Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in Traditional Japanese Poetry

Download or read book Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in Traditional Japanese Poetry written by Edward Kamens and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kamens focuses especially on one figure, "the buried tree," which refers to fossilized wood associated in particular with an utamakura site, the Natori River, and is mentioned in poems that first appear in anthologies in the early tenth century. The figure surfaces again at many points in the history of traditional Japanese poetry, as do the buried trees themselves in the shallow waters that otherwise conceal them. After explaining and discussing the literary history of the concept of utamakura, Kamens traces the allusive and intertextual development of the figure of the buried tree and the use of the place-name Natorigawa in waka poetry through the late nineteenth-century. He investigates the relationship between utamakura and the collecting of fetishes and curios associated with utamakura sites by waka connoisseurs.