Saigyo
Encyclopedia
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
poet
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...
of the late Heian
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
and early Kamakura period
Kamakura period
The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
.
Biography
Born Satō Norikiyo (佐藤 義清) in KyotoKyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
to a noble family, he lived during the traumatic transition of power between the old court nobles and the new samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
warriors. After the start of the Age of Mappō
Mappo
The Latter Day of the Law, is one of the Three Ages of Buddhism. Mappō or Mofa , which is also translated as the Age of Dharma Decline, is the "degenerate" Third Age of Buddhism.- Tradition :...
(1052), Buddhism was considered to be in decline and no longer as effective a means of salvation. These cultural shifts during his lifetime led to a sense of melancholy in his poetry. As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired Emperor Toba
Emperor Toba
was the 74th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Toba's reign spanned the years from 1107 through 1123.- Genealogy :...
, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown, he quit worldly life to become a monk, taking the religious name
Religious Name
A religious name is a type of given name bestowed for a religious purpose, and which is generally used in religious contexts. Different types of religious names may be in use among the clergy of a religion, as well in some cases among the laity....
En'i (円位). He later took the pen name, "Saigyō" meaning Western Journey, a reference to Amida Buddha
Amitabha
Amitābha is a celestial buddha described in the scriptures of the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism...
and the Western paradise. He lived alone for long periods in his life in Saga, Mt Koya
Mount Koya
is the name of mountains in Wakayama Prefecture to the south of Osaka. Also, Kōya-san is a modifying word for Kongōbuji . There is no one mountain officially called Kōya-san in Japan....
, Mt Yoshino
Yoshino, Nara
is a town located in Yoshino District, Nara Prefecture, Japan.As of September 1, 2007, the town had an estimated population of 9397 and a density of 97.93 persons per km². The total area was 95.65 km².-Geography:...
, Ise
Ise Province
or was a province of Japan including most of modern Mie Prefecture. Ise bordered Iga, Kii, Mino, Ōmi, Owari, Shima, and Yamato Provinces.The ancient provincial capital was at Suzuka...
, and many other places, but he is more known for the many long, poetic journeys he took to Northern Honshū
Honshu
is the largest island of Japan. The nation's main island, it is south of Hokkaido across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyushu across the Kanmon Strait...
that would later inspire Basho
Matsuo Basho
, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...
in his Narrow Road to the Interior
Oku no Hosomichi
, translated alternately as The Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Narrow Road to the Interior, is a major work by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō considered "one of the major texts of classical Japanese literature."...
. He was a good friend of Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika , also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie, was a Japanese poet, critic, calligrapher, novelist, anthologist, scribe, and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods...
. Some main collections of Saigyō's work are in the Sankashū, Shin Kokin Wakashū, and Shika Wakashū. He died in Hirokawa Temple in Kawachi Province
Kawachi Province
was a province of Japan in the eastern part of modern Osaka Prefecture. It originally held the southwestern area that was split off into Izumi Province...
(present-day Osaka Prefecture
Osaka Prefecture
is a prefecture located in the Kansai region on Honshū, the main island of Japan. The capital is the city of Osaka. It is the center of Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area.- History :...
) at age 72.
Style
In Saigyō's time, the Man'yōshū was no longer a big influence on wakaWaka (poetry)
Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of classical Japanese verse and one of the major genres of Japanese literature...
poetry, compared to the Kokin Wakashū. Where the Kokin Wakashū was concerned with subjective experience, word play, flow, and elegant diction (neither colloquial nor pseudo-Chinese), the Shin Kokin Wakashū (formed with poetry written by Saigyō and others writing in the same style) was less subjective, had fewer verbs and more nouns, was not as interested in word play, allowed for repetition, had breaks in the flow, was slightly more colloquial and more somber and melancholic. Due to the turbulent times, Saigyō focuses not just on awaré (sorrow from change) but also on sabi
Wabi-sabi
represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete"...
(loneliness) and kanashi (sadness). Though he was a Buddhist monk, Saigyō was still very attached to the world and the beauty of nature.
Poetry examples
Many of his best-known poems express the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty.
Most monks would have asked to die facing West, to be welcomed by the Buddha, but Saigyō finds the Buddha in the flowers.
To be "heartless" was an ideal of Buddhist monkhood, meaning one had abandoned all desire and attachment.
Saigyō travelled extensively, but one of his favorite places was Mount YoshinoMount Yoshinois a mountain located in the town of Yoshino in Yoshino District, Nara Prefecture, Japan. In 2004, It was designated as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range....
, famous for its cherry blossoms.
Resources
- Saigyô, Poems of a Mountain Home, translated by Burton WatsonBurton WatsonBurton Watson is an accomplished translator of Chinese and Japanese literature and poetry. He has received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1981 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of...
, Columbia University Press, © 1991 ISBN 0-231-07492-1 cloth ISBN 0-231-07493-X pbk [233 pp.] - Saigyô,Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyô (1118-1190), translated by William R. LaFleur, New Directions 1978.
- William R. LaFleur. Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. This is an expanded and matured reworking of the material in Mirror for the Moon.
External links
- Classical Japanese Database - has some poems by Saigyō in translations and in the original Japanese