“The Poet Who Challenged the Shogun: Asukai Masayo and Shinshoku Kokin Wakashū”, 2024-02-07 ():
During Japan’s late medieval era, the Ashikaga shoguns wished to merge the imperial and warrior governments and establish a feudal monarchy.
Shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori made considerable efforts to acquire cultural capital and start a new imperial dynasty. He understood the symbolic importance of ancient traditions for the realization of his ambitions. One gesture aimed at acquiring cultural authority was his initiation and sponsorship of a literary project known today as the last imperial anthology of waka, Shinshoku kokin wakashū.
The collection reveals that its compiler, Asukai Masayo, challenged the shogun with an agenda that undermined Yoshinori’s authority.
…Due to Asukai Masayo’s symbolic authority rooted in Japanese antiquity and based on his expertise in ancient traditions such as waka and kemari (a type of kickball game), Shogun Yoshinori was unable to challenge the choices Masayo made for his collection. Thanks to the importance of his family’s heritage, Masayo possessed cultural knowledge and authority that transcended its own field and bled into the realm of politics. In addition, the mid-1400s was only the beginning of the Asukai rise in power; due to the house’s expertise in two traditional arts, by the 16th century, it had unprecedented economic stability and had gained shogunal support for exclusivity in the transmissions of its teachings.
…This ranking has a few features unseen in other late medieval imperial anthologies. First, the official commissioner Go-Hanazono does not appear among the most-represented poets. Most medieval imperial collections have their imperial commissioners included among the top 10 poets.73 Instead of Go-Hanazono, represented with 12 poems, who was still young at the time of this collection’s completion which justifies the scarcity of his poems, the list contains his stepfather Go-Komatsu (1377–1433) of the Northern Court. Yoshinori is also included but represented with fewer poems than the compiler’s father, famous poets from the past, and the late retired emperor. In fact, it is astonishing that poets associated with the shogunate and the Ashikaga shoguns themselves are not among the most-represented poets, except for Ton’a (1289–1372) who was close to the second Ashikaga ruler, Yoshiakira (1330–67). In the preceding imperial collection, Shingoshūishū, 3 of the Ashikaga rulers—Yoshiakira, Yoshimitsu, and Takauji (1305–58)—are among the top-10 poets.
Asukai Masayo’s power was located in his expertise and the prestige of his family, while Yoshinori had power in financial means to support Masayo’s activity. Once both sides entered a symbiotic relationship based on the exchange of their material and symbolic assets, they were fully able to perform their assigned roles. The prominence of medieval cultural experts and their patrons depended heavily on the existence of their relationship, mutual support, and loyalty, which corresponds to what Brian Steininger concludes about textual transmission and personal relationships in the context of Chinese learning in medieval Japan.74 However, the list of the most-represented poets in Shinshoku kokinshū suggests that the Ashikaga clan and Yoshinori himself were not as important as the members of poetic and imperial families. It is no wonder that Yoshinori was angered by and disapproved of Masayo’s anthology; it strays from the precedent of earlier collections and is a sign of disrespect for the shogunate.
In addition, while entries in waka dictionaries emphasize that the Nijō house is well represented in Shinshoku kokinshū, none of the Nijō poets made the top-10 poets’ list.75 Instead, the collection pays respect to the Asukai house—Asukai Masayori, Masatsune, and Masayo—and to the early 1200s when the Asukai were just beginning to gain importance. Go-Toba himself, besides supporting the Mikohidari school, was Masatsune’s first patron and it is largely thanks to him that the Asukai grew in power. Asukari Masa’ari, who became one of the compilers of a never-completed imperial collection and maintained close relations with the Kamakura shogunate, is represented with 14 poems. In addition, many of the esteemed Shinkokinshū-era poets and patrons, most of whom are associated with the Mikohidari school—Yoshitsune (1169–1206), Shunzei (1114–1204), Teika—are also on the list. It is, however, the compiler’s father, Masayori, who emerges at the top; this emphasizes the lineage of the compiler who appears as the authoritative center of this imperial collection and his vast cultural superiority over Yoshinori. We observe similar dynamics in the first spring volume, where Masayori’s poem opens the volume, while Yoshinori’s composition ends it.76 The shogun’s dissatisfaction was thus caused by the lack of recognition for him as the center of cultural production.
This ranking suggests that Shinshoku kokinshū was not meant to promote the Ashikaga or Yoshinori, even though their existence is acknowledged, but above all to foreground the importance of the Asukai and to pay general tribute to the beginnings of waka which elevated, as tradition dictates, emperors and not shoguns. Masayo did not honor the agents to whom he owed his position as the imperial compiler—Yoshinori and Go-Hanazono—in a manner some compilers had done in the past.77 He asserted his house’s position, which confirms Jeffrey Mass’s view of medieval Japan, according to which family takes precedence above everything else.78 Yoshinori did not appreciate the collection because it did not recognize and highlight his prominence but rather favored the Asukai family and imperial court—traditional units against which Ashikaga shoguns could never win culturally or symbolically.
…Yoshinori took Masayo’s compilation agenda as an offense, but the reality was that imperial waka collections were traditionally not compiled for shoguns before the late medieval era, and Masayo was already setting precedent by including Yoshinori’s composition as third in the spring volume. Poetic conventions allowed for coded recognition of a shogun’s presence within the imperial realm—Shinshoku kokinshū shared this feature with previous imperial collections initiated by Ashikaga rulers. However, Yoshinori was not considered equal in status to the ruling emperor, to his own father, or to the Asukai poets whose lineage and level of expertise in traditional arts could not be surpassed by many. Thus, despite Yoshinori’s efforts—patronage of the Asukai, sponsorship of the collection, and personal engagement in the process—he was betrayed in his alliance with Masayo.