into political capital for his recall.
Instead, in the poem On Reading the Imperial Edict Announcing the Beginning
of the New Era, he merely complains about metaphors, in particular about the
fact that the edict refers to him as a giant whale, an unsavory image for evil and
corrupt ministers. In the last two couplets of the poem Michizane straightens the
metaphoric record:
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52
S
wallowing boats? My mouth cantdoit.
S
pitting out waves? Idont have thatvoice.
A
h, how deplorable, me inexile!
My steps are faltering and Iam losing my life spirit.
Michizane sarcastically ridicules the edict by literalizing the metaphor and gives
rein to his despair, but he does not use the momentum of his indignation to argue
orplead.
Let us contrast Ovids frontal pursuit of his family, friends, supporters, and the
emperor that we sampled above with a surprising form of addressivity that comes
to the fore in Michizanes exile poetry. It will show how Michizane blended the
literary resources of the Chinese and Japanese literary traditions, his reception of
Bo Juyi and his own creative temperament into an intriguing, fresh novel poetics
of exile. In comparison with Ovids clamorous addressivity we saw that Michizanes
poetry from exile appears introverted, as he often addresses himself, or dark forces
of fate and heaven. Yet he creates for himself a curious lineup of dialogue partners:he starts talking to passing geese, going South in autumn, and is envious that
they know their date of return, unlike the banished poet (no.480). He thinks of the
bamboo back in his residence in Kyoto and addresses it like a person left behind
due to his exile (no.490). In another autumn poem he does not speak to the owers directly, but plants himself in his garden back home in Kyoto in the middle of
yellow chrysanthemums and wilting owersimagining how his white tuft would
t into the plot (no.512). Some of his more distant dialogue partners in nature even
answer him. Here is a dialogue in quatrains where he converses with themoon:

Asking the AutumnMoon

You passed spring, you passed summer, here you are in

autumn:
Like a mirror, like a jade ring, but a crescent before.
May Iask you, who has never announced an end or

beginning,
Why do you, covered in oating clouds, disappear in

theWest?

Answering for theMoon

The fortnight plant is opening, my laurel is fragrant,

Im half, then full again53
The three-thousand Buddhist worlds Ipass in my circles

around heaven.
Where heaven turns its penetrating gaze clouds will

dissipate,
But Ionly go West, Im not banished.

54

52

Poetic lore related to the moon:a laurel tree is said to grow on the moon and the fortnight plant
(mei ) opens for a fortnight and wanes again for the second half of the month. The legendary
Chinese Emperor Yao supposedly xed the calendar based on its blossoming rhythm.
54
Kanke buns, Kanke ksh no.510-11.
53
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The moon is a good person to ask about exile:like Michizane, it can be covered
inslanderousclouds and it disappears in the WestMichizanes trek down
from the capital to Dazaifu in the Southwest. But the moon regards the poet with
both empathy and cosmic indierence. That Heaven will ultimately dissipate the
clouds might console the poet:right and wrong, truth and slander will not stay
concealed and the poets innocence will become manifest at least in the broader,
cosmic picture, even if the current Heavenly Sovereign Emperor Daigo has kept
him exiled. But the moons mobility reaches into all three thousand Buddhist
worlds, in sharp contrast to Michizanes connement in Dazaifu, and the moon
is quick to point out that its westbound trajectory is a physical law, not a political
punishment.
Michizanes ctitious dialogue with the moon is only one example of his larger
engagement with plants and objects in the natural world, which holds a curiously
prominent place in Michizanes exile poetry. They can be poetic objects signaling
empathy and carriers of a possibility for pardon, like the moon or the geese above.
They can be painful, but still consoling reminders of the time before and, hopefully, after exile:thinking of the bamboo or plum tree back home in his residence
in Kyoto has the sweetness of nostalgic reminiscing, but it is painful as a deceptive
counterfactual:in one poem Michizane remarks that while the blossoms can still
at least smile, he is all sad (no.495).
Some of the poetic lore around plants that Michizane uses had a long-standing
connection to exile in the Chinese tradition and had early on become part of the
poetic repertoire in Japan. Chrysanthemumsalready owers of autumn, decline,
and sorrowwere particularly poignant reminders of exile. Qu Yuan, the paragon
of Chinese exile poets mentioned above, said in Encountering Sorrow, which he
composed supposedly before his suicide, in the morning Idrank dripping dew
from the orchids and in the evening dined on fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemums

,

.55
The exotic ora of the Chinese South plays a central role in Qu Yuans nal
plaint:they are part of the scenery through which Qu Yuan travels in a desperate search of a ruler who appreciates him and he might eat or drink from them,
adorn himself with ower garlands, or use them as tissue paper to dry his tears,
as occasion demands; also, Qu Yuan is a gardener and plants fragrant owers,
hoping they will not be overtaken by evil weeds. This mode of a very embodied,
material use of plant metaphorswhere Qu Yuans cultivation of plants proves
his moral fragrance and innocence and evil and stinking plants are kennings
for slanderous ministers at court who brought about his downfallhad become a
standard trope in Chinese literary culture and was early on adopted into Japanese
literature.
But Michizane also picked up on new forms of dealing with objects in nature,
for example conversing with them. Bo Juyi liked to engage spring, crane,
or autumn light in poetic dialogue, occasionally speaking for them. There
can be no doubt that Michizane wanted his readers to be thinking of Bo Juyi
55
Ma 1993,23.
10/12/2013 8:03:35 PM
when hearing his poetic diaologue with the moon.56 Got Akio has shown that
Michizane was the rst Japanese poet to write numerous poems on the topic of
bamboo. He echoed Bo Juyi, who enjoyed writing about the bamboo plants that
surrounded him in many of the places he lived and who himself helped establish
bamboo as a prominent poetic topic in Chinese poetry. Although Michizanes
tutor Shimada no Tadaomi did write about bamboos, he relied on traditional
poetic lore, referring for example to the third-century ce extravagant Seven
Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The novelty of Bo Juyis and also Michizanes bamboo poetry was that they cut their plants fresh:they established them as topics in
their own right and cut them loose of the clichd poetic lore and addressed them
as everyday objects existing in material space. Bo Juyi famously wrote about
his love for eating cheaply purchased bamboo sprouts; and Michizane planted
bamboo in front of his study in Kyoto, an homage to Bo Juyis life spent among
bamboo.57
But, as Got and several other scholars have pointed out, Michizane, with
his plant poetry from exile, was not just a disciple of Bo Juyi. Michizanes poem
Longing for my bamboo at home on a snowy night (no.490)is not a traditional
poem on things (eibutsushi

) loaded with erudite poetic lore. Neither
is it a chatty snapshot of everyday life la Bo Juyi. It uses the moral qualities
associated with bamboosteadfastness, persistenceand entrusts Michizanes
plaintive voice to the bamboo and is in this way a novel form of the Expressing
ones inner feelings subgenre of poetry (jukkaishi

), a true breakthrough
in Michizanes Dazaifu poetry.58 sone Shsuke locates Michizanes highpoint
as a poet in the way Michizane can convey everyday life scenes that use plant
imagery to limitless depth and sadness in his exile poetry.59 Fujiwara Katsumi
discusses the mysterious, sad brightness in Michizanes exile poetry and associates this with a very distinctive metaphorical mode.60 So there is a clear sense
among Michizane scholars that the poet developed a new repertoire of rhetorical
tools inexile.
Let us look at Planting Chrysanthemums, to see some of this distinctive
mode at play. Here is Michizane, gardening in front of his home in Dazaifu:
Planting chrysanthemums

D
ark-skinned their small leaves, white-toothed theirroots:

(I plant them) in front of my cottage, pressing close to the
railing.

I traded cloth for them:from the dwelling of an
oldwidow

Got them for books:from an old monks garden.

Planting them here Idid not even think of Tao Yuanming.

W

hen they blossom Iwill oer them to the Buddha.
56
See the commentary on this poem in Kojima and Yamamoto 1998,171f.

Got 1993a, 10234.
Got 1993a,131.
59
sone1998a.
60
Fujiwara 2001, 288293.
57
58
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61
In the midst of sorrows Icant fathom the dayIdie,

So Ijust gather sand to make a moat and bind reeds into
afence.
As with the Chinese bamboo chair, Michizane places the chrysanthemums into
a context of trade exchange:he received them in return for cloth and books from
acquaintances who each carry their own lot of hardship:a widowed neighbor and
an old monk. And he plants them in a cramped space in front of his simple residence. In the last two couplets these tradable (kaekitaru

) objects of economic value suddenly function as poetic and religious capital:Qu Yuan and Tao
Yuanming (365427) are the foremost poets who come to mind when speaking
of chrysanthemums.62 Tao Yuanming retreated from public oce and returned
to live his life on his family farm in the countryside, enjoying the farm work and
the charms of the rustic environment that allowed him to garden, read, drink,
and write poetry. For the pleasures of a balanced life of gardening, Tao Qian was a
perfect model of identication, although he was not exiled, but writes much of his
poetry about how he made this life-changing choice. But in this poem Michizane
consciously renounces the poetic lore of chrysanthemums: he omits Qu Yuan
completely and mentions Tao Yuanming, only to say that he was not thinking
of Tao Qian when planting his chrysanthemums, but prefers oering the owers to the Buddha once they bloom. This moves Michizane from the consolation
through the poetic tradition to the desire for religious salvation, which becomes a
prominent concern for the aging poet in exile. In the last couplet the poem takes
a lugubrious turn: although a pile of sand, a mound, and a fence could all be
innocent elements of landscape gardening, we are not sure how they relate to his
forebodings of death. Is he already grave digging while gardening?
This is just one example of Michizanes intricate mobilization of plants as
creatures of botanical, economic, poetic, and religious signicance with various
degrees of physical and metaphorical value. Plants enabled a form of addressivity
in Michizanes exile poetry that is quite unthinkable in Latin literary culture, just
as oratory and court rhetoric was a form of social and literary practice that in its
distinctive Greco-Roman form did not develop inJapan.
7. Conclusion
After their death in exile Ovid and Michizane came to live on as exile poets par
excellence. Already a century after Michizanes death, Murasaki Shikibus Tale of
Genji evokes Michizane (and Bo Juyi) to capture the mood of the protagonists exile
in Suma, when Genji has to leave the capital for sexual liberties he took with the
sister of his archenemy. And Ovids nostalgia for Rome in his exile poetry became
particularly attractive after the fall of the Roman empire during periods when
Ancient Rome was consciously evoked as a political model for the presentfor
61

In a chrysanthemum poem composed during Michizanes exile in Sanuki, which describes his
despair when thinking of the chrysanthemums in his garden back home in Kyoto, he mentions Tao
Qian and Qu Yuan together. Kanke buns, Kanke ksh no.269.
62
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example, during the Carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century and during
the Middle Ages.63 Although the overall popularity of Ovids exile poetry dropped
with the Renaissance and remained low into the twentieth century until its rehabilitation by scholars over the last few decades, it always remained an intensely
personal point of reference for writers who suddenly found themselves out of
favor in some form ofexile.
From the perspective of the poetics that both poets developed in exile their afterlife appears ironically inverse. Ovids intense addressivity was not rewarded:he
was never pardoned in life or death although posterity and later readers stood by
him, as he had anticipated. Michizane, however, who had kept more to himself or
contented himself with metaphorical addresses to objects in nature, died a criminal, but was rehabilitated and became a god within a few decades of his death,
after a stream of ominous disasters was attributed to his vengeful spirit:Tokihiras
death in his prime, the death of the young crown prince, the son of Emperor Daigo
and Tokihiras sister, Daigos own death, and thunder and lightning that struck the
palace and killed several courtiers, among others.64 In 947 the Kitano Shrine in
Kyoto was dedicated to Michizane, where Michizane merged with Tenjin, a general deity of thunder. The court rehabilitated the scholar-ocial by conferring two
nal posthumous promotions in 993:to minister of the left and to grand minister
of senior rst rank, the highest possible court rank and oce in Heian Japan.
Today, Michizane is one of the most popular Shinto deities, worshipped in thousands of shrines throughout Japan and in particular demand during the season of
school and university entrance examinations when throngs of students come and
pray to the god of scholarship to be accepted into prestigious schools of their preference. What Ovid had dared to imagine in poetryhis apotheosishappened to
Michizane in real afterlife, though of course thanks to a radically dierent horizon
of cultural possibilities. Michizane did not become an immortalized poet on the
East Asian equivalent of Mount Helicon and its Muses (there is none), but was
gradually transformed from an angry spirit into a form of previously extant thunder deities, retaining the scholarly trait that the historical Michizane embodied.
Not just the exile poet was rehabilitated and survived in divine form. The form of
adressivity directed at plants and nature that he had developed in his exile poetry took
on its own afterlife. The spatial disjunction between owers and the poet, and the
owers ability of emotional empathy became a major trope in later Michizane lore
and several of his most famous, possibly spurious waka, play onthis. (see Figure 6.2)
When Michizane was about to leave his home for exile he presumably addressed
the following waka to the plum tree in his garden:

When the east windblows,

Send along your fragrance,
Plum blossoms!
Though without master,
Dont forget the spring.65
63
On Ovids late antique and medieval reception see Dewar 2002 and Hexter2002.
For a brief introduction to the highly complex process of Michizanes deication into Tenjin see
Borgen 1986, 30736.
65
Shiwakash, no.1006.
64
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fi g ur e 6 . 2 Michizane Bidding Farewell to his Red Plum Tree in Kyoto When Departing
forExile
Picture Scroll of the Origins of Matsuzaki Tenjin Shrine (Matsuzaki Tenjin engi emaki).
Kamakura Period, 1311. Hfu Tenmang, Yamaguchi Prefecture,Japan.
The earliest surviving version of this poem stems from an eleventh-century imperial anthology, so that the poem belongs most probably to Michizane lore rather
than to his poetic oeuvre. A later ourish of the legend claimed that the plum
tree was so touched by his masters poem that it ew down to Kyushu to be with
his master. That very tree, visitors nowadays are told to believe, is still revered in
the Tenjin shrine in Dazaifu. Tenjin shrines are usually covered with emblems of
the plum, Michizanes symbol, and in todays sleepy provincial town of Dazaifu
Plum Branch Cakes can be sampled at any street corner. The plum continues to
hold particular signicance for Michizane lore, but there were similar legends and
poems cropping up around Michizanes cherry tree and pine tree.66
Although these are later stories associated with Tenjin, the god of scholarship and of thunder, that are often kept apart from Michizane the living poet,
we can see a suggestive line from Michizanes addresses to plants to the growth
of legends that put esh around the late poets rhetorical gestures in his exile
poetry, even to the point of conceiving of ying trees that consoled the homesick
Michizane inexile.
This chapter has been a controlled experiment devoted to the hypothetical
question, what happens if you force poets socialized in very dierent literary cultures, equipped with very dierent generic, rhetorical, poetic tools and dierent
personal temperaments and identities into a comparably shocking situation like
exile? As we saw, though the catastrophe of exile was comparable, Michizanes and
Ovids poetic reactions were rather dierent. And we discovered that this holds
not only for our poets:modern scholars will have accordingly dierent, possibly
even inverse expectations in reading exile poetry from Rome or Japan, as Ishowed
when discussing the question of the fallacy or felicity of emotional realism
projected onto the exile poetry.
66
Borgen 1986, 29095.
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The reasons for the contrast between Michizanes and Ovids dierent
addressivity are complex and hard to determine. They would include sociopolitical
aspects such as dierences in the legal system, structure of the public sphere, the
social prole of poets, and forms of civic participation (such as oratory). Equally
important are dierences in the structure of Japanese and Roman literary cultures:a lengthy elegy says dierent things and allows the poet to voice them differently from a terse Sino-Japanese quatrain. And lastly, their respective literary
cultures shaped their personal creative temperament dierently:Ovids invention
of the epistolary elegy for the Heroides before his exile and his startling application
of the emotive potential of this form in his exile work contrasts with Michizanes
distinctive reception of Bo Juyis poetry in his exile verse. Exploring these various
reasons for the dierence between the addressivity of Ovids and Michizanes exile
poetry would have required a book-length study in itself. Or it might have provided one of many alternative structures for writing this book. Nothing is better
than exile for being forced to see alternatives.
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CHAPTER7
Satire in Foreign Attire

The Ambivalences of Learning in Late
Antiquity and MedievalJapan
1. Our Satire, Their Philosophy

In the last two chapters of this book we move from perspectives on the symbolic
centers of the Roman and Japanese Empires that we explored in the last three
chaptersfounding gures of state formation, the respective capitals as sites
of literary production, and poets and poetry in exileto two particular modes
through which younger cultures dened themselves in relation to their reference
culture:satirical invectives against the older reference culture, in this chapter, and
texts that juxtapose both cultures for comparative and contrastive eect, in the
nal chapter.
Philosophers and Confucian scholars were iridescent gures in Ancient Rome
and Japan. On the one hand, they were impersonations of a highly respected foreign regime of knowledge. On the other hand, they were derided as impractical,
stilted, ludicrously cerebral, and aloof from the society they inhabited. Romans
were aware that philosophia was a Greek invention with a Roman intervention
and aftermath. Recently, scholars have increasingly emphasized the existence of
a Roman philosophy in its own right that goes far beyond the translation and
adaptation of Greek philosophy into the Latin language.1 Yetall originality granted,
philosophy in Rome did develop within the framework of the long-established
Hellenistic schools of the Academics, Peripatetics, Epicureans, and Stoics.
Similarly, the Confucian Classics and philosophical masters were of Chinese origin and, while the traditional Japanese elites made them their own by using their
ideas and phraseology in virtually all texts and contexts, early Japan did not produce a Confucius or any other school of thought similar to the Chinese Mohists,
Daoists, Logicians, Legalists, or the Yin-Yang-school.
If philosophers in Rome and Confucian scholars at the Academy in Kyoto represented a not really home-grown regime of knowledge, Romans and Japanese
1
Important markers of this paradigm shift are Grin and Barnes 1989 and 1997, Morford 2002, and
Sedley2003.
10/12/2013 8:03:36 PM
could boast something that seemed less developed in their reference cultures
Greece and China:satire. Certainly, satirical invective pervades Greek old comedy,
iambic verse, and the so-called Menippean satire, associated with the Syrian
cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara (3rd cent. bce), but the Roman rhetorician
Quintilian (3595) claimed famously, in a gesture of Roman self-assertion, that at
least satire is all ours.2 And indeed, Latin verse satire as represented by Horace,
Persius, and Juvenal stands out as a quite clearly dened uniquely Roman genre,
although its relationship to Greek precedents (and to satirical registers of other
Latin genres such as comedy or the epigram) is extremely complex.
In Ancient Japan nobody claimed satire as a uniquely Japanese phenomenon
and there is no genre equivalent to Roman verse satire. Neither was it a genre in
China. Certainly, political satire as an instrument to criticize (feng
) wanton
rulers was one of the crucial functions of poetry according to the Great Preface
to the Classic of Poetry. But little before the Early Modern Period, which saw the rise
of a whole subgenre of satirical novels such as Wu Jingzis hilarious The Scholars
(Rulin waishi

), makes us laugh like some lines from Persius or Juvenal.
The relative poverty of Chinese satirical genres becomes clear in contrast to Japan.
Since the medieval period, comical plays (kygen

) served as intermezzi in
Noh theater and the haikai

culture of the Early Modern Period celebrated
parodic transgression against the established canon of classical court culture in
painting, poetry, and lifestyle. Haikai poetry (later called haiku) was a parodic
genre, parasitic upon classical poetry that had thrived under imperial support
since the Heian Period (7941185) and had established a xed decorum of diction,
topics, and occasions. Haikai poetry relished the transgression of this xed poetic
cosmos by throwing in seemingly highbrow Sino-Japanese words, bantering vernacularisms, and other previously inappropriate language.
The Heian Period, during which the aesthetic of court poetry developed, later
becoming the very target of Edo Period (16001868) parodic genres like haikai,
had produced subtler forms of parodic satire.
Again, satire was certainly not absent from Chinese literature that inuenced
Heian Period literary production. From satirical texts that turned up in the vast
provincial library of Dunhuang, the Chinese outpost of the Silk Road in northwestern China, we understand that satirical pieces had low social prestige and
were therefore probably not transmitted in great numbers. Thus, we cannot be
sure whether a vast amount of Chinese satires that inuenced Heian literary production are just lost or whether there were not so many in the rst place. What
we can say is that, in contrast to China, in Heian Japan satires and parodies were
included in canonical anthologies and were thus elevated to a respectable literary register that coexisted strangely with the choice of exemplary literary works
surrounding them. The contrast is obvious in the case of the Chinese Literary
Selections (Wenxuan

, 5th century). It became a model of diction, style, and
generic decorum in China, and then in Japan. When the Japanese courtier
Satura quidem tota nostra est (Institutio oratoria 10.1.93). On the disputes over the uniqueness of
Roman satire see Freudenburg 2005,130.
Satire in ForeignAttire
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Fujiwara no Akihira (9891066) modeled his Sino-Japanese anthology Literary

Essence of Our Court (Honch monzui

) on the Literary Selections with the
intention of creating an authoritative panoramic view of Japanese literary production, he slipped in a small number of obviously tongue-in-cheek pieces. Some
were erotic satires such as a rhapsody on the pleasures of conjugal sex, or an
ocial biography authored by a fellow named Organ Extraordinary (Ratai

),
the Former Governor of Goose Head [Glans Penis] that lavishes praise on the
male organ under the suggestive title Biography of the Iron Hammer.3 He also
included piecessuch as an examination essay on Monkey Music (sarugaku

, sangaku
)that would not be funny for modern readers but must have

been delightful to their Heian audience in the ways they play with genre confusion
and transgress established cultural boundaries. Monkey Music, a popular folk
revelry that included dance and music, was certainly a most unlikely topic for the
ocial examinations at the capitals Academy, which tested its candidates knowledge of the Chinese classics, such as the canonical Literary Selections and the Three
Histories (Sanshi
) Even if the examination system in Japan never became the

recruitment strategy for government service as it did in China, it obviously gained
those who mastered it social distinction as a well-educated elite. So the choice of a
solemn scholarly genre for a low-class carnivalesque topic is the trick of the piece,
which demands considerable knowledge of the cultural context for its modern
reader to reach a hard-earned moment of erudite laughter.4
Yet why did Heian elites laugh at themselves and canonize this laughter in
their model anthologies? How could the comic and the canonical collaborate so
smoothly in Japan? What was funny about this less bawdy but rather cerebral and
belabored attempt to elicit laughter from the very highbrow audience the pieces
are parodying? This paradox is captured by Linda Hutcheon in a tting mythological chire:I recall a friend once saying that the god of parody, if there were
one, would have to be Janus, with his two heads facing in two directions at once.
Increasingly though, I nd myself invoking Hermes, the mediating messenger
god, with his winged sandals and paradoxically plural functions, for Hermes is the
god of both thieves and merchants, cheating and commerce. What better deity to
preside over the thinking about parodys transgressing and authorizing impulses,
its challenges to as well as its reinscriptions of authority?5
As we will see, nobody less than Hermes/Mercury will guide us to explore how
and to what eect the canonical and pedagogical can collaborate with the comic
and subversive within one and the same text. In this chapter Iwill approach these
On this biography and its relation to Japanese and Chinese erotic literature see Borgen2004.
See also the parodic examination essay on waka poetry in Zoku Honch monzui, 4647. Since
the early tenth century waka poetry enjoyed imperial support. It was thus an elite genre, unlike
the Monkey Music, but texts in classical Japanese were not included in the Academys ocial
examinations, for which candidates wrote Sino-Japanese essays on Chinese canonical literature.
The pieces comic eect results from its inappropriate language choice (Sino-Japanese, not Japanese
vernacular, the language of waka poetry) for a discourse on a text in a wrong language (in Japanese,
not Chinese-style) cast into a mismatched genre (a purely Sino-Japanese genre that did not have a
Japanese equivalent)quite an academic exercise that is unlikely to arouse visceral responses of
exhilaration in a modern reader.
5
Hutcheon, 2000,xvii.
4
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questions through two texts, which wed the pedagogical with the satirical in puzzling ways and which, for that very reason, have both been marginalized in their
ownways.
2. An Odd Couple:The Sino-Japanese Poems on the Tale

of Shining Genji and Martianus Capellas The Marriage of
Philology and Mercury
The Sino-Japanese Poems Composed on the Tale of Shining Genji (Fu Hikaru Genji
monogatari shi

, hereafter Genji Poems) are a medieval retelling in
poetic form of the Tale of Genji. Written by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu (ca.
9781014) in Japanese vernacular, the Tale of Genji recounts the numerous love
aairs (and their implications in following generations) of the main protagonist
Genji, son of an emperor and a low-ranking concubine. The Genji Poems were
written in 1291 during the Kamakura Period (11851333), when de facto power was
in the hands of the shoguns at Kamakura, outside of modern-day Tokyo, and symbolic ceremonial power resided with the emperor inKyoto.
During the Heian Period (7941185) the imperial courtthough increasingly
dominated by powerful Fujiwara regents at the expense of imperial powerwas
the center of cultural life with its exuberant literary and musical performances and
ritual celebrations. The splendor of the Heian court had given place to an austere
warrior regime, and post-Heian Period also meant a quantum leap in the development of Sino-Japanese poetry. While Heian Sino-Japanese poetry had developed
in response to Chinese court-centered poetry of the third through eighth centuries
and was mostly composed by courtiers educated at the Academy in the Heian capital, Sino-Japanese poetic production during the ensuing medieval period shifted
to temples outside the capital and their monks. Catching up on new poetic styles
in China, religious meditation, personal musings, and a new aesthetics of nature
replaced the Heian Periods ornate decorum of ceremonial propriety, courtly landscape, and self-assertion.
The shift from ornate court culture of Confucian courtiers to warrior government surrounded by poet-monks is the broader canvas against which to appreciate
the Poems on the Tale of Genji. The text picks up on the ornate registers of Heian
court poetry and applies the Heian genre of Sino-Japanese poems composed on
canonical Chinese texts to a noncanonical Japanese text, claiming in passing that
the Genji is nothing less than a piece of ocial historiography. The eect of this
maneuver is quite odd. Does the author seriously mean to place the Tale of Genji
on the same authoritative footing as the Chinese Classics? That must have been
quite a leap of faith in a period when the Tale of Genji had gradually been gaining
authority as a manual for the composition of vernacular waka poetry, but existed
realms below the canonical status of the Chinese Classics. Or is the author mostly
enjoying his own provocative play with inverting the conventional genre hierarchy? Authorial intention of an anonymous author is even harder to fathom than
of a known one, and it is itself symptomatic that the piece is anonymousa rather
unusual fact in Sino-Japanese poetry where texts usually need to have authors (and
attract believable attributions if they dont).
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Apparently nobody wanted to take responsibility for such an eccentric text.

Equally wisely, scholars have avoided taking responsibility for its interpretation.
This is highly surprising, given that the piece oers itself as a fabulous niche
in Genji scholarship, which certainly equals the amount and complexity of
Shakespeare studies. That there is virtually no scholarship on this textalthough
Iargue that it is a suggestive contribution to early Genji criticismand that it does
not even appear in major modern dictionaries to the Genji proves that something
is seriously wrong with it. What is the problem with the Genji Poems? How do
they upset the genre hierarchy to the degree of discrediting themselves? Is this
text another of the cerebral and erudite satires or a genuine case for the Genjis
canonicity, or both? As you will see Iargue it is ingenuously both, even if it might
lose some of its readers along theway.
The Marriage of Philology and Mercury (De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii) is
a similarly odd text, although, in stark contrast to the stunning obscurity of the
Genji Poems, it became a bestseller for medieval curricula of the Seven Liberal Arts
and also had considerable impact on the medieval chantefable tradition and on
the development of allegorical ction. It was written sometime between Alarics
sack of Rome in 410 and the Vandal occupation of Carthage in 439 by the African
author Martianus Capella from Carthage, whom scholars have made everything
from eloquent peasant to dignied proconsul.6 The book is a systematic treatment
of the Trivium, the arts of Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric and the Quadrivium,
the sciences of Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. The treatment of
the disciplines is framed by an allegorical tale of Mercurys betrothalconrmed
by a council of the godsto the brilliantly erudite maiden Philology, who receives
as part of her dowry seven handmaidens, the Seven LiberalArts.
Although the tremendous inuence of Martianuss encyclopedic schoolbook is
beyond question, its framing as an allegorical tale of marital union has irritated
scholars. William Stahl, who has produced a meticulous translation and thorough
study of the text, states:
One cannot read Martianus book cursorilyone must tackle itand the reader
is immediately at a loss to explain how a book so dull and dicult could have
been one of the most popular books of Western Europe for nearly a thousand
years. We moderns may be repelled by the style and content of the De nuptiis, but
vernacular readers and medieval students seeking an introduction to the learned
arts and nding in Martianus work a fairly compact treatise dressed in fantasy
and allegory were both charmed and edied by it. Martianus understood the
tastes of his readers much better than the modern critics who have been puzzled
by this apparent enigma. (Stahl,21)
H. J.Rose in his Handbook of Latin Literature of 1936 is even more to the point:It
is the dullest and poorest stu imaginable. (458).7 Only the recent scholarly
6
For a condensed overview of the works reception history see Stahl 1971, 5571. For disputes over
dating of the text and biographical details of Martianus see ibid.,920.
7
I also like the damning statement that it is a sad classic in the history of didactic literature.
(Richard Johnson in Stahl 1971, 84). Banality, puerility, bad tasteJohnson does not spare
Martianuss oeuvre any epitheton deformans.
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appreciation for the period of Late Antiquity, which no longer embodies either
the last sad stage of classical decadence or the embryonic and sketchy seed of
the dark Middle Ages, has yielded more sophisticated judgments of Martianuss
accomplishment. Martianuss Marriage has been recognized as a text of formidable broad sweep, that works through Neo-Platonist metaphysics, plots out numerological schemes, delights in correlative systems that harmonize the pantheon of
Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and many other Mediterranean religious traditions, and
clothes this bursting universe of Late Classical encyclopedic knowledge into an
allegory of harmony and union of cultures, religions, disciplines, and genres.8 It is
the unique mixture of genres crossing path in the Marriage that makes it hardest
to disentangle the agenda of the work:humble schoolbook, erudite encyclopedia,
allegorical fable and Menippean satirewhere is the readers intended place in
that labyrinth of contradictory gestures? It is the intersection of the pedagogical
with the satirical that will interest ushere.
A complex map of dierences and similarities between the Genji Poems and
Martianuss Marriage emerges. Facing East, toward Egypt and Chaldea, we have
a long Latin text from Late Antiquity by an author from the cultural fringe concocting a new genre of allegorical pedagogics that was to become highly inuential during the Middle Ages and beyond. Facing West, toward China, we have a
short Sino-Japanese piece from medieval Japan, which employs the authoritative
genre of Chinese-style prefaces and poetry on a canonical Chinese work in order
to legitimize a vernacular tale by a Heian court lady, and which received close to
no attention, although it did at least survive.
But the odd couple shares a curious intersection of the pedantically pedagogical with the subversively satirical. It also shares the status of being a misplaced text
in modern scholarship. The Marriage has been adopted away from its late classical
context by the concerns of medieval scholars and the Genji Poems are yet awaiting
adoption by Genji scholars in search for new soil far from overworked terrain.
3. Translating In and Out of GenjisWorld

The Tale of Genji provides a highly peculiar view of the Heian aristocratic world.
Unlike Heian courtier diaries written in Sino-Japanese by members of the male
elite, which record court protocol in annalistic and so prosaic fashion that they
could be used as ritual handbooks, and also unlike diaries in vernacular Japanese
by female authors, which cultivated the confessional, plaintive, private, and anecdotal, Murasaki Shikibus Genji creates a narrative space in between both worlds.
The Heian universe was divided into public (hare

) (originally meaning
bright) and private (ke ) (originally meaning subdued) phenomena that
8
Among the recent appreciations is Shanza 1986, which reads the work as a crypto-pagan
mystagogic compendium, whose self-parody serves as a cover-up for pagan knowledge under
Christian Vandal rule. Joel Relihan 1993, 13751 carefully lays out the satirical elements of Martianuss
allegorical frame narrative. That Grebe 1999, a nine-hundred-page long study of Martianuss work,
devotes a mere ten pages to the elements of Menippean satire in the text, is symptomatic for much
of the scholarship on Martianus, which either focuses on the satirical framing or on the treatment of
the liberalarts.
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mapped onto linguistic, aesthetic, and social aspects of life. While the ocial
world was broadly associated with the Sino-Japanese language, Chinese-style artistry, ocial events and performance at court, the private world was reserved for
the female and intimate sphere, indigenous artwork and cultivation of Japanese
vernacular poetry. These lines were asymmetrical and blurred, as in the case of
waka poetry that could be public or private, and associated with male or female
performance at court. Yet it is important to keep in mind that the discourse
around the public and private was highly pliable and did not necessarily map
onto social reality. Thus, Murasakis work is not only ctional because it contains
ctional events, but because it creates a ctional space governed by the two discursive poles of public and private.
Transgressing her own social boundaries in a highly gender-sequestered
world, Murasaki creates (and sometimes ostentatiously denies herself) access to
female and male emotions, private and ocial events, and, to a lesser degree,
Sino-Japanese and Japanese idioms. The Genji both enacts and contradicts the
division between these two worlds in fascinating ways. In his amorous adventures, Murasaki shows us the private half of her male heros ocial male court
existence, and throughout the long narrative in fty-four chapters annual court
observances and ritual events relating to births, deaths, illnesses, and anniversaries provide ample opportunity to weave in and out of the public and private
spheres and produce ever new constellations of this dynamic.
Because Chinese-style and Japanese aspects of Heian life did not exist in
rigid isolation, exploiting their creative tension and and creating ever new controlled interplay was one of the favorite pastimes of Heian court society. Also, they
intersected in dierent proportions on the linguistic, social, and gender level and
were never mapped symmetrically. Vernacular waka poetry, for example, developed linguistically in active contrast to Sino-Japanese poetry. Sino-Japanese diction and, occasionally, certain topics (e.g., wine and, to some degree, love), were
kept strictly apart from a puried space of Japanese poetry and poetics. This set
the stage for the haikai/haiku revolution in the early modern period, which precisely made the transgression of these linguistic and thematic boundaries into
its hallmark. Yet, socially, waka poetry had since the late ninth century gained a
public platform at court in the form of poetry competition events and imperial
anthology compilations. Quite apart from asymmetrical mappings of the public and the private onto language choice, gender distribution, style, and social
occasion, there were genres that purposefully or playfully erased the line between
these two poles. On the linguistic level, some genres included both Sino-Japanese
and Japanese parts and were based on creative juxtaposition of the two idioms in
the spirit of an authorized transgression.
One rather rare form of authorized transgression was poetic translation. The
late ninth-century Chisato Collection (Chisatosh

) by e no Chisato juxtaposes individual couplets from famous Chinese poems with a paraphrase into an
integral waka poem. This process is a poetic translation, because snippets from
longer Chinese poems are transformed into integral Japanese poems. The strong
length dierence between Japanese and Chinese poetic forms made what might
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seem like a literal translation into a true poetic experiment. Amore common sanctioned intersection of the dividing line between Chinese-style and Japanese modes
was aesthetic juxtaposition of Chinese and Sino-Japanese poems with vernacular
waka poems based on similarity in mood or topic. We see this most famously in the
eleventh-century Wakan reish

(Collection of Japanese and Sino-Japanese

Poems For Recitation), discussed in Chapter 5, and its twelfth-century sequel. Athird
form of authorized transgression were composite genres, such as prefaces written
in Sino-Japanese followed by a collection of vernacular poems.9 The fourth and
most derivative mode of sanctioned transgression can be called poetic elaboration. Phrases from famous Chinese or Sino-Japanese texts would serve as topics
for the composition of vernacular poems. This hybrid genre originated from the
practice of composing Sino-Japanese poems on Chinese topics at ocial poetic banquets, a practice that connected vital parts of Heian court reality, namely seasonal
ritual observances, diplomacy, and the Academy, the prime institution of Chinese
education in the capital. Poetic banquets at certain seasonal junctures, in honor of
Korean envoys, or at the Academy in reverence for the Confucian Analects and other
Chinese canonical texts, provided the courtiers with a stage on which to gain imperial favor, parade ones poetic talent, and display ones Chinese erudition.
Transgressions between the public and private worlds were ripe with satirical potential, because mismatches among language choice, topic, and occasion produced a hilarious, often defamiliarizing double vision. Similar to exotic snapshots
in imaginary travelogues chronicling excursions to strange tribes or lunar realms,
Japanese scholars of the Chinese Classics dressed in Japanese language could look
like creatures from another planet. In the Tale of Genji Confucian scholars seem to
be envoys of a powerful but outlandish foreign regime:strangely dressed, socially
awkward, and too erudite to speak normal Japanese. The main character, which
Murasaki Shikibu employs as a window unto the world of Confucian scholarship,
is Genjis son Ygiri.10 Ygiri is the son by Genjis rst wife Aoi, one of the few
women in the tale without any particular charms and with no poetry attributed, a
clear statement of distance in a narrative where the most crucial communication
happens through poetic exchanges. Ygiri is further distanced from his father
because of his multiple associations with the powerful northern branch of the
Fujiwara family, who since the mid-Heian Period became de facto rulers in their
service as regents to the emperor.
Ygiris mother is a Fujiwara, Ygiri is particularly treasured by his Fujiwara
grandmother, and he marries the daughter of his Fujiwara uncle T no Chjo, a
close teenage friend of Genji, from whom Genji gets increasingly estranged in
adulthood. Thus, Ygiri is an anti-Genji of sorts on the political level, standing
closer to the Fujiwara than to Genji and the imperial lineage.11 Also, in contrast to
his fathers tantalizing alternation between amorous adventurism and responsible
For example waka poems on the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki ) and on the Chinese
primer Mengqiu.
For a rich view on the various aspects of Ygiri in the Genji see Shirane 1987, 3240, 100103,
11619.
11
On this see Okada 1991,363.
9
10
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care for the women he courts, Ygiri only possesses his fathers responsible side.
When jealousies break out between his rst and second wives, Ygiri proves incapable of easing the tensions by using the ckle and inventive charms, which his
father always brings into play so eectively.
The last and for our purposes most relevant contrast between father and son
is Ygiris academic education, for which Genji himself is actually responsible.
Whereas Genji is early on decorated with high court rank due to the special favor
of his father, the Kiritsubo Emperor, Genji forces Ygiri to take the more onerous path of passing the examinations at the Academy instead of awarding him a
higher rank right away based on birth. The eect is twofold:Ygiri indeed turns
out to be a brilliant student of extraordinary talent, but despite his success he also
feels humiliated before his peers who inhabit a world where academic studies
were inconsequential for the access to powerful positions in the imperial bureaucracy. The Academy in the capital, where the four tracks of Classics (mygyd
), History and Literature (kidend

), Law (mybd

), and
Calculus (sand

) were taught, was established in the seventh century and
lived through its heydays in the ninth century.12 By Murasakis time the Academy
was no longer a springboard to high oce, but served mostly the male members of the Sugawara, and e families to gain academic degrees, which secured
the candidates middle-rank oce or a scholarly career at the Academy. Although
the examination system in Japan, especially after the ninth century, never provided regulated access to political power like in China, the Japanese Confucian
scholars (jusha
) and Academy students possessed much symbolic power as

experts of highly revered Chinese learning. Many of them would be called upon to
participate in poetic banquets at court.13
While appearing to be paragons of the most authoritative kind of learning
within the Sino-Japanese public Heian world, once brought into Murasakis
vernacular private space they become pitiable creatures, which lack condence,
talent, intuitive judgment, and taste. When Genji and his friend T no Chjo compose Sino-Japanese poetry together with literati from the Academy in honor of the
cherry tree in front of the Imperial Palace (which we discussed in Chapter5), the
doctors make their rst ludicrous appearance in thetale:
It was a lovely day, with a bright sky and birdsong to gladden the heart, when those
who prided themselves on their skillPrinces, senior nobles, and alldrew
their rhymes and began composing [Sino-Japanese]14 verses. As usual, Genjis
12
On the Academy in the tenth century see Steininger2010.

In that function they were called literati (bunjin ). In contrast to China, where the same
term referred more generally to individuals with extraordinary literary and artistic talent, the
Japanese term in the Heian Period referred to individuals whom the emperor invited to compose
Sino-Japanese poetry at ocial banquets. On the specic meaning of the term literati during the
Heian Period see Kudo 1993, 75110.
14
Throughout Ihave replaced Tylers translation of Chinese with Sino-Japanese whenever he
refers to poems composed by Japanese authors. Due to the existence of a Japanese vernacular,
Sino-Japanese was a hybrid idiom that originated from Literary Chinese, but developed a dynamics
of its own. It should therefore not be called Chinese, because that term fails to describe the
Japanese identity of the authors and the often hybrid nature of the language theyuse.
13
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very voice announcing, I have received the character spring, 15 resembled no

other. The Secretary Captain came next. He was nervous about how he might
look, after Genji, but he maintained a pleasing composure, and his voice rang
out with impressive dignity. Most of the rest appeared tense and self-conscious.
Naturally, those belonging to the lesser ranks were even more in awe of the
genius (zae ) of His Majesty and the Heir Apparent, which stood out even
then, when so many others excelled at that sort of thing. They advanced in dread
across the immaculate expanse of the broad court, only to make a painful labor of
their simple task. His Majesty was touched by seasoned performances from the
shabby old Doctors, and he derived great pleasure from them,too.16
Genjis incomparable voice dominates the scene and the doctorsusually of middle rank, who are presumably experts of Sino-Japanese compositionare terried
by the presence of the court nobles of the third and higher ranks. Their uninspired
eorts are tragicomic, but the pleasure the Emperor, Genjis father, derives from
their sad performances is equally ambivalent. The reader cannot be quite sure
whether the joke is at the expense of the doctors or also of the Emperor, who is
magnanimous enough to enjoy their labors.
One gets an even more ambivalent glance at the shabby old doctors when
Ygiri receives his academic sobriquet, a Chinese-style name, which was conferred upon entering the Academy:
With desperately aected composure they shamelessly wore odd, ill-tting
clothes that they had had to borrow elsewhere, and everything about them
presented a novel spectacle, including their manner of taking their seats with
grave voices and pompous looks. The younger nobles could not stie their
grins. Genji had chosen only quiet, collected men to pour their wine, men
unlikely ever to give in to mirth, but even so the Commander of the Right,
the Lord of Civil Aairs, and the others who so earnestly kept their cups lled
got a ne tongue-lashing. Fie upon your manners, sirs! You presume to serve
His Majesty, yet you fail to know a man of my renown? You are fools, sirs!
The company broke into laughter. Silence! Iwill have silence! Your conduct is
disgraceful! Sirs, Imust require you to leave!17 Such magisterial censure was
great fun. Those who had never heard anything like it before thought it a rare
treat, and the senior nobles who had come through the Academy beamed with
15
The participants of the banquet advanced in order of rank and drew a rhyme character in a
lottery. They then used the rhyme character as basis for the rhyme structure of their poems and often
alsoas can be imagined with the rhyme character spring during a banquet at the beginning of
the yearastopic.
16
Tyler 2001, 155. Genji monogatari, Hana no en, 35354.
17
The passage is replete with academic diction strikingly dierent from the language of the other courtiers.
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satisfaction. Everyone felt it was a wonderful thing that His Excellency [Genji]
should have chosen this course for his son. Was there a buzz of talk? They put
a stop to it. Acheeky remark? They issued their rebuke. But as the night wore
on and their stridently disapproving expressions stood forth a little in the lamplight, they took on instead a pathetically comical sadness, and this among other
things made the occasion a strange and curious one indeed.18
The reader cannot help chuckling at the ridiculous manners of these lamentable
creatures, but is also drawn into the mixed feelings of the attending nobles. Those
who are unfamiliar with the isolated world of the Academy are amused by the curious scene. But those who attended the Academy are momentarily proud of their
academic education and sympathize with the hardships of study awaiting Ygiri,
but not without clandestine gloating. Yet as the evening drags on, even they have
had their dose of professorial fun and get depressed.
The deep rift between courtiers and academicians and the disjunction between
political power and cultural capital is epitomized in the gure of Ygiris tutor on
the day Genji tests his son in preparation for the rstexam:
The tutor was glad and proud at the sight. His face in his drunken dazefor
the Commander kept his cup lledwas awfully thin. He was too great an
eccentric to have found employment commensurate with his learning, and he
lived in poverty and neglect, but Genji had singled him out that way because
he saw something in him. The man seemed destined for even greater things in
the future, considering that he now enjoyed Genjis favor far beyond his station
and that he therefore owed to his young charge this sudden renewal of his life.19
In a society that at least expected that power would coincide with taste, manners,
and talent, the academicians are a painful violation of that rule, because their outstanding erudition does not match their low station, which alienates them from the
center of court life. Even more distressing, their erudition does not yield the fruits of
superior taste and aesthetic renement. Although their poverty might excuse them
from wearing elaborate attire, their shameless appearance in ill-tted rental clothes
Tyler 2001, 38182. Genji monogatari, Otome,2425.
19
Tyler 2001, 38384. Genji monogatari, Otome, 29.
18
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betrays their aesthetic numbness. The paragons of Sino-Japanese high culture oend
Japanesetaste.
Did Genji, who never fails to be the irresistible embodiment of Japanese tastefulness, really want his son to be in that lthy company? Murasaki has it both ways:She
adds one more sparkling feather to Genjis image by making it into his genuine
intention. Genji seems to really believe in the value of a solid Chinese education
that he laments not having received himself:After all, [Chinese] learning is what
provides a rm foundation for the exercise of Japanese wit. (Tyler, 381)This precisely
entitles her, in an ultimately more forceful countermaneuver, to show the uselessness of academic education. After the sobriquet ceremony, the party company composes Sino-Japanese poems and Genjis, not the doctors, poem is singled out for
special praise by the audience.
After this quick exchange of contradictory blows, Murasaki cleverly retreats from
the narrative scene into her conned female social role:While the reader is burning
to read Genjis lavishly praised poem, Murasaki smilingly disappoints us by stating
[A] woman has no business repeating what she cannot know, and since Ido not
wish to give oense, Ihave omitted it. (Tyler, 383). Our author excuses herself elegantly for her temporary intrusion intono, conquest ofthe public male space of
Academy ceremonies, which certainly excluded female presence.
Murasakis risky play with both brightening the subdued and subduing the
bright world gets more complex when the avor of the academic is embodied
in a woman. In the famous rainy night discussion, during which Genji and
his friends exchange stories about amorous experiences in the past and erotic
prospects for the future, a Chief Equerry, a senior ocer in charge of the Imperial
Stables, oers to his unbelieving companions his adventures with a scholarly lady,
who in the end scared him away with all her erudition. This daughter of his private tutor during his time as a student at the Academy turns out to be the Chief
Equerrys most ecient instructor in preparation for hisexams:
She was very good to me. Even while we lay awake at night, she would pursue my
edication or instruct me in matters benecial to a man in government service,
and no note from her was ever marred by a single one of those kana letters, being
couched in language of exemplary formality. What with all this I could not have
left her, because it was she who taught me how to piece together broken-backed
[Sino-Japanese] poems and such, and for that Iremain eternally grateful. As to making her my dear wife, however, a dunce like me could only have been embarrassed
to have her witness his bumbling eorts.20
The object of his romantic aection turns out to be a real turno, who does nothing a reputable Heian woman would do. She doesnt write in Japanese kana letters, but uses Chinese characters, and her formal public tone puts the literary
20
Tyler 2001, 33. Genji monogatari, Hahakigi, 86.
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eorts of the struggling Chief Equerry to shame, who should be the one taking
the exams. He continues his courtship without the slightest sense of romantic
adventure, but it all comes to a sudden end through a combination of the scholarly
ladys erudition and foulsmell:
Well, I had not been to see her for a long time when for some reason I went
again. She was not in her usual room; instead she spoke to me through an absurd
screen. Is she jealous, then? Iwondered, at once amused by this nonsense and
perfectly conscious that this might be just the chance Iwas looking for. But no, my
paragon of learning was not one to indulge in frivolous complaints. She knew the
world and its ways too well to be upset with me. Instead she briskly announced,
Having lately been prostrate with a most vexing indisposition, Ihave for medicinal purposes been ingesting Allium sativum (Garlic), and my breath, Ifear, is too
noxious to allow me to entertain you in my normal fashion. However, while Icannot address you face-to-face, Ihope that you will communicate to me any services
you may wish me to perform on your behalf. It was an imposing oration. What
could Ipossibly answer? Ijust said, Very well, got up, and started out. Isuppose
she had been hoping for something better, because she called after me, Do return
when the odor has abated! Ihated to pretend Ihad not heard her, but this was no
time to waver, and besides, the smell really was rather overpowering . . . 21
The screen, behind which our so unromantic female scholar speaks, is a welcome
prop that piques the romantic imagination of the suitor in search of amorous
adventure. She might be mad at him for his long absence, he thinks, and the very
thought of her jealousynally a normal feeling for a normal womanwhets his
erotic appetite. But his ray of hope for a normal Heian romance is destroyed by her
formal lecture on her condition and on her ingestion of garlic.
The agonizing Chief Equerry makes it clear to his spellbound male companions that he hates academic, Sinicized women and that, if already they are educated, they should hide their abilities to avoid intimidating their male lovers:
There is nothing at all attractive about having absorbed weighty stu like the
Three Histories and the Five Classics, and besides, why should anyone, just
because she is a woman, be completely ignorant of what matters in this world,
public or private? Awoman with any mind at all is bound to retain many things,
even if she does not actually study. So she writes cursive Chinese characters after
all and crams her letters more than half full of them, even ones to other women,
where they are hopelessly out of place, and you think, Oh no! If only she could be
more feminine! She may not have meant it that way, but the letter still ends up

21
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being read to her correspondent in a sti, formal tone, and it sounds as though
that was what she had meant all along. Alot of senior gentlewomen do that sort
of thing, you know. The woman out to make poetry becomes so keen on it [i.e.,
to produce a sti, formal tone?] that she stus her very rst line with allusions to
great works from the past, until it is a real nuisance to get a poem from her when
you have other things on your mind. You cannot very well not reply, and you look
bad if circumstances at the moment prevent you from doing so. Take the festivals,
for example. Say it is the morning of the Sweet Flag Festival. You are o to the palace in such a rush that everything is a blur, and she presents you with one of her
eorts, quivering with incredible wordplays; or it is time for the Chrysanthemum
Festival, you are racking your brains to work out a tricky [Sino-Japanese] poem,
and here comes a lament from her, full of chrysanthemum dew and, as usual,
quite out of place. At other times, too, her way of sending you out of season a
poem that afterward you might admit is not actually at all bad, without pausing
to think that you may be unable even to give it a glance, can hardly be called very
bright. She would do better to refrain from showing o her wit and taste whenever
her failure to grasp your circumstances leaves you wondering why she had to do
it, or cursing the x she has put you in. Awoman should feign ignorance of what
she knows and, when she wants to speak on a subject, leave some things out.22
Whom is our female author Murasaki making fun of? Of culturally transgendered,
or rather transculturalized, women who show o their education in courtship
as if in a male court setting, or of untalented dull men like the Chief Equerry who
are afraid of being outwitted by clever women precisely in those anxious moments
before facing an ocial court celebration? As the erudite woman puts her dull lover
into a x the author Murasaki clamps her readers sympathies between an impenetrable and pathetic Lady Doctor and a self-proclaimed and ridiculous MisterDunce.
Thus, we see that the Tale of Genji is highly ambivalent and pursuing a zigzag
strategy in its incursions into the Sino-Japanese male space of academic learning.
Although the spokesmen of Confucian education are generally the butt of satire
rather than the mouth of reason, Murasaki also acknowledges and reinforces belief
in the higher values of that education. In addition, she does not so much assert superiority over the doctors through satire, but experiments with the access to her object
of satire. As author she challenges the boundaries between the public and private
22
247
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worlds, weaving in and out of them by way of dierent protagonists such as Ygiri or
the female scholar. As author gure she sweeps on the scene at the last minute and
retreats into her female social role before the experiment can backre and point the
satirical edge againsther.
Now, the medieval Sino-Japanese Poems Composed on the Tale of Shining Genji
take Murasakis seriosatirical inroads into Confucian education a step further. They
undertake an inverse transposition of the Genji from Japanese to Sino-Japanese,
from prose to poetry, and from female author to male interpreter. They were obviously written by somebody with a Confucian education. Although we cannot be sure
whether the author was indeed a man because the piece is anonymous, it is unmistakably written in a male voice. To legitimize the female vernacular tale in its new
male Sino-Japanese environment, the preface to the Genji Poems hails the Tale of
Genji as a work of ocial historiography, taking advantage of the path already laid out
in the Fireies Chapter of the Tale of Genji where vernacular tale literature in general is defended as a better form of Chinese-style historiography. As such, the author
makes the Genji a text, whichlike the three Chinese canonical historieswould be
studied in the History Track and on which students and doctors would write poems
at Academy banquets.
The preface follows the protocol of prefaces written at Academy banquets on
the Chinese canonical histories. They usually open on a grand statement of the
signicance of the canonical text chosen for the occasion and then expound on the
origin and main message of the text.23 In similar fashion the preface to the Genji
Poems declare the tale in the very opening into a national classic:
The Tale of Shining Genji is a profound text of our nation. If you skim it and know
little about it you consider it a playful toy; but if you ponder on it and study it
well you will take it as the foundation of devoted learning. It records events since
the Divine Age and describes those of the Human Age, just like the illustrious
volumes by our courtiers and princes, (the Chronicles of Japan); in assembling
hundreds of texts into one book, it is like Sima Qians Historical Records. Who
would ever call it a go-between of owers and birds? In short, it sums up all of
Japanese and Chinese writing.24

It is unmistakable what the Tale of Genji is supposed to be. First and foremost it is an
ocial history like the venerable Chronicles of Japan (Nihon shoki

, 720 ).In
a second step, which consciously goes against chronology and degree of canonicity,
the Genji is compared to Chinas rst comprehensive history, the Historical Records
23
See in particular the prefaces to poems on the Later Han History and on the Classic of Documents in
Honch zoku monzui Kokushi taikei 29, 130,132.
24
Text and translation are based on Gunsho ruij 134, 27081 and Got Akios commentary on the
preface in Got 2004. Punctuation adapted by author.
10/12/2013 8:03:38 PM
(ca. 90 bce) by Sima Qian, the rst of the canonical Three Histories. And the preface
states clearly what the Genji is not supposed to be. According to the author, the Genji
is of course not a go-between of owers and birds, a derogatory term that the prefaces to the Kokinsh (905) had used to describe vernacular poetry abused for trivial
love exchanges. Even if the author tries hard to defend the Genji against such a prejudice, any reader of the tale knows of course that most of its poetry derives indeed
from love exchangesthough not trivialones.
To claim the Genji as ocial historiography and defend it against prejudices associated with the genre of vernacular poetry was impossible enough. Yet the most grandiose gesture in the opening of the preface is the statement that the Genji sums up all
Japanese and Chinese-style writings. The author thus breaks down the entrenched
hierarchy between the public and private worlds, just to make Genji, a text that
belongs linguistically into the private world, into the ultimate embodiment of textuality beyond that division. Not only is the hierarchy between the public and more
authoritative and private and more intimate inverted, but the Genji presumably
transcends it completely.
Because there is nothing to add to this leap of faith, the author retreats humbly to
his task of proving at least that the Genji measures up to Chinese-style historiography.
The best strategy to accomplish this was to claim that the Genji was not just like ocial historiography, but was actually recorded by court historians:
This is the gist of the Tale of Genji:As four generations of benevolent sovereigns succeed one another, their magnicent abundant virtue spreads everywhere and their
bond with the Three Dukes and Hundred Ocials, who admire (their rulers) transformative moral power, is like sh in water.25 At one time (Genji) enters the owery
curtains of the female palace quarters and ties the knot in secret (with Fujitsubo26),
just as the Middle Captain Ariwara (no Narihira) abandoned himself to beautiful
ladies. Another time (the Akashi) lady from humble origins becomes his mate27,
just like the girl of (Lieutenant) Katano rising to prosperity. 28 [ . . . ] All of this is in
keeping with the laws of the sage governance of sage eras and absolutely had to be
recorded by the Left and Right Historian.

[ . . .

25
Like the proverbially close bond between Liu Bei (161223), the ruler of the Chinese Kingdom of
Shu, and his general ZhugeLiang.
26
Referring to Genjis aair with Fujitsubo, the wife of his father, Emperor Kiritsubo, which resulted
in the birth of Genjis illegitimate son, the later Emperor Reizei.
27
Referring to Genjis marriage with the Lady from Akashi, whom Genji met during his exile away
from the capital in the provinces.
28
Both Ariwara no Narihira and the Lieutenant of Katano are protagonists in earlier romantic tales
and considered models for Murasaki Shikibus Genji gure. Narihiras love aair with the Nij
Consort appears in the Tales of Ise. Although the Katano shoj monogatari is lost, we understand
from allusions to it in the Genji that the Katano Lieutenants beloved rose from humble origins to
prominent reputation through marriage, just like the AkashiLady.
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The Confucian classic Record of Rites (Liji

) assigns the recording of the rulers
acts to the Left, and the recording of the rulers words to the Right Historian.
Synecdochically, both oces stand for the practice of ocial historiography,
which in China from Sima Qian into the twentieth century led to twenty-ve voluminous dynastic histories produced by a massive sta of court-employed historians over more than twenty centuries. In contrast, Japanese ocial historiography
ourished briey between 712 and 901 and produced only six considerably shorter
histories. The author claims pretentiously that the Genji was produced by a sta
of imaginary court historians, who did not exist in Murasakis time, but were fashioned after their appearance in the Confucian Classics.
The invention of imposing court historians contrasts hilariously with the events
they supposedly had to record:Genjis incestuous liaison with his stepmother, his
aair with the Lady of Akashi during the boredom of exile in the provinces and
other amorous adventures resembling those of his dubious role models, Ariwara
no Narihira or the Katano Lieutenant.
After making the Genji into the all-encompassing canonical history beyond the
division between the public and private worlds, the author is ready to make the
next breath-taking claim, namely that the Genji is the best of governance manuals
and teaches the truths of the Three Teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Shinto.29 We see here one of the earliest statements of the second major strategy
developed by medieval Genji critics to defend the value of tale literature, a strategy
that went beyond those Murasaki Shikibu had already built into the Genji for her
own justication.
Whats more, when discussing principles of government, (the Tale of Genji)
reveres the Confucian way of Three Relations and Five Constants.30 With
the procession to hara at Mount Oshio (in Chapter 29) it describes hunting
outings.31 In discussing the divinations for the High Priestess of Ise it pays its
respects to the Gods.32 And when showing the deep tenants of manifest and
secret teachings, it turns to the Buddha.33

After establishing the Genji as ocial historiographyeven as crowning synthesis

of Japanese and Chinese-style writings beyond the canonical curriculumand as
29
The preface later introduces another move that was to become standard in defending the low
status of ction in China and Japan, namely the claim that ctional stories are an expedient means,
which convey deeper, otherwise inexpressible truths, just like parables in Buddhist sutras.
30
Three Relations:between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife. For the Five
Constants there are dierent lists, but one includes the Confucian virtues of benevolence,
righteousness, ritual, wisdom, and trustworthiness.
31
In chapter29 Emperor Reizei makes an excursion to the hara and Oshio Slopes. This excursion
is evoked as example of a Confucian ceremony.
32
This refers to the establishment of the daughter of the Rokuj Haven as Ise Priestess described in
Chapter9.
33
This reference to Buddhism concludes the three examples for how the Tale of Genji addresses the
Three Teachings of Confucianism, Shint, and Buddhism.
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repository of religious truths, the author jumps to what he considers the essential meaning of the Genji. Any reader of the Genji will be surprised to hear that
the Genjis essence lies in the gure of Genjis son Ygiri. Certainly, Ygiri is an
important gure among the more than four hundred protagonists in the tale,
especially as a contrast to his father and as a channel for the female author into the
public world of the Academy. But how can Ygiri be so essential? The blatantly
disproportionate attention of the prefaces author to Ygiri reveals his intentions.
If he wants to translate the Genji from the private to the public space and
elevate it to canonical status in that Sino-Japanese world, his best bid is Ygiri, the
most scholarly gure of the Tale ofGenji:
How great that there is the beloved heir of the Genji clan, (Ygiri), a disciple of
Apricot Terrace34 in Locust Tree District.35 Tirelessly he studied at night, the snow
making up for a cantilevered lamp. He reviewed unremittingly, while reies
shed their light on his ve-colored bamboo mat. . . . Meeting with enlightened
times, he exercised ministerial powers on behalf of the realm. This clearly is the
signicance of the saying that he governed the world through wen.36

[ . . . ]37
Ygiri imitates the famously diligent Chinese students Che Yin and Sun Kang, who
use ingenious methods to compensate for their lack of money for candle oil when
studying day and night for the ocial exams:Che Yin supposedly caught reies
during the day that he releases after nightfall and Sun Kang sat close to the reecting snow so that he could continue his studies at night. Ygiris highly successful
devotion to his academic studies is praised as an act of lial piety, showing that he
takes his Confucian duties as legitimate male heir seriously. The preface closes
Ygiris case accordingly with heavy-handed Confucian praise. (see Figure 7.1)
Given that the author has taken pains to establish Genji as canonical historiography, as a repository the deeper truths of the three teachings, and that he has
hailed Ygiri as the guiding protagonist of that vision, the closure of the preface
with its strange mixture of playful self-deprecation and its unexpected celebration
of the instincts of vernacular poetry comes as a surprise and yet another turn of
tone in the preface.
But unfortunately, my Lu-ish dullness is incorrigible,38 Iam worlds apart from
Bo Juyis ancient style, and since its hard for me to get used to the Hymns of
34
Name of Confuciuss school near Qufu in present-day Shandong Province.

Poetic name for the state academy.
Ygiri is described in the words the Record of Rites uses for the virtuous King Wen (twelfth century
bce) of the Zhou Dynasty. As we explored in Chapter2 and 3 wen has a broad spectrum of meanings,
ranging from pattern and ornament to civilization, cultivation, sophistication, and literature.
37
In the Gunsho ruij edition this character has a re radical().
38
As a compound just means dullness. Read in parallel to the Hymns of Zhou in the next
line the character ro can also refer to the State of Lu, Confuciuss home state. Hence the satirical
pun on ro as both dull and from Lu/Confucian.
35
36
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fi g ur e 7. 1 The nonacademic Ygiri as he appears in the original Tale of Genji, but not
in the Genji Poems:His jealous wife Kumoi-no-kari suspects him of reading a letter from
hislover
Scene from Picture Scroll of the Tale of Genji. Late Heian Period, 12th century The
Gotoh Museum,Tokyo.
Zhou (from the Classic of Poetry) Iam ashamed to play around with the evanescent words of Murasaki Shikibu. Thats what (Zhuangzi) means when he says
that the wisdom of a frog in the well knows nothing of the turtle in the ocean
and the happy quail on the fence does not envy the giant peng bird in the clouds.
Natural principle makes it thus.39

What on earth does the author want us to make of this closure? His self-deprecating
Lu-ish dullness discredits Confucianism, the teachings from Confuciuss homestate of Lu, alias Dull Country. His confessions of indulgence into Murasakis
ephemeral dew-like words rather than allegiance to the venerable Zhou hymns or
the model of Bo Juyi (772846), who since the Heian Period had been the most
beloved Chinese poet in Japan, betray false humility. Equally, when the author
makes himself into a frog and a quailimages of people with petty understandingrather than into an ocean turtle or enormous Peng bird, he does not apologize for his pettiness. To the contrary, he invests in Daoist fashion the values of
39
This phrase echoes the Sino-Japanese Preface to the Kokinsh, where it describes waka poetry as
the product of a natural human instinct to respond to the world. Ironically, though, not waka but
kanshi poems, which the Kokinsh Preface disdains as an articial genre introduced from China,
follow this closure to the preface of Sino-Japanese Poems.
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the grand and petty and turns his apology for his narrow-mindedness and lack of
literary education into a celebration of true grandeur of the vernacular tradition.
This sets the scene for the memorable closure that natural principle makes
the author into a petty poet with little talent and ephemeral vernacular tastes. With
these very words the preface to the Kokinwakash had claimed that vernacular
poetry was a natural outburst of human emotions in response to external stirring.
And what follows this preface is precisely the authors poetic outburst in response
to the Tale of Genji, but, ironically, not in the vernacular, but in Sino-Japanese.
Thus, we have a bag of very mixed messages that leaves the reader wondering
about what this text actually is. Does it really want to elevate the status of the Genji
by translating it into the authoritative space of Academy learning? Or does it satirize the stilted style of dull academicians? Is it a parody of the Academys protocol of poetic composition on Chinese canonical works? Or does it want to save the
academicians from the scorching ridicule they had been subjected to by Murasaki
Shikibu? An argument for canonization, a satire, a parody, or a rescue attempt of
the Academy from its own pretentiousness, the Sino-Japanese Poems on the Tale of
Shining Genji are a living testimony to the indeterminacy of texts that challenge conventions of language choice, gender, genre, and occasion in multiliterate cultures.40
4. Allegorical Satire in Martianus Capellas Marriage of

Philology and Mercury
Martianuss Marriage has often been considered a pedagogical schoolbook prefaced
by an allegorical sugarcoating designed to sweeten the bitter medicine of academic
study administered in the ensuing chapters on each of the Seven Liberal Arts.
Against this instrumental reading of the allegorical framing, Ipropose a reading
that places the framing at the heart of Martianuss overall agenda, namely to show
the way to salvation through paideia [education].41 Inspired by Ciceros claim that
the truly educated man combines rhetorical skill with expert knowledge in various
philosophical and legal disciplines, Martianus continues Ciceros attack on Greek
philosophy in On the Orator, in particular on Platos polemical division of a presumably treacherous rhetoric and true philosophy.42 Cicero had outdone Greek
wisdom love (philosophia) by imagining a new Roman philosophy that would join
rhetoric and philosophy under the broader concept of wisdom tout court (sapientia/
sophia). Martianus gives esh to Ciceros proposed union in the gures of Mercury
as rhetoric and Philology representing philosophy. It is revealing that the woman
Mercury most desires to marry is Wisdom (in Martianus called by her Greek name,
Sophia). But his quest fails, because she has promised her foster sister Athena eternal chastity. Thus, Wisdom remains chaste, but stands for Mercurys desire to unite
his human logos with human episteme, embodied in his actual bride Philology. To
40
For further exploration of the Genji Poems in the context of the medieval reception of the Tale of
Genji see Denecke2008.
41
Stahl 1971,88.
42
Cicero. De oratore III.60-61. Nuchelmans 1957 traces this Ciceronian critique in Martianus and the
reception history of the Marriage.
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esh out this reading of the Marriage that emphasizes Martianuss contribution to
late classical discourse about philosophy, let us briey rehearse theplot.
Young Mercury, inspired by the liaisons of other gods around him, decides
to look for an appropriate mate. At rst he has bad luck. Wisdom has promised
Athena eternal chastity, Prophecy is already Apollos lover (who is not to be messed
with) and Psyche, the daughter of Entelecheia (Aristotelian category of potentiality) and Sun, is o with Cupid (and celebrates her own marriage in Apuleiuss
Golden Ass, which clearly inuenced Martianuss marriage tale). Finally, Philology
is proposed as a proper mate, and Mercury prepares for their union by acquiring
elegant diction and taking into his household seven servant ladies who will later
serve as dowrythe Seven Liberal Arts. Athena rst objects, because she wishes
Philology to remain a virgin just like herself and Wisdom. But the marriage is
approved by a council of the gods under Jupiters leadership and deliberations
begin on the invitee list, which include many good friends of Philology such as
Genius, Liber (book), Nocturnus (God of the night), and as archival assistants of the heavens, the Three Fates determining an individuals life span, namely
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.
At the marriage ceremony, the Muses and Virtues give their blessings. Philology
now prepares for her ascent to heaven where the marriage ceremony will take
place. Immortality, her handmaid in this, administers to Philology an emetic to
rid her of the weight of unnecessary knowledge that would encumber her ascent.
She is puried and ascends through the tones of the various celestial spheres to
heaven, where she is greeted against the backdrop of a stunningly beautiful Milky
Way by Jove, the gods, and an array of great philosophers and immortalized poets.
Before proceeding to the wedding night, the couple has to listen to the expositions
of the Seven Liberal Arts in seven lengthy books, indeed an irritating postponement of their rstunion.
Unlike the author of the Genji Poems, who targets the polar disjunction between
Chinese-style education and vernacular literature, Martianus harmonizes the
confusing variety of contending cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions
associated with Egyptian, Babylonian, Greco-Roman, Etruscan, and various other
Mediterranean traditions into an allegorical marriage tale. The Genji Poems translated a vernacular tale by a female author into the idiom, generic decorum, and
literary canon of male Confucian education. Martianus, in turn, propagates his
vision of universal Roman wisdom that combines rhetoric and human ingenuity
with philosophy and human knowledge by translating it into the allegorical marriage of ingenuous Mercury with erudite Philology.
The choice of Philology and Mercury as bride and groom can be extended into
a number of suggestive directions. Hermes/Mercury, the god of inventiveness,
master hermeneutist and thus patron of orators, the translator of messages and
crafty trickster marries Philology, foster sister of Athena and Wisdom, embodiment
of human knowledge and thus mistress of the Seven Liberal Arts. 43 Not Philosophy,
43
For the broad cultural and semantic baggage of Mercury and Philology see Grebe 1999, 84146. In
the Marriage Mercurys identication with the Egyptian god Thoth is particularly prominent.
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the Greek master science, but Philology, a scion of Ciceros vision of wisdom, is
courted. Wisdom and by extension Philology indeed appeared to be a much more
spacious category under which Martianus could unite the highly syncretic thought
world of Late Antiquity. This was not as easily possible with Platos and Aristotles
very assertive ethnic notion of philosophy, which made philosophical logos Greek and
ambivalently superior to Egyptian or other oriental mythos. Perfectly consistent with
Martianuss vision of wisdom, Discordia, as the notorious enemy of Philology, is the
only person who gets ocially disinvited from the marriage ceremony. This is a clear
sign that syncretic eclecticism should reign over narrowly philosophical sectarianism
in Martianuss new vision of wisdom (Stahl,22).
If my reading of the Marriage emphasizes Martianuss contribution to a discourse
about philosophy, this is also where Menippean satire comes into play. Menippean
satire is the strangest and most promiscuous of all Greco-Roman satirical genres.
The most famous examples included Varros Menippeae, Senecas Pumpkinication
of Emperor Claudius (Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii), and the works of the Greek writer
Lucian of Samosata.44 It was dierent from the verse satirists such as Horace, Persius,
or Juvenal, who were claimed by Quinitilan to be entirelyRoman.
For our purposes the most interesting feature of the Menippean satire is that
it is intraphilosophical. Menippus belonged to the Cynic school and the satirical
exposure of other philosophers ridiculous truth claims and hypocritical manners
was precisely part of the philosophical program, not simply an outside view of a
pragmatic educated citizen on an outlandish esoteric profession. The Hellenistic
school of the Cynics, ancestors of the collusion between philosophical ambition and intellectual derision, was driven both by philosophical inquiry and by
the satirical exposure of the occupational disease called philosophy. At the bottom of this double impulse laylike with the other Socratic schools such as
the Cyrenaics45the Socratic irony that exposed its interlocutors prejudices and
helped him or her through the masters midwifery (maieutics), to recognize the
real truth behind hypocritical pretenses.
44
In combining the earnest encyclopedic sweep with the framing of a Menippean satire, Martianus
had one crucial predecessor:the antiquarian and polymath Varro Reatinus (11627 bc), who wrote
on almost any conceivable topic. As with most of his other works, his Nine Book on the Disciplines
(disciplinarum libri IX) is lost and of his 150 books of Menippean Satires only six hundred verses
survive in fragments. From the fragments we can see that Varros pieces, like later Menippean
satires, included biting exposure of social vices, a relish in eccentric language, including many
grecisms, archaisms, and hapax legomena, and the treatment of fantastic celestial themes such
as councils of gods and descents to the Underworld. On the genre of Menippean satire see
Relihan1993.
45
Diogenes Laertius gives us a colorful picture of the Cynics and Cyrenaics:they were mostly of
low-born origin and included many slaves and also women. Diogeness account includes a hilarious
story about how one of the female members, Hipparchia, cleverly proves her equality with men
through a mock-syllogism. They get famous with their defty and scatological verses, such as the
farter Metrokles, and their strange outts and props, such as Diogenes with his barrel or a
certain Menedemos, whose potpourri outt included high-heel theater shoes, an Arkadian felt hat
embroidered with the signs of the zodiac, and a beard reaching down to his shoes. It is signicant
that Diogenes insists on calling these schools philosophical and not just a way of life (enstatis biou),
although they rejected natural philosophy and logic and only accepted ethics, the third subject of
Greco-Roman philosophy, as a worthwhile topic of reection.
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This deeply philosophical impulse pervades Lucians Menippean satires, which

exerted profound inuence on Martianuss text. Lucian (12080), a Syrian rhetorician and teacher, wrote in elegant Attic Greek, diametrically opposed to Martianuss
baroque Latin larded with semi-scientic Grecisms, solitary neologisms, and tortuous syntax. However, the combination of Socratic midwifery, pedagogics, and
satire is characteristic of both authors. In Hermotimus or about philosophical
schools (Hermotimos e peri hairesen) Lucian attacks the dogmatic self-assertion
of philosophical schools, in particular the thriving Stoic school. Hermotimus, who
has spent much of his lifetime and money on his philosophical instruction, is set
straight on the ineciency, hypocrisy, arrogance, and impracticality of philosophical school training by Lycinus, a namesake of the author, who appears here as
the midwife Socrates to awaken Hermotimus to start a new life sheltered from
philosophical stupidities. At the height of Hermotimuss birth as a new person,
Lycinus tells the poignant story of the eects of philosophical training told by an
angry old man who refused to pay a philosophy teacher because he did not see any
educational eects on his nephew.
As to what you have sold us, you have got it still; your stock of learning is none
the less; and in what Ireally sent the boy to you for, you have not improved him
a bit; he has carried o and seduced neighbour Echecratess daughter, and there
would have been an action for assault, only Echecrates is a poor man; but the
prank cost me a couple of hundred. And the other day he struck his mother; she
had tried to stop him when he was smuggling wine out of the house, for one of
his club-dinners, Isuppose. As to temper and conceit and impudence and brass
and lying, he was not half so bad twelve months ago as he is now. That is where
Ishould have liked him to prot by your teaching.46
This well-chosen anecdote leads Hermotimes to his moment of healthy revelation that Lycinus is the true philosopheralthough Hermotimes had started
out on the proud pretense of generously introducing his friend to the mysteries
of philosophy that only he possessedand that he has wasted more than his
money. Hermotimess realization comes literally along as a new birth, with a
babyscry:
Lycinus: Were our original expectations from philosophy at all of a dierent nature, by the way? Did they contemplate anything beyond a more decent
behaviour than the average? Why this obstinate silence?
46
Lucian. Hermotimus 81. Greek text from Kilburn 1959, vol. 6, 408. Translation from Fowler
1905, 87. ,
: ,
, ,
,
: ,
, .

.
.
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Hermotimus: Oh, why but that I could cry like a baby? It cuts me to the
heart, it is all so true; it is too much for me, when I think of my wretched,
wasted yearspaying all that money for my own labour, too! Iam sober again
after a debauch, Isee what the object of my maudlin aection is like, what it
has brought uponme.47
The moment of sudden revelation and liberation from darkness and blindness
produces an interesting afterbirth: although Hermotimus has been delivered
by Lycinus, he realizes after his infantile cries that he has been miseducated and
wishes for an emetic to get rid of that poison, because only this afterbirth will
allow him a newstart:
I only wish there were an emetic that would purge out every doctrine they have
instilled into me; Iassure you, if Icould reverse Chrysippuss plan with the hellebore, and drink forgetfulness, not of the world but of Stoicism, Iwould not think
twice about it. Well, Lycinus, Iowe you a debt indeed . . . Henceforth, if Imeet a
philosopher on my walks (and it will not be with my will), Ishall turn aside and
avoid him as Iwould a mad dog.48
The dialogue ends in true cynic fashion in that Hermotimes promises to avoid philosophers like mad dogs (kynos; thus cynic=doggish philosopher). The amused
reader assumed thus that Hermotimes might henceforth seek instruction from
the sane dogs and true philosophers, the cynics.
Apart from the Socratic combination of irony with midwifery, Martianus shares
another very important feature of the Menippean satire. Lucian often recongures
the world through eshing out names, ideas, or concepts into real-life actors and
enjoys playing through the implications of his newly bred incarnations borrowed
from abstract philosophical discourse. In his Dialogues of the Dead Lucian has
the cynic philosopher Diogenes invite Menippus to the underworld and promises
that Menippus will have an even merrier time gossiping and attacking people
down there than on earth. Menippus gets into trouble when waiting with many
other shades to be ferried over Lethe, the underworlds River of Oblivion. Not
only does Hermes have to pay his passage. More importantly, the shades have too
much baggage for the little ferry boat. Everybody is asked to relinquish their property, which proves particularly dicult in the case of a philosopher:
Menippus: Its a philosopherI mean a quack full of tricks. Make him strip
too. Youll nd a lot to give you a laugh hidden under thatcloak.
Lucian. Hermotimus 83. Kilburn 1959, vol. 6, 412. Fowler 1905, 89. :
, ;
;: ;
, ,
.
, .
48
Lucian. Hermotimus 86. Kilburn 1959, vol. 6, 414. Fowler 1905, 90.
, , ,
, .
, . . .
, .
47
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Hermes: O with your clothes rst and all the rest later. My god! What a load
of quackery, ignorance, argumentativeness, conceit, useless questions, thorny
words, sophistic ideas! Plus plenty of useless eort, quite a bit of nonsense,
humbug, and hairsplitting. What do you know about that! Hes got money, too,
and easy living, shamelessness, bad temper, sloth, and eeteness! You can hide
them all you want, Ican still see them. And get rid of the falsehood and the
delusions and this thinking youre better than everyone else. Even a battleship
wouldnt hold you if you got on board with all that!49
Menippus has Hermes taking further care of the problem of over-freight by suggesting to cut of the philosophers six pounds of beard and the long eyebrows, and,
last of all, the heaviest thing of all, which the philosopher had been hiding under
his arm:atterysomething hes found very useful all his life. The laugh the
reader gets out of this passage is not so much the list of vices for which the philosopher is held responsible, but the way he is viciously decorated with the physical
allegory of those vicesof which attery has most pounds. It is the translation of
the vices into visual emblemsprecisely what we can later really see in Baroque
emblems of virtues and vicesthat isfunny.
In his Philosophies for Sale, a delightful account of an auction of famous philosophers, Lucian ridicules and at times physically eshes out doctrinal tenets
of the various schools. Not all philosophers are marketablewho would want a
Democritus declaring the world void with some occasional atoms in motion or a
Heraclitus whining about the eternal changes in the eeting universe? Socrates,
proudly proclaiming to be a pederast and very knowledgeable in matters of sex
can only be bought on credit. The buyer of the Stoic logician Chrysippus gets to
taste the potential lethality of Lucians allegorizinggame:
Chrysippus: Being funny, eh? Watch outIll shoot you down with my
Indemonstrable Syllogism.
Seventh Buyer: Sounds terrible. What happens to the victim?
Ch.: Baement, stopped mouth, and severe dislocation of the brain. My
best, though, is this:if Iwant, Ican turn you to stone in this instant.
B.: Stone? How? You dont look to me like Perseus50, my friend.
Ch.: This way. Tell me, is a stone a substance?
B.: Yes.
Ch.: Something animate is a substance,right?
B.: Right.
49
Lucian. Dialogi mortuorum 20 (10).8. Translation from Casson 1962, 200201. :
, , : :
.: ,
. , ,
,
,
: ,
.
: , ;
50
Perseus possessed for a while the head of Gorgon Medusa, who would turn everybody to stone
who sawher.
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Ch.: Are you something animate?

B.: I should thinkso.
Ch.: Then youre a substancewhich makes you a stone.
B.: No, no! For gods sake, reverse the logic and turn me back into a man!51
Chrysippus turns his potential buyer back into a man by a similar absurd logic
and the buyer is deeply grateful:Thank you, thank you! My legs were already getting cold and sti . . . Im buying you. Hermes, how much do Ihave to pay for this
fellow? Lucians jokes about the various philosophers who are sold are of course
always at their expense, as is the readers laughter. Yet as we see with Chrysippus,
the embodiment of the sophistries of Stoic logic, Lucian indirectly also proves the
opposite, namely that school philosophy, always decried for her impotent ineciency, can be eective, in fact lethally eective.
It was this blade of the two-edged sword of allegorical translation that Martianus
put to use in his allegorical marriage between Philology and Mercury:In having
these two gures (and especially the purely conceptual, non-mythical Philology)
putting on allegorical esh and uniting in marriage, Martianus, at his most serious, chooses a highly eective and, literally, most weighty tool to propagate a
Ciceronian vision of Roman philosophy as comprehensive wisdom.
Given that allegorical narration clothes concepts in human form, or visualizes typical attributes of well-known gures, it is obvious that clothing plays a
large role in Menippean satire in general and Martianuss Marriage in particular.
The play with what is hidden and what is displayed, the tuning of inner content
to outer (possibly misleading) appearance becomes ultimately a symbol for truth
versus ction, content versus framing tale in the Marriage.
The need for clothes is, after all, the trigger of Martianuss whole tale. Pubescent
Mercury needs to marry at the very moment when his body becomes too masculine to staynaked:
His mother [Venus] had encouraged him in [his inclination to marry] when,
on his yearly journey through the zodiac, he greeted her in the company of the
Pleiades. She was concerned about him, especially because his body, through the
exercise of wrestling and constant running, glowed with masculine strength and
bore the muscles of a youth perfectly developed. Already with the rst beard on
his cheeks, he could not continue to go about half naked, clad in nothing but a
short cape covering only the top of his shoulderssuch a sight caused the Cyprian
[Venus] great amusement. With all this in mind he decided to marry.52
51
Lucian. Philosophies for Sale 2425. Greek text from Harmon 1960-67, 498500. Translation
from Casson 1962, 328. :, .
.: ;:
. , , .
: ; , , .:
: ;:.: ; ;:.
: ;: .:
.:. .
52
Martianus. De nuptiis 5.Translation from Stahl 1977, 6.in quam sententiam mater illum anxia, cum
annua peragratione Zodiactea in Pliadum numero salutaret, impulerat, praesertimque quod palaestra
crebisque discursibus exercitum corpus lacertosis in iuvenalis roboris excellentiam toris virile quadam
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To make her daughter ready for the betrothal, Philologys mother chooses the proper
diadem and belt and gives her what appears to be a dress of puresilk:
She gave her a dress and robe white as milk, which seemed made of that eece from
the precious shrub in which, they say, the sages of India and the inhabitants of the
mountain of shadow are clothed, and of threads of shining cotton, as much as that
country produces.53
The choice of pure white silk is deliberate and contrasts favorably with her previous
ornate and pompous attire. But it also points to the problem that Philologys inner
mind does not yet match her outer dress of pure simplicity. She suers from worldly
overload, which she has to get rid of before her ethereal ascent to heaven with the
help of an emetic:
[Immortality] lightly felt with her right hand Philologys heartbeat and breast;
when she found that it was greatly swollen with some inner fullness, she said
Unless you retch violently and void this matter which is choking your breast,
you will never attain the throne of immortality at all. The girl strained hard and
with great eort vomited up the weight she was carrying in her breast. Then that
nausea and labored vomit turned into a stream of writings of all kinds. One could
see what books and what great volumes and the works of how many languages
owed from the mouth of the maiden. There were some made of papyrus which
had been smeared with cedar oil, other books were woven of rolls of linen, many
were of parchment, and a very few were written on linden bark. There were some
written with a sacred ink, whose letters were thought to be representations of
living creatures; when Immortality saw the writings of these books, she ordered
them to be inscribed on certain imposing rocks and placed inside a cave within
the sanctuaries of the Egyptians, and she called these stones stelae and ordained
that they should contain the genealogies of the gods. But while the maiden was
bringing up such matter in spasms, several young women, of whom some are
called the Arts and others the Disciplines, were straightway collecting whatever
the maiden brought forth from her mouth, each one of them taking material for
her own essential use and her particular skill . . . After the maiden had with travail brought forth from deep inside herself all that store of literary reproduction,
worn out and pale with exhaustion, she asked help from Immortality, who had
witnessed such a great eort.54 (Stahl, 4648).
Only after this violent cleansing does the simplicity of Philologys white silk dress
nally match her inner purity. She is born anew as an immortal ready to ascend in
amplitudine renidebat. ac iam pubentes genae seminudum eum incedere chlamidaque indutum parua
invelatum cetera humerorum cacumen obnubere sine magno risu Cypridis non sinebant. rationabili igitur
proposito constituit pellere caelibatum.
53
Martianus. De nuptiis 114. Stahl 1977, 39. itaque vestum peplumque lactis instar fulgidum dedit, quod
vel ex illa herbarum felicium lana, qua indusiari perhibent Indicae prudentiae vates accolasque montis
umbrati, et, quantum usus eius telluris apportat, ex candentis byssi netibus videbatur.
54
Martianus. De nuptiis 13539. Stahl 1977, 4648. [ . . . ] leniter dextra cordis eius pulsum pectusque
pertractat ac nescio qua intima plenitudine distentum magno cum turgore respiciens ni haec, inquit,
quibus plenum pectus geris, coactissima egestione vomueris forasque diuderis, immortalitatis sedem
nullatenus obtinebis. At illa omni nisu magnaque vi quicquid intra pectus perpenderat evomebat. tunc
vero illa nausea ac vomitio elaborata in omnigenum copias convertitur litterarum. cernere erat, qui libri
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the same way as Hermotimus is cleared of his misconceptions about the philosophical life and brought to a new life through his Socratic midwife Lycinius.
Yet, on the level of narrative, clothing means wrapping the naked truth in the
yarn of myth and ction. Martianus promises at various points to leave his allegorical
framework and get down to the naked truth, but with little sincere conviction. Right
before the Seven Arts start to lecture on their disciplines, the author turns to the
reader with a promise to put an end to the mythical:
Reader, we have covered a great part of the story. . . So now the mythical part is ended;
the books which follow set forth the arts. With true intellectual nourishment they
put aside all fable and for the most part explain serious studies, without however
avoiding entertainment. Now you know what will follow, given the goodwill of the
heavenly powers and the Muses and the lyre of Latonas son [Apollo].55
But this oath of abstention is broken right away when Grammar comes in and insists
on further myths so that Martianus has to givein:
But, Icried, in the previous book notice is given that the myths have been put
away and that the precepts in the volumes which follow are a work of those Arts
which tell that which is the truth. But with a laugh she joked at this and said:Let
us tell no lies, and yet let the Arts be clothed. Surely you will not give the band of sisters naked to the bridal couple? Surely they will not go like that before the senate of
the Thunderer [Jove] and the heavenly gods? To say no more about embellishment,
what is to be the program? Surely, let them speak on their own teachings, and
let them be clothed in incorporeal utterance. Now you are deceiving me and are
not consistent with your promise; why do you not admit that your work cannot be
composed except by the use of imagery? With these words the Muse got the better
of me:Are you running way? I am joining in the game.56
Clothing is necessary in good society and so the disciplines receive their rhetorical
coatings of incorporeal utterance, despite protestations of the author.
quantaque volumina, quot linguarum opera ex ore virginis diuebant. alia ex papyro, quae cedro perlite
fuerat, videbantur, alii carbasinis voluminibus implicati libri, ex ovillis multi quoque tergoribus, rari
vero in philyrae cortice subnotati. erantque quidam sacra nigredine colorati, quorum litterae animantum
credebantur egies, quasque librorum notas Athanasia conspiciens quibusdam eminentibus saxis iussit
adscribi atque intra specum per Aegyptiorum adyta collocari, eademque saxa stelas appellans deorum
stemmata praecepit continere. sed dum talia virgo undanter evomeret, puellae quamplures, quarum Artes
aliae, alterae dictae sunt Disciplinae, subinde, quae ex ore virgo euderat, colligebant in suum unaquaeque
illarum necessarium usum facultatemque corripiens . . . postquam igitur illam bibliothecalem copiam nixa
imi[ta]tus uirgo diudit, exhausto pallore confecta Athanasiae opem, quae tanti laboris conscia fuerat,
postulavit.
55
Martianus. De nuptiis 21920. Stahl 1977, 63. Transcursa, lector, parte magna fabula . . . nunc ergo
mythos terminator; inunt / artes libelli qui sequentes asserent. / nam fruge vera omne ctum dimovent
/ et disciplinas annotabunt sobrias / pro parte multa nec vetabunt ludicra. / habes quid instet, si potestas
caelitum / faveantque Musae et chelys Latoia.
56
Martianus. De nuptiis 222. Stahl 1977, 64. atquin prioris ille / titulus monet libelli / mythos ab ore
pulsos / Artesque vera fantes / voluminum sequentum / praecepta comparare. / at haec iocante rictu / nil
mentiamur inquit / et vestiantur Artes. / an tu gregem sororum / nudum dabis iugandis, / et sic petent
Tonantis / et caelitum senatum? / aut si tacere cultum / placet, ordo quis probatur? / certe loquentur
illae, / quicquid erat docendum, / habitusque consequentur / asomato in profatu. / haec nempe cta
vox est, / et devius promissi es; / cur ergo non fateris / ni gminis gura / nil posse comparari? / his me
Camena vicit:/ fugis? iugabo ludum.
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In the end the issue of clothing even gives Martianus the chance to satirize
Satire. As we learn from the opening of the Marriage, the marriage tale we are
reading is actually a tale Lady Satire told Martianus on long winter nights. At the
end of the book Satire accuses her scribe, Martianus, of being too cheap with her
accoutrements:
Our garrulous Satire has heaped learned doctrines upon unlearned, and
crammed sacred matters into secular; she has commingled gods and the Muses,
and has had uncouth gures prating in a rustic ction about the encyclopedic
arts. Herself distressed by awareness of the triviality of her composition, and
swollen with gall and bile, she said:I could have come forth in a grand robe, to
be admired for my learning and renement, decorous in appearance, as if just
coming from the court of Mars. Instead Ihave been inspired by Felix Capella
whom ignorant generations have observed ranting as he passed judgment on
barking dogs, giving to the high oce of proconsul a bumble bee long separated
from his blossoms by the sickle, and in his declining years; a man whom the
prosperous city of Elissa has seen as a fosterling settled in a neighborhood of
slothful herdsmen, barely managing on a small income, drowsy by day and blinking his eyes with eortwhen Icould ttingly qua the Pegasean draught. And
so, my son, in accordance with the testimony of an old man, show indulgence, as
you read, for the tries which he has produced.57
This end of Martianuss long book is a decorous gesture of humility, asking the
reader and his son (to whom his book is addressed) indulgence for his trivial composition. Humility and self-deprecation are good defense mechanisms helping
him conclude his daunting task of writing an encyclopedic coverage of the Liberal
Arts. Menippean satire had helped Martianus to advance his syncretic vision of
wisdom and philosophy by giving it rich allegorical clothing. There are moments
of naked truth that promise riddance of ornateness, such as the administering
of the emetic to Philology or Martianuss promise before the discourses of the
Liberal Arts to end his myth-telling.
But overall Martianus is clearly on the side of ornate rhetoric, heavy clothing,
and elaborate allegory for pedagogical purposes, but obviously also for his own
playful indulgence. Lady Satire, throughout the book a rather morose and pretentious character, disapproves of the authors presumably rustic outt for her. He
thus helps Martianuss self-deprecating bows to the reader and seems to say: He
could have done better, but here I stand. Ultimately, Satire will have to take responsibility for Martianuss eccentric tale, which is not too far from the desire of the
author of the odd Genji Poems to remain unnamed.
57
Martianus. De nuptiis 9981000. Stahl 1977, 38182. haec quippe loquax docta indoctis aggerans
/ fandis tacenda farcinat, immiscuit / Musas deosque, disciplinas cyclicas / garrire agrestic cruda nxit
plasmate. / hac ipsa namque rupta conscientia / turgensque felle ac bili multa chlamyde / prodire doctis
approbanda cultibus / possemque comis utque e Martis curia; / Felicis inquit sed Capellae emine /
indocta rabidum quem uidere saecula / iurgis caninos blateratus pendere, / proconsulari vero dantem
culmini / ipsosque dudum bombinat ore osculo / decerptum falce iam canescenti rota, / beata alumnum
urbs Elissae quem vidit / iugariorum murcidam viciniam / parvo obsidentem vixque respersum lucro,
/ nictante cura somnolentum lucibus / ab hoc creatum Pegaseum gurgitem / decente quando possem
haurire poculo? / testem ergo nostrum quae veternum prodidit / secute nugis, nate, ignosce lectitans.
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fi g ur e 7. 2 With Lady Satire nowhere in sight:Although an important character in

Martianuss compendium, serious medieval depictions of the well-robed Ladies of the Seven
Liberal Arts are centered instead around Philosophia, Socrates, andPlato
The Seven Liberal Arts from the Hortus deliciarum by Herrad von Landsberg
(twelfth century, destroyed 1870). From the Metropolitan Museum of Arts copy of
Christian Moritz Engelhardts Herrad von Landsperg, Hortus Deliciarum (Stuttgart 1818).
Photo:Elizabeth G.C. Menzies (Creative Commons).
5. Outlook
We have looked at two highly ambivalent texts that deal with the borders and
translation between dierent worldsbetween the public and the private
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spaces in the case of the Genji Poems and between the invisible world of philosophical concepts and the landscape of allegorical embodiments in Martianuss
Marriage.
Both texts obviously intend to promote canonization of their body of knowledge, the Tale of Genji and the Liberal Arts education. And both employ their comical escapades not just to sugarcoat the bitterness of learning, but to sketch new
visions with the help of a translation experiment. The Genji Poems try to claim a
world beyond the wa-kan division. Martianuss Marriage experiments with a personied allegory of syncretic encyclopedic knowledge that makes cultural and disciplinary in ghtsso much criticized by Lucianinto a thing of the past. Also,
moments of comic self-deprecation help to suspend these odd translation experiments beyond their authors.
If the Genji Poems have been neglected by the vast community of Genji scholars, it is because they are insignicant from the point of view of Genji reception.
Yet as an experiment with the wa-kan dynamics they become a highly interesting
document in their own right. Martianuss Marriage, though eagerly researched in
the medieval context, needs more attention from classicists interested in the rise
of the novel and Apuleiuss Golden Ass, in intraphilosophical satire in the style
of Lucian, and from scholars of classical philosophy. If anything, both texts are a
powerful testimony that satire as a tool of education, of cultural reconciliation, and
empowering self-deprecation thrives in multiliterate cultures and produces pieces
that are not always outright funny, but stand out as courageous translation experiments in their complex worlds.
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CHAPTER8
The Synoptic Machine

Juxtapositions
1. SynopticTexts
Satire was a versatile mode for writers of younger literatures to relate to their reference culture in a playful, liberating, and ambiguously subversive way. In this last
chapter we will explore another strategy of directly relating reference and younger
cultures:synoptic texts. Iuse the term here not in reference to texts that have
survived in multiple versions and are printed in columns side-by-side, as New
Testament scholars do when they talk of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. In this chapter Icall synoptic those texts that explicitly juxtapose elements of one culture or language with those of another, arranging them in a virtually visual diptych that urges the reader to compare and contrast the two sides. As
examples of this rather peculiar textual arrangement, we will analyze a text that
juxtaposes biographies of famous Greeks and Romans and a poetry anthology that
matches vernacular waka with Sino-Japanese kanshipoems.
Synoptic texts are of unusual interest as they are philosophical and aesthetic experiments that display cultural dierence or similarity in a highly structured scheme by
inserting their target unitslives or poems in our caseinto what one could call a
synoptic machine. The binary format of juxtaposition prompts the reader to discern similarities or contrasts, recognizing human universals or discovering cultural
peculiarities. This synoptic machine could reveal fundamental dierences, but it
could also produce false contrasts, resulting in mutual warping of the vision of what
constitutes Greek or Roman, Chinese, Sino-Japanese or Japanese identity.
Both in Greco-Roman and Japanese literary cultures, there was no established
genre of this kind. What were the motivations for authors or compilers of synoptic
texts when they juxtaposed dierent cultures or traditions in a climate of complex
political and cultural hierarchies? What were the deliberate and what were the
unintended eects of the synoptic format that folds complex historical patterns
of cultural, linguistic, and literary contact zones into memorable miniature diptychs? If many texts written in multiliterate contexts can hide their implicit target
of comparison from the readers immediate sight, what, then, do synoptic texts,
with their overdetermined, drastically magnied power to compare, reveal?
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We explore these questions on the example of two texts almost too dierent to
be truly comparable:the poetry collection Newly Selected Collection of Myriad Leaves
(Shinsen Manysh

, hereafter:New Myriad Leaves), which matches vernacular waka with Sino-Japanese kanshi poems and Plutarchs Parallel Lives (Bioi
Parallloi, after 96 ce), which couples biographies of famous Greeks with tting
Roman counterparts. Our two separate case studies will ultimately allow us to see
common patterns of how the polarizing force of the synoptic machine adds meaning between the lines and even inscribes itself into the narrative logic of bothtexts.
2. First Case Study:Divergent Poetics in the New MyriadLeaves

The New Myriad Leaves is a collection of about 250 waka poems (consisting of
5-7-5-7-7 syllables) that are matched with Sino-Japanese heptasyllabic quatrains
(four lines of seven syllables each).1 We know that 170 of the waka stem from the
Poetry Contest of the Kanpy era (889898) for his Majesty (Kanpy no ntoki kisainomiya no utaawase

).2 Between 889 and 893 two parties composed poems in 20 rounds on the topics of spring, summer, fall, winter,
and love. These ve topics became the basic arrangement pattern of later imperial waka anthologies such as the Kokinsh, which includes a number of poems
from this contest.3 Although the collection has been attributed to Sugawara no
Michizane, many doubts remain as to whether he actually did compile the collection and might have written some of the Sino-Japanese quatrains.
New Myriad Leaves was compiled at a crucial turning point in Japanese history.
The late ninth century saw the end of ocial missions to the Chinese Tang court,
not the least precipitated by Michizanes opposition to the missions. It witnessed
the rise of the northern branch of the Fujiwara to the regency and the decline
of the power of non-Fujiwara nobility, a factor that resulted in Michizanes exile
to Dazaifu. And it coincided with the emergence of kana literature and of the
ascent of waka at court, not the least thanks to poetry matches such as the one
that produced New Myriad Leaves. Deliberately rendered in the older Manygana
script that uses only Chinese characters instead of the recently developing kana
syllabary, New Myriad Leaves both furthered the rise of wakas reputation but also
resisted the new kana script that came along withit.
In this pivotal moment when the vernacular tradition regained a footing
at court after a period of imperial support for Sino-Japanese anthologies in the
early ninth century, New Myriad Leaves was one of a few bold literary experiments
1
The exact number of poems diers depending on the manuscript lineage. There is especially large
variation with the second of the two books into which the anthology is divided. Some editions omit
the quatrains and the preface to the second book completely and only feature the waka. In this
chapter Ifocus exclusively on the rst book, which contains quatrains of higher quality. Its preface is
dated to 893, while the preface to the second book refers to913.
2
This contest was probably celebrated for Hanshi, the mother of the reigning Emperor Uda. The
meaning and translation of the title are disputed.
3
The collection has received surprisingly little scholarly attention despite its great signicance for
literary history. Helen McCullough has given it its due place as a crucial stepping-stone towards the
Kokinsh in McCullough 1985. The recent richly annotated multivolume edition Shinsen Manysh
chshaku will hopefully lead to more interpretivestudy.
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with the juxtaposition of Japanese (wa

) and Chinese-style (kan
) sensibilities. Other synoptic texts compiled during that time included e no Chisatos
Waka on Topic Lines (Kudai waka

or Chisatosh

, 897), which
culled Chinese lines from famous poems mostly by the Tang poet Bo Juyi and his
friend Yuan Zhen and juxtaposed them with an adaptation of their content into
waka poems, and the two prefaces to the Kokinsh, one in Japanese and one in
Chinese-style.
The New Myriad Leaves is unusual among these and later synoptic wa-kan collections, because it rst gives the waka, which is then followed by a Sino-Japanese
quatrain composed in response to the waka. In contrast, Chisatos Waka on Topic
Lines focuses on the Chinese lines to which the waka are meant to respond. To
adopt a format where kanshi are tted into the framework of preceding waka was
a bold move in the late ninth century and we need to understand it as a signicant step in the reassertion of vernacular poetry as public court poetry. The use
of Manygana script and the very title of the collection emphasized continuity
with the tradition of court panegyrics preserved in the Collection of Myriad Leaves
(Manysh

, ca. 759). The concern with creating pedigree and a long history for vernacular court poetry is further highlighted in the preface, which opens
on the phrase:The Myriad Leaves is a strand of the old songs

.4 This is a reformulation of the claim the Han Dynasty historian Ban Gu
(3292) made when he said that the genre of poetic expositions or rhapsodies
(fu ) popular in his own time was actually a strand of the Old Poems, that is
of the canonical Classic of Poetry compiled seven centuries earlier. The compiler
of the New Myriad Leaves adopts Ban Gus strategy to legitimize younger genres
by linking them historically to older ones. It constructs a three-tier literary history
that consists of the most archaic old songs, followed by the Myriad Leaves and
succeeded by the New Myriad Leaves, the collection at hand. This emphasis on
literary pedigree masks the novelty of the poetry included in the collection whose
aesthetics sets it apart from the older poetry in the Myriad Leaves.
Reading the poems in the New Myriad Leaves is a pleasantly disturbing experience. Just when one thinks one has grasped a beautiful poetic turn of phrase in a
waka, the corresponding kanshi twists or contradicts the waka, suddenly rendering its poetic message brittle and estranged. It is as if one were to change glasses
at frantic speed and had to readjust ones eyes each timeanew.
Cosmology
Let us observe this process at close range. Consider the pair of poems that opens
the collection:
Waka:
(text in Manygana)

(text in kana orthography)

(translation)
ow can the springrain
H
That weaves wild, shifting

patterns
Shinsen Manysh Preface. Shinsen Manysh chshakuI,4.
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O
n the watersface

Yet spread a green, unvarieddye

Along the mountain slopes?5
Kanshi:

6
When spring comes, what strength has the heavenly qi

(=vital breath)?
Fine drizzle through mist turns water surfaces into

wavygauze.
S
uddenly you see on a slowly warmingday:
Over mountain and river all things appear dipped in lush
green.
Both poems unroll an early spring scene before our eyes: ne rain that produces delicate textile patterns on still water surfaces and mountain slopes that
are dyed in fresh green. But if we look a bit closer, the basic similarity dissolves
into fundamental dierences: the mystery whispered to us in the wakathe
inexplicable translation of the wild patterns on the water surface into a continuous carpet of green on the mountain slopesis explained away in the quatrain with a cosmological vocabulary that xes the delicately oating scene in
the waka into categories of time, space, and seasonal logic. The kanshi infuses
the self-contained visual snapshot of the waka with causal terminology: the
strength of heavens qi causes the days to warm and the rain spreads wavy
gauze on the water and greenery over the slopes. The quatrain also imposes
order by means of temporal progression and spatial orientation. The quatrains
emphasis on temporal progression from the coming of spring, to the onset of
rain and the slow warming of the days that leads to a greening of all things in
the cosmos stands in striking contrast to the wakas atemporality. Similarly, the
quatrains emphasis on a particular perspectivewe dont know exactly who is
doing the gazing in the third line, but the reader sees the scene through the
eyes of this unnamed spectatorcontrasts with the lack of spatial orientation
in the waka, where the scene exists in a mode compellingly independent from
human perception.
Considered separately, each of the poems is a fine and consistent treatment
of early spring. Read together, the intuitive consistency that the reader feels
at first crumbles. We are left wondering whether the wakas blurred coexistence of wild patterning with the smooth lack of patterning is more appealing, or whether the quatrains explanation of the cosmological mechanics of
early spring and its effects on a spectator is more attractive, more poetic, more
logical.
Which of these approaches to early spring grants the poem and the poet more
power over the cosmos? In the next pair of poems it is clearly the kanshi:
Translation from Cranston 2006, vol. 2, 557. All translations of poems from the New Myriad Leaves
are mine unless indicated otherwise.
6
Shinsen Manysh 1.1-2. Shinsen Manysh chshaku I,3536.
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Waka:

Kanshi:

8
Come, springmist,
Stretch a net around thetree:
If the blossomsfall,

The warbler will be sure toleave
Keep him here on the bough!7
Mist hanging from spring peaks:embroidered curtains

stretchedout.
Places where a hundred owers fall resemble burnt

incense.
If there were a method to arrest springs gentle yang

energies
I would not regret the warblers voice and the seasons last
fragrance.
Both poems come up with poetic methods to halt the passing of spring. The
wakas proposition to stretch out a net to keep the blossoms from falling and,
accordingly, to keep the warbler from leaving at the end of spring, is what doctors would call a mere symptomatic treatment of the problem. The quatrain,
in contrast, is ambitious enough to want to eradicate the root cause of the evil of
passing spring. It proposes doing nothing less than stop the workings of the cosmos:arresting further progression of those yang energies would keep the warbler
and spring fragrances from disappearing. As in the previous pair of poems, we see
a use of cosmological reasoning in the quatrain, where the waka argues by visual
appearance onlythe fanciful, ineectual season-stoppingnet.
Cosmologically inspired poetic arguments in the kanshi of the New Myriad
Leaves can result in outright parodic poems. Consider this pair of summer
poems that introduces another seasonal bird, the ckle and adulterous cuckoo:
Waka:

Kanshi:
Are your secretloves

S
o incessant a yearning?
For you cry, cuckoo,
All the livelong summer night

Till the sky is bright withdawn.

T
he creature singing throughout the summer months?
Thats called cuckoo!

Y
ou have always played tame and seductive, calling at my
bedroom window.
7
8
Translation from Cranston 2006, vol. 1,558.

Shinsen Manysh 1.9-10. Shinsen Manysh chshaku I,p.72.
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9
Wherever just one of your cries touches:thousands of hateful suerings

The workings of creation were entrusted to you entirely!
Both poems deal with the question of why the cuckoo is crying relentlessly all
night long for three full summer months, and both poems turn directly to the
bird for an answer. The waka assumes that the bird must have many secret loves,
unknown by people, which force incessant yearnings with all urgency upon the
poor bird and, by implication, upon lovers in the summer. Where the waka asks
and speculates, the kanshi answers and boasts its cosmological knowledge:That
creature singing all the time in summer? Thats of course the cuckoo! And, as
any good Heian poet consulting standard poetic encyclopedias would know, the
cuckoo belongs to the tame birds that approach humans like the seagulls in the
Daoist Master Text Liezi who are tame toward people who harbor good intentions. Worse, the cuckoo seduces humans, inicting innumerable suerings
on those who are even briey exposed to its song. Why, then, would it be singing all the time? It faithfully executes the workings of creation with which the
heavenly creator entrusted it and ensures that humans fall in love, have sex, and
procreate.
The contrast between the vulgar business of copulation and the birds devoted
service to the creator reminds us of other Heian texts that parody scholarly cosmological vocabulary in the process of ponticating on sex, such as e no Asatsunas
(886957) Rhapsody on the Marriage of Husband and Wife (Danjo konin fu

). Because it is a long rhapsody Asatsuna can go into scholarly detail

about how exactly the Yin and Yang forces in the cosmos cause juices in dierent
parts of the body to ow and eect the workings of creation that ensure human
procreation. But the basic conceit of evoking elevated cosmological vocabulary to
talk sex is the same. And in the process it relieves the victims of any responsibility
for indulging their lust and sexual desire:its simply nature.
Cosmological concepts pervade the quatrains, whether they describe seasonal
change, devise methods to stop seasonal change, or use technical language to talk
about procreation, as we saw in the three examples above. In contrast, the waka
are conspicuously lacking in a cosmological framework.
PoeticLogic
The direct, synoptic juxtaposition of a waka with a kanshi poem in the New Myriad
Leaves also brings to sudden light just how dierently poetic logic can work in
these two genres. Even if deployed to explain the same seasonal phenomena, the
mechanisms are profoundly dierent. Consider the following couple ofpoems:
Waka:

Whatissad

About the empty locust

Is that itsbody
Shinsen Manysh 1.83-84. Shinsen Manysh chshaku I, 36364.
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Merely depends on thedew

Of summer grasses

Kanshi:

10

The fate of the locust and manisnt it all thesame?

D
rinking dew and searching for food keeps them alive for
awhile.
Throughout the three summer months they frolic among
the trees of thewoods
Through all the four seasons:their faint breath in the
middle of this vast universe.
Both poems reect on the transience of life through the image of the locust, but
the underlying logic diers. The waka does not directly compare human transience to the transience of the locust, but the tone of lament over the transient
self/body (mi ) of the locust applies by implication to the frailty of human
life. In contrast to the wakas use of hidden metaphor, the quatrain opens on a
cumbersome simile:The fate of the locust and manisnt it all the same? The
overly explicit analogy injects a comic undertone into the next line:we are asked to
imagine humans, like locusts, sucking dew o summer grasses and seeking their
food in the elds to satisfy their creaturely needs. The last two lines rely again on
the idea that humans and locusts are on equal footing as members of the myriad
things under heaven, sport alongside each other among the trees in the woods
and breathe alongside each other in the vast universe. The quatrains attempt to
explicate the waka by spelling out the logical connection between locust life and
human life produces an ambivalent message. Although the quatrain still laments
the dew-like transience of human life, its frailty is its charm and beauty:roaming in the woods and living through the seasons is as ravishing as it might be
lamentable.
In the next pair of poems the dierent poetic logic of the two poems in describing the same constellation of seasonal phenomena is even more pronounced:
Waka:

ince the night iscold

S
When thread-spinning insectsounds
Respond to geesevoices
I want to borrow thatrobe
Which these insects weave towear.
Kanshi:

C

ries of geese and cries of insectseach soclear.

S
ounds come from the patches of autumn owers and
autumn leaves.

Who would have known that Icant get enough of these two
stimuliautumn sounds and autumn plants!
10
Shinsen Manysh 1.67-68. Shinsen Manysh chshaku I,305.
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11
Absorbed in chanting alone in my mountain cottage, Imake

my feelings intopoems.
Both poems treat a typical autumn topic, the blending of cricket and geese voices
on a cooling autumn night. The quatrain adds a visual cue, autumn owers and
leaves, to the soundscape of crickets and geese and increases the sensory depth
of the autumn mood. However, the dierence between the poems lies not in the
sensory more of autumn in the quatrain, but in the poetic how of autumn. The
waka uses, again, a metaphor to connect the crickets to the human world, but, unlike
in the previous waka the metaphor is made esh and thread:shivering in autumns
new coolness, the poet wants to borrow the robe that the crickets spin for themselves.
In the waka cricket and human worlds overlap, because the robe that the crickets presumably spin while chirping protects the poet against the cold. But the
quatrain is structured around the construction of two parallel worlds that resonate
with each other, but do not overlap. Everything, except for the poets loneliness and
his mountain cottage, comes in double number:the cries of geese and of insects;
the autumn owers and autumn leaves, in short the two stimuli of which the
poet cannot get enough. The concept of stimulus here reveals the poetic logic at
work:one of the rhetorical devices from the poetics of the Classic of Poetry, stimulus (Ch. xing, J. ky
) describes the mutual resonance between events in nature
and the human realm. In the separate worlds of crickets and humans each spins
what bets his species:the crickets spin robes, while humans produce poetry in
response to the stimulus from nature.
Poets in waka andkanshi

If the poetic logic of most waka in the New Myriad Leaves eliminates the division
between nature and the human world and merges them through metaphors that
naturalize the human world just as much as they humanize the natural world, the
quatrains in the New Myriad Leaves uphold the boundaries between nature and
the human world and insist on their dierent workings, even if they are closely
connected through a logic of mutual resonance and analogy. This has profound
implications for how the composition of poetry, a distinctly man-made product,
can be represented in poems. Many of the quatrains in the New Myriad Leaves put
the poet into the scene of his own poem and celebrate the chanting and composing of poetry. Waka are obviously poems, but none of the waka in the New Myriad
Leaves features a poet in the act of producing or reciting poetry. Consider the following example:
Waka:

11

ardly have you gonetobed

H
O
n a summernight
When brightening dawncomes

With onecry
O
f a singing cuckoo.
Shinsen Manysh 1.115-16. Shinsen Manysh chshaku II,117.
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Kanshi:

12
hen days are long and nights short Im weary to get up in

W
the morning
And hear the cuckoo when the summer water clock

announces daybreak.
Whistling along, the poet furtively lets his brushroam:
the avor of his ne piece becomes one with spring.
Both poems describe an early morning scene in summer and note the paradox of summer:although night and day would still each have six double-hours
according to the Japanese system of counting hours relative to the season, not
in absolute measure, the nights are short and the days long. The paradox is
highlighted in the quatrain, which refers to the time-measurement device of
a water-clock. In the quatrain after the rst touch of morning sulkiness the
poet comes into his own:whistling along, he is inspired to take his brush and
write and, against all odds, a ne piece of writing emerges that is one with
spring, the season considered poetically much more productive. Not only does
the poet of the quatrain describe his activity as a poet, which we do not see in
any waka of the same collection. What is more, the summer-weary poet writes
against nature and goes on to happily produce in plain summer a piece with the
avor of spring.
True, the Kokinsh Prefaces will make a bold and successful attempt to naturalize poetry completely, by declaring that waka is a specically human song,
which, just like the songs of birds and other animals, emerges spontaneously
in response to changing seasonal beauty. The celebration of the poet as a creator
of human culture who even has the power to rewrite the seasons that we see in
the kanshi is diametrically opposed to the wakas emphasis on poetry as a natural
response in harmony with the seasons.
Let us look at another example of the suggestive contrast between the lack of
poetic agency in the waka and the assertion of it in the Sino-Japanese quatrains of
the New Myriad Leaves:
Waka:

B
ecause Ipassed through
Autumns elds and mountains

From dawn tildusk

I have suddenly dressed in brocade
Without intendingto.
Kanshi:

A
traveler, Iwent through elds and mountains allday:

My robe gleaming with patches of foliages brocade,
12
Shinsen Manysh I.51-52. Shinsen Manysh chshaku I,243.
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13
I climbed peaks, looked closely at ravines below with my

wanderingeyes
And then moistened my ink on the stone, delving into
myriad modes of pleasure.
The rst half of the quatrain roughly covers the content of the waka:the traveler
seems clothed in brocade after wandering through the autumn landscape all day
and picking up foliage that sticks to his robes along the way. Waka and kanshi
coincide in the charm of the spontaneous, the joy over unexpected eects: the
waka poet unintentionally gathers a robe of foliage brocade and the kanshi poet
ends up with poems. Agood number of manuscripts have the character ky
instead of the word tanoshimi

, thus meaning myriad modes of stimuli
instead of myriad modes of pleasure. Thus, while the waka poets heart is empty
of intentions, the kanshi poets heart is too full of them: its so full that it rst
drives the poet to let his eyes wander over the compelling panorama from above,
which is paralleled by a wandering of the moistened brush that allows for myriad pleasures.
Again, writing in response to the stimuli that present themselves in the gorgeous vista makes the line sound a bit more technical, as it uses the trope from
the poetics of the Classic of Poetry. The quatrain does not mention the word intention (kokorozashi
), which is where poems start according to the psychology of
composition described in the Great Preface to the classic. But the waka indirectly
does, when emphasizing that the traveler didnt have it in his heart (kokoro ni
mo aranu) to get dressed in the brocade of autumn foliage. Although this is the
typical place where intentions that ultimately result in the composition of kanshi
reside, the turn of phrase is rarely used in waka. Curiously, the waka rejects a poetics of intention by mentioning their absence in the heart, whereas in the analogous place the kanshi fails to mention intentions to imply their presence, as the
poet pours them into his poems. Once we read the unusual formulation kokoro ni
aranu in conjunction with the kanshi, the formulation makes a perfect contrastive
match with the conventional poetic psychology on which the kanshi relies. This is
one of the most suggestive examples of the dierence between waka and kanshi in
the New Myriad Leaves:the rst downplays, the later elevates the poets subjective
agency within thepoems.
On the example of cosmology, poetic logic, and the agency of the poet in the
poem we have shown in three instances how kanshi and waka function dierently.
We also observed in detail how the juxtaposition of the two poems brings these
dierences to light in the rst place and forces the reader to reconsider her understanding of the two separate poems in mutual illumination and contrast. For now
we have seen enough of the synoptic machine at work in the New Myriad Leaves
to proceed to our second case study of a synoptictext.
13
Shinsen Manysh I:111-12. Shinsen Manysh chshaku II,103.
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3. Second Case Study:Synoptic Lives in Plutarch

When Plutarch wrote his Parallel Lives (dating from ca. 96120 ce) Rome had
ruled Greece for about two and a half centuries. As a Roman subject of the Greek
province of Achaea, he found himself impelled to ask questions such as why
Romes political fortunes had so brilliantly risen and forced Greece under Roman
rule. Plutarch was an essayist, historian, philosopher, and local politician from
Chaironeia, a little town in Boeotia close to Delphi, at whose sanctuary he seems
to have served as a priest. As part of the Greek elite living under Roman imperial
rule, he undertook educational travels to Athens, Egypt, and repeatedly to Rome,
where he apparently spent his time giving lectures and completing political missions. He was well-connected with the Roman ocials ruling Greece and their
friends in Rome; in recognition of his services Emperor Hadrian possibly made
him procurator of the province of Achaea late in life.14
Plutarch was voracious in his reading and writing tastes. The Lives are his
most famous work together with the Moralia, which constitute the most important surviving corpus of philosophical dialogues from antiquity after Plato. The
Lives include twenty-two pairs (including one double pair) of biographies of
prominent Greek and Roman leaders, ranging from the legendary beginnings to
the Hellenistic and late Republican Periods and including such varied gures as
Theseus, Pericles, and Alexander on the Greek side, and Romulus, Caesar, and
Cicero on the Romanside.
The Lives are a bewildering project, painting a vast mural of Greek and Roman
history through the relentlessly detailed coupled biographies of its heroes.15
Biographies of famous statesmen, generals, philosophers, or poets were a
well-established Hellenistic genre, but nobody before Plutarch had used it as a tool
for panoramic historiography through the means of biography. Also, only Plutarch
devised his project in synoptic fashion, welding the histories of two countries into
sets of paired biographies. Before Plutarch, the Roman Republican author Nepos
(ca. 9924 bce) had written biographies of Roman politicians and foreign nations,
but he did not group them in diptychs as Plutarch did. Plutarchs expansive synoptic project of the Lives was unprecedented and was to remain unique.
While not moralistic, Plutarch was fascinated by human moral psychology; he
was widely read, though not an antiquarian, and was sensitive to the complex plight
of Greeks under Roman rule. These qualities made him a popular writer to whom
people turned for moral guidance and edication as well as for entertainment and
suspense. Since the nineteenth century, when Plutarchs fortunes as an entertaining classical writer declined, scholars have undertaken extensive source criticism
of his work, examining what plot elements he took from which sources and with
what degree of reliability. Much less attention has been devoted to questions about
14
For a vibrant treatment of Plutarchs life and work in the context of his time see Lamberton2001.
For an overview of Plutarchs programmatic statements about his enterprise see Du 1999, 1351.
On the complex issues of Plutarchs construction of Greek and Roman identities in the Lives see
Du, The Politics of Parallelism, 287309. On the relation of Plutarch and his work to Rome more
generally see C. P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford:Clarendon Press,1971).
15
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his project as a whole, such as why and to what eect he used a synoptic format
that transformed what could have become a random string of biographies into a
complex historical canvas of the Greco-Roman cultural constellation.
The Rhetoric of Plutarchs synkriseis

To most of his diptychs Plutarch appends a short comparison (synkrisis) that confronts the protagonists in a nal ctional showdown, picking up specic thematic
strands to compare the two characters. As Christopher Pelling has shown, even
the protagonists deaths are carefully balanced against each other and urge us to
understand that Plutarchs artistic unit is not the individual Life, it is the pair.16
The synkrisis typically opens on a caesura, a moment where Plutarch states
that this is what he found in sources about his protagonists and that he will now
proceed to compare and contrast their precise points of dierence and similarity.
The synkrisis of Lycurgus, the Spartan law-giver and king, and Numa Pompilius,
Romes second king, is a good example to show how the syncritic sections are
framed:
Now that we have recounted the lives of Numa and Lycurgus, and both lie clearly
before us, we must attempt, even though the task be dicult, to assemble and
put together their points of dierence. For their points of likeness are obvious
from their careers:their wise moderation, their piety, their talent for governing
and educating, and their both deriving their laws from a divine source. But each
also performed noble deeds peculiar to himself. To begin with, Numa accepted,
but Lycurgus resigned a kingdom. One got it without asking for it, the other had
it and gave itup.17
To garner sympathy from the audience, Plutarch emphasizes the diculty of his
task. He then adopts a very visual approach to comparison:because the biographies
lie clearly before us, the points of likeness are obvious to everybodys eyes, as
are the points of dierence, which Plutarch likes to deliver in the fashion of logical
opposites:Numa accepted, but Lycurgus resigned a kingdom. As the synkrisis
proceeds, Plutarch helps each protagonist score points. Plutarch has little interest in any of the candidates winning the day, but places the reader into the role of
ultimate judge. The careful musing on issues of moral judgment is more important than easy declarations of victory. Tim Du makes this point for Plutarchs
works in general: This tendency to use synkrisis to provoke thought and raise
questions is particularly and distinctively Plutarchan. He often uses synkrisis not
16
Pelling 1997, 228. See also the excellent article Lamberton 1997. Tim Du shows through extensive
case studies how important it is to read the biographies as pairs. For his reections on synkrisis in
the Lives see Du 1999, 243286. For more recent scholarship that discusses the dynamic of pairing
see ibid., 250, Fn.25.
17
Plutarch, Lycurgus and Numa 1.1-2. English translations are from Perrin 1928. Perrin I, 38385.
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to demonstrate the superiority of one side of the equation over the other, but rather to
explore the issues raised as a whole.18
The deployment of synkrisis to explore general questions of human character,
ethical principle, and pragmatic politics shows us Plutarch the practical thinker, a
philosopher in a minor mode. What about synkrisis and Plutarch the biographer
and historian? Whereas the syncritic evaluations of each pair are short, the biographies are long, meandering aairs studded with plot detail whose signicance
is not always apparent. Does Plutarch take the syncritic texts as an opportunity
to bring a higher purpose to each life and each diptych of lives, and to satisfy the
readers desire for closure?
Often Plutarch succeeds in retracing each character with broader strokes and
highlighting each pairs traits eectively by contrast. But the desire for summary balance can also give way to unexpected distortions. Take for example the synkrisis for
Theseus and Romulus. As we will discuss below, Theseus, king of Athens and the
slayer of the Minotaur, is matched with Romulus, the founder of Rome. In his biography Theseus performs Herculean tasks for the benet of the people and frees them
from the yoke of Cretan vassalage. But in the synkrisis Plutarch suddenly lashes out
against him as a womanizer, even a vile rapist:
[T]he transgressions of Theseus in his rapes of women admit of no plausible excuse.
This is true, rst, because there were so many; for he carried o Ariadne, Antiope,
Anaxo of Troezen, and last Helen, when he was past his prime and she had not
reached her prime, but was an unripe child, while he was already of an age too great
for even lawful wedlock. It is true, secondly, because of the reason for them . . . But
one may suspect that these deeds of his were done in lustful wantonness. Romulus,
on the other hand, in the rst place, although he carried o nearly eight hundred
women, took them not all to wife, but only one, as they say, Hersilia, and distributed
the rest among the best of the citizens. And in the second place, by the subsequent
honour, love, and righteous treatment given to these women, he made it clear that
his deed of violence and injustice was a most honourable achievement, and one most
adapted to promote political partnership. In this way he intermixed and blended
the two peoples with one another, and supplied his state with a owing fountain of
strength and good will for the time to come. And to the modesty, tenderness, and stability which he imparted to the marriage relation time is witness. For in two hundred
and thirty years no man ventured to leave his wife, nor any woman her husband.19
18
Du 1999,245.
Plutarch, Theseus and Romulus 6.1-3. Perrin I, 19799.
.
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19
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Plutarch pits bad rape against good rape:We should despise Theseus for his promiscuity and sexual transgressions; but we should admire Romuluss rape of the
Sabines, when Romulus and his menall bachelors in need of wivesabducted
women of the indigenous Sabine tribe to secure the survival of the edgling polity
of Rome. This was an act of wise marriage politics, which resulted in the establishment of a Latin-Sabine dual kingship that masked subjugation and resonated
with Republican ideas of dual structures of government. Plutarchs defense of the
rape is so overblown, Romuluss sexual virtue is so disproportionately praised
his rape is virtuously monogamous since he only took Hersilia for himselfand
Theseuss selsh lust is so overstated that we might wonder whether the entire
episode about Theseuss promiscuity is motivated by Plutarchs desire to justify Romuluss rape of the Sabines by contrast. Would Plutarch otherwise have
discussed Theseuss romantic escapades at such length and in such a light? Is
the odd black-and-white diptych of Theseuss and Romuluss sexual and political ambitions an eect of the synoptic machine? There is no way to know for
sure, but this example shows that the framework of synkrisis could add complex
new brushstrokes to a protagonists biography and generate more questions about
what the juxtaposition of two lives means to say about these two individuals separately and in conjunction.
Entangled Beginnings:Rome and Athens in the

Biographies of Romulus and Theseus
Plutarch shows how both Greek and Roman lives are driven by the same
forces: virtue and vice, ambition, thirst for honor and reputation, wisdom and
righteousness or foolishness and lack of cultivation. This shared moral vocabulary, though ultimately rooted in classical Greek philosophy, applies to all lives,
and ethnicity is independent of moral capacity. Sometimes a Roman is more civilized and Greek than a reckless individual who happens to be ethnically Greek.
It is of course not surprising that Plutarch considered moral values universal, just
as Plato and other classical Greek philosophers had claimed. However, Plutarch
is also aware of a historical dimension of morality and seems at times unsure
whether to ascribe it to nature or nurture, innate talent or education.
Despite the shared moral psychology that holds for Greeks and Romans alike,
Plutarch sketches a dierent political cosmology in the lives of the foundational
gures he chooses to represent Greece and Rome: Theseus and Romulus. His
pride as a historian of events, not a poet of myths, makes him self-conscious about
his decision to include the legendary past into the purview of historical biography,
as he explains to his Roman friend, the consul Socius Senecio:
Just as geographers, O Socius Senecio, crowd on to the outer edges of their maps
the parts of the earth which elude their knowledge, with explanatory notes that
What lies beyond is sandy desert without water and full of wild beasts, or blind
marsh, or Scythian cold, or frozen sea, so in the writing of my Parallel Lives,
now that Ihave traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable
reasoning and which aord basis for a history dealing with facts, Imight well
say of the earlier periods: What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality,
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and a land of poets and fabulists, of doubt and obscurity. But after publishing
my account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, Ithought Imight not
unreasonably go back still farther to Romulus, now that my history had brought
me near his times . . . May Itherefore succeed in purifying Fable (mythdes), making her submit to reason (logos) and take on the semblance of History (historia).
But where she obstinately disdains to make herself credible, and refuses to admit
any element of probability, Ishall pray for kindly readers, and such as receive
with indulgence the tales of antiquity.20
What could be a safer start for a historian venturing into the dangerous waters
of the mythic past than a prayer to the reader promising that all will be ne,
if myth only makes herself credible? Plutarch promises to draw History out
of Myth with the rope of Reason. After writing the biographies of Lycurgus
and Numa Pompilius, only slightly less legendary than Romulus, Plutarch felt
encouraged to go back all the way to the beginnings of Rome. Romulus was
in many ways an ideal starting point for his project:He founded the city that
became synonymous with the empire under which Plutarch lived. Plutarchs
sprawling ruminations on various etymologies of Rome start with the name
of Romulus, and only then head o in various other directions. Intriguingly,
Plutarch does not discuss the etymology of Athens. And here emerges the
most interesting paradox in Plutarchs sketch of the dierent political cosmology of Greece and Rome through the gures of Theseus and Romulus:On the
one hand, Plutarch starts his story from Romulus, not Theseus, and shows
Rome in possession of a charismatic mandate that began with the rule of
Romulus. On the other hand, Rome is portrayed as a belated newcomer to the
history of civilizations:Plutarch is careful to highlight Greeces connection to
old world civilizations such asCrete.
Let us look in more detail at this ambivalence of cultural destiny. The clearest
indication that Plutarch wants to show Rome as the possessor of a charismatic
mandate and Athens as a place of factional strife and discontinuity is the radically dierent portrayal of Theseuss and Romuluss deaths. Theseus dies ignominiously and has to wait until the fth century bce to be rehabilitated, while
Romulus, in accord with the ideology of the imperial cult of Plutarchs own times,
ascends to heaven in a glorious apotheosis. Theseuss trajectory is dubious: he
leaves Athens to its own devices for a love conquest, so that Menestheus, another
Plutarch, Theseus 1.1-3. Perrin I, 35. , ,

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,

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,
,
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20
279
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descendant of Athens older king Erechtheus, takes over the kingdom. Later he barely
escapes execution with Herculess help. When he leaves Athens for good he curses
the Athenians, who have come to hate him, in a place thereafter called Araterion or
Place of Cursing. He dies a refugee on the island of Scyros, where his family had
ancestral estates. That it remains unclear whether the king of Scyros pushed Theseus
down the clis or he fell by chance makes his end only more shameful. Theseuss
death goes unnoticed and only after Menestheuss death do Theseuss sons recover
rule over Athens.
Plutarch draws a partial parallel to how Romulus because of his increasingly arrogant and autocratic behavior lost popular footing in Rome toward the end of his life.
But we need to compare the description of Romuluss death with Theseuss dubious
and insignicant end to appreciate the dierence between these two heroes. Just at
the moment when Romulus has disappeared and evil rumors start spreading that
some patricians tried to cover up their murder of Romulus by telling the populace he
had risen to heaven, a reliable witness bursts on the scene with happy tidings:
At this pass, then, it is said that one of the patricians, a man of noblest birth, and of
the most reputable character, a trusted and intimate friend also of Romulus himself,
and one of the colonists from Alba, Julius Proculus by name, went into the forum
and solemnly swore by the most sacred emblems before all the people that, as he was
traveling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, fair and stately to
the eye as never before, and arrayed in bright and shining armour. He himself, then,
arighted at the sight, had said: O king, what possessed thee, or what purpose
hadst thou, that thou hast left us patricians a prey to unjust and wicked accusations,
and the whole city sorrowing without end at the loss of its father? Whereupon
Romulus had replied: It was the pleasure of the gods, O Proculus, from whom
Icame, that Ishould be with mankind only a short time, and that after founding a
city destined to be the greatest on earth for empire and glory, Ishould dwell again in
heaven. So farewell, and tell the Romans that if they practice self-restraint, and add
to it valour, they will reach the utmost heights of human power. And Iwill be your
propitious deity, Quirinus. These things seemed to the Romans worthy of belief,
from the character of the man who related them, and from the oath which he had
taken; moreover, some inuence from heaven also, akin to inspiration, laid hold
upon their emotions, for no man contradicted Proculus, but all put aside suspicion
and calumny and prayed to Quirinus, and honoured him as agod.21
21
Plutarch, Romulus 28.1-3. Perrin I, 17779. ,
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Plutarch goes on to ridicule other tales of miraculous disappearances of people.

Yet, as with his play in the opening of Theseuss biography with truth and ction,
history and myth, maps and their wondrous peripheries, Plutarch wants us to
both believe and doubt that Romulus became the god Quirinus.
Although Theseuss ignominious death contrasts with Romuluss imperial
apotheosis, Plutarch later introduces an interesting parallel to Romuluss miraculous transformation into Quirinus, which explains a bit better why Plutarch paired
Romulus with Theseus:in a vision Theseus appears to the Greek soldiers ghting
the Persians at Marathon in 490 bce and urges them on to victory. When the oracle of Delphi advises the Athenians to search for Theseuss gravesite, they indeed
nd a con of a man of extraordinary size, a bronze spear lying by its side, and a
sword (Theseus 36.2. Perrin I, 85). In the 470s bce Theseuss remains are brought
to Athens and enshrined amid solemn processions and sacrices. The physical
installment of Theseuss body in fth-century Athens constitutes a partial parallel to Romuluss death and apotheosis with the dierence that Romuluss body
disappears whereas Theseuss nally reappears. Plutarchs account of Theseuss
rehabilitation holds an important key to why Plutarch chose Theseus to match his
biography of Romulus. In this way Theseus becomes a hero not of mythical, but
classical Athens, of the Athens that was to become the center of Greek civilization
and democracy. That Plutarch refers to the concept of democracy to describe
Theseuss rule makes it all the clearer that it was the future of Rome and Athens
that made Romulus and Theseus into a tting pair for Plutarch.
Although Plutarch celebrates Rome and the Roman mandate to rule the world,
he also shows it as a newcomer to the history of civilizations, emphasizing by
contrast Greeces mythical and historical depth. This is evident, rst, in the family pedigree of our heroes:both Theseus and Romulus are of divine parentage
osprings of Poseidon and Venus, respectivelybut Romulus is a nobody who
rises to extraordinary heights, while, as a blood relative of Hercules, Theseus is a
younger member of the world of Greek gods and demigods.
Second, we see it play out in the history of their respective cities. As Plutarch
observes, of the worlds two most illustrious cities . . . Rome and Athens, Romulus
founded the one, and Theseus made a metropolis of the other. (Theseus 2.1. Perrin
I, 5). Theseuss mortal father Aegeus, who by chance impregnates Aethra, the
daughter of the king of Troezen, on his way to Athens, stood in a longer line of
kings of Athens, which had been ruled by descendants of Cecrops and Erechtheus.
When Theseus hears from his mother that the king of Athens is his father, he
goes to claim the throne. He does not need to found a city as did Romulus. Pairing
Theseus with Romulus thus gave Greece, represented by Athens, a much greater,
even if tumultuous, historical depth thanRome.
Third, Plutarchs choice of role model for our protagonists allows Greece to
participate in a political cosmology of mythical charisma that Rome simply lacks.
Plutarch shows at excessive length how Theseuss actions are driven by the example of Hercules.22 Theseus chooses the dangerous land road to Athens when claiming
22
David Larmour notes in Plutarchs Compositional Methods in the Theseus and Romulus,
that [t]he role of Heracles in the Theseus is large and important, so much so that it almost causes
281
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the throne, which gives him the opportunity to prove himself in overcoming great
challenges in the fashion of his admiredhero:
[He], as it would seem, had long since been secretly red by the glorious valour of
Heracles, and made the greatest account of that hero, and was a most eager listener
to those who told what manner of man he was, and above all to those who had seen
him and been present at some deed or speech of his . . . Theseus admired the valour
of Heracles, until by night his dreams were of the heros achievements, and by day
his ardour led him along and spurred him on in his purpose to achieve the like.23
It is not so much that with his portrayal of Theseus as a second Hercules Plutarch
leaves the safe haven of history for myth. Rather, the connection with Hercules allows
Plutarch to show Theseus as a participant in an older, semi-divine political cosmology that adds to his charisma as a political leader.
A last example of how eager Plutarch is to endow Greece with historical age and
mythical charisma is the account of Theseuss liberation of Athens from vassalage
to Crete. When tribute collectors from Crete come to collect the seven young men
and girls whom the Athenians had been sending to Crete to atone for the killing of a
Cretan envoy, Theseus decides to go himself and ends up killing the Minotaur with
the help of Minoss daughter Ariadne, who lends him the famed thread to navigate
the treacherous labyrinth. Plutarch gives various accounts of this famous episode,
but one point is clear: Plutarch defends the older civilization of Crete against the
poets of Athens who have represented it merely as an Oriental oppressor; Athens
should be proud to have been subservient to an older civilization with a language
and literature:
And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city which
has a language and a literature. For Minos was always abused and reviled in the Attic
theatres, and it did not avail him either that Hesiod called him most royal, or that
Homer styled him a condant of Zeus, but the tragic poets prevailed, and from
platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus
was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice dened byhim.24
Whether in enmity or peace, Greece is woven into a fabric of older civilizations

that had literature, laws, and judges long before Rome. To add a last layer of
an artistic imbalance (p.363). He shows how Plutarch tries to counterbalance this asymmetry
by bringing in references to Hercules in Romuluss biography, for example the tradition that
Roma was the daughter of Telephus, the son of Hercules. Iwould argue that, despite these sparse
attempts to redress the balance between the two protagonists, Plutarch uses Hercules also to
distinguish Theseus from Romulus, Greece from Rome and to show Theseus as member of an old
world of mythical rule, in contrast to Romuluss and Romes entrance on the stage of the realpolitik
of history.
23
Plutarch, Theseus 6.6-7. Perrin I, 1517. , ,
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,
. . . ,
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24
Plutarch, Theseus 16.2-3. Perrin I, 3133.
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,
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complexity, we should note that Crete, from a synchronic perspective, could also
be seen as a remote precedent for the contemporary Roman domination of Greece
Plutarch was witnessing in his owntimes.
Our discussion of the pairing of Romulus and Theseus has highlighted only
a few of the ambivalent parallels and contrasts around which Plutarch builds
the lives of his two heroes. Things get yet more complicated when we take into
account that Plutarch wrote his diptych of Romulus and Theseus after completing
the paired biographies of Numa Pompilius, successor of Romulus and the second
of the seven kings who ruled Rome before the foundation of the Republic in 509
bce, and Lycurgus, the notorious Spartan lawgiver and founder of Spartan political institutions.
Double Beginnings:Romulus and Theseus in the Light of Numa

Pompilius and Lycurgus
Embarking on reading two pairs of two heroes as a set of two diptychs takes us
into a higher gear of the synoptic machine and closer to the limits of what the
device of synoptic juxtaposition can meaningfully say about both constituent
parts. Again, Plutarchs pairing was motivated through the Roman side. From
Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, it was logical to proceed to Romulus,
its founder and rst king. But moving from Lycurgus to Theseus constituted a
quantum leap. Certainly, Lycurgus, rst mentioned as late as Herodotus, is a shadowy gure who might have lived between the ninth to seventh centuries bce, if
he lived at all. But his historical elusiveness is of a dierent quality than that of
Theseus. Theseus was Heracless cousin, whereas Lycurgus might have been his
descendant in the eleventh generation, but inhabited a very dierent, more distinctly human and postheroicworld.
Let us rst look at some of the broader patterns that connect the two biographical diptychs. The choice of the Athenian hero Theseus and the Spartan lawgiver
Lycurgus highlights the competitive axis of Athens-Sparta, so constitutive of Greek
cultural consciousness. On the Greek side the logic of cultural complementarity
is more decisive than genealogy. In the Roman case, instead, royal succession and
the logic of cultural complementarity overlap:Romulus founded Rome in military
and political terms and Numa Pompilius gave the city its religious institutions.
More intriguingly, the cultural prole of Rome and Greece as embodied by founding gures of the rst and second generation is suddenly inverted:Romulus was
the charismatic newcomer set against a historically and mythically well-connected
Theseus in a civilized Athens dominated at rst by a yet more civilized and old
Crete. But with his notorious measures to discourage wealth, luxury, and excess
and to banish the unnecessary and superuous arts, (Lycurgus 9.3. Perrin I,
231) Lycurgus represents a cultural reversal, a conscious relapse into a kind of
secondary primitivism, where children are only taught basic literacy, enough to
serve their turn; all the rest of their training was calculated to make them obey
commands well, endure hardships, and conquer in battle (Lycurgus 16.6. Perrin
I, 257); even laws are to be inculcated and were not permitted to be written down.
This stands in suggestive contrast to Plutarchs all-too-educated Roman king
Numa who not just reads but presumably writesbooks.
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To capture how Lycurgus and Numa function as contrastive, mutually illuminating foils, Plutarch uses a musical metaphor:Just as musicians tune their lyres, so
Lycurgus tightened the strings at Sparta, which he found relaxed with luxury, and
Numa loosened the strings at Rome, where the tones were sharp and high (Lycurgus
and Numa 1.3. Perrin I, 385). By juxtaposing the secondary primitivist utopia of
Lycurguss Sparta with the gradual renement of Romes primary primitivism after
the age of Romulus, Plutarch draws again attention to the civilizational gap between
Greece andRome.
But the most interesting point of contrast between the two kings is their legacy:Sparta loses supremacy over the Greek states after abandoning the precepts of
Lycurgus and, similarly, Rome falls into a phase of bloody wars after Numas death.
Despite some opposite political measures, they are both eective leaders whose polities descend into chaos after their passing. However, whatever Plutarch might say
about the wars after Numas death, he had to acknowledge that, while there was never
a world-spanning Spartan empire, the Roman Empire eventually did dominate the
world throughwar:
Thus not even for a little time did the beautiful edice of justice which he [Numa]
had reared remain standing, because it lacked the cement of education. What,
then! someone will say, was not Rome advanced and bettered by her wars? That
is a question which will need a long answer, if Iam to satisfy men who hold that
betterment consists in wealth, luxury and empire, rather than in safety, gentleness, and that independence which is attended by righteousness. However, it will
be thought, I suppose, to favour the superior claims of Lycurgus, that, whereas
the Romans increased in power as they did after abandoning the institutions of
Numas time, the Lacedaemonians, on the other hand, just as soon as they forsook the precepts of Lycurgus, sank from the highest to the lowest place, lost their
supremacy over the Greeks, and were in danger of utter destruction. Nevertheless,
this remains a great feature in Numas career, and one really divine, that he was a
stranger, and yet was summoned to the throne, where he changed the whole nature
of the state by force of persuasion alone, and mastered a city which was not yet in
sympathy with his views; and that he accomplished this without appeal to arms or
any violence (unlike Lycurgus, who led the nobles in arms against the commons),
but by his wisdom and justice won the hearts of all the citizens and brought them
into harmony.25
,
.
,
.
25
Plutarch, Lycurgus and Numa 4.6-8. Perrin I, 399401.
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,
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Plutarch makes at least four complicated moves at once. First, Rome sunk into a
period of war because, unlike Lycurgus, Numa did not put enough weight on paideia, the public education of his citizens. Second, Sparta lost hegemony because
it abandoned Lycurguss legacy, whereas Rome gained hegemony despite Numas
lack of educational policies. Third, some people might be proud of how wars
made Rome great and enabled its wealth, luxury, and imperial tastes, but Plutarch
would favor safety, gentleness, and that independence which is attended by righteousness (Lycurgus and Numa 4.7. Perrin I, 399). And fourth, Numa, standing
on the side of civilization rather than uncultivated raw force, is to be congratulated on his skills as persuader and orator that gained him the peoples sympathy
and support.
This is a complex scheme of praise and blame. It becomes yet more puzzling when we consider how much Plutarch emphasizes Numas thirst for
self-cultivation: Plutarch explains that Numa was called to the throne after
Romuluss miraculous disappearance and a short interregnum of factional strife
between Romans and Sabines. Numa was chosen for his virtue (aret), acquired
through discipline (paideia), hardships (kakopatheia), and the study of wisdom or
philosophia. (Numa 3.3,5). In his process of self-cultivation Numa applies reason
(logos) to the unbridled passions (epithymioi) and renounces the romance with
violence that is typical for primitive barbarians:
He had thus put away from himself not only the infamous passions of the
soul, but also that violence and rapacity which are in such high repute among
Barbarians, believing that true bravery consisted in the subjugation of ones
passions by reason. On this account he banished from his house all luxury and
extravagance, and while citizen and stranger alike found in him a faultless judge
and counselor, he devoted his hours of privacy and leisure, not to enjoyments and
money-making, but to the service of the gods, and the rational contemplation of
their nature and power.26
Plutarch presents Numa here as a natural philosopher who devotes his time to
contemplating secrets of nature, and as a chief priest who founds the religious
institutions of Rome and inspires his people to develop sentiments of piety toward
the gods. Plutarch mentions that it is unclear whether Numa studied Pythagorean
writings, but he seems inclined to not reject the idea outright, saying that (t)his
was the chief reason why Numas wisdom and culture were said to have been
due to his intimacy with Pythagoras; for in the philosophy of the one, and in the
.
, ,
, ,
, .
26
Plutarch, Numa 3.5-6. Perrin I, 315. ,
,
.
,
,
,
.
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civil polity of the other, religious services and occupations have a large place.
(Numa 8.4. Perrin I, 333). Plutarch quotes sources that state that twelve pontical
books, and twelve others of Greek philosophy, were placed in a con upon his
death. When the cons came to light four hundred years later after heavy rainfall,
one con was found empty, without a trace of a body, while the other contained
Pythagorean writings (Numa 22.5). They were then solemnly burned at the comitium, perhaps in keeping with the Pythagorean precept of keeping the teachings
secret.
Undeniably, Numa is a rex doctus, erudite, virtuous, and pious; the only criticism Plutarch advances against him on the subject of education is that he didnt
make it into a public matter, but left education uncontrolled in the hands of the
parents, unlike Lycurgus, who separated children from their families at an early
age and subjected them to heavy doses of public education in physical prowess,
warfare, and basic literacy.
Reading the pair of Lycurgus and Numa in conjunction with the closely related
pair of Theseus and Romulus, we can see Plutarch spin out his thoughts on
the beginnings of cultures and polities through the lens of two generations of
founding gures. Romulus has proleptic imperial charisma, but lacks illustrious
pedigree and land. Theseus lacks moral charisma, but has the family tree and
a city. Numa, the second king, adds to Romuluss charisma erudition and piety.
Lycurgus, the leader of Sparta, the other, non-Athenian Greece, adds to Athenian
exuberance the insight that in the face of the experience of luxury, a conscious
retrovolution to primitive simplicity is the best way to hegemony.
Let us return once more to the complex scheme of praise and blame that closes
the synkrisis of Lycurgus and Numa. Plutarchs sympathy for Lycurgus and his
relative lack of sympathy for Numa is striking and puzzling. Does Numa symbolize how important the injection of Greek wisdom (and persuasion and oratory)
into the earliest history of Rome was? Or, in contrast, does Lycurgus illustrate
how a Greek who understood the value to resist civilization and opt for simplicity
could have stopped the decline that comes with wealth and overrenementa
criticism often expressed by Romans who saw their pristine values corroded by
Greek inuence? Do we have here a Roman king who is Greek enough to be wise
and erudite (although it does not help his kingdom) and a Greek/Spartan king
who restores Roman values of rustic simplicity and martial prowess (although his
vision implies a secondary, not pristine primitivism)?
Cultural values and cultural belonging of our Greek and Roman kings seem to
switch sides in Lycurgus and Numa. What does this mean? Given Plutarchs enthusiasm for all four protagonists at one point or the other, we might speculate that
Plutarch envisioned the ideal founding gure, who founds, launches, and keeps
his polity on the right track, like the qualities of Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, and
Numa rolled into one:perhaps a king living in close physical bond with the ideals of the heroic age, but also someone whose charisma allows him to suddenly
rise from nowhere, who knows how to resist the temptations of renement and
laxity, but who is at the same time erudite, wise, pious, and well supplied with
Greekbooks?
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4. The Synoptic Machine

Incomparable as our two case studies may be in genre, linguistic constellation,
authorship, scope, motivation, and reception, it is meaningful to place them side
by sidejuxtapose them as a diptych of case studiesand use them to reect
more generally on the nature of synoptic texts. We showed in close detail how
their synoptic format brought to light broader arguments about the relationship
of Greek to Roman culture, and Japanese to Chinese-style poetics and exerted
pressures of contrast and balance on both sides that we described with the term
synoptic machine. The form of these texts exceeds their content, and rather than
declaring Greek or Japanese victors for patriotic purposes, both the Lives and the
New Myriad Leaves seem absorbed in working out the warps and wefts that their
suggestive juxtapositions force uponthem.
The two case studies also showed how stunningly indeterminate synoptic texts
tend to be. The excess of meaning that the synoptic format generates takes the
shape of a persistent question, an open-ended experiment. The compiler of the
New Myriad Leaves seems to ask:what happens to our perception of the world and
to poetry if we directly confront Chinese-style and Japanese diction, rhetoric, and
topic conventions, which are so incommensurable? Plutarch, in turn, asks:What
happens if we confront the driving forces that have shaped lives of great Greeks
and Romans and compare their moral values, actions, and outcomes? What happens if we view the actions of great Greeks and Romans alike through the screen
of Greek philosophical vocabulary? Plutarchs dominant conceptual vocabulary of
democracy versus tyranny, fate (tych) versus virtue (aret), prudence (sphrosyn),
self-control (enkrateia) and ambition (philotimia) derive mostly from Platonic and
Hellenistic philosophy. The texts strongest and most interesting claims do not
lie in the surface content, but in the implications that arise from the juxtaposition. The degree of ambivalence and open-endedness of this metatext is what
makes the Lives so fascinating and puzzling. In that sense Plutarchs Lives, despite
appearances, are not just historical explorations, but exercises in Socratic midwifery, which have strayed from their place in the dialogue form and dressed up
in the genre of biography.27
Moreover, both of our case studies emerged from a cultural milieu of agonistic comparison that provides a milieu for synoptic texts to thrive. New Myriad
Leaves was produced in the very period when, after strong imperial sponsorship
in the early ninth century for Sino-Japanese poetry, vernacular poetry was gaining ground as a public genre. Until the mid-eighth century vernacular poetry,
especially in the long-verse form, had held a prominent function as a canvas
27
Du 1999 shows how exploratory and thought-provoking rather than descriptive and antiquarian
Plutarchs Lives really are. Translated into genre terms, Plutarchs oscillation between biography
and philosophical dialogue might be more interesting than the often-discussed oscillation between
historiography and biography. Given that Plutarch was a copious writer of dialogues, and the only
two surviving corpora of Greek philosophical dialogues are indeed Platos and Plutarchs, Plutarchs
inclination to generate questions rather than produce answers in the Lives is close in intent, if not in
form, to the dialogue genre. On Plutarch as a philosopher and on his dialogues see Lamberton 2001,
2644 and 14687.
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on which to display imperial grandeur, but the late ninth century propagation
of the short thirty-one-syllable waka form at court was a new phenomenon that
radically reshaped the early Japanese literary landscape. This competition between
the Sino-Japanese and vernacular traditions culminated in the production of the
Kokinsh, which as we saw in Chapter 1 invented ingenious strategies to outdo
Sino-Japanese poetry by claiming that waka originated in the age of the gods and
the depths of the human heart rather than, like Sino-Japanese poetry, in historical
time and through the imitation of previous pattern and models.
In the case of Plutarch, Hellenistic culture was ripe with practices built on
agonistic comparison.28 The standard education included rhetorical exercises
like the encomium, ctional eulogies that praised well-known historical gures
through contrast and comparison and relied on a highly polarized moral vocabulary. Students also had to produce, in true sophistical fashion, paired speeches that
would argue for both sides of a question. Many of Plutarchs essays bear titles that
smack of the rhetorical culture of agonistic comparison and contrast, such as Did
Rome gain hegemony thanks to fate or virtue? Even if Plutarch most often comes
down in between the two options, his style of argument is driven by an agonistic
rhetoric that gives the illusion that there could be a simple solution.
If one looks too closely at synoptic texts, one quickly nds ones head spinning.
The simple device of juxtaposition creates a perpetuum mobile where the reader is
plunged into distinguishing signicant from insignicant contrasts and constitutive from coincidental similarities of the juxtaposed entities. We are sometimes
forced to change perspective at each new turn of phrase. As readers we can compensate for the overdetermination inherent in the synoptic form only by overinterpretation of the authors intentions. Like eyes that grow weary from gliding back
and forth between close and distant objects, our moving between the elliptical,
underdetermined synoptic text and our systematic overreading of it is as exciting
as disturbing. Ithink it has yet to be fully recognized just how vertiginous both
the New Myriad Leaves and the Parallel Lives are by virtue of their synoptic format,
and how much we can learn from synoptic texts about the gradual and often coincidental process of shaping cultural identities through juxtaposition and contrast.
28
See Pelling 2000 and 2002 and Du 1999, 24347.
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EPILOGUE
Beyond the Comforts of Inuence:

Deep Comparisons
1. The Comparative Imperative, Revisited

Over the past decade, World Literature has advanced to become a candidate for
the most recent paradigm in the eld of comparative literature and a literary correlate to other world paradigms, such as world history/global history, that have
made themselves felt in agendas for teaching, research, and hiring. Idare say that
the new excitement over the signicance, methodology, and pedagogy of World
Literature is rather unlike any other paradigm that has swept over the stage of
literature departments in North America over the past half centuryincluding
heavyweights such as New Criticism, Deconstruction, Postmodernism, Gender
Studies, or Postcolonialism. World Literature is a new movement with an old
name that dispenses with some of the iconoclastic clamor that has surrounded
previous paradigms in comparative literature. Some of its most prominent proponents at times even make a point of picking up a job left unnished ever since
Johann Wolfgang Goethe brought the concept of Weltliteratur into circulation in
his conversations with his condant Johann Peter Eckermann in 1827. Mindful of
Goethes use of the concept, David Damrosch emphasizes that Weltliteratur is a
state of mind and a method, not a corpus oftexts:
World literature is fully in play once several foreign works begin to resonate
together in our mind. This provides a further solution to the comparatists lurking panic:world literature is not an immense body of material that must somehow, impossibly, be mastered; it is a mode of reading that can be experienced
intensively with a few works just as eectively as it can be explored extensively
with a large number.1
And despite their otherwise diverging vision and practice of World Literature,
Franco Moretti makes a related point in his Conjectures on World Literature:
World literature is not an object, its a problem, and a problem that asks for a new
critical method; and no-one has ever found a method by just reading more texts.
1
Damrosch 2003, 29899.
10/12/2013 8:03:45 PM
Thats not how theories come into being:they need a leap, a wagera hypothesisto get started.2
After quoting Goethe and Karl Marx on Weltliteratur Moretti laments that we have
failed to live up to their vision and urges us to tryagain:
Well, let me put it very simply, we have not lived up to these beginnings: the
study of comparative or international literature has been a much more modest
intellectual enterprise, fundamentally limited to Western Europe, and mostly
revolving around the river Rhine (German philologists working on French literature). Not much more. . . . Ithink its time we return to that old ambition of
Weltliteratur:after all, the literature around us is now unmistakably a planetary
system. The question is not really what we should dothe question ishow.3
Just as the proponents of Weltliteratur make a connection between an old concept and their novel endeavor current world literature pedagogy is both novel and
conscious of its twentieth century precedents. With his World Literature and Its
Place in General Culture of 1911, Richard G.Moulton of the University of Chicago
laid an important foundation for the introduction of world literature courses and
Great Books courses into general college education in North America during the
twentieth century. The idea that reading masterpieces of literature from around
the world in translation would counteract the progressive specialization in the
humanities and would give students Herzensbildungmoral judgment, aesthetic
appreciation, and civic competencyled to a unique expansion of world literature
pedagogy over the past century. As John Pizer reminds us, this has indeed been an
American phenomenon, despite Weltliteraturs roots on the old continent.4
Philo Buck of the University of Wisconsin compiled one of the earliest anthologies of World Literature for college use in the 1930s. It contained about 90percent
of European literature, with the slight rest split between Sanskrit, Persian, and
Arabic, all traditions that have inuenced European writers. Subsequent anthology projects would occasionally aim to include a bit more of the world, but it was
not until the 1990s that more forceful eorts were made to produce truly global
anthologies. According to recent estimates by the college book publisher Norton,
about 1,200 institutions in North America currently oer World Literature courses
in their general education program and enroll somewhere between 100,000 and
120,000 students each year. These courses rely on the major anthologies currently
on the market produced by Norton, Longman, and Bedford:all in six hefty volumes, largely arranged chronologically, and spanning texts from Ancient Egypt
to postcolonial Trinidad and India. Whereas Nortons tradition of publishing
anthologies of World Masterpieces goes back to the 1950s, the rst editions of the
Longman Anthology of World Literature and the Bedford Anthology of World Literature
date to the last decade and testify to the ascent of the new World Literature paradigm in college pedagogy.
Moretti 2004149.
Ibid.,148.
4
On the history of the development of world literature courses in America see Chapter5 of
Pizer2006.
3
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It is the complex nexus between World Literature theory and pedagogy that
makes the paradigm in America so promising and unprecedented. First, in terms
of sheer numbers the dynamic of its future development is bottom-up, driven
by mass education and urged on by anthology editors and new visions of liberal
arts education. Unlike deconstruction and postmodernism, lets say, it is not only
being designed by a few raried bright theorists whose work will eventually trickle
down into the catacombs of academeundergraduate educationand become
canonized in theory courses that are already somewhat dated when they make
it into the curriculum of literature departments. This time theory has a hard time
catching up with pedagogy.5
This inverse and synchronic nexus between Weltliteratur theory and practice
also challenges cherished myths about the origins and spirit of comparative literature as an academic discipline. Still today, the patina of an old world myth coats
the self-understanding of American comparatists. Didnt the nineteenth-century
founding fathers of the discipline, such as the Hungarian-speaking Transylvanian
Hugo Meltzl and the Dane Georg Brandes, come from multilingual peripheries
that predisposed them to become comparatists in the rst place? Werent Erich
Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, towering twentieth-century comparatists, who founded
the discipline in North America, erudite Europeans whose traumatic escape from
the terror of Nazism and the horrors of wars on the Old Continent brought aesthetic sophistication and a higher, authenticating wisdom to the discipline? And
isnt comparative literature predicated on the tantalizingly eortless multilingualityin high literary European languages, that is, not the pidgin languages and
dialects of non-Western immigrantsthat Europeans seem to imbibe with their
mothersmilk?
Undoubtedly there are renowned comparatists and programs of Comparative
Literature in Europe, but their number and scope hardly bears comparison to the
prominence of the discipline in North America. And unlike in America, where
the discipline is increasingly transformed by scholars working in Asian, Middle
Eastern, and African languages, the number of Europes comparatists who work
beyond the major European languages is minimal. Again, large-scale publication
projects like the new, global third edition of Kindlers Literatur Lexikon in nineteen volumes (Berlin: J. B. Metzler, 2009) show that Weltliteratur still holds its
place in scholarly agendas. But one could only wishin vainthat the currently
all-too-frantic reformers of German higher education realized that Weltliteratur
should be read extensively by entering university students, that universities should
establish and sta centers and departments to teach it. Such a program could revolutionize the German academic landscape by bringing a true, solid global edge
to the education of future generations and help integrate a society that for all
too long has neglected its ethnic diversity; Weltliteratur in the country of Goethe
should not just languish in dusty reference works on dark library shelves.
Recent pedagogical guides and reference works include Damrosch 2009a and 2009b and DHaen,
Damrosch, and Kadir2012.
Epilogue
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The new American paradigm thrives on the tension between world literature
as method and theory and world literature as canon and general education pedagogy. While a large amount of world literature theory develops in the context of
the analysis of modern literatures, the world literature canon as featured in the
college anthologies leans heavily toward premodern traditions, the rst few millennia of world literature that preceded the past century. Considering that most
literary traditions in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East only fully connected with
Western modernity late in the nineteenth century, nearly ve out of the six volumes of the above-mentioned world literature anthologies consist of works that
precede the modern period. This creates formidable challenges for the instructors
of American world literature courses, most often trained in English or another
European literature. Reading Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul will allow students and instructors alike to stay close to their comfort zone of cultural difference, but an instructor teaching the Indian epic Mahabharata alongside the
Japanese warrior tale The Tales of the Heike and Homers Iliad will have to face
pressing questions in an introductory level undergraduate course, that no scholar
so farto my knowledgehas had the expertise and courage to tackle comparatively in her research.
This paradoxical nexus between modern-oriented theory and an overwhelming
premodern canon oers a fantastic opportunity and has the potential to become
a truly creative site for developing theories of premodern comparative studies.
How should we face independent cultural development, and compare distinctive,
largely self-contained traditions such as Chinese, Indian, and Arabic literature
before the advent of global modernity? Making the best out of this opportunity will
to some degree go against much of the recent excitement about the world and
the global in other disciplines such as history, religion, or archeology. Travel,
migration, and diusion have been key terms and central assumptions and
have opened fascinating vistas on the vivid interconnections among cultures and
worlds ever since at least the Neolithic Period. But textual traditions, in particular
the elite traditions that became the foundation of classical civilizations, do not
travel like guns, germs, and steel; not even like coins, miniature paintings, or
religious statuettes. The Roman senate did at some point ban Chinese silk for its
suggestive eroticism and its ability to drain the empires silver reserves when it
became fashionable among the capitals rich, but not one of the most erudite and
cosmopolitan members of the Roman elite ever had the faintest inkling of the
metrics of classical Chinese poetry, a single concept of Confucian ethics, or the
most basic conventions of Chinese historiography. In short, in the larger context
of comparative studies, comparative literature faces particular challenges because
of the exceptional patterns of circulation (or lack thereof) of its object of study, literary texts. This problem might yield a more thought-provoking criterion to dene
the discipline in the future than the well-worn literariness of texts that the last
report about the state of the eld has brought up again to dene the distinctiveness of comparative literature.6
Saussy 2006,17.
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The fact that literary texts are among the cultural products most resistant to
travel and to successful diusion should make us think more about the relative
proportion of studies of cultural diusion versus studies of genetic dierence in
comparative literature. Particularly in its traditional Euro-centripetal approach, but
also in its global incarnation with a modern and postmodern focus, much of the
work done in comparative literature is a variant of reception studies. Studying the
reception of Greco-Roman antiquity in European vernaculars, the mutual reception processes between European vernaculars, or even the assertive responses of
non-Western writers to the impact of colonization and Western modernity, builds
on one and the same assumption:historical inuence and reception are what matters. Comparisons across historically nonrelated cultures have been, and still are,
vastly outnumbered by studies of inuence and reception. Courageous comparatists working between East Asian and Western traditions, such as Zhang Longxi,
Earl Miner, Anthony Yu, Eugene Eoyang, Pauline Yu, Stephen Owen, and, more
recently, Alexander Beecroft have made great contributions to the methodology
of comparisons of historically unrelated literary traditions. But based on a logic
of sheer numbers, reception and inuence studies have developed a much richer
and more sophisticated methodological repertoire than comparisons that are facing the challenges of engaging historically unmediated cultural dierence.
This book interweaves two cases of receptionSino-Japanese and
Greco-Romanand has compared these historically unrelated processes, making
for three storylines with a radically dierent research history. Greco-Roman reception studies in the broadest sense have the longest and richest pedigree and the
most sophisticated repertoire of methodological tools. Confronting the wealth and
depth of that scholarship is a daunting enterprise. In contrast, the academic study
of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange and reception is underdeveloped. Traditional
Sinology in Japan goes back to the early period, but it was largely limited to the production of philological reference works, commentaries, and textual editions. For
centuries Sino-Japanese reception processes were the underlying, unquestioned
assumption, not a dynamic requiring investigation and interpretation, let alone
explanation. Although the formation of the modern discipline of literary studies
since the Meiji Period opened scholarship to questions of interpretation and criticism, it also enshrined national literature (kokubungaku

)with a focus
on vernacular works such as the Manysh and the Tale of Genji as the canon of
Japanese literatureand marginalized the grand old Sino-Japanese literary tradition. The twentieth century can boast a good number of groundbreaking kanbun scholars who have investigated Sino-Japanese reception processes; and since
the 1980s the Wakan hikaku bungakkai

(Wa-kan/Sino-Japanese
Comparative Literature Association), which also edits a high-quality journal,
has proven a lively platform for scholars researching Japanese literature from
Chinese and Sino-Japanese perspectives. But Sino-Japanese studies constitute a
small minority in literary studies in Japan and the West. And we cannot emphasize enough that the Sino-Japanese Comparative Literature Association consists
of scholars of Japanese literature who are largely out of touch with Japans academic discipline of Comparative Literature, which has focused largely on Japans
Epilogue
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reception of Western literatures in the modern period. This discipline developed

on the Eurocentric Western model, with the addition of a Japanese point of reference, but it has so far failed to produce a Comparative Literature of the rst order
that we should expect in Japan:a eld that studies Japanese literature comparatively in relation to the other East Asian traditions of China, Korea, and Vietnam,
and more broadly to South and Southeast Asia. Whereas we are striving to overcome the Euro-centripetal legacy of comparative literature, we could wish that a
more Asia-centric comparative literature model takes hold in future literary studies inJapan.
A major motivation for writing this book has been a desire to reect more
methodically on the processes of Sino-Japanese reception, taking inspiration from
the far more developed and mature studies of reception in the Greco-Roman context. But the ultimate challenge has been the third storyline, the one that connects
our two stories of Greco-Roman and Sino-Japanese reception. To my knowledge
nobody to date has ever undertaken a book-length study in any language that
compares these two historically unrelated reception processes. Developing that
storyline without any precedent to go by has been the most enticing and daunting
challenge of this project. In phases of doubt Iwas in turns urged on and taken
aback by Erich Auerbachs apt words on the conditions for bold synthesis:
But how is the problem of synthesis to be solved? Asingle lifetime seems too
short to create even the preliminaries. The organized work of a group is no
answer, even if a group has high uses otherwise. The historical synthesis of
which I am speaking, although it has signicance only when it is based on a
scholarly penetration of the material, is a product of personal intuition and hence
can only be expected from an individual.7
Although collaboration is often the most practical and therapeutic answer to the
formidable challenges of bold comparative projects, they can ultimately only
cohere intellectually in individual minds, even if inspired and enhanced by a
group eort. What can the intuition of an individual hold on to for discerning
relevant connections and producing bold syntheses?
For historically unrelated comparisons, the dominant answers have involved
versions of formalism and the belief that comparability requires abstraction,
reduction, typologization, or formal equation. For Japanese literature Earl Miners
study Comparative Poetics has been a groundbreaking eort in this direction.
Analyzing Asian and Western literatures through the prism of the Western genre
categories of drama, lyric, and narrative while being aware of their relativity and
cultural inection, Miner strongly believed that poeticsmeta-discourses about
literatureprovided the most accessible avenue to bold comparisons. This posits
comparability on the level of a set of shared concepts of a higherorder.
Auerbach 1969, 11 (originally published in German in1952).
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2. Comparing Literary Cultures

In this study I decided to renounce this scheme of a shared formal typology.
Instead I tried to show how comparability arises from a complex translation
process of incommensurate concepts, not from a higher order of abstraction or
reduction. In several chapters Ihave undertaken this translation with the help of
the notion of literary culture. For a genre formalist the Iliad is mainly an epic.
For the student of literary cultures it is that and much more:the most important
schoolbook text in the Hellenistic world, which was read with the Alexandrian
apparatus of philological and commentarial scholarship, and which has thus left
a massive record in material culture as young children in Egypt, Rome, or Gaul
used it as writing practice; and the top text on top of the genre hierarchy that
invited veneration, memorization, allegorical interpretation, parody, recitation,
recreation, quotation, allusion. With our comparison of literary cultures rather
than literary works, we move from single, surface equivalences of concepts and
literary texts to what Iwould like to call a deep comparison that approximates
and counter-highlights literary cultures.
Studies of literary culture have enjoyed great popularity over the past decade.
Suddenly every period and era, place and tradition has gained its own characteristic literary culture worthy of scholarly elaboration. This loosely intuitive, yet
capacious and suggestive concept has opened literary studies to a rich array of new
horizons:suddenly the material culture of reading and writing, producing and circulating, copying and printing, compiling, rearranging and disseminating of texts
has become as important as their content, which for so long had monopolized
scholarly attention; the social contexts, audiences, users, patrons and performers of literary texts have entered the stage; and the connections between literary
production and political culture, religious practice, and economic development
now create a matrix around literary texts that has become constitutive of, not just
collateral, to their meaning.
The comparison of Roman and Early Japanese literature in this book has
focused on four particular aspects of literary culture that have enabled us to go
beyond surface appearances and undertake focused deep comparisons:education, literacy, genre hierarchies, and genre translations. In setting the stage for
our comparison Iemphasized the importance of the canon and process of education:Greece and China were only reference cultures in the full sense of all
meanings spelled out in the rst chapter because Roman and Japanese elites were
trained from childhood in the Hellenistic or Chinese canon, aided by the relevant
scholarship, commentaries, and philological reference works. The focus on education allowed us to contrastively develop a nuanced picture of dierent forms
of literacya denition of literacy that accounts not just for basic reading and
writing, as the term is generally understood, but for cultural, political, religious,
and literary practices associated with the reading and writing of texts. Ihave characterized Japanese literary culture as predominantly monolingual, biliterate, and
tricanonical, and contrasted it with Roman literary culture that functioned mainly
in a bilingual, monoliterate, and bicanonical fashion. This threefold scheme
of literacy allowed us also to explore the radical dierences between literatures
Epilogue
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written in characters and those recorded in alphabetic systems:while Roman literature started as a translation literature that required translation for the study
and absorption of Greek literature, Japanese literature launched unto a bifurcated
path, with Chinese-style literature accessible without translation and vernacular
literature as a separate, independent tradition heavily inuenced by the Chinese
tradition but without direct Chinese precedent.
The third aspect of literary cultures that we encountered repeatedly also
relates to questions of education: the importance of genre hierarchies, which
determine the relative status and signicance of certain genres within a culture
and which engendered rhetorical forms such as recusatio and satire, expressing
competition over the relative status of genres. Deep comparison is particularly
crucial when it comes to thinking through genres across cultures. Formalist criticism most easily succumbs to the comparative fallacy of equating genre labels
across cultures without any regard to their status in the genre hierarchy. Yet while
the two genres of highest standing in Greco-Roman and European literatures
epic and dramadid not exist in early Japan, the two literary genres of highest
standing in early and medieval Japanshort lyrical genres such as kanshi and
waka (excluding here the Chinese Confucian Classics and Ocial Histories)
were absent from the inuential poetological schemes of Plato and Aristotle.
Shifting our comparisons from genres to genre hierarchies produces a set of
fascinating questions:what does it mean for a literary tradition if lyrical poetry
with its highly metaphorical imagery and its potentially intimate voicestands
at the top of the genre hierarchy and becomes the venue for articulating epic
themes of governance, court culture, public life? Dont we need a dierent vocabulary to talk about the imagery and rhetorical repertoire in Japanese poetry? If
we take the comparison between early Japanese and Latin literature seriously,
would we not need to read ocial kanshi and waka as the functional equivalent to
Western epic poetry, and read it as we would read Homer or Virgil? How can we
compare functional topologies (location of genres within genre hierarchies) rather
than formalistic typologies ofgenre?
Things can get still more dicult, even if false friends or fallacious equivalences are absent, which brings us to our fourth insight about literary cultures.
Deep comparison requires transposition, the functional and symbolic translation of disciplines and genres that only one of the cultures in comparison might
possess. Several of the preceding chapters developed strategies to translate the
central importance of rhetoric and oratory in Greco-Roman education and political culture into comparable practices in Early Japan. In Chapter2 we compared
Ciceros account of the history of Roman oratory to Japanese prefaces of poetry
anthologies that related poetry to the origin of the cosmos, civilization, and political development. And in Chapter6 we compared Ovids oratorical panache in his
exile poetry to Michizanes reliance on plant imagery in lyric poetry. On a general
level, poetry training in China and Japan held a similar role in elite education, as
it was considered the road to polished speech and writing, competent citizenship
and, for some time in China, civil service. Again, only a functional topology of certain practices rooted in a certain literary culture can lead us to a meaningful deep
comparison that brings to light what appeared untranslatable in the rstplace.
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3. Disciplinarity and Layered Comparison

The ubiquitous praise of interdisciplinarity that has been with us for a while can
make us forget what we can gain from observing standards and practices in other
disciplines and applying them to our own. In this book Ihave consciously taken
the role of the Japanologist and Sinologist who uses the Greco-Roman literary
tradition and its academic discipline, Classics, as a theoretical and critical framing
device to better understand early East Asia. Idid so with the hope that scholars
of Classics might conversely benet from using East Asian studies as a framing
device that could inspire new questions, answers, or methods in Classics. This
is a form of comparison that newly values disciplinarity, not to resist the synthesizing, visionary forms of interdisciplinarity, but to benet from the depth and
precision of disciplines by making them into comparative tools. This approach
connects scholars minds more strongly through the philological study, interpretation, and mutual illumination of the literary canons of the cultures under scrutiny,
and less through the handier shortcuts of a limited, reductive critical vocabulary
that always somehow predetermines the convergence of the results. Ultimately,
it strives to bring into dialogue various layers of comparison: of artifacts (such
as texts), of cultural systems (like literary cultures), of critical concepts extracted
from case studies within a tradition; and lastly, of academic disciplines with their
specic histories, practices, and current agendas.
In the introduction Itouched on the many ways in which studies of East Asian
literatures, as young academic disciplines in the West, could benet from the venerable eld of Classics, and Ipostponed remarks on how Classics could benet
from East Asian studies to the end of the book. Iwill limit myself here to a few
points. First, the natural connection between the premodern and modern, which
is the result of the long, continuous literary histories of China and Japan, gives
the study of ancient East Asia a relevance and multifaceted vibrancy that Classics
has been struggling to maintain. One of the recent attempts to recover relevancy
in Classics has been the new subeld of reception studies (in a more specialized
sense than Iused the term above), which explores the afterlife of Ancient Greece
and Rome in Western cultural history up to the present. However, this hardly
compares to the powerful intellectual, cultural, and economic motivation behind
the study of the living literary histories of East Asia. Fascination with modern
East Asia is a strong driving factor behind increasing student enrollments, departmental growth, and funding opportunities in the United States, and the study of
premodern East Asia has been beneting as well from the current trend of swift
expansion, which stands in contrast to the anxieties surrounding the shrinkage
in Classics.
Thus, although the denationalized nature of Classics discussed in the introduction has more successfully avoided imposing nineteenth-century concepts of
the nation-state on the ancient world, the political and academic institutionalization of Chinese and Japanese national literary studies has merits of its own:the
vitality and high quality of source-criticism scholarship produced in particular by
Japanese and Chinese scholars working on their native tradition provides a fundamental basis for Western studies of China and Japan. And a crucial part of the
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academic life of todays scholars of East Asia is the collaboration among Asian,
Asian-heritage, and non-Asian scholars working and living in between various
countries as well as the negotiation between a self-reective native approach
and heteroscopic outsider perspective. It is this constant negotiation of the ever
shrinking dierence between a self, which is heavily inected by close familiarity with the other tradition, and the other tradition that has become more own
than other, which provides a powerful intellectual stimulus for creative thinking
for East Asianists, Eastern and Western, as well as everybody in-between. The
very fact that still today great numbers of cultivated Japanese acionados write in
the ancient genres of waka poetry and haiku practice traditional forms of poetry
chanting, makes ancient Japanese poetry accessible from angles that have been
completely occluded for Classicists.
The natural institutional and intellectual connection between the premodern
and the modern in East Asian Studies also stimulates a more variegated market
of approaches and methods. If Classics has hardly been known for theoretical
panache or visionary methodological experimentation, scholarship on East Asia
can boast a wide spectrum of intellectual styles ranging from heavily philological
to highly theoretical scholarship depending on period, project, scholar, and materials. Although many scholars might stick to the same period and materials, the
most innovative scholarship has often come from scholars who have combined
premodern with modern, and philological with theoretical concerns.
Overall, it is most pleasant to imagine how a fuller engagement with other
antiquitiesin particular Near Eastern, Indian, Chinesewith their own distinctive shapes of historical, intellectual, and literary traditions, could give new questions, even new answers, and certainly a new conceptual vocabulary and a new
global edge to the discipline of Classics.
More concretely, Ihope that this book has thrown new light on specic questions and texts of the Latin and Japanese traditions. Sometimes Ihave attempted
to oer new answers to old, impossible inquiries that seemed to beg the question:just as Japan scholars should be more actively grateful for the preservation
of scores of texts from the rst two centuries of full-edged literacy, should not
Latinists take the loss of early Latin literature less for granted? Instead, the connection between the nature of its tradition as a translation literature and the
language complex vis--vis Greece that came with it will hopefully inspire further exploration. In addition, with the concept of a Roman Atticism promoted
by Cicero in his Brutus I aimed to add a new perspective to discussions of the
Atticism-Asianism debate and Romes seminal roleinit.
At other times, this comparative project has generated new questions and perspectives on some of the most canonical and heavily researched texts:for example we asked why the Aeneids portrayal of Aeneas as a not quite illiterate but an
a-literate gure has bothered so few readers and modern scholars, but how poor
a gure, despite his city building skills, he would have made in Early Japan, where
literacy and the manipulation of wen in all its meanings embodied the highest
ornament of cultivation and moral exemplarity.
At yet other times, we drew into the limelight texts that have received little attention in their own literary cultures but that use strategies that resemble those from
298
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another literary culture where they were extremely successful. Velleius Paterculus
has been considered a minor writer, but he proposed theories of literary production similar to the highly successful Kokinsh Prefaces in Japan. In turn, while
Martianus Capellas Marriage of Mercury and Philology became a standard work
of medieval education, the Genji Poems remained odd, erratic, and have received
almost no scholarly attention.
Lastly, we can identify strategies that Rome and early Japan either shared in
positioning themselves vis--vis Greek and Roman literary precedents or that are
distinctive of either of them. We analyzed texts that tried to outpast the older
reference culture and we saw that both in eighth- and ninth-century Japan and,
probably, in early Rome, the intuitive attraction of sophistication and rhetorical
ornament preceded the rise of a discourse of simplicity and austerity that was
claimed as emblematic of the younger, less corrupted culture. Both Roman and
early Japanese authors were aware of the historical atness of their literary culture and had a strong consciousness of the age dierence that separated them
from their reference culture. Both tried to devise ways to lay claim to a purity
and pristineness that would give their tradition older age, dignity, and independence. On the other hand, Early Japanese and Roman literary cultures developed
a dierent repertoire of tropes to negotiate the problem of cultural inuence and
competition. The inventor discourse so prominent in Roman culture, which
gave Roman writers a more aggressive agency in the face of the Greek originators
of certain genres and cultural practices, was not signicant in early Japan. And
the prominent trope of recusatio, of writing in a lesser genre or lesser tradition,
could take opposite shape in Japan, where vernacular texts such as the Tale of Genji
engaged in an anti-recusatio of sorts, attempting to claim that their status exceeded
that of the venerable Confucian Classics.
***
On various levels of the layered comparisons proposed in this book, Ihave promoted one trope of comparison in particular:catachresis. It is not one of the darling master tropes of European cultural history, such as metaphor, metonymy, or
allegory. To the contrary, it has often been considered a rhetorical vice and has
accrued unsavory associations with linguistic incompetence:the misapplication
of a word for lack of linguistic correctness the sloppiness of mixed metaphors for
lack of stylistic soundness. In short, catachresis has come to mean an abuse of
the linguistic repertoire of competent speakers. The Latin equivalent of the Greek
term is indeed abusio. And the reputation of catachresis as the bastard brother of
metaphor, as a botched, deviant metaphor has only slightly improved its standing now and then: the eighteenth-century grammarian and philosopher Csar
Chesneau Dumarsais promoted catachresis to the venerable position of metaphor in his treatise Des Tropes (1730), and some deconstructionist and postcolonial
critics have attempted to mine the subversive potential of the concept for their
purposes.8 Already its earliest theorists had mixed feelings about this ambivalent
On the debates over the relation between the two tropes and on Dumarsais see Parker1990.
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trope, as we can see in Quintilians large work on the pedagogy of oratory, but
he credited it with two positive functions:he emphasized that it could serve as a
stand-in to refer to something for which a proper word is missing (like a tables
legs) and, by extension, that it can be a therapeutic trope in situations where
one languages poverty can be mended by another languages bounty, in particular
Latin by Greek (Quintilian 8.6.34).9
In an imaginary Tropology of Comparison, which has yet to be written, catachresis would be the master trope of deep comparison. It is the inverse of ellipsis, which diagnoses the absence of a dening phenomenon in another culture
by comparison and sidesteps unproductive but popular questions such as: Can
a civilization without epic, tragedy, or philosophy truly be civilized? Catachresis,
in contrast, allows us to prot from the asymmetries of the comparison of historically unrelated cultures. It turns asymmetry and incommensurability into a
key heuristic device to make the comparison productive, to imagine scenarios of
mutual virtual history that let actual history appear with greater clarity and genuine signicance. As a trope of relative enrichment under messy circumstances,
catchresis well bets a study of the relative age of literary cultures and of academic disciplines. And in the end, it is a perfect cipher for a methodology of deep
comparison.
For denitions of catachresis in Greek and Roman texts see Lausberg 1960 221, 282, 289.
300 | Epilogue
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Throughout this book Ifollow the Chinese and Japanese naming conventions of
providing the family name rst, followed by the given name. Translations from
any language are mine, unless otherwise noted.
Source Texts
Note:For the curious reader Iinclude basic editions of Chinese, Japanese, Greek,
and Latin source texts central to this book at the beginning of this bibliography, accompanied by prominent translations into English or other Western languages (sometimes partial translations if no complete translations are available).
Translations of the source texts are set in smaller font. For the Greek and Latin
source texts Irely on the Loeb Classical Library editions unless otherwise indicated.
Abbreviations:
BMFEA
CQ
HJAS
JATJ
JJS
JRS
KST
MN
NKBT
NKBZ
SKT
SNKBT
SNKBZ
TAPA
Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities

Classical Quarterly
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese
Journal of Japanese Studies
Journal of Roman Studies
Shintei zho Kokushi taikei
Monumenta Nipponica
Nihon koten bungaku taikei
Nihon koten bungaku zensh
Shinshaku kanbun taikei
Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei
Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zensh
Transactions of the American Philological Association
10/12/2013 8:03:46 PM
Time Literary Supplement

Waka bungaku taikei
Wakan hikaku bungaku
TLS
WBT
WHB
I. Chinese and Japanese Source Texts and Selected Translations

Akazome Emon etal. Eiga monogatari (Tale of Flowering Fortunes). Yamanaka Yutaka
etal., eds. Eiga monogatari. 199598. NKBZ 3133. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
McCullough, Helen Craig and William H. McCullough, trans. 1980. A Tale of Flowering Fortunes:Annals
of Japanese Aristocratic Life in the Heian Period. 2vols. Stanford:Stanford University Press.
Bo Juyis Collected Works. 1988. Zhu Jincheng, ed. Bo Juyi ji jian jiao. 6 vols.
Shanghai:Shanghai guji chubanshe.
Chya gunsai (Compendium of Texts for Court and Provinces). Kuroita Katsumi etal.,
eds. 196467. Chya gunsai. KST, Vol. 29. Tokyo:Yoshikawa Kbunkan.
Chuci (Songs of Chu). Wang Yi, comp. 1989. Chuci buzhu. Annot. Hong Xingzu.
Taibei:Tiangong shuju.
Hawkes, David, trans. 1985. The Songs of the South:an Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan
and Other Poets. Harmondsworth and NewYork:Penguin Books.
Ennin. Nitt guh junrei kki (Record of a Pilgrimage to Tang China in Search
of the Law). Ono Katsutoshi, ed. 1992. Ru Tang qiufa xunli xingji jiaozhu.
Shijiazhuang:Huashan wenyi chubanshe.
Reischauer, Edwin, trans. 1955. Ennins Diary:The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law.
NewYork:The Ronald Press Company.
Fujiwara no Akihira. Shin sarugaku ki (Record of New Monkey Music). Kawaguchi

Hisao, ed. 1983. Shin sarugaku ki. Tokyo:Heibonsha.
Gunsho ruij (Classied Series of Various Books). Hanawa Hokinoichi, comp. 195960.
Gunsho ruij. 29vols. Tokyo:Zoku Gunsho Ruij Kanseikai.
Han shu (Book of the Han). Ban Gu, comp. Han shu. 1986. Er shi wu shi.
Shanghai:Shanghai guji chubanshe.
Dubs, Homer, trans. 1938.The History of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku. ACritical Translation, with
Annotations. 3vols. London:Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Honch monzui (Literary Essence of Our Court). Comp. Fujiwara no Akihira. Got
Akio etal., eds. 1992. Honch monzui. SNKBT 27. Tokyo:Iwanami shoten.
Rabinovitch, Judith and Timothy Bradstock, trans. 2005. Dance of the Butteries. Chinese Poetry from the
Japanese Court Tradition. Ithaca:East Asia Program, Cornell University.
Kaifs (Florilegium of Cherished Airs). 1964. Kojima Noriyuki, ed., Kaifs, Bunka
shreish, Honch monzui. NKBT 69. Tokyo:Iwanami Shoten.
Maurizi, Andrea, trans. 2002. Il pi antico testo poetico del Giappone:il Kaifs (Raccolta in onore di
antichi poeti). Pisa:Istituti Editoriali e Poligraci Internazionali.
Ki no Tsurayuki. Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary). Kikuchi Yasuhiko etal., eds. 1995. Tosa nikki.
Kager nikki. NKBZ 13. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
McCullough, Helen, trans. 1990. Classical Japanese Prose. An Anthology. Stanford:Stanford University
Press, 73-102.
Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters). Knoshi Takamitsu etal. 2007. Kojiki. SNKBZ 1.
Tokyo:Shgakkan.
Philippi, Donald L., trans. 1968. Kojiki. Tokyo:University of Tokyo Press.
302
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Kokinsh (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry). Comp. Ki no Tsurayuki etal. Kojima
Noriyuki and Arai Eiz, eds. 1989. Kokin wakash. SNKBT 5. Tokyo: Iwanami
shoten, and Katagiri Yichi. 1998. Kokinwakash zenhyshaku. Tokyo:Kdansha.
Cranston, Edwin, trans. 2006. A Waka Anthology. Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance.
Stanford:Stanford University Press.
Rodd, Laurel Rasplica, trans. 1984. Kokinsh. A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern.
Princeton:Princeton University Press.
Li Han. Mengqiu. Hayakawa Mitsusabur, ed. 1973. Mgy. SKT 58-59. 2 vols.
Tokyo:Meiji Shoin.
Watson, Burton, trans. 1979. Meng chiu: Famous Episodes from Chinese History and Legend. Tokyo,
NewYork:Kdansha.
Manysh (Collection of Myriad Leaves). Annot. Kojima Noriyuki et al. 199496.

SNKBZ 9.Tokyo:Shgakkan.
Cranston, Edwin, trans. 1993. A Waka Anthology. Volume I:The Gem-Glistening Cup. Stanford:Stanford
University Press.
Michitsunas Mother. Kager nikki (Gossamer Diary). Kikuchi Yasuhiko et al., eds.
1995. Tosa nikki. Kager nikki. NKBZ 13. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
Arntzen, Sonja, trans. 1997. The Kager Diary. A Womans Autobiographical Text from Ancient Japan.
Ann Arbor:Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.
Murasaki Shikibu. Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji). Abe Akio et al., ed. 1994Genji monogatari. SNKBZ 2025. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
Seidensticker, Edward, trans. 1976. The Tale of Genji. 2vols. NewYork:Knopf.
Tyler, Royal, trans. 2001. The Tale of Genji. 2vols. NewYork:Viking.
Nara ibun (Documents Remaining from the Nara Period). Takeuchi Riz et al., eds.
194344. Nara ibun. Tokyo:Yagi shoten.
Nihon kiryaku (Abbreviated Record of Japan). Kuroita Katsumi, ed. 1929. Nihon kiryaku.
2vols. KST, vols. 1011. Tokyo:Kokushi Taikei Kankkai.
Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan). Kojima Noriyuki et al., eds. 1994- Nihon shoki.
3vols. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
Aston, W. G., trans. 1956. Nihongi:Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.C. 697. London:Allen
& Unwin.
Quan Tang shi (Complete Tang Poetry). 1960. Beijing:Zhonghua shuju.

Sei Shnagon. Makura no sshi (The Pillow Book). Matsuo Satoshi and Nagai Kazuko,
eds. 1997. Makura no sshi. SNKBZ 18. Tokyo:Shgakkan.
McKinney, Meredith, trans. 2006. Sei Shnagon. The Pillow Book. Penguin, 2006.
Morris, Ivan, trans. The Pillow Book of Sei Shnagon. 2vols. NewYork:Columbia University Press.
Shijing (Classic of Poetry). Kong Yingda, annot. 1999. Shisanjing zhushu. Maoshi zhengyi. 3vols. Beijing:Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Legge, James, trans. 1893-95. The Chinese Classics, Vol. 4, Part I, II. 2nd rev. ed. Oxford:Clarendon Press.
Shinsen Manysh (Newly Selected Collection of Myriad Leaves). Shinsen Manysh

kenkykai, ed. 2005. Shinsen Manysh chshaku. 2vols. Osaka:Izumi shoin.
Shtoku taishi denryaku (Abridged Biography of Prince Shtoku). Suzuki Gakujutsu
Zaidan, ed. 197073. Dai Nihon Bukky zensho. Tokyo:Kank Suzuiki Gakujutsu
Zaidan:Hatsubai Kdansha.
Shi wakash (Collection of Waka Gleanings). Komachiya Teruhiko etal., eds. 1990.
Shi wakash. SNKBT 7.Tokyo:Iwanami shoten.
Cranston, Edwin, trans. 2006. A Waka Anthology. Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance.
Bibliography
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Richardson, Donald M, trans. 2002. A Collection of Rescued Japanese Poetry. Shi wakash. 2 vols.
Winchester, VA:D. M.Richardson.
Sugawara no Michizane. Kanke buns (Literary Flourish of the Sugawara Family).

Kawaguchi Hisao, ed. 1966. Kanke buns, Kanke ksh. NKBT 72. Tokyo:Iwanami
shoten.
Borgen, Robert, 1986. Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard
University Press.
Wakan reish (Collection of Japanese and Chinese Texts for Recitation). Comp. Fujiwara
Kint. Sat Michio et al., eds. 2011. Wakan reish. Shinsen reish. WBT 47.
Tokyo:Meiji Shoin. And sone Shsuke etal., eds. 1983. Wakan reish. Shinch
Nihon koten shsei. Tokyo:Shinchsha.
Rimer, J. Thomas and Jonathan Chaves, trans. 1997. Japanese and Chinese Poems to Sing:the Wakan
reish. NewYork:Columbia University Press.
Wenxuan (Literary Selections). Xiao Tong, comp. 1986. Wenxuan. Annot. Li Shan.
6vols. Shanghai:Shanghai guji chubanshe.
Knechtges, David, trans. 1982-1996. Wen xuan or Selections of Rened Literature. 3 vols.
Wenyuan yinghua (Flowers from the Garden of Literature). 1979. Li Fang, comp.
Taibei:Xinwenfeng chubanshe.
Yang Xiong. Fayan (Model Words). 1987. Fayan yishu. Annot Wang Rongbao.
Beijing:Zhonghua shuju.
Yijing (Classic of Changes). Kong Yingda, annot. 1999. Shisanjing zhushu. Zhouyi
zhengyi. Beijing:Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Lynn, Richard John, trans. 1994. The Classic of Changes:ANew Translation of the IChing as Interpreted
by Wang Bi. NewYork:Columbia University Press.
Yiwen leiju (Compendium of Letters Arranged by Category). Ouyang Xun, comp. 1974.
Yiwen leiju. Taibei:Wenguang chubanshe.
Yutai xinyong (New Songs from a Jade Terrace). Xu Ling, comp. 1985. Wu Zhaoyi and
Cheng Yan, eds. Yutai xinyong jianzhu. 2vols. Beijing:Zhonghua shuju.
Birrell, Anne, trans. 1995. Chinese Love Poetry:New Songs from a Jade Terrace:a Medieval Anthology. 2nd
ed. London and NewYork:Penguin.
Zhou li (Rituals of the Zhou). 1999. Zhou li zhushu. Shisanjing zhushu. 2 vols.
Beijing:Beijing daxue chubanshe.
Zoku honch monzui (Sequel to Literary Essence of Our Court). Kuroita Katsumi etal.,
eds. 1965. Honch monzui. Honch zoku monzui. KST vols. 29.2. Tokyo:Yoshikawa
Kbunkan.
II. Greek and Latin Source Texts and Selected Translations
Aulus Gellius. Noctes Atticae (The Attic Nights). Rolfe, John C., trans. 1967. The
Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Cassius Dio. History Romana (Roman History). Cary, Earnest, trans. 1970-1987. Cassius
Dio. Roman History. 9vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Veh, Otto, trans. 1985. Cassius Dio. Rmische Geschichte. 5vols. Zrich:Artemis.
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| Bibliography
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Cicero. Academica. Rackham, H., trans. 1967. De natura deorum: Academica. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
Cicero. Brutus. Hendrickson, G. L., trans. 1936. Cicero. Brutus. Loeb Classical Library.
Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
Cicero. De fato (On Fate). Sutton, E. W. and H. Rackham, trans. 1948. De oratore,
together with De fato, Paradoxa stoicorum, De partitione oratoria. Loeb Classical
Series. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
Cicero. De nibus bonorum et malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil). Rackham, H.,
trans. 1931. De nibus bonorum et malorum. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge,
Mass.:Harvard University Press.
Annas, Julia, ed. 2001. Cicero. De nibus bonorum. On Moral Ends, trans. Raphael Woolf. Cambridge
and NewYork:Cambridge University Press.
Cicero. De oratore (On the Orator). Sutton, E. W. and H. Rackham, trans. 1948. De
oratore, together with De fato, Paradoxa stoicorum, De partitione oratoria. Loeb
Classical Series. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.
May, James M. and Wisse, Jakob, trans. 2001. Cicero on the Ideal Orator. De oratore. New York and
Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Cicero. De re publica (On the Commonwealth). Keyes, Clinton Walker, trans. 1977.
Cicero. De re publica, De legibus. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard
University Press.
Zetzel, James E. G., trans. 1999. Cicero. On the Commonwealth and On the Laws. Cambridge,
NewYork:Cambridge University Press.
Ennius. Annals. Warmington, E. H., trans. 1935-40. Remains of Old Latin. Vol. 1.Loeb
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Earnest Cary, trans. 1937-50. The Roman Antiquities
of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Loeb Classical Literary. 7 vols. Cambridge,
Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum. Jrgen Blnsdorf et al., eds. 1995. 3rd ed.
Stuttgart:Teubner.
Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Jacoby, Felix, ed. 192358. Berlin:
Weidman.
Horace. Carmina (Odes). Niall Rudd, trans. 2004. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Loeb
Shepherd, W. G., trans. 1983. The Complete Odes and Epodes:With the Centennial Hymn. Penguin.
Livius Andronicus. Warmington, H., trans. 1982. Remains of Old Latin. Vol. 2.Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass:Harvard University Press.
Livy. Ab urbe condita libri (History Since the Foundation of the City of Rome). Foster, B. O.,
trans. 196784. Livy. Loeb Classical Library. 14vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Lucian. Dialogi mortuorum. Hermotimus. Vitarum auctio (Dialogues of the Dead;
Hermotimus; Philosophies for Sale). Harmon, A. M., K. Kilburn and M. D.
Macleod, trans. 196067. Lucian. 8 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge,
Fowler, H. W. and Fowler, F. G., trans. 1905. The Works of Lucian of Samosata. 4vols. Oxford:Clarendon
Press.
Casson, Lionel, trans. 1962. Selected Satires of Lucian. NewYork:Norton.
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Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the Marriage of Philology

and Mercury). Dick, Adolf, ed. 1969. Martianus Capella. De nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii. Stuttgart:Teubner.
Stahl, William Harris, trans. 1977. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Plato. Timaeus. Bury, R. G., trans. 1929. Plato. Timaeus; Critias; Cleitophon; Menexenus;
Epistles. Loeb Classical Library. London:W. Heinemann.
Watereld, Robin, trans. 2008. Plato, Timaeus and Critias. Oxford and NewYork: Oxford University
Press.
Plutarch. Perrin, Bernadotte, trans. 1928. Plutarchs Lives. 11 vols. Loeb Classical
Library. London:William Heinemann.
Polybius. Histories. Paton, W. R. 19221927. Polybius. Loeb Classical Library.
Scott-Kilvert, Ian, trans. 1979. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin.
Ovid. Fasti. Frazer, Sir James George and Goold, G.P., trans. 1989. Ovid. Fasti. Loeb
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Ovid. Tristia. Epistulae ex Ponto (Tristia. Letters from the Black Sea). Goold, G. P.
and Wheeler. A. L., trans. 1988. Ovid. Tristia. Ex Ponto. Loeb Classical Library.
Green, Peter, trans. 2005. Ovid. The Poems of Exile. Tristia and the Black Sea Letters. Berkeley:University
of California Press.
Pliny. Naturalis historia (Natural History). Rackham, Harris, trans. 196775. Pliny.
Natural History Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press. Vol. 8 trans.W. H.S. Jones, 1968.
Healy, John F., trans. 1991. Pliny. Natural History. Penguin.
Propertius. Elegies. Goold, G. P., trans. 1990. Propertius. Elegies. Loeb Classical Library.
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Zetzel, James. 2002. Dreaming About Quirinus: Horaces Satires and the
Development of Augustan Poetry. In Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of
Horace, ed. Denis Feeney and Tony Woodman. Cambridge University Press,
3852.
. 2003. Plato with Pillows:Cicero on the Uses of Greek Culture. In Myth,
History and Culture in Republican Rome. Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman.
Exeter:University of Exeter Press, 11938.
. 2005. Review of Elaine Fantham. The Roman World of Ciceros De Oratore.
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 in Bryn Mawr Classical
Review09.05.
Zhang Buyun. 1984. Tangdai Zhong Ri wanglai shi jizhu. Xian: Shanxi renmin
chubanshe.
Zhang Longxi. 1998. Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Dierences in the
Comparative Study of China. Stanford:Stanford University Press.
. 2007. Unexpected Anities: Reading Across Cultures. Toronto, Bualo,
London:University of Toronto Press.
Zhang Xihou. 1995. Wang Ji yanjiu. Taibei: Xin wen feng chuban gufen youxian
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10/12/2013 8:03:47 PM
INDEX
Abe clan, 126

Abridged Biography of Prince Shtoku. See
Shtoku taishi denryaku
Academics (Platonic Academy), 38, 234
Accius, 72, 115
Account of the Eastern Expedition of the
Great Tang Priest (T daiwaj tseiden)
(Mifune), 125
Achaean League, 36, 83
Actio, 88
Actium, battle of, 3334
Aeneas, 16, 17, 1819, 12024, 12734,
13946, 147, 15153, 154, 17274, 298
foreign edge of, 12021, 12728
pietas of, 121, 139
popularity of, 123
Shtoku compared with, 124, 135,
138, 153
Aeneas and the Building of Carthage
(Vergilius Vaticanus), 145(gure)
Aeneid (Virgil), 17, 1819, 113, 121, 12224,
12728
city-building motif, 13946, 147, 153
described, 122
as a double text, 123
literacy theme absent in, 15153, 298
prophecy motif, 127, 12834, 135,
13839
Rome envisioned in, 160, 17274,
186200
Shtoku taishi denryaku compared
with, 123, 124, 13839
twists added to myth in, 128
Aeschylus, 35
Index.indd 327
Age of the Masters, 82

Agglutinative languages, 46
Akahito, Yamabe no, 81, 99
Akazome Emon, 190
Akihira, Fujiwara no, 167, 236
Akihito, Emperor of Japan, 159
Alaric, 238
Alcaeus, 113
Alexander the Great, 8, 34, 36, 37, 84, 275
Alkimos, 127
Allegorical satire. See De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii
Alphabetic languages, 4647, 296
Altar of Peace (Ara pacis), 120
Amaterasu, 66, 161, 164
American paradigm of world literature,
29192
Amores (Ovid), 219
Analects, 21, 29, 3031, 47, 66, 71, 99,
100, 241
described, 23
opening text of, 31(gure)
Ancus Marcius, 166
Anecdotal literature (setsuwa), 61
Ank, Emperor of Japan, 185
Annals (Ennius), 45, 58, 113
Anthologia Palatina, 179n46
Antiochus III of Seleucid Empire, 36
Antonius Pius, 53
Apion, 9
Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii
(Pumpkinication of Emperor
Claudius) (Seneca), 255
Apologus, 28
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Apostrophe, 224
Aptum, 88
Apuleius, 254, 264
Ara pacis (Altar of Peace), 120
Aratus, 223
Archilochus, 113
Aret, 171
Aristarchus of Alexandria, 22, 29
Aristophanes, 114
Aristotle, 57, 88, 105, 106, 255, 296
Ars amatoria (Art of Love) (Ovid), 204, 222
Asiatic style, 86, 89, 1089, 111, 118
Asking the Autumn Moon
(Michizane), 22728
Assmann, Jan, 9
Asuka, 154, 175
Atlantis, 2, 3
Attalus, 22
Atticism, 86, 89, 103, 10713, 117, 118
Roman, 11112, 298
Attic Nights (Aulus), 53
Atticus, 72, 73, 7476, 80, 108, 112
Auerbach, Erich, 291, 294
Augustan Period, 17, 18, 115, 116, 160, 161,
170, 177
Augustus, 3334, 60, 76, 120, 157, 164,
170, 19293
Aeneid on, 122, 123, 124, 128, 140, 142,
153, 173
Ovid exiled by, 17, 203, 204, 207,
20910, 219, 222, 223, 224
Varro Reatinus and, 72
Aulus Gellius, 53, 54, 55
Authorized transgression, 24041
Auto-apology, 224, 225
Auto-apotheosis, 224, 225
Autumn Thoughts (poetry theme),
21012
Ax, Wolfram, 82n3
Axial Age paradigm, 10
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 218
Ban Gu, 267
Barbarianism, 5, 6, 17, 50, 55
Bedford Anthology of World Literature,
290
328
Index.indd 328
Beecroft, Alexander, 293

Bi (comparison), 94
Bicanonical education, 46, 295
Bidatsu, Emperor of Japan, 121, 136
Bilingual literary cultures, 46, 49, 56,
295
Biliterate literary cultures, 46, 48, 56,
295
Binary comparative approach, 1213
Biography of the Iron Hammer
(Ratai), 236
Bioi parallloi (Parallel Lives) (Plutarch),
18, 266, 27586
double beginnings in, 28386
Rome and Athens in, 27883
Shinsen Manysh compared with,
28788
synkrisis in, 27678, 286
Black Sea Letters (Ovid). See Epistulae ex
Ponto
Boethius, 219
Bo Juyi, 180, 181, 252, 267
Makura no sshi allusions to, 19697,
200
Michizane inuenced by, 208,
209, 211, 214, 216, 217, 218, 227,
22829, 230, 233
Book of the Han Dynasty, 26
Book of the Later Han Dynasty, 26
Brandes, Georg, 291
Brush talk, 48, 151
Brutus (Cicero), 16, 7276, 298
autobiographical history of oratory
in, 74
described, 72
home-coming image in, 72, 74
natural history of oratory in, 7374,
75, 76, 79, 108
reception history of oratory in, 74, 76
simplicity in, 86, 103, 10713, 119
Brutus, Decimus Junius, 222. See also
Brutus (Cicero)
Brutus, Lucius Junius, 120
Buck, Philo, 290
Buddhism, 12, 41, 4445, 83, 94
arrival in China, 134
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
language and, 48
Michizane on, 228
persecution of followers, 33, 44
Shtokus role in introducing, 121,
12427, 13539, 148, 150, 151
textual canon of, 26
Tiantai (Tendai) school of, 124,
125, 148
Bun. See Wen
Bring, Johann Gottfried, 7
Bydin, 155
Caesar, 57, 72, 103, 123, 275
Caesars Calendar: Ancient Time
and the Beginnings of History
(Feeney), 34
Caesura, 276
Callimachus, 21, 84, 113, 114
Calvus, 107, 109, 111
Camena, 50, 58, 59
Camillus, 208
Cang Jie, 67, 68, 151
Cao Pi, Emperor of China, 99
Cao Zhi, 99
Capella, Martianus, 18, 23839,
25362, 264, 299. See also De Nuptiis
Capital laments, 17576, 185
Capitals, 1617, 154202. See also Kyto;
Rome (capital)
romance vectors in, 17, 16061,
186202
time vectors in, 17, 160, 16986
unequal, 16169
Carneades of Cyrene, 38
Cassius Salanus, 22324
Catachresis, 13, 202, 299300
Catiline conspiracy, 219
Cato the Elder, 5, 38, 53, 57, 102
in Brutus, 72, 7376, 79, 108, 11112
decline narratives of, 8182, 83, 87
Cato the Younger, 208
Catullus, 187, 194
Cento, 179
Chantefable tradition, 238
Chen Dynasty, 137
Cherry Tree, 156(gure), 159, 242

Cherry Tree in the Inner Imperial Palace,
The (Yoshiiku), 156(gure)
Chest-Tail defect, 94n19
Che Yin, 251
China
age of culture in, 12
centralized rule in, 7
conquest by Japan, 33, 36
marginality of Japan to, 4445
missions from Japan to, 4244
Chinese canon, 26, 46, 48
Chinese language, 4649
Chinoiseries, 7
Chisatosh (Chisato Collection) (Chisato),
24041, 267
Chka (long poems), 96
Chreia, 28
Chronicles of Japan. See Nihon shoki
Chrysippus, 25859
Cicero, 16, 18, 21, 38, 49, 53, 7276, 79,
80, 102, 10313, 117, 118, 119, 208, 275,
296, 298. See also specic works of
Capella inuenced by, 253, 255
importance as a literary mediator, 86
on language enrichment, 5455
Ovid compared with, 219
as self-proclaimed oratory
champion, 74
City-building, 13946, 147, 153
Claassen, Jo-Marie, 219
Classic of Changes, 67, 147
Classic of Poetry. See Shijing
Classics, 1315
Code of Waka Poetry (Fujiwara no
Hamanari). See Uta no Shiki
Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems.
See Kokinsh
Collection of Japanese and Chinese-style
Poems for Recitation. See Wakan
reish
Collection of Myriad Leaves. See
Manysh
Comedy, 60, 84
New, 60
Old, 60, 114, 116, 235
Index
Index.indd 329
329
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Como, Michael, 124n8, 125, 126

Comparative approaches
binary, 1213
deep, 29596, 300
layered, 29799
ontological, 1213
Comparative fallacy, 296
Comparative imperative
overview, 1019
revisited, 28994
Comparative Poetics (Miner), 294
Compendium of Roman History
(Historiae Romanae) (Velleius),
7680
Competitive imitation, 77, 79
Composed to Myself (Michizane),
208, 209, 218
Confucian Classics, 20, 22, 27, 51, 69,
82, 84, 299
Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi on,
250
reasons for studying, 8
track of study devoted to, 26
Confucianism, 6, 24, 28, 82, 188
Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi on,
252
Genji monogatari on, 241
satire and, 234
wen in, 6667
Confucius, 84
death of, 82
Kokinsh on, 71
on ornament and substance, 87
ritual observances to, 24, 216
Conjectures on World Literature
(Moretti), 28990
Consolations (Seneca), 219
Consolations of Philosophy (Boethius),
219
Consolatory letters, 219
Constantinople, 155
Contaminatio, 60
Conte, Gian Biagio, 134
Continuity, 14, 50, 56, 113, 176, 177, 267
Controversiae, 28
Copia, 88, 109
330
Index.indd 330
Core/periphery model of education, 28

Coriolanus, 208
Cornelius Severus, 222
Corpus Hermeticum, 9
Cosmogony, 6970, 7172
Cosmology, 26770
Cotta Maximus, 222
Couplet culture, 178
Crassus, Lucius Licinius, 38, 1034,
1057
Crates of Mallos, 22, 24, 29
Critias, 24
Critical marks, 29, 30, 31
Crypto-colonialism, 34
Cultural capital, 1, 16, 37, 98
Cultures
daughter, 4, 5
host, 5
literary (see Literary cultures)
mother, 4, 5
reference (see Reference cultures)
relative age of, 14
source, 5
target, 5
Cursus honorum, 161
Cynics, 105, 255, 257
Cyrenaics, 105, 255
Daigakury (State Academy), 22, 26, 27,
51, 162, 182
importance of, 2425
Michizanes service in, 205
satire and, 234, 237, 242, 244,
245, 253
Daigo, Emperor of Japan, 69, 71,
184, 206, 209, 21011, 226, 228, 231
Daijkan, 162
Damrosch, David, 289
Danjo konin fu (Rhapsody on the
Marriage of Husband and Wife)
(Asatsuna), 270
Dao (michi; the Way)
in Kokinsh, 6972, 79, 80
Yakamochi-Ikenushi correspondence
on, 98, 99
Daoists, 234
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Dardanus, 127, 128, 133, 134

Daughter cultures, 4, 5
Dazaifu, 17, 203, 206, 214, 21517,
232, 266
Decline narratives, 8183, 8586, 87, 95,
1037, 116, 117, 119. See also specic
works
Deep comparison, 29596, 300
Demosthenes, 106, 110
De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The
Marriage of Philology and Mercury)
(Capella), 18, 23839, 25362, 264,
299
historical context of, 238
plot of, 254
role of clothing in, 25962
De oratore (On the Orator) (Cicero), 16,
38, 73, 85, 86, 112, 117
De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
compared with, 253
on rhetoric vs. philosophy, 104,
1057, 118
on sapientia, 103, 1045, 107, 112, 117
De re publica (On the Republic) (Cicero),
73, 104
Des Tropes (Dumarsais), 299
Detached Palace, 175
Dialogues of the Dead (Lucian), 25758
Dialogus de oratoribus (Dialogue on
Orators) (Tacitus), 8586
Diaochonglun (Discussion of Insect
Carving) (Pei), 100n30
Diaries. See Nikki
Did Rome gain hegemony thanks to
fate or virtue? (Plutarch), 288
Diodorus Diculus, 8
Diogenes Laertius, 255n46, 257
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 55, 111n52,
127, 128, 133, 15759
Dionysius I of Syracuse, 35
Disciplinarity, 29799
Discussion of Insect Carving
(Diaochonglun) (Pei Ziye), 100n30
Dispositio, 88
Double-Ninth Festival, 150, 21012
Douglas, Gavin, 122
Dragon carving, 98100

Dragon texts, 68
Drama and theater, 7, 16
literary cultures lacking, 59
Noh, 11, 56, 167, 235
standing in genre hierarchy, 56, 57,
58, 5960, 296
Drama of continuity, 50
Drama of translation, 50, 56,
5859
Dream of the Red Chamber (Story of the
Stone), 13435
Dryden, John, 122
Dual-structure hypothesis, 40
Du, Tim, 27677
Dumarsais, Csar Chesneau, 299
Du Xunhe, 180
Eckermann, Johann Peter, 289
Eckstein, Arthur, 3536, 40
Eclogues (Virgil), 113
Edo (city), 155
Edo (period), 235
Education, 1516, 83
bicanonical, 46, 295
canonical hierarchy in, 26
canons adopted and adapted in,
2223
core/periphery model of, 28
deep comparisons of, 29596
satire on (see De Nuptiis Philologiae
et Mercurii; Fu Hikaru
Genji monogatari shi; Genji
monogatari)
state involvement in, 2426, 32
tracks of study in, 2627
tricanonical, 46, 48, 56, 295
Egypt, 36, 40
archeological excavations in, 28,
2930
failure to become a reference culture,
810
relative age of culture, 24
Eibutsushi (Poems on Things), 229
Eiga monogatari (Tale of Flowering
Fortunes) (Michinaga), 177
Index
Index.indd 331
331
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Elegies, 84
epistolary, 21819, 233
love, 16061, 18794, 219
praise, 201
standing in genre hierarchy, 57
Elegies (Propertius), 17, 154, 190, 19194
Makura no sshi compared with,
198202
recusatio in, 19294, 199201, 202
Eliot, T. S., 122n2
Ellipsis, 13, 202
Elocutio, 88
Emishi tribes, 163
Ench Tamura, 125
Encomia/encomium, 28, 288
Encountering Sorrow (Qu Yuan). See
Lisao
Engi Era, 226
Enkyklios paideia, 27
Ennin, 33, 4445, 63n3
Ennius, 22, 23, 24, 45, 50, 58, 103, 113,
114, 115, 127
Ensai, 150
Entire Body defect, 94n19
Envy theme, 77, 79, 80
Eny, Emperor of Japan, 181
Eoyang, Eugene, 293
Epic of Gilgamesh, 139
Epics, 16, 84
on city-building, 13940
literary cultures lacking, 56, 59
love elegies compared with, 187, 188,
189, 201
5859, 296
Epicureans, 105, 234
Epigram tradition, 57, 187
Epistolary elegies, 21819, 233
Epistulae ex Ponto (Black Sea Letters)
(Ovid), 205, 219
Epodes (Horace), 113, 115
Eshi. See Huisi
Essays (zuihitsu), 19091
Essential History of the Song Dynasty
(Song le) (Pei Ziye), 100n30
Etruscan (language), 45
332
Index.indd 332
Etruscans, 35, 41
Euripides, 28, 35, 215
Eusebius, 4n3
Examination system (Japanese), 26, 27,
32, 57, 182, 236, 242
Exile poetry, 17, 20333, 296. See also
Sugawara no Michizane; Ovid;
specic works
Fabii family, 57, 205
Fabius Pictor, 46, 57, 127, 164
Fabula, 28
Fachprosa, 57
Fagles, Robert, 122
Farrell, Joseph, 54n71
Farris, William Wayne, 41
Fasti (Ovid), 166, 204, 223
Favorinus, 25
Feeney, Denis, 34, 46n55, 73, 152
Feng (Airs), 94
Ficus ruminalis, 157
Fitzgerald, Robert, 122
Five Constants, 250n31
Five Dynasties Period, 43
Florilegium of Cherished Airs. See Kaifs
Flourish, 94, 1012, 105
Foreign edge of founding gures,
12021, 12428
Four tones and eight faults rule
(sisheng babing), 92
Frederick the Great, 7
Freudenburg, Kirk, 11314n55
Fu (enumeration), 60, 94, 174, 267
Fdoki (Records of Wind and Earth), 66
Fugu (Returning to Antiquity), 82
Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi (Genji
Poems), 18, 59, 23738, 239, 24853
confusing closure in, 25153
De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii
compared with, 254, 262, 299
historical context of, 237
lack of scholarly attention to, 299
male voice in, 248
on public vs. private space, 249, 250,
251, 264
Fujiwara (city), 164, 166
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Fujiwara (family), 24, 26, 162, 182,

189, 237
Michizane and, 205, 207, 211, 266
women of, 186
Fujiwara Katsumi, 229
Fujiwara no Fuhito, 90
Fujiwara no Kint, 17786. See also
Wakan reish
Fujiwara no Michinaga, 177
Fujiwara no Muchimaro, 92
Fujiwara no Nobuomu, 184
Fujiwara no Tadanobu, 194200
Fujiwara no Tanetsugu, 168
Fujiwara no Tokihira, 2056, 209, 231
Fujiwara no Kint, 17786. See also
Wakan reish
Fukuhara, 169
Fulvius Nobilior, 58
Fumi no Obito, (lineage of scribes), 21
Fu Xi, 67, 68, 151
Ganjin (Jianzhen), 12425
Gender. See also Women
language and, 48
romance vectors and, 189, 190
Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji)
(Murasaki Shikibu), 18, 61, 160, 174,
186, 187, 237, 23953, 264, 293
anti-recusatio in, 299
as authorized transgression,
24041
as historiography, 24851
Michizane evoked in, 230
picture scroll of, 252(gure)
on public vs. private space, 23940,
241, 242, 245, 24748
Genji Poems. See Fu Hikaru Genji
monogatari shi
Genre hierarchies, 14, 5661
deep comparisons of, 295, 296
of Kyoto, 17476
romance vectors in, 187, 188
Geopolitics, 3245
conquest and, 3339
major dierences in, 3944
Georgics (Virgil), 215

Germanicus, 22324
Gloss-reading. See Kundoku
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 77, 28991
Golden Ass (Apuleius), 254, 264
Golden Latinity, 82
Golden Pavilion, 156
Gossamer Diary (Kager nikki) (Mother
of Michitsuna), 189
Got Akio, 229
Grammar, 2122, 23, 24, 29
Grand Palace of Kadono, 168
Greece
age of culture, 14
Bioi parallloi on, 27883
conquest by Alexander the Great, 8
conquest by Rome, 33, 34, 35,
3639, 83
conquest of Western Mediterranean,
3435, 83, 139
Hellenic connection to founding of
Rome, 127
as Magna Graecia, 34, 35, 41, 127
Greek language, 4547, 57
Green, Peter, 213
Gruen, Erich, 74n26
Guangwu, Emperor of China, 42
Gunki monogatari (War Tales), 58
Habinek, Thomas, 76
Hadrian, 23, 53, 275
Haikai (haiku), 235, 240, 298
Hamamatsu Chnagon monogatari (Tale
of Middle Councilor Hamamatsu), 139
Hamanari, Fujiwara no, 16, 9296, 105,
117, 118. See also Uta no Shiki
Handbook of Latin Literature (Rose), 238
Han Dynasty, 26, 28, 29, 41, 42, 84,
151, 174
Han History, 82
Hanihara, Kazur, 40
Hardie, Philip, 123
Hare (formal), 69
Hartley, L. P., 105
Hata clan, 126, 168
Hatooka Akira, 214
Index
Index.indd 333
333
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Head-Tail defect, 94n19

Heian-ky (Kyoto), 154, 157, 168
Heian Period, 2, 33, 48, 57, 58, 65, 69,
154, 202
education during, 24, 26, 28, 29
Kyto during, 155, 157, 161, 162,
163, 169
satire during, 235, 237
Heij, 164
Hellenism, self-reexive, 11316
Hellenismos, 88
Hellenistic literature, 84
Hellenistic Period, 21
Hellenistic Six Dynasties Period, 21
Hermotimos e peri hairesen
(Hermotimus or about
philosophical schools) (Lucian),
25657
Herodotus, 8, 152, 204
Heroides (Ovid), 219, 233
Herzenbildung, 290
Herzfeld, Michael, 34, 37
Hesiod, 3
Heteroscopic approach to studies, 298
Herodotus, 132
Hexagrammatic literacy, 68, 69, 75, 79,
151
He Yan, 29
Himiko, Queen of Japan, 120
Hinds, Stephen, 58, 113
Historiae Romanae (Compendium of
Roman History) (Velleius Paterculus),
7680
Historical atness, 4, 13, 16, 61, 65,
83, 299
Historical Records (Sima Qian).
See Shiji
Histories (Polybius), 170
Historiography, 57, 84, 24851
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, 71, 81, 99,
175, 178
Homer, 3, 8, 21, 28, 29, 49, 58, 83, 84,
128, 172, 179, 292, 296. See also
specic works of
Ennius on, 113
Horace on, 115
334
Index.indd 334
literacy theme absent in works of,

15253
Ovid on, 210
Virgil inuenced by, 122, 123, 132, 133
Homophone Rhyme defect, 94n19
Honch monzui (Literary Essence of Our
Court) (Akhira), 236
Horace, 16, 60, 86, 102, 103, 11216, 117,
118, 119, 190, 194, 207, 235. See also
specic works of
Capella compared with, 255
Rome envisioned by, 17172
Horace moment, 103, 11316, 118
Horapollon Nilotes, 9
Horikawa, Emperor of Japan, 157
Hortensius, 111
Host cultures, 5
Huang niao (Yellow Bird), 2089
Huisi (Eshi), 17, 120, 12425, 126, 135,
13637, 149, 150
Hutcheon, Linda, 236
Hut of Romulus, 15759, 170
Iamblichus, 8
Ibis (Ovid), 219
Iccius, 17172
Iconization, 7, 10, 18
Iliad (Homer), 29, 30(gure), 122, 123,
127, 133, 292, 295
Imperial Palaces (Japan), 155, 159, 162,
181, 182
Index locorum, 14
Inuence studies, 293
Insect carving, 90, 98100
Institutio (Quintilian), 28
Inventio, 88
Inventor trope, 58, 11316, 118, 299
Ise Shrines, 164
Isokola, 8889
Isolating languages, 46
Izumi Shikibu, 190
Jakobson, Roman, 88
Japan
age of culture, 12
centralized rule in, 7, 66
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
claims to uniqueness in, 4

conquest and colonization by, 33,
34, 36
female emperors of, 120
foundation of empire, 120
marginality to China, 4445
missions to China, 4244
origins of, 3940
Japanese language, 4648
Japanese Preface to Kokinsh (Ki no
Tsurayuki), 69, 1012
Jaspers, Karl, 10
Jerome, 4n3
Jianzhen (Ganjin), 12425
Jin Dynasty, 137
Jing, Empress of Japan, 68
Jinmu, Emperor of Japan (legendary),
67n9, 120, 124, 161, 176
Jinshin War, 92
Jit, Empress of Japan, 175
Jmon Period, 40
Journey to the West, 134
Jukkaishi (Poems on Expressing Ones
Inner Feelings), 229
Jusha (Confucian Scholars), 242
Jshichij kenp (Seventeen
Article Code of Conduct)
(Shtoku), 148
Juvenal, 235, 255
Kager nikki (Gossamer Diary) (Mother
of Michitsuna), 189
Kaifs (Florilegium of Cherished Airs),
16, 51, 53, 6669, 79, 80
Brutus compared with, 75
described, 66
ornament and, 85, 8992
on Shtoku, 15051
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, 71, 81, 99,
175, 178
Kaky hyshiki (Model Forms for the
Canon of Waka Poetry), 92
Kamakura Period, 237
Kamakura shogunate, 15455, 237
Kamatari, Nakatomi no, 92
Kamen, Edward, 202n78
Kan (Chinese-style), 267. See also

Wa-kan division
Kana, 160, 186, 196, 266
Kanbun (Sino-Japanese literature),
4748, 60, 121, 293. See also specic
works
Kaneie, Fujiwara no, 189
Kanemichi, Fujiwara no, 181
Kanezane, Fujiwara no, 169
Kanke ksh (Later Collection of the
Sugawara Family) (Michizane), 214,
218
Kanmu, Emperor of Japan, 154, 157,
16869, 175
Kanpy no ntoki kisainomiya
no utaawase (Poetry Contest
of the Kanpy era for his
Majesty), 266
Kanshi (Sino-Japanese poetry), 16, 51,
56, 57, 92, 118, 139, 185, 265. See also
specic works
romance vectors and, 186
in Shinsen Manysh, 26674
Yakamoch-Ikenushi correspondence
and, 97
Kant, 154
Katai, 92
Ke (informal), 69
Kenkei (riddle type of poetry), 95
Kidend (literature and history track),
26, 242
Ki no Haseo, 214
Ki no Tsurayuki, 1012, 105, 118
Ki no Yoshimochi, 81, 83, 87, 101, 102,
105
Kinai rulers, 164
Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, 291
Kishi clan, 126
Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, 212, 231
Koguryo, 41, 42, 83, 126
Koizumi, Junichiro, 120
Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), 21, 23,
24, 29, 41, 57, 66, 161
Kokinsh (Collection of Ancient and
Modern Poems; Kokinwakash), 16,
61, 67, 93, 94, 249, 253
Index
Index.indd 335
335
10/9/2013 8:33:31 PM
Kokinsh (Cont.)
Ciceros work compared with, 104,
112, 117, 118
dao in, 6972, 79, 80
described, 69
reverse view from, 100102
romance works and, 186
266, 267, 288
simplicity and, 85, 86, 117
Velleius Paterculuss work compared
with, 299
Kokinsh moment, 86, 103, 112, 117
Kokinwakash. See Kokinsh
Kokubungaku (national literary studies),
4, 293
Knin, Emperor of Japan, 92
Knin Period, 65
Korea, 14, 36, 174
conquest by Japan, 33
education inuenced by, 24, 25
geopolitics inuenced by, 39, 40,
41, 44
immigrant lineages from, 83,
12527
literary culture of, 48
writing system and, 67, 6869
Ktoku, Empress of Japan, 121
Kudaishi (Topic Poetry), 6061, 178
Kudai waka (Waka on Topic Lines)
(Chisato), 267
Kundoku (gloss-reading), 3031, 47
Kuni, 164, 175
Ky (stimulus), 272, 274
Kygen, 235
Kyoto, 7, 42, 43, 15469
as Capital of Peace, 154, 163
cityscape of, 15559
founding of, 154
government of, 16162
ideological signicance of, 164
literacy of, 16768
map of, 165(gure)
romance vector and, 17, 18691,
194202
social life in, 167
336
Index.indd 336
as a symbolic capital, 155

time vector and, 17, 17486
topography of, 16466
LaMarre, Thomas, 69
Lamplight Gone (Michizane), 21213
Language, 4556. See also Literacy
agglutinative, 46
alphabetic, 4647, 296
isolating, 46
logographic, 47
preservation patterns and, 5354
SOP, 46
source, 5
SPO, 46
target, 5
Latecomers, 16, 20, 8485. See also
Decline narratives; Ornament;
Simplicity
Later Collection of the Sugawara Family
(Michizane). See Kanke ksh
Late Republican Period, 53, 57, 60
oratory during, 74, 79
simplicity during, 85, 86, 89, 10216
Latin (language), 45, 46, 47, 48,
5455, 57
Latinitas, 88
Latium, 2, 5, 130, 132, 13334, 142, 146,
154, 162
Lavinium, 121, 122, 123, 131, 139, 154
Layered comparison, 29799
Legalists, 234
Lesser genres, 57, 59
Letters from Pontus (Ovid), 17
Liang Dynasty, 137
Liber Annalis (Atticus), 73
Liezi, 270
Liji (Record of Rites), 204, 249
Lingering Fragrance Festival
(ykosai), 212
Linked poems (renku), 18283
Lions Roar Sutra, 148
Lisao (Encountering Sorrow)
(Qu Yuan), 208, 228
Literacy, 14753. See also Language;
Writing
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
absence of theme in Aeneid, 15153,

298
dierences in patterns, 46
hexagrammatic, 68, 69, 75, 79, 151
of Kyoto, 16768
Shtoku taishi denryaku on, 14751
Literary cultures, 4, 1011, 12, 13, 1516
Ciceros contributions to, 76
dissimilitudes in, 3261
education in (see Education)
genres in (see Genre hierarchies)
geopolitics in (see Geopolitics)
increased popularity of studies,
295
language and (see Language)
latecomer status and (see Latecomers)
renement in, 2021
similarities in, 2032
Literary density, 83
Literary Essence of Our Court (Honch
monzui) (Akhira), 236
Literary history, 6265
Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons,
The (Wenxin diaolong) (Liu Xie),
87n6
Literary Selections. See Wenxuan
Literati, 242n13
Liu Xie, 87, 89
Liu Yuxi, 211
Livia, 204, 223
Livius Andronicus, 58, 59, 84, 102
as a teacher, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
translations by, 4950, 5253
Livy, 57, 77, 161, 164, 166, 170, 174
Logicians, 234
Logographic languages, 47
Lombardo, Stanley, 122
Longing for my bamboo at home on a
snowy night (Michizane), 229
Longman Anthology of World Literature,
290
Lotus Sutra, 125, 148, 14950
Love elegies, 16061, 18794, 219
Lowrie, Michle, 153
Lucian of Samosata, 255, 25659

Lucilius, 86, 11316, 117, 118, 119
Lucretius, 54
Ludi Romani, 59
Ludi scenici, 59
Lu Ji, 99
Luoyang, 166
Lupercal Cave, 159
Lshi (regulated poetry), 20, 92
Lycurgus, 276, 279, 28386
Lysias, 75, 111
Macedonian Wars, 36
Macer, 222
Maecenas, 115, 190, 191, 19294, 199, 201
Magna Graecia, 34, 35, 41, 127
Mahabharata, 292
Makura no sshi (Pillow Book) (Sei
Shnagon), 17, 154, 161, 186, 194202
Elegies compared with, 198202
plot of, 19498
subtlety in, 19495
unusual format of, 19091
Manetho, 9
Manygana script, 266, 267
Manysh (Collection of Myriad Leaves),
16, 51, 5354, 61, 71, 85, 118, 157, 215,
293
on capitals, 174, 175
on ornament vs. simplicity, 96100
Marc Aurel, 53
Marcus Aper, 86
Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius), 34,
72, 104
Marriage of Philology and Mercury, The
(Martianus Capella). See De Nuptiis
Martianus Capella. See Capella,
Martianus
Martindale, Charles, 1415
Marx, Karl, 290
Master Texts, 134, 147, 270
Maternus, 86
Meltzl, Hugo, 291
Memorable Doings and Sayings (Valerius
Maximus), 32, 37
Index
Index.indd 337
337
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Memoria, 88
Menander, 28, 60
Menippeae (Varro), 255
Menippean satire, 235, 239, 25559, 262
Menippus of Gadara, 235
Messalinus, 222
Messalla Corvinus, 115, 204, 222
Metamorphoses (Ovid), 204, 215
Michi. See Dao
Michizane Bidding Farewell to his Red
Plum Tree in Kyoto When
Departing for Exile (picture scroll),
232(gure)
Middle Republic Period, 2
Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to
Dierences in the Comparative Study of
China (Zhang Longxi), 12
Minamoto no Nobukata, 197
Minamoto no Yoritomo, 169
Miyako no Yoshika , 182
Miner, Earl, 293, 294
Model Forms for the Canon of Waka
Poetry (Kaky hyshiki), 92
Mohists, 234
Mokkan (wooden tablets), 30
Mole defect, 94n19
Monkey Music, 236
Monmu, Emperor of Japan, 9092
Monobiblos, 191
Monogatari (tale literature), 61, 160, 174,
18691, 195. See also specic works
Monolingual literary cultures, 45, 46,
48, 295
Monoliterate literary cultures, 46, 56,
295
Mononobe clan, 126, 135, 137
Moralia (Plutarch), 275
Moretti, Franco, 28990
Morgan, Teresa, 28
Morris, Ivan, 174
Morwood, James, 140
Mos maiorum, 157
Mother cultures, 4, 5
Mother of Michitsuna, 189
Moulton, Richard G., 290
Murakami, Emperor of Japan, 157
338
Index.indd 338
Murasaki Shikibu, 18, 61, 160, 174, 186,

187, 190, 196, 230, 237, 23953. See
also Genji monogatari
Muromachi Period, 155
Mussolini, Benito, 120
Mutual virtual history, 1023, 11718, 119
Mybd (Law track), 26, 242
Mygyd (Classics track), 26, 242
Monjd (Literature track), 26
Mystery cults, 9
Myth of exile, 219
Naevius, 103, 127
Nagaoka, 164, 168
Nagaya, Prince, 92
Nagle, Betty Rose, 219
Naipaul, V. S., 292
Nakatomi family, 126, 135, 137
Naniwa, 164, 175
Nanyue Peak, 125
Nara (city), 7, 42, 43, 177, 18485
capital lament on, 175
founding of, 164
Nara (period), 2, 57, 118
education during, 28, 29
government during, 161, 162
ornament during, 88
Narratio, 28
National literary studies. See
Kokubungaku
Neoteric poetry, 187
Nepos, 275
Nero, 207
New Comedy, 60
Newly Selected Collection of Myriad
Leaves. See Shinsen Manysh
New Monkey Music (Shin sarugaku ki)
(Fujiwara no Akihira), 167
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 76
Nihon (Japan), 6
Nihonjinron, 3940
Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan), 41, 57,
66, 71, 72, 126, 150, 161, 248
Nikki (diaries), 61, 160, 18691. See also
specic works
Ninken, Emperor of Japan, 185
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Nitt guh junrei kki (Record of a

Pilgrimage to Tang China in Search of
the Law) (Ennin), 33
Noh theater, 11, 56, 167, 235
Nukata, Princess, 5153
Numa Pompilius, 157, 276,
279, 28386
Obelos, 29
Object reference, 7, 10
Octavian. See Augustus
Odes (Horace), 113, 115, 172
Odoacer, 155
Odusia (Livius), 4950, 5253
Odyssey (Homer), 29, 49, 84, 128
e clan, 24, 182, 242
e no Asatsuna, 181, 270
e no Chisato, 24041, 267
e no Masafusa, 6265, 69, 72. See
also specic works of
e no Masahira, 121
OHara, James, 129
jin, Emperor of Japan, 68
Old Comedy, 60, 114, 116, 235
Old Poems, 267
mi, 168, 17577
mi no Mifune, 12425
miwa no Takechimaro, 90
On a bamboo armchair (Michizane),
21617
On Agriculture (Cato), 53, 72
Ondoku, 47n59
On Grammarians and Rhetors
(Suetonius), 22, 23
Onmyd, 94
On Reading the Imperial Edict
Announcing the Beginning of the
New Era (Michizane), 22627
On the Ends of Good and Evil (Cicero), 54
On the Orator (Cicero). See De oratore
On the Republic (Cicero). See De re publica
Ono no Imoko, 14950
Ontological comparative approach, 1213
Opici tribe, 82
Orange Tree. See Tachibana Orange Tree
Oratory, 84
Brutus on, 7276, 79, 108

decline of, 86
of Ovid, 22226
Organ Extraordinary (Ratai), 236
Ornament, 82, 85, 86, 87119
debates on simplicity vs., 96100,
10216
elusiveness of, 8789
embracing, 89102
Ornatus, 87, 88
Oscan (language), 45
sone Shsuke, 229
tomo no Ikenushi, 96100, 118
tomo no Tabito, 215
tomo no Yakamochi, 96100, 117, 118
tomo, Prince, 51, 5253, 90
tsu, Prince, 81, 85, 9091, 92, 101, 102,
105, 112
Out-pasting, 34, 299
Ovid, 17, 166, 187, 190, 20615, 21826,
23033, 296. See also
specic works of
addressivity of, 21822, 227, 231
impact of exile on, 2035, 206
letters to wife, 219, 22022
life and works of, 204
pleas of, 22226
as poet-provocateur, 20713
realism in works of, 21315
reason for exile of, 204, 207
Ovid Among the Scythians (Delacroix),
216(gure)
Owen, Stephen, 293
Paekche, 21, 23, 41, 42, 83, 126, 148
Palatine, 157, 159, 166
Pallanteum, 128, 133, 135, 144
Palliatae, 60
Panaetius, 114, 172
Panathenaic Games, 3
Pan Yue, 88, 99
Parallelism, 51, 52, 8889, 94
Parallel Lives (Plutarch). See Bioi
parallloi
Parhae, 163
Paullus, L. Aemilus, 114
Index
Index.indd 339
339
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Paullus Fabius Maximus, 222

Pedagogy, 29091
Pei Ziye, 100n30
Pelling, Christopher, 276
Pericles, 275
Perilla, 219, 222
Peripatetics, 38, 234
Peripatos, 105
Persians (Aeschylus), 35
Persius, 235, 255
Perspicuitas, 88
Persuasive speeches, 88
Phaedrus (Plato), 152
Phaenomena (Aratus), 223
Philip V of Macedon, 36
Philo of Larissa, 107
Philosophies for Sale (Lucian), 25859
Philosophy
rhetoric vs., 104, 1057, 118
satire and, 23437 (see also De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii)
Philoxenos, 55
Phoenix Hall, 155
Pietas, 121, 139
Pillow Book (Sei Shnagon). See Makura
no sshi
Pillow words, 176, 185
Pizer, John, 290
Planting Chrysanthemums
(Michizane), 22930
Plato, 24, 72, 152, 253, 255, 278, 296.
See also specic works of
Platonic Academy, 38, 105, 106, 107, 114
Plautus, 50, 53, 55, 60, 102
Pliny, 82
Plutarch, 8, 18, 17071, 266, 27586,
288. See also specic works of
Poetic banquets, 52, 150, 241, 242,
243n15
Poetic elaboration, 241
Poetic expositions (fu), 267
Poetic faults, 92, 93, 94
Poetics (Aristotle), 57
Poetogony, 7172, 79
Poetry. See also specic works
development of, 84
340
Index.indd 340
epic (see Epics)

exile (see Exile poetry)
haikai (haiku), 235, 240, 298
kanshi (see Kanshi)
kenkei, 95
kudaishi, 6061, 178
lshi, 20, 92
neoteric, 187
praise, 17475
renku, 18283
rhyme in, 92, 93
uta, 5153
waka (see Waka)
Poetry Contest of the Kanpy era for
his Majesty (Kanpy no ntoki
kisainomiyano utaawase), 266
Political capital, 1, 16, 37
Politum, 74
Pollio, 115
Polybius, 114, 170, 174
Pompey the Great, 103, 208
Ponsonby-Fane, Richard A., 164
Pontices, 157
Porcius Licinius, 72
Powell, Barry, 152
Praise elegies, 201
Praise poems, 17475
Praise speeches. See Encomia/
encomium
Prefaces
development of genre, 60
to Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi,
24853
to Kaifs (see Kaifs)
to Kokinsh (see Japanese Preface
to Kokinsh; Kokinsh; SinoJapanese Preface to Kokinsh)
to Shijing, 6364, 69, 70, 94, 235,
274
Prince Shtoku Lecturing on the Lions
Roar Sutra, 148(gure)
Progymnasmata, 28
Propertius, 17, 113, 123, 154, 161, 187,
190, 19194, 198202. See
also Elegies
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Prophecy, 127, 12834, 135, 13839

Prosopopoeia, 28, 224
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 21
Public vs. private space, 23940, 241,
242, 245, 24748, 249, 250, 251,
26364
Pumpkinication of Emperor Claudius
(Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii)
(Seneca), 255
Punic Wars, 22
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, 35
Pythagorean philosophy, 35
Qi Dynasty, 137
Qin Dynasty, First Emperor of, 45
Qing Dynasty, 26
Quadrivium, 27, 238
Quintilian, 27, 28, 30, 54, 60, 61, 114,
187, 235, 300
Qu Yuan, 2078, 217, 228, 230
Ransom of Hector (Dionysius I), 35
Ratai (Organ Extraordinary), 236
Realism, 21318
Reception studies, 8, 15, 29394, 297
Record of Ancient Matters. See Kojiki
Record of a Pilgrimage to Tang China in
Search of the Law (Nitt guh junrei
kki) (Ennin), 33
Record of Rites. See Liji
Record on the Land of Drunkenness
(Wang Ji). See Zuixiangji
Record on the Land of Stillness and
Enlightenment (Ennin), 63n3
Record on the Realm of Poetry
(Masafusa). See Shikyki
Records of the Grand Historian, 26
Records of Wind and Earth (Fdoki), 66
Recusatio, 59, 60, 188, 296, 299
in Elegies, 19294, 199201, 202
in Makura no sshi, 199201, 202
Reference cultures, 1, 410, 21, 61, 84,
116, 128, 295, 299
allusions to, 8
bibliographical dimension, 8
conquest and, 33
dened, 4
education and, 16, 22, 24, 32, 83
ethical dimension, 6
language and, 45
legal meaning, 6
linguistic sense, 7
literary history and, 65
manifold perspectives on, 2
material dimension, 67
satire and, 17, 18, 23435
synoptic texts and, 265
Renement, literary, 2021
Reform movements, 8283, 89
Refusal trope. See Recusatio
Regulated poetry. See Lshi
Reincarnation, 13439
popularity as narrative device,
13435
prophecy compared with, 134, 135,
13839
as Shtoku theme, 120, 12425,
12829, 13539
Remus, 157
Renku (linked poems), 18283
Republic (Plato), 3
Rerum rusticarum libri tres (Varro), 72
Returning to antiquity (fugu)
movements, 82
Reverse kundoku, 47
Rhapsodies (fu), 60, 84, 98, 174, 267,
270
Rhapsody on daybreak (Xie Guan), 180
Rhapsody on the Marriage of Husband
and Wife (Danjo konin fu) (e no
Asatsuna), 270
Rhetoric
Brutus on, 72
De oratore on, 104, 1057, 118
study of, 23, 28
of synkrisis in Plutarch, 27678
Rhyme, 92, 93
Riddle type of poetry (kenkei), 95
Ritsury (statutory law) system, 161
Rituals of the Zhou (Zhou li), 182
Index
Index.indd 341
341
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Roaming Wind defect, 94n19

Roman Atticism, 11112, 298
Romance vectors, 186200
of Kyoto, 17, 18691, 194202
of Rome, 17, 16061, 18694,
198202
Rome (capital), 1617, 15467
cityscape of, 15559
current status as capital, 155
founding of, 155
government of, 161
ideological signicance of, 164
imaginary plan of, 167(gure)
romance vector and, 17, 16061,
18694, 198202
social impact of military expansion,
16263
sophistication of, 16667
time vector and, 17, 16974
topography of, 166
Rome (empire)
age of culture in, 12
Bioi parallloi on, 27883
conquest of Greece, 33, 34, 35,
3639, 83
expulsion of Greeks from, 38
founding of republic, 120
Romulus, 120, 122, 140, 173, 191, 275,
27786
as Aeneass grandson, 127
death of, 279
Hut of, 15759, 170
in light of Numa Pompilius, 28386
Rome in the biography of, 27883
synkrisis for, 27778, 286
Romulus Agustulus, 155
Rose, H. J., 238
Rudd, Niall, 114n55
Ruden, Sarah, 122
Rulin waishi (The Scholars) (Wu Jingzi),
235
Rushdie, Salman, 292
Ryshi (bureau exam), 27
Saich, 125
Saimon, 212
342
Index.indd 342
Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin, 76

Sallust, 57
Sand (mathematical track) 26, 242
Sangygisho (The Three Sutra
Commentaries) (Shtoku), 14849
Sanshi (Three Histories), 236
Sapientia, 103, 1045, 107, 112, 117
Sappho, 84, 113
Satire, 1718, 23436, 265. See also
specic works
Menippean, 235, 239, 25559, 262
296
Satires (Horace), 16, 86, 103, 11216
Sawara, Prince, 168
Scaevola, Quintus Mucius, 104
Scholars, The (Rulin waishi) (Wu Jingzi),
235
Schwindt, Jrgen Paul, 74n27, 79
Scipio Aemilinus, 114, 208
Sei Shnagon, 17, 154, 161, 186, 194202.
See also Makura no sshi
Sekiten, 24, 216
Selections of Rened Literature. See
Wenxuan
Seleucid Empire, 36, 40
Self-colonization, 1, 34, 39
Self-reective approach to studies, 298
Self-reexive Hellenism, 11316
Seneca, 208, 219, 255
Sententia, 28
Servius Tullius, 132, 164
Setsuwa (anecdotal literature), 61
Seven Hills, 166
Seven Liberal Arts, 18, 238, 253, 254,
261, 263(gure)
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove,
229
Seventeen Article Code of
Conduct (Jshichji kenp)
(Shtoku), 148
Sextus Pompeius, 222
Shiji (Historical Records) (Sima Qian),
151, 214, 248
Shijing (Classic of Poetry), 20, 84, 92,
2089
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
date of compilation, 65
Great Preface to, 6364, 69, 94,
235, 274
267, 272, 274
Shikyki (A Record on the Realm of
Poetry) (Masafusa), 6265
Shimada no Tadaomi, 229
Shin sarugaku ki (New Monkey Music)
(Fujiwara no Akihira), 167
Shinsen Manysh (Newly Selected
Collection of Myriad Leaves), 18,
26674
Bioi parallloii compared with,
28788
cosmology in, 26770
described, 266
poetic agency in, 27274
poetic logic in, 27072
Shitennji temple, 121, 126
Shshi (ministry exam), 27
Shtoku, Prince, 16, 17, 1819, 123,
13539, 14751, 153, 154
Aeneas compared with, 124, 135, 138,
153
birth of, 13536
cult of, 121
as rst author in Japanese history,
14849
foreign edge of, 12021, 12427
Shtoku taishi denryaku (Abridged
Biography of Prince Shtoku),
12327, 153
Aeneid compared with, 123, 124,
13839
described, 121
literacy motif, 14751
reincarnation motif, 120, 12425,
12829, 13539
Shun, Emperor of China, 217
Signatures, 59
Silk Road, 163, 235
Silla, 41, 42, 83, 126, 135, 163
Silver Latinity, 82
Sima Qian, 151, 214, 248, 250
Simplicity, 82, 85, 86, 94, 10219
Attic (see Atticism)

in decline narrative, 1037
Hellenism and, 11316
wa-kan game and, 96100
Sinographic sphere, 4849, 151
Sino-Japanese canon, 46
Sino-Japanese literature. See Kanbun
Sino-Japanese Poems Composed on the
Tale of Shining Genji (Genji Poems).
See Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi
Sino-Japanese poetry. See Kanshi
Sino-Japanese Preface to Kokinsh
(Ki no Yoshimochi), 69, 81, 85, 94,
101, 103
Ciceros work compared with, 105,
112, 118
excerpts from, 7072
Sino-Japanese War, 33
Sisheng babing (four tones and eight
faults rule), 92
Six Dynasties Period, 5, 15, 20, 23, 36, 52
development of poetry during, 84
Six Dynasties Period
ornament during, 82, 87, 88, 89,
92, 117
Six Poetic Modes, 93, 94
Socius Senecio, 27879
Socrates, 3
De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii on,
255, 256, 258
De oratore on, 85, 1037, 112
Soga clan, 126, 137
Solon, 23
Sone no Yoshitada, 181
Song (Hymns), 94
Song Dynasty, 26, 182
Song le (Essential History of the Song
Dynasty) (Pei Ziye), 100n30
SOP languages, 46
Sshi, Empress of Japan, 190
Source cultures, 5
Source language, 5
Spitzer, Leo, 291
SPO languages, 46
Stahl, William, 238
State Academy (Japan). See Daigakury
Index
Index.indd 343
343
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Stating my Feelings (Prince tsu), 91

Steiner, Deborah, 152
Stesichoros, 132
Stimulus. See Ky
Stoics, 38, 105, 234, 256, 259
Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red
Chamber), 13435
Strabo, 8, 127
Suasoria, 28, 225, 226
Substance, 87, 88, 89, 94, 1012, 105
Suetonius Tranquillus, 22, 23, 24, 29,
45, 49
Sugawara family, 24, 182, 242
Sugawara no Fumitoki, 121, 18485
Sugawara no Michizane, 17, 18, 181,
184, 20518, 22633, 296. See also
specic works of
addressivity of, 218, 22021
rst banishment of, 205
impact of exile on, 2034, 206
letters to wife, 22021
life of, 205
pleas of, 22630
as poet-ocial, 20713
realism in works of, 21318
reason for exile of, 206, 207
rehabilitation of, 212, 231
Shinsen Manysh attributed to, 266
Sui Dynasty, 42
Suiko, Empress of Japan, 124, 148
Sulla, 103, 104
Sulpicia, 189
Sun Kang, 251
Suzaku Avenue, 163
Synchronizing, 4n3
Synkrisis, 27678, 286
Synoptic machine, 265, 266, 274, 278,
283, 28788
Synoptic texts, 17, 18, 26588. See also
specic works
Tachibana Orange Tree, 157, 159
Tachibana no Norimitsu,
194, 197
Tacitus, 57, 8586
Taih legal code, 90
344
Index.indd 344
Taira clan, 121, 169

Taira no Kiyomori, 169
Tale literature. See Monogatari
Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga
monogatari) (Michinaga), 177
Tale of Genji (Murasaki). See Genji
monogatari
Tale of Middle Councilor Hamamatsu
(Hamamatsu Chnagon monogatari),
139
Tales of the Heike, The, 58, 292
Tales of Ise, 187, 188
Tang Dynasty, 5, 20, 26, 28, 36, 42, 43,
44, 57, 137, 182
decline narratives during, 82
development of poetry
during, 84
ornament during, 87, 88, 117
Tanka (short poems), 96. See also
Waka
Tao Qian, 230
Tao Yuanming, 230
Tarentum, 35
Target cultures, 5
Target language, 5
Tarquinius Superbus, 120
Tebtunis Papyrus, 29, 30(gure)
Teishi, Empress of Japan, 190, 191,
195, 196
Telos, 129, 130, 132, 133, 138, 14546,
161, 172
Temmu, Emperor of Japan, 92
Temple of Vesta, 155
Tendai school of Buddhism. See Tiantai
school of Buddhism
Tenji, Emperor of Japan, 5052, 90, 92,
168, 175, 17677
Tenjin, 231, 232
Tenmu, Emperor of Japan, 51, 90, 168
Terence, 53, 60, 102
Terrains of Text in Mid-Heian Court
Culture (Kamens), 202n78
Theater. See Drama and theater
Theocritus, 113, 215
Theodosius, 155
Theophrastus, 88
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Theseus, 275, 27786

Athens in the biography of, 27883
death of, 27980
in light of Lycurgus, 28386
synkrisis for, 27778, 286
Thousand Character Classic, 21, 23, 29
Three Histories (Sanshi), 236
Three Kingdoms Period, 41, 83, 126
Three Relations, 250n31
Three Sutra Commentaries, The
(Sangygisho) (Shtoku), 14849
Three Teachings, 250
Thucydides, 10910
Tiantai (Tendai) school of Buddhism,
124, 125, 148
Tiberius, 76, 204, 223
Tibullus, 187, 188, 207
Timaeus (Plato), 24, 8
Time vectors, 17, 160, 16986
of Kyoto, 17, 17486
of Rome, 17, 16974
T daiwaj tseiden (Account of the
Eastern Expedition of the Great Tang
Priest) (mi no Mifune), 125
Tokugawa shogunate, 155
Tokyo, 155
Tomb Period, 41
Tomis, 203, 2045, 215, 216
Topic Poetry. See Kudaishi
Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary), 189
Tragedy, 58, 59, 60, 84
Trajan, 23
Translatio, 5, 13, 34, 41, 43
Translation, 16, 47, 4950, 5256, 298
deep comparisons of, 295, 296
drama of, 50, 56, 5859
from source to target language, 5
Transposition, 296
Tricanonical education, 46, 48, 56, 295
Tristia (Ovid), 17, 205, 20910, 211, 212
addressivity in, 21819, 22022
Trivium, 27, 238
Trojan War, 123, 139, 14041, 142, 144
Tullia, 219
Tusculan Disputations (Cicero), 219
Tych, 171
Uda, Emperor of Japan, 180, 205, 206, 211

Umbrian (language), 45
Universal way. See Dao
Uta (song, poetry), 5153
Uta no Shiki (Code of Waka Poetry)
(Fujiwara no Hamanari), 16, 85, 9296
Valerius Maximus, 32, 37
Valerius Soranus, 72
Varro Reatinus, 72, 157, 255
Velleius Paterculus, 16, 18, 7680, 299
Vernacular Japanese canon, 26, 46
Vernacular Japanese poetry. See Waka
Verres, 111
Vietnam, 14, 36, 48, 174
Vimalakirti Sutra, 149
Vipstanus Messalla, 86
Virgil, 17, 18, 28, 113, 115, 179, 190, 204,
215, 296. See also specic works of
Volcacius Sedigitus, 72
Vulture Peak, 125
Wa (Japanese), 6, 40, 42, 267
Wabun, 48
Wad Era, 92
Waist-Tail defect, 94n19
Waka on Topic Lines (Kudai waka)
(Chisato), 267
Waka (vernacular poetry), 16, 105, 117,
118, 139, 185, 265. See also specic
works
current writing in form of, 298
earliest treatise on, 85
elegance and literary knowledge in,
9296
Kokinsh importance to, 69, 70, 71,
79
in Makura no sshi, 197, 199, 200
public and private, 240
in Shinsen Manysh, 26674,
28788
standing in genre hierarchy, 5657, 61
women writing in, 196
Yakamoch-Ikenushi correspondence,
96100
Index
Index.indd 345
345
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Wakan hikaku bungakkai (Wa-kan/SinoJapanese Comparative Literature

Association), 293
Wa-kan polarity, 118
beginnings of, 96100
Fu Hikaru Genji monogatari shi and,
264
Wakan reish (Collection of Japanese and
Chinese-style Poems for Recitation), 17,
56, 160, 17786
as authorized transgression, 241
Forbidden City, 178, 179, 18184
Mountain and Water, 179
Old Capitals, 178, 179, 18485
Old Palaces, 178
Water, with Fishermen, 178, 17981
Wa-kan/Sino-Japanese Comparative
Literature Association (Wakan
hikaku bungakkai), 293
Walking Muse, The: Horace on the Theory
of Satire (Freudenburg), 11314
Wang Ji, 63
Wang Xizhi, 147
Wani-kishi, 21, 23, 25, 29
Warring States Period, 147
War Tales (gunki monogatari), 58
Wei Dynasty, 99, 166
Weltliteratur, 77, 28991
Wen (bun)
dened, 66
in Kaifs, 6667, 69, 79,
8990
Kokinsh on, 6970, 71, 79
ornament and, 87, 88, 8990, 95
in Shtoku taishi denryaku, 12327
Wen, King of China, 6667, 71, 137
Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and
the Carving of Dragons) (Liu Xie),
87n6
Wenxuan (Literary Selections; Selections
of Rened Literature), 26, 27, 174,
23536
Western Han Dynasty, 178
Western Zhou Dynasty, 20
What Is a Classic? (Eliot), 122n2
Winding Stream Banquet, 96, 150
346
Index.indd 346
Wisse, Jakob, 107

Wixted, John Timothy, 69
Women. See also Gender; individual
women
education of, 48
romance written by, 186, 189, 190,
196, 201
of Rome, 167
Women of Aetna (Aeschylus), 35
World Literature, 28994
World Literature and Its Place in General
Culture (Moulton), 290
World Masterpieces, 290
World Republic of Letters (Masafusas
vision of), 62, 64
Writing, 6769, 79. See also Literacy
earliest introduction to Japan, 23
naturalization of, 6768
Wu (martial), 8990
Wu, Emperor of China, 26, 28
Wu, Empress of China, 137
Wu, Fusheng, 87n7
Wu Jingzi, 235
Wuzong, Emperor of China, 33, 44, 45
Xie Guan, 180
Xing (evocative image), 94
Xuanzong, Emperor of China, 6
Ya, 94
Yamanoue no Okura, 215
Yamato, 42, 66, 163, 164, 177
Yang strokes, 68
Yang Xiong, 98, 117
Yayoi Period, 40
Yellow Bird (Huang niao), 2089
Yellow Emperor, 151
Yin strokes, 68
Yin-Yang learning, 94, 234
Ykosai (Lingering Fragrance
Festival), 212
Yoshino, 175
You Dark Heaven (Michizane), 2089
Yu, Anthony, 293
Yu, Pauline, 293
Yuan Zhen, 211, 267
Index
10/9/2013 8:33:32 PM
Zai Yu, 100

Zerubavel, Eviatar, 3
Zetzel, James, 104n36
Zhang Longxi, 12, 293
Zheng Xuan, 29
Zuihitsu (essays), 19091
Zhou Dynasty, 66, 137

Zhou li (Rituals of the Zhou), 182
Zhuangzi, 134
Zuixiangji (A Record on the
Land of Drunkenness) (Wang Ji),
63, 65
Index
Index.indd 347
347
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Index.indd 348
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Index.indd 349
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Index.indd 350
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Index.indd 351
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Index.indd 352
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Index.indd 353
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Index.indd 354
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Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

2. East Asian literatureHistory

Setting the Stage:Sino-Japanese and Greco-Roman

Starting avant la lettre:An Essay on How to Tell the

Latecomers:Of Ornament, Simplicity, and

City-Building or Writing? How Aeneas and Prince

Rome and Kyoto:Capitals, Genres, Gender

Poetry in Exile:Sugawara no Michizane and

Satire in Foreign Attire:The Ambivalences of

The Synoptic Machine:Sino-Japanese and

the Society of Fellows at Columbia University, under the directorship of David

University, Meisei University (Tokyo), Princeton University, Harvard University,

Classical World Literatures

1. The Relative Age of Cultures

Unlike with individual peoples minds in a community, there is of course no

| Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

6 | Classical World Literatures

Two further connotations of reference bring us to this studys specic focus

Classical World Literatures

3. The Comparative Imperative

Classical World Literatures

My project has been driven by a restless, inevitable urgency, the sense of a

12 | Classical World Literatures

its well-established venerable Western sibling), because national rhetoric has

14 | Classical World Literatures

Martindale and Thomas 2006,13.

16 | Classical World Literatures

self-consciously lacked: indigenous philosophical traditions. Precisely that lack

Classical World Literatures

a Buddhist hagiographical biography for comparison with the Aeneid. Although it

Starting Canonical:Early Japanese and Roman Education

De grammaticis et rhetoribus 12. Translation from Kaster 1995,5.

| Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

As Cicero relates in De re publica4.3.3.

Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

characters, and encyclopedias that brought synonymical expressions, loci classici,

fi g ur e 1 . 1 The Homeric Epic as Hellenistic SchoolbookText

Classical World Literatures

fi g ur e 1 . 2 The Analects as Japanese SchoolbookText

(The Master said:To learn and sometimes review

Valerius Maximus, Factorum et dictorum memorabilium II.2.2. Shackleton Bailey 2000,139.

Classical World Literatures

Comparisons are not inconvenienced, but enabled by controlled dissimilitude.

Text based on Ono 1992,472.

Classical World Literatures

long-prevailing Hellenistic multipolar anarchy to being the hegemonic power in

36 | Classical World Literatures

to represent the endpoint of a longer process of the submission of Greece and

Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

as a unipolar hegemonic power in the Mediterranean in the late third century

Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

To clearly formulate the crucial dierences between the pattern of literacy in

| Classical World Literatures

disadvantage of requiring translation.56 Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet, but

Classical World Literatures

Classical World Literatures

When spring comes forth