CHAPTER II
POETRY—THE "KOKINSHIU"
For seventy or eighty years after the establishment of the capital at Heian or Kiōto, Chinese learning monopolised the attention of the nation. No prose writings of importance in the Japanese language have come down to us from this period. The native poetry also languished. Chinese verse composition was the fashion, Mikados and even princesses being numbered among the adepts in this accomplishment. The end of the ninth century, however, saw a revival of Japanese poetry. We now meet with the names of Yukihira, Narihira, Ōtomo no Kuronushi, and others, followed in the early part of the tenth by Ki no Tsurayuki, Ōshi Kōji, Henjō, and Ono no Komachi (a poetess).
In A.D. 905 the Mikado Daigo instructed a committee of officials of the Department of Japanese Poetry, consisting of Ki no Tsurayuki and other poets, to make a collection of the best pieces which had been produced during the previous one hundred and fifty years. The Anthology known as the Kokinshiu (Poems, Ancient and Modern) was the result of their labours. It was completed about 922, and contains over eleven hundred poems, arranged under the headings of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Felicitations, Partings, Journeys, Names of Things, Love, Sorrow, and Miscellaneous. Only five of this number are in the longer metre called Naga-uta, the
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